the beached whales were little girls

with their pig-tails & their open mouths.
what could i do but get closer? 
the sand so small beneath me. i am a whale too 
but with two legs & a bouquet of toes. 
they lay face-up ready for caskets.
dead before i got here or maybe 
they are just an installation art project.
i'm not sure & that's why i sit with them.
two girls. green plants in their hair.
lips cut up. dried blood on a nose.
i lay down too so i can be like them.
above the sky is very expensive. shiny.
gold foil wrapped clouds. i think to myself
i can't afford any of this. but i'm too tired
to make the journey home on my inflatable raft.
there are so many tolls if i want to re-enter the city.
my passport is fake. it has the image of 
a flock of sea gulls where my face should be.
the birds land on the whales. i tell them
please do not eat their flesh. not in front of me.
the birds just laugh & laugh so i laugh with them
hoping it might influence them. the birds 
just eat the whale's hair--snipping the ribbons 
of each pig-tail before gobbling the strands.
this is all very complicated. 
i don't have enough storage space left 
in my brain to understand what these whales 
are supposed to mean. i'm convinced they'e acting
so i shout at them to get up. this backfires 
& seems to make them only more dead.
have you ever noticed how disobedient 
the body is? i tell the bones not to break
& they snap in all directions. is it just me?
i have terrible luck so i take very few chances.
i decide these whales are probably getting compensated.
benefits, salary, everything i need. 
i ask them for tips on how to look like
a work of art & their eyes flutter or maybe
it was only the breeze off the water.
i should have listened to my mother 
when she said the ocean is approaching.
our house in central pennsylvania is now
a beach house. i didn't need to yearn
for anything but shelter. another storm 
is coming. i tell the whales they have had their time
being dead & now they have to decide if that
is how they want to stay. no response.
i am too tired to hoist them up & back into the water.
trying to check the time, i realize my phone
is also a whale. so are all my fingernails.
whales everywhere. a whale is something
too big for its own saving. not 'big' as in size
but 'big' as in depth & deepending. 
the continent isn't big 
but the country is. my face is a whale but
not the grass spread all over my arms.
what kind of floating is left? 
the whales are gone. i didn't notice them leave.
i feel their impressions in the sand where
they once laid. i lay down in one & it fits me
almost perfectly. i close my eyes
so i don't have to pay for the sky. 

techniques for gripping the dirt

gravity was a girl with fishtail braids.
lately i feel light as a plastic bag
haunting a tree branch. someone told me once
that a poem can't just sound beautiful
it needs to have a purpose. fuck your purpose.
i'm walking my shark down main street.
he is swimming so well & i am so proud of him.
people walking by don't notice my shark because
they aren't considering the possibilities
but one day they might have pet sharks too.
i noticed sometimes all the lights in my house
turn purple. a lot of violet light.
when that happens i invite past lovers over 
& we dance to no music in the silent purple.
that light reveals all our stains
& some of them resemble continents 
& some of them resemble faces. 
i planted an apple tree in the microwave.
it's in full blossom. i stab a white flower
with a fork & feed it to a boy who i have
happily tied up in my bed. outside the pollution 
is so thick sometimes it feels like 
walking through jello. slow motion. 
red jello where the sun should be. the trees
have given up on photosynthesis & have
switched over to wind power. they're just
trying to be consciencious. 
there's no recycling bins on our block 
so i send my soda bottles to the landfil
where they will learn to sing hymns.
my partner says i should go to church
if i want to see the stained glass 
but i don't know if it's worth the grief
of order. sitting & kneeling & sitting 
& standing & crossing yourself.
what do you tell yourself when you wake up
with a balloon tied to your arm?
i look at the balloon a few seconds before destroying it
& saving the rubber skin. i'm not a hoarder
but if i don't save these things who will?
life is a series of decisions whether or not
to hold on. i'm not holding on to the ground anymore.
there are girls who used to perform gravity on me 
& now they lift me up. i tell them i need 
to keep my feet on the ground 
but that just makes them giggle & tilt me.
it is seventh grade again & i remind myself over & over
one day someone will love me. my eyeliner 
with thick as a plum. 
i am fishing for a shark
in the river. when this happens 
i think about heavy objects breaking windows.
a rock. a brick. a shoe. i think of
all the knee caps out there. the girls give up
then & i'm left here with another balloon
in the purple light with all these boys 
hungry for flowers.

it is january & i shouldn't be looking for fireflies. 

i sleep with 
a jar in my mouth, waiting. 
waiting is a myth. i don't believe
in waiting. no, i am keeping a vigil over 
an uncertain staircase. 
i used to sleep walk 
in high school. not far, just out to 
the back corner of my yard where i would fall down
& sleep again, like a fallen tree limb.
i'm not scared of sleep walking 
because i know, even if i wanted to, 
nothing would stop me.
not a dead bolt. not a locked door. 
i have nightmares all the time
but especially in daylight. 
they knit themselves
overtop of the real.
i knelt down for a half an hour
& picked at the corner of a tree 
trying to get it to unravel. 
i thought i saw the tether. 
sometimes i see my own 
the little fibers around my edges.
when i touch you, i feel them loud.
like hairs growing from palms.
i want to hold one up & ask you
to pull but then you would ask me
what you're pulling. about the fireflies
i think they might be a sustainable alternative to lightbulbs. 
i hate lightbulbs
for their glowing loudness
& with fireflies we might feel 
less compelled to be on fire.
i threw out my matches but i do have a lighter.
the lighter might be useful
for getting the stove started
if it stops working again.
we eat can after can of baked beans.
glossy & thick & sweet. by 'we' i mean myself
& all the fireflies who are sleeping
& waiting for june. i tell they 
june is not guaranteed. we are living 
in an apocalypse. the clothes 
might fold themselves by then.
i'm sick of seasons. they are cruel 
& make it seem like everything is alive
& changing when they're not.
it snows just flurries outside
& i tell the flurries to be fireflies.
i tell them to remember their wings.
the tethers everywhere are swarming.
all those twitching legs. i miss
my sleep walks. i want to wake up
far away from everything.
i want to wake up drowning in the ocean.
kick myself to the surface & find
no land in sight, just a swarm of fireflies
performing above the water.
tomorrow is a knotted finger trying 
to point. tomorrow is the house stirring
itself with a wooden spoon & the mice.
it is january & i should feel reborn.
i should, for at least a sort time,
believe this year could be plastic. 
i take clear tape to press down 
the edges. my friends would be scared for me
if i told them about all their fraying.
i wish i could ask them 
to let me tape them still at night.
i don't catch a single firefly.
the jar is empty. i stay up for weeks looking.
i'm still awake. 
still waiting. 

the flat earth 

they say we're supposed see saturn tonight,
faint like a thumb print on the glass dome.
i don't look because i don't want to know
whether or not it's too cloudy to see stars. 
okay, i'll say it:
i sympathize with flat earthers. 
i too distrust
obvious science. to think, all these planets
as thin as sheets of paper. what are we 
held aloft by? maybe it's trust. 
a collective belief.
that's so dangerous, i love it. 
how am i expected to believe saturn would
bob to the surface just for me? i stand 
outside. it is hot & shimmering sun. 
tomorrow in the city the ground
will roll out humid & grey & 
i will think nothing about the surface of earth
or saturn or stars. the sun is not
a star. the stars out there are scattered
& beautiful. the sun is here to haunt us.
this is the different between fire 
& salt. i steal salt packets from the employee kitchen.
this building is worth more 
than any planet & more than 
any one of my family members. tall & glass. 
at night it reflects city lights, not stars.
whose job is it to work the projection
of the night sky? how do they keep 
that secret? or maybe they don't, maybe
they live alone like anchors did 
in medieval times, alone in a room
praying all day to reach god. 
each day i get farther from anything divine.
it's wonderful. sometimes i can imagine 
the edge is close. maybe if i walked 
too far up the street i would find it.
i could sit & hang my legs over
the depths. i did not see saturn tonight
because i didn't remember to look. 
i was more devastated than i should be.
it's just a planet. just a great big 
sheet of paper. there are no 
wandering lives on its surface. 
no maps & countries with violent borders.
there is just a blur of color.
the person operating the sky tonight
curls up on the floor of their life.
i sleep in a room with no windows
like like theirs.

my life as a device

i put another CD in my mouth
i picked up off the street. the mirror side
called me prism. i flossed with its rainbows.
the pieces of trash on my street 
are my neighbors.
i wave hello to several condoms hiding 
behind a street lamp. 
the grass is dying again.
patches of brittle beige. every tree dreams
of living in a world with more ways to breathe.
breathing fingers. breathing teeth. breathing bark.
my face recognition technology 
doesn't notice me anymore. i blink. 
i hold my mouth still. it blinks & blinks 
& asks where are you? it's thrilling
to slip away. a bird eats bread
from the trash tangle & dreams of surveillance.
a few weeks ago images of hong kong flickered
on the TV screen. people gathered to destroy 
a camera. i was watching with my family.
we all agreed it was horrible, 
nodding to wash our hands before changing the channel 
to a commercial for an eyebrow trimmer.
i thought to myself i could use that. 
the eye converts light to 
impulses. i find eyes where you wouldn't expect.
there are three cameras leading 
to our apartment. one out front.
one pointed towards the alley. one pointed
towards the stairwell. i picture my landlord 
watching hours of footage to catch us
entering & exiting with no particular purpose
other than the need 
to make the cameras feel important. 
when my parents bought me a video camera 
for one of my birthdays my first project
was to keep vigil over my stuffed animals.
i believed they moved when i wasn't there
so i pointed the camera at them 
& dared them to move. i never caught anything
though once i thought i saw one breathing.
i slowed the video down, viewing it
on the back of the device on a tiny screen.
another day i set the video on the tri-pod
& captured myself dancing.
i hated the video i had looked better
in my head. when i'm in the bathroom
sometimes i worry there are cameras 
behind the mirrors. i remind myself
there are no cameras in bathrooms.
maybe there's a two-way mirror.
what do i know about the texture 
of a CD? i have pressed my tongue there
to feel each recollection. we used to
burn our crushes CDs in middle school
when there were still eyes 
on the rooves of our mouths.
i could take a video right now out the window.
i could crouch & be a camera. 
warm my organs with secrets 
as they unspool from light.

lure 

he had boxes of fish lures 
& i asked if he could show me all of them.
i was on a playdate at his house.
i always thought of playdates like trying on
someone else's house. in the bathroom 
i'd smell the soap & open the curtains 
to so what kind of showerhead there was.
i missed the house i lived in where 
the shower head was detachable. ours was
fixed overhead like a sun. 
he placed them in my hands one at a time.
the lures smelled like wet leaves & 
sometimes like some kind of oil. 
slippery, they left my hands feeling slick.
my favorites were long & neon green.
i asked him what they were meant for catching
& he laughed & said girls. 
i laughed too. i was so drawn to it.
i couldn't help it. if there were a hook 
i would have slipped it into my lip
for that lure. he told me his dad took him fishing
on a huge ocean-like lake. every body of water
is eventually an ocean. he took me to his bathtub 
& asked if i want to go fishing there.
i agreed & we filled it with water. blue salt water.
the window on the other side of the bathroom 
blurted grey bright light on us. 
i want to be fished for & he helps me into the water.
i'm surprised when it comes up to my chin.
holding my breath i go under.
brain thrumming with lures. a thin black lure
with two tails. a pink lure with glitter in the gills.
i wanted lures too. i would ask my dad for lures
when i got back to my house. would my mom
let me fish for her? i should have ask him
to be a girl. a wanted a hook through my septum 
like a woman i saw at the pizza place. 
i forgot i was sinking until i saw the glimmering--
a whirling lure with a feathery tail.
i could wear it as an earring. i bit down 
& he realed me in easy. no thrashing
just my body pulled out of the water & on top of his.
spilled on the tile floor 
of his bathroom. i scrabbled off quickly
aware of being young & warm. was i a trout?
a bass? i wanted to be a sunfish. huge & balanced.
unblinking. before i left he told me 
to pick a lure to keep. i wanted to ask him
which lure would capture him but instead
i took the simple black one. dangled it 
infront of his face & he smiled. every boy 
is a fisherman somewhere behind his mouth.  
i slipped the lure into my pocket. i walked him
dreaming of pulling a girl from my bath tub.

i ask dad to build me a deep sea diving suite

he gets to work in the basement. smell of mildew 
& stone. one single light bulb dangling above a work bench. 
dad usually crafts with wood.
he grows trees from the ceiling just to chop them down.
what i love about him is doesn't ask personal questions.
not why do you need a deep sea diving suite?
but instead how deep do you plan to go?
i don't tell him i'm visiting friends in a trench,
i say miles & miles & miles below the surface.
he's not scared for me. he knows i am 
a durable person. he will construct safety for me.
i've never told him anything & it is better that way.
a boy raped me in high school. i wanted to tell him so badly
but i knew if i did he would respond by 
building something awful. 
violence is a kind of contraption.
i could imagine him driving to the boy's house 
& turning him into a tree--into material.
so instead i just take a tiny hammer
& smack nails into the walls of my bedroom
until i can almost forget. dad is brilliant.
before this he built my brother all kinds 
of bodies for him to try on.
my brother paces in the hallway upstairs
trying to decide if he is a machine 
or a ghost. i have never been an apparatus before
& i am so excited. he hear the welding tools at work.
i hear dad as he chops limbs from a metal oak 
he grew just for my suite. so the truth is
i don't have friends yet deep below the ocean
but i want to. i think maybe if i sink & sink 
& sink i might find something easy down there.
a city of eels or a village of tuna.
i would be willing to nestle among angler fish 
or even sharks. i am not a particular human.
i know i should be grateful for communion.
when he finishes the suite he pours me into it.
the garment resembles a space suite 
only made of metal. there is a great tube 
coming from the helmet. a umbilical chord
decades long. i ask him who will hold 
the air source above the surface & he says he will.
he says he's coming with me to the edge of the water.
you can't say no to a man's determination--
the ways he will try to prove his love for you.
i can't admit i don't know where i'm going.
drowning doesn't require water. drowning can be
full of air. i hug him & thank him for the suite.
i tell him i can't believe how perfect it is. 
later that night he will lower me
into the night black water. i will walk
as far as the chord will let me.

a wedding of celophane 

that semester, without you knowing,
i moved in & out of your apartment.
i slept in the medicine cabinet.
i laid down in the half-sized oven &
pressed myself into the tiny square closet
you called "the secret door."
the street lamps outside. your short curly hair
wet from a shower. the creek of wooden floor boards.
in my rusted cathedral car
i drove us one saturday to the philadelphia art museum 
& we wondered. i told you too much & too little.
i knew what to say when i wanted someone to love me 
quickly & without substance. 
i was all the statues & you were all the still lives:
a bowl of pears. a glinting pitcher. 
i was a moon in mitosis & you stole beautiful windows 
by slipping them into your pocket.
we never took walks on your street but we should have.
all the knotted old trees were my family
with their thick knees breaking open the old concrete sidewalk.
i introduced them to you. i said 
i love this boy & i am going to love him
until he wants to keep me. i think i believed
love would always be met-- that love was just a matter of
devotion. i would drive hours on the schykill expressway 
to meet him for a flicker of couch.
for a tooth's worth of mouth.
when a trans boy touches a trans boy
it feels impossible-- like this might be
the only chance you have to be electric & whole.
you knew where to touch me-- where i would fold
into elastic planets. you showed me how to hold a cock 
like a limb & not an implement, 
tightening the straps 
on my harness--telling me
you'll do fine, you'll do fine
i'll help you, let me help you guide it.
i looked at your tegan & sarah poster
for a moment between movements that night.
i was thinking about how you were the first person
who knew me only as this self. for that
i never wanted to leave you. 
i felt like a room filling with sand. 
desperate to stay. desperate to be kept.
i imagined a wedding of celophane & aluminum foil.
a tiny house in upstate new york 
where you were from. did you ever
picture driving huge highways with me? 
showers next to each other? the blurred huge future
looming huge like the blinking radio towers outside the city?
i think  you might have 
but only in flashes. i said i love you 
not because i loved you but because
i wanted to weld my needing to yours. 
i'm here to admit i knew so little about your desires. 
i stayed in your apartment, not with my body 
but with my skin. curled up in the bathtub.
over a coat hanger. perched in the window.
the last time i saw you was outside your building.
it had just rained & the night was dripping.
i told you i could walk myself to my car
& you asked if i was sure. i said yes
& ambled the crooked street. i turned back
to look at you as you tried to light a cigarette 
in the humid may air. 

vacation bible school

the beach is covered with god.
little paper umbrellas made of psalms.
today's scripture is you & you are made of heat.
we line up in a hallway of forest noise.
the neon lights overhead
bleed green & blue. we are on vacation 
in babylon, in galilee, in canaan.
outside the rest of the world forgets 
both god & children. they are going to
the great fireplace. they are going neon 
& naughty & never again. 
the bible's thin pages 
taste sweet like they were pressed 
in sugar. i lick an open bible
without anyone noticing. this is vacation
i can do what i need to.
the ocean has too many whales.
there is a lie in the back of everyone's mouth
though none of us are sure what it is.
we will play a game where we try to guess
each other's most common sin.
i guess you don't listen to you parents?
the boy says, no, i covet my neighbor's house. 
i tell the boy that's not that bad
i covet my neighbor's wife. in another game 
we take turns praying in silence.
we take turns asking god for strange things
hoping we will answer one. i ask god 
for grass to smell louder. i ask god
to never leave vacation. i ask to become
an everlasting vacation. i ask for a blue bicycle.
i ask for a mat to sleep on 
so i can live in the bible. the bible
is soft & unknowable. i tell the bible
that it is my god. its words turn to locusts
that swarm below the ceiling. there is
no one left in the whole school.
learning is a process of forgetting 
ambiguity. god never talks to me
but i talk to him. he has plans 
for the summer. he will visit us all here
one day & he will smack a beach ball.
he will read a story from the great book.
for now, i am sun burnt & shaking.
i am barefoot. i am walking on water
in the bathroom sink.

for the trumpet 

i played trumpet only for two years
& i was terrible at it. 
i didn't really even like the sound
of trumpets. i prefered a clarinet or an oboe
to anything brass. though, i liked the saxaphone 
but i decided it seemed too heavy--
like a great shiny organ to cradle.
i loved touching the trumpet. 
three buttons at the top. i'd hold the instument 
in my lap just to press each one.
topped with white pearlish circles,
almost soft to the touch. 
traced a finger up the bell 
as if it were a throat. years later 
i would love men like trumpets--
wanting their touch but not their
loudness. their brass mouth pieces 
like funnels into their brass skulls. 
i hated how everyone could hear
when i tried to practice the trumpet.
i would go out into the backyard
but everone in the house
could still hear each note 
each faulter
clear & sharp. there is never enough room
to fuck someone. never enough 
windows. never enough valves & shine.
the trumpet slept in a soft black case.
i removed its mouth before putting it away.
i wrapped myself in sheet music
before falling asleep. i love writing
because no one can hear me.
it is like playing a muted trumpet.
i wonder where my trumpet is.
if you don't play the instument for too long 
its keys get stuck. i remember how guilty i felt
each time i taught my trumpet 
how to move again. some mornings 
i wake up with a trumpet for a mouth.
other nights the trumpet grows from 
a man's throat. he tells me he needs me 
to play him something quiet & beautiful,
which is impossible on the trumpet,
so i sing into the bell. a tongue 
in a hallway. oh trumpet full 
of boys. oh pearl & glint--
i sit the trumpet bell-down
& hide underneath the bell like a tent.
dark & protected. i hum a song 
meant for loudness. i make it 
muffled & hushed.