eclipse by whale on a june night/day

there is a version of me
still rooting through the clovers 
in the backyard. she's on her knees.
she lays each little plant out on her palm
to count the leaves. the sun is giving up
& crawling into its den for winter.
if you see a bear you should tell it
you have more than six ghosts & it will know
to move on. for the last week
i've eaten only from the Titanic's menus.
you can find them online. i ring a bell
for service to come.
a waitor arrives from my hallway
& brings me waldorf pudding which is 
a thick custard. the spoon is made
of whale bone. a whale passes by the window.
a whale soars through the sky 
to eclipse the clouds. a whole study
of clovers is waiting for me--
i notice how the leaves at the top
always want to pull apart but almost never do.
i should feed her-- my searching girl.
she works until her hands 
are boney & as thin as spiders.
i order boiled rice & it rains from above.
all the little grains like pale ants 
marching across the floor. a whale 
is always getting larger.
a four leaf clover could be waiting 
inside the cover of a wandering bible.
the ship, all great & glacial,
is passing by & blows its horn.
i tell the waitor i'm going to need 
some time to figure out what else i need.
he turns into a bullfrog. 
will the whale eat the bullfrog
or the bullfrog eat the wall.
a jaw is a malleable organ.
she eats a clover & it is bitter.
the green spread all over her body.
the shape of the clover leaves 
contagious across the house.
soon, my hands are clovers 
& my heart & my soul & my bones.
the ship is sinking again. slowly at first
the way everything ends. a disbelief.
the whale breaching & smashing the moon
into fine little pieces.
i carry the girl & store her
in a jar. i tell her she has to take a break 
or she'll die from all this chasing.
i ring a bell & the house 
turns into a blade of grass. i ring a bell
& the waitor is a flock of ibis &
i am the spoon made of bone.

the company of wax beans & birds  

bean stalks have been finding their way
into my house under the front door.
too many beans to be eaten. i watch the pods swell
like earlobes-- each listening 
to the sounds of birds telling the same story 
over & over. i want to write important poems 
full of humans but all i have are the peaches
at the bottom of my fridge & then now 
these beans. if the beans are magic 
i might never know. the birds are telling a story 
of a girl lost in the woods.
i say "i'm a boy" & the birds say
"everyone is a girl in the woods." if there is 
a fairytale lurking here it might never open.
on the back porch i go stare at the mountain 
& ask the mountain what its father's name was.
the mountain keeps its lips shut.
i don't use the stove, instead 
i use it as a place to pile
handfuls of beans i'm picking.
the birds outside want a bean or two
so i open the windows & let them in.
so many feathers. beaks hungry for ears.
i cover mine & wait for them to leave.
it is lonely to watch a plant grow.
could it be i wish i had someone
peering at my green neck 
& green arms--someone considering
my thrist for the sun? the stalk spreads 
all the way down my hall & towards the porch.
i tell the stalk it doens't want 
to climb the mountain. it's too steep 
& impossibly rocky. it's full of mouths
not attached to bodies. the stalk listens
& lays down to rest on the cool floor of my kitchen.
in my fruit bowl, the last clementine
starts to rot--sinking into itself.
outside on the street a flowering tree
spits all its heart onto the road.
i ask the stalk to stay-- to please
curl around me while i sleep.
cocoon me in an august swing. i am 
discussing my future with foliage.
i am letting a peach pit rest
beneath my tongue. the birds comes back
this time just to stare at me.
i ask if there is an evil witch
living in the trees. the birds
don't answer. i know that means there is.
i am a girl in the woods. in the mirror
i try to count my strands of hair.
the bean stalk knocks on the door.
it wants to watch.

in praise & fear of sasquatch hunters 

their heat vision goggles
peering at the red in us.
a patch of light in a tree. a smudge 
of squirrel. dad & i sit in a room 
empty of everything but the TV. 
white walls no-- green walls
no-- chameleon walls. walls changing colors 
to our moods. a mood ring wrapped around 
my heart snug & tight. on the TV we watch
a live stream from the sasquatch hunters. 
dad kneels & prays. 
i press my hands together. the hunters
rise early in the morning. 
they eat only the meat of strong animals:
bear & geese & cockroaches. 
the hunters never speak to each other 
so as to keep their focus 
on the endless hunt. dad believes 
in monsters. he sets a bear trap
in the yard. he places mouse traps
all along the walls of the room. 
we have just this one room to share
& who knows what is outside.
outside could be anything
like a serpent of asphalt or 
a headlight monster. i trust only
what i see on TV. the TV is honest
& delivers us the truth. a moving image.
men with technology. they plot an attack 
on the sasquatch. we watch intently 
the sasquatch never comes. 
after long days of watching them 
hunt the sasquatch we lay down 
on separate sides of the room.
flat blank floor. i feel the edges of my bones.
i consider the sasquatch 
& what he is plotting even now 
as the night beat its wings.
pausing i look at the hairs 
on the backs of my hands. the hair 
engulfing my legs. i find a sasquatch 
perched here inside my bones.
i look at my father & his broad shoulders 
& his hunger for leaves. 
watching him sleep, i convince myself
he is surely a sasquatch too.
this is where my sasquatch came from.
the TV turns on by itself.
just static. i am so so scared.
where will we go? where will we hide?
the hunters are always waking. 
i trace my teeth with my finger.
i curl up into a fist. the room dangles 
far away from everything. dangles from a treeth branch.
we are safe. we are just swallows.
we are just voles, i say. 
i stay awake all night.
the sun in our single window
is blue with its heat. when dad wakes 
i ask him, "are we monsters?"

my junk mail is lonely & un-openned.

i am sure a small creature was to blame
for your lost letter. do you know
they can ship anything these days?
i ordered ice cream online & it arrived 
in a box with dry ice. the ice unspooled 
a single thread of smoke into the living room.
i could ship myself in the right sized box
though it would be dark & terrifying.
the smell of cardboard. wiggling my toes
to keep them from falling asleep. 
sometimes, i search for tea cup dogs online
& all of them say they will ship the dog to you
for only like 100$ which means it's probably 
a scam. it costs more to ship a casket of books.
but here are these images 
of tiny tiny dogs. shrinking dogs.
i picture a dog in an envelop. you sending me
a dog the size of a magic bean. 
planting the bean in the yard
to grow a puppy tree. soft little animals
ripe as peaches each june. forgive me
for all my imagining. my mail box
used to have a little flag & not it's just
a little grey box. there is surely 
a pigeon reading your letter or perhaps 
an even more minute culprit 
like a centipede--they moved across the ground
like em-dashes. they pour over your letter
& all the secrets you told me 
that i never recieved. i think of your letter
slipping between the light clouds today.
all the streams of my junk mail
following to old apartments. crinkled envelops.
the junk mail moving from mailbox 
to trash can. in some of these places 
a resident might ask, "who on earth 
even was this?" me it was me.
the mail of a someone named "pearl"
used to arrive at my house on grant avenue 
& i would try to feel the envelopes 
for what was inside. sometimes the words
had enough weight that i could know them.
these were hand-written letters. 
i never openned them, just saved each
in a pile by the door. pearl never came.
it comforts me to think someone else
might be doing this with my mail.
maybe they save even my junk mail.
i hope they are bold & they open you letter.
know my secrets now. i guess it also possible
you never wrote to. i check the mail box each day
for your letter. today, 
a moth flies out with a cackle.
i ask the moth if it has seen 
a letter & the moth flurries away.
maybe yes, maybe no. 
i save a piece of junk mail.

for a future square moon

at the landfill we go looking
for our glasses. a sea gull 
plays a harp & the heat melts 
all of our credit cards which is 
mostly a relief. have you ever tried
running in the rain & dodging 
each drop? this requires slow motion.
the rain washes all the trash clean & new.
we find a broken machine 
that used to make bottle caps &
a dilapidated frog. now, we each have
six or seven fingers. more to write poetry with.
instead of course i'm using them
to hold onto a balloon dinosaur.
it's giant & if i let go the appatosaurus 
will go extinct again. in the landfil 
we find plastic bones. the skeletons 
of wanderers before us. a new direction 
sprouts on our compasses & we follow it 
until the world ends & we hit a wall. 
touching the barrier. the sensation of static
& the taste of mint. the wall 
wants to know what we imagine 
on the otherside. i remember 
it is best to not think in times like this 
or god will hear you & yank your wants away.
once, i was close to catching
a golden bee but i thought to deeply about it 
& the bee dispersed into a poof of glitter.
at the landfill, we find
several dying bees & nurse them back to health.
they pollinate us & next thing we know
we are finding plums & peaches 
& apricots in our hair. we eat fruit
until we're sick & dizzy with sugar.
laying, face up towards a fizzling sky
we talk about glass bottle sodas 
& wishing to never leave the landfil.
we could be great junk people,
living in other people's pasts.
a pair of opera glasses we find 
helps us inspect the shape of the moon.
it's become less & less round
in the last few weeks. we fear
it might turn square. what will that mean 
for the ocean? the angles are changing.
the angels are buried 
in banana peels. all the cores of apples
shed their seeds like glossy brown tears.
apple trees grown but not with any fruit
because the bees have moved on.
now every bee is a musician.
tiny saxphones. tiny drumsets. 
all the animals have aspirations.
i want to be a hermit in a broken machine.
the wolves out here want to be gods.
many of my friends 
want to be professors. a gnat
dreams of publishing the next great american novel.
the landfil snaps back
to just a waste basket. we take out the trash
& watch it out the window
as it's plucked from the curb.
a child off to school. a traveler
stepping onto a greyhound.

i pulled a turnip from the dirt

& the whole world caved in.
slipping of soil. not the roots 
or the pipes or the wires 
could hold this together. 
a round purple-ish turnip. 
i clutched it like a telephone reciever.
a dial tone pouring from all the pipes
& i drifted to the bottom of a jar.
all the glass in the world 
won't make a promise of you. 
pterodactyl wings bracketing 
this afternoon. where did the soot go?
the permafrost? the oil?
a strawn punched into an oil tank:
i tell all the histories to drink.
then, of course, our brothers
are somewhere else in all this slipping.
a book balanced on their heads.
i'm trying to fall apart 
with skill. one of them will blame us
for pulling the root from the yard.
he will say
how could you not know 
the role of a turnip so glossy & wide?
but it was all the wanting
that got in the way. i Google
in my soul because there is no more wifi.
the desctruction snapped our laptops
like saltines. Google tells me 
i need to find a lover
& pull a lock of his hair
to start undoing this. i find no one 
but a single quivering ear of corn.
pulling corn hair 
& stuffing my pockets, i dream of a man 
made of corn standing tall 
& beautiful. he would never tempt me
like the turnip did. why is it all
so fragile? go on world
pull yourself back together.
the dirt turns to sand
& the sand turns to pearls.
a great pile of necklaces.
the beads are cool across my skin
& i find a single gaping clam 
at the bottom. press my finger
to its tongue. the clam laughs.
i hope to wake up & not remember
any of this. i hope to rise
in a field of skunk cabbage
with the sun setting
purpling like the turnip. 
i put a sting of pearls 
in my mouth to take back 
with me.

how many queers does it take to ____?

a corn dog hovers in the hallway 
barking all night. i stroke my finger
across the golden surface.
i tell the animal to hush hush.
one day, there will be a plate 
to catch all the birds as they fall. 
chicken nuggets are made from 
all the pieces of the bird. 
most feathers taste like sage. 
i meant to ask you a question 
about a hole growing in the closet.
purple & swelling. a tunnel 
through the mountain. each day 
it asks me to come inside.
i am curling up in the head 
of a needle & never coming back.
we all have to eat something.
i take a handful of grass
& then another & another
to stuff myself. i want to be
a good teddy bear for whatever
the next life holds. one theory 
amoung witches is:
if you were a female in your last life 
& a male in the next 
sometimes energy carries over.
this is how you get a gay man.
how many queers does it take
to microwave a tulip? 
we are all standing around
the radioactive bond fire. 
the dogs are with us 
in their hunger & their wanting.
have you ever seen a man
beg for purple? we smear each other
all over the green backdrop.
in the forest, the steepness 
asks all the questions.
trees clutch rocks. i clutch 
everything i have forgotten 
to tell you. how will we live
in a world without air mattresses? 
soon enough it will all leak out.
i cut a row of gills. i plunged 
my head into the bath tub. pink is coming
very very soon. after that
we will have all red. the sun 
round & red 
& cherry cough syrup flavored.
the burning throat 
of tonight is blinking 
on & off. where are your shadows?
what are they doing without you?
i whistle. mine doesn't come back.
he must be doing the god's bidding.
do you trust your own mitosis?
i do not. i'm still hunting
a clone of myself. he sleep
in the tiny backyard.
i feed him corn dogs 
& blue water ice to try & 
make him different from me.
his face though-- his face is
the same as mine.

my brother & i wear burger king crowns

printed jewels on cardboard.
the two of us try to discover 
what we might be kings of. i scale a rock.
a church crumples into a paper crane.
schoolyard oak tree bends down 
to kiss my forehead.
birds land on my brothers shoulders
& carry him to the roof. snakes glide
underneath my shoes to lift me there with him.
our kingdom ranges from the driveway 
all the way down to main street
where broken glass is known 
to assemble back into bottles.
i adjust his crown. he adjusts mine. 
a dragon meanders down the road
with a cigarette in his mouth.
we divide the corn fields between each other.
i say i want to the one 
with the huge collapsing red barn.
he wanted the one with the silo. 
we point to what we want. i want
the old school house. he wants 
the water town & the house on main street
with the turret. the mailbox 
whispers so we go recieve our messages.
it tells us our people 
are displeased. they want 
a king with a metal crown. something
unchangable. we run away 
to beneath the pine tree 
where all our pets our buried.
amoung the ghosts of goldfish 
& chickens & frogs we hold each other.
we wanted too much too. 
in the distance, an arby's sign glows
& an burger king dazzles radiant.
everything we notice is cardboard.
mom's statin wagon & the grass
& even the tree we're sitting under.
we crawl through the center spiral
of a curly fry. it's a vortex
down into the basement: cool & damp.
there, we lay our crowns down 
amoung broken beer boxes. 
we vow to keep this life secret--
to lay on separate bunks 
& dream ourselves back into children.
the dragon pauses at the corner 
a block away. a fire engine 
rushes past & send red flickering
through both of our mouths.
in bed that night we cannot sleep.
in every direction the walls
tell us we are hiding. 
i tell my brother to close his eyes.
he drifts off to sleep. i stay awake
for us. for a moment
i sweat the jem in the crown 
burn heavy & real. 

infinity piece puzzle 

on the floor of the living toom 
we build the puzzle. maybe a million pieces.
do the border first, a frame. 
moving the furniture. the couch 
sprouting hooves & runs to hide
in the attic. there's only so long
until the puzzle evaporates
& we all become pieces. i picture myself
with three little arms fitting perfectly 
into a circle of four other dead boys.
the image is coming into focus.
a bird? yes one huge great bird.
all those green & black feathers.
no, maybe it is a courtyard. 
i should have mentioned earlier
a puzzle is something only a family
must complete. we woke 
on this yellow saturday
& found stacks & stacks of fragments.
a voice came from the windows 
& told us loudly
we had to assemble. my father 
got a screw driver from the garage
& tried to unscrew the house.
all of us on our knees. frantic.
sifting through corners of an unknown image. 
we take more guesses aloud. 
my brother thinks it's the beach house
from that one year in chincoteague.
he sees the channel & the kayaks.
i see now a great snake wrapping itself 
around my arm. the black rat snake 
we found in the brush. its scales 
glossy in sun beams. my mother thinks
it might be a loaf of breaf. steam pouring.
free from the oven. the whirls of soft white 
beneath the crust. i start to wonder
if an image is every stagnant thing.
i think of my favorite photographs 
of my younger self 
& how the tree in the background
tend to move with the wind-- how occasionally
one photo of me on the beach 
will appear with thick blankets of snow 
coming down around. my bare feet. 
the photograph self shivering. 
the puzzle blooms up the staircase
& into each of our rooms. 
it cannot stop itself. another match.
other paring. i find my face 
small & palm-sized on one piece. 
i found my brother's feet on another.
somehow, we all finish. sweat on our foreheads.
we are carefull. we move around the parameter
of rooms so as to not disturb the puzzle.
we say nothing of it to each other
just share a glance & go sit on our beds.
all the windows chatter about us.
they spread rumors that we are 
a strange family with too many fingers.
a tree outside yearns to be a puzzle 
& a bird feels the places on his body 
where the lines might be drawn
to turn him into one. before we sleep,
my brother comes into my room.
he says nothing but together 
we stare into the puzzle. a new image.
yes, you were waiting for me to announce
what the image really was. a new one emerges 
at each glance. this one is of us.
my brother & i stand on the porch.
rain pours down around us. 
we are small & barefoot. the rain turns
to gnats. the rain turns to pine cones
but all the while my brother & i
stand still in the picture.

once i had a rainbow machine 

two prisms. a window. the sun
all watermelon in its september.
college students with fingers 
like coat hangers. all the door knobs 
in the world turning at once.
our dorm room was microwave humid.
a bracelet of ants made its way
across the wall. i lied to the lamp lights
& told them i needed to astral project 
somewhere else each morning.
really, i ran on a treadmill. 
sometimes a rainbow would join me
with all its shivering but 
it would never stay long. rainbows always have
somewhere else to go. i imagine
a whole world exists dedicated to each color.
i like to think my violet self 
is wiser & that apples taste vaguely
like bruises there. the rainbow machine
visits all these fragments 
& returns with only their light.
i put my bed in a tree. i put a tree
in the basement. a refrigerator
blooms from the carpet. a rose
opens on the windowsill & is consumed 
by the ants. we sit on the floor.
my roommate visits the violet world 
when she sleeps. i sleep walk once 
& end up in the bathroom 
on the floor below us. our building 
grows long hairy legs & attempts 
to walk away. we read books 
at our desks. she is gone
& i lay on the floor by myself
with only the company 
of the rainbow machine. the machine
tells me a story of when it was first
harvesting wave lengths. i tell the machine
i want to be in love all the time
but by "love" i don't mean "love"
i mean rapid acceleration. i'm willing
to open my window & crawl out on the roof
for the next boy. i'm willing
to slip into the red world
& steal a slice of the color for him.
my body need a fun house mirror
to look assembled. the rainbow machine
moves faster & faster. whirling color.
i tell it i need more time. the days move
across my roommate's face & she doesn't seem
bothered by it. she goes through her routine
& i go through mine
all the while the rainbow machine
is culling us for color. i lose 
all my yellow one saturday & the next week
there is no green to be found. 
i search out the colors 
in the surrouning town. walks on the trail.
sitting in a target parking lot.
the rainbow machine eventually dies.
it falls from the window 
where it perched. i do not try
to fix it. i feel relief & fear.
will it haunt me? yes it will. 
my roommate sleeps heavy. 
she doesn't notice it's gone.
the air conditioner does little 
to strip the orange from the room.
we wake up in summer & the room
folds back down into 
a slice of printer paper.