i hear carousel apples in the window

with all their mush & their laughing.
this means november is coming 
heavy as wet leaves. 
carousel apples are perfect 
for applesauce you know?
put them to sleep 
with the rest of the children
in the crock pot & wait
a whole day to return to them.
i haven't eaten applesauce 
in a long time but i think about it often--
think about how at school lunch 
they would sprinkle a bit of cinnamon 
on top of a styrofoam bowl of applesauce
& how its sweetness would hurt my teeth.
plastic spoon to mouth. how 
every single memory is about eating.
my mom kept the little cups 
in the same drawer as fruit cocktail.
aluminum foil lid pulled back.
i would press my tongue to the surface
imagining drinking from a great lake
of applesauce. but, 
back to those carousel apples--
they crawl like mice into my apartment.
i run my fingers across their bumpy skin 
& tell them bed time stories. 
their favorite one is about how 
for a few years of middle school 
i was obsessed with baking a pie 
& entering it in the county fair.
i carved all kinds of apples. 
made flakey crusts
& filled them. got sugar underneath
my nails but never entered a pie. the house
filled with pies-- 
so many pies we invited
neighbors to take them. 
the apples like
this story because it is 
a triumph of quantity.
i tuck them into bed with me 
& tell them to be careful 
not to fall off the side
during the night & bruise. i show them
my own bruises from falling 
off the bed at night & they ask me 
what on earth i dream about. i explain 
i don't dream usually 
i just have nightmares.
i eat one of them before bed. i eat
standing up at the counter in the kitchen.
don't worry. they don't mind. 
they're honored to be devoured. 
teeth through skin. 
dull red. white soft flesh.
i swallow piece by piece. eat right through
the middle. seeds buzzing in my chest.
the leftover carousel apples sing.

bubbles float on 9th avenue

above the heads daily foot-track. 
i try to find a source. each moves
like a cradle. like there is something
inside the bubbles that we cannot know 
& it needs to be rocked gentled.
i consider myself inside one of them
because i'm always looking for 
somewhere else to locate my body.
i dream inside matchboxes & Ziploc bags.
i want the wind between the buildings
to be muffled through the bubbles skin.
i am walking towards penn station where 
a train will push my body fast enough
to get home. each rail car a kind
of bubble only without the blink
of rainbow & without the same obvious threat
of rupture. if i linger too long
i'll miss that train & the world will end.
i will become a bubble floating outside
in the july heat. i will beckon 
people walking by. i plot along,
using the curb as a sidewalk & passing by
people will less urgency in their gate.
other people are briefly considering
the bubble though no one tries
to pop one & no one tries to fit themselves
inside one. i think about how brave
a bubble is in new york city's movements.
i want to buy bubbles. just one little tube
with the wand in the lid. i think about
sitting on the porch with my brother
in july. suds on my fingers. blowing carefully
so as to make as large bubbles as possible.
us grabbing them like clear fruit as if
we could teach the bubbles to be solid.
i reach up to one of the bubble on the street. 
the cars shout at each other in their 
metal throats. everything is touching shoulders
& then there's these bubbles. as if there
is nothing to be bothered about. i have
to hold one. i have to. i am a short man.
i am a small man in all of this. sweat blooms 
along my forehead. i strain. i want to graze
the bottom of the bubble but it sneaks just
out of my touch. i have to keep moving
so i do & i don't look back but i invent 
a version of the story where i touched the bubble
& it did become solid. a sphere of glass.
that i pocketed that sphere & took it home
to release it in the parking lot
behind our apartment where no one ever walks.
maybe a part of me was cruel. maybe i wanted
the bubble to be lonely like i was or maybe
i wanted to keep it for company.
maybe those are both the same thing. 

family of stickers 

my great aunts would get stickers 
in the mail & save them for me. 
like having two grandmothers.
their cloud-like hair. 
their pink painted mouths.
stickers with portraits of
carnations. red. yellow. orange. roses. 
rippling american flags.
running horses. a miniature square
of beach 
complete with three shells &
a starfish. stars. trees.
what word can i use
to explain an image so common 
that it means nothing & everything.
that's what these stickers were.
an image repeated 
five to a row.
each time we'd visit they'd present
the stickers to me. sheet after sheet.
some wearing shiny silver edges.
they'd hold the sheet up 
to the dim light of the dining room. 
our thin pink reflections 
in boarders.
red table clothe. portraits
of relatives on every end table
some of them framed in silver.
the big bay window showering
the stickers with light. 
i wanted to make family of stickers.
i would go alone with my stickers  
in their big house. alone to peel
the first one off a sheet.
how carefully i'd work
peeling corner up first--
watching the slice of image 
pull free from its adhesive surface 
before planting it on a patch
of my own skin. maybe the back
of my hand. sometimes looking
in the bathroom mirror i would
place one on each cheek
staring at myself a moment or two
before removing the stickers.
the sticking to skin & the tug
of hair as each was removed.
what did these fragments 
mean to me? were they part of
my body? did i want
to crawl into one of their
clear scenes. an urge for simplicity.
to be contained in just one chamber.
in the rec room we would all sit
& listen to the aunts talk.
their words rippled over me
as if gazed into the sheets
of stickers. i should have offered 
it to them as well. i should have
put stickers over their eyes 
& on their cheeks. they also 
probably dreamed of those landscapes.
what stories they told?
those are gone now but i could
still take their bodies
& press them into a sheet
of stickers. repeat my great aunts 
across a sheet. their faces.
their hands. their mouths.
their bodies as flowers.
maybe a pink rose or even 
a field of lavender. 
running horses. 
a rippling flag. 

all you ever need is a cardboard box 

all day people tell me they miss me
& i turn into a vase of poppies.
i should ask them what they mean but
instead i go visit the ruins of my old houses.
holograms of rooms i used to live. 
here is a video of the past standing
tall & shimmering. a poppy's face 
can make an excellent bowl
to drink from. after you leave somewhere 
it is best to knock the whole thing down 
so that your ghosts can bloom up like mist.
when i leave this city what will i do?
there's too much stone. in the attic
of my parents house my brother & i would
build cities from card board boxes.
i would tell him that everything
a person could ever need is a cardboard box.
i filled a box with blankets &
crawled inside. imagined a kitchenette
in the corner. imagined cutting a window.
the road outside becomes carpet & so
i leave my shoes on the curb.
i walk barefoot like i'm preparing
my own body for a funeral. 
what do i mean by ruin? i mean wilting 
& i mean buckling. there's a crooked pipe
sticking out of the ground where there
used to be a house. i tell them i haven't
gone anywhere. that i'm just becoming
more murky--that i'm just possibly 
made of more & more water. they stick
their fingers in me. i'm yes a pond.
i'm yes a kind of 
dripping. there are ruins
of ancient cities. there are fallen
pillars on their sides like torsos.
there are words carved into stone
broken like bread. i'm eating stone.
i say yes, i'm right here-- 
will you hold onto
one of my endings? & it is a metal 
wind-up bird & it flutters in 
their hands. if nothing else 
i want a cardboard box to fill
with cut flowers-- all sideways
& distressed. all of them poppies.
all of them missing myself. i miss
myself too which is what people mean
when they tell me they miss me.
the truth is friend, that no one 
at all has told me they miss me.
do they miss my arches? do they want
a good slab to stand under?
i am going to knock over the vase
myself & there will thank god
be a flowing. which sounds like
a flowering but is not at all 
a flowering. i am deflowering 
the city. i am replacing each 
building with cardboard. i am 
replacing each memory i've ever had
with an empty vase. i could
crawl inside if i wanted but
then everyone could see me. 

a single leaf 

i make the first tear down
the middle of the leaf, right along
the little spine. i steal them from
bushes by the red brick apartment complex 
up the street. i like to walk & consider
all the people coming in & out of their 
dwelling places. i wonder if any of them
pull leaves from these bushes. if they also 
like the texture. i promise i'm not 
a destructive person but that's not
entirely true. if i could i would 
probably break more glasses-- steal them
like leaves from the high shelf 
& toss them out the window. for a split second
i could make believe they were birds 
& somewhere between the ground & the ledge
they would flap & save themselves. there is
a lot of falling going on. i count the ledges
in my house. i tear the leaves until 
there's nothing left to tear. flecks
of green scattered on the sidewalk. 
i tell the bush i'm sorry that this 
is just something i need right now.
to feel this injury. to consider 
my own spine & how thin it could be
if i were to one day grow from a 
feeble branch. if i were to one day 
shutter in the november wind waiting
for the warmth of fingers pressed 
down on me. would i expect care? 
would i expect laceration? i do this.
i do. i sit & i hope to be torn apart.
i pick a porch & become a knot of mums.
i call the numbers of old lovers & 
hang up before they can answer.
i imagine their fingers around their phones
as if ready to rip them apart. the leaves 
produce a sticky residue. blood i think
feeling guilty. i think of my own 
blood & wish it was green.  
wish it were less so that 
i would make less mess. wish there were
men hiding in the bushes 
for me to reach in & hold in 
my hand. wish they would tell me
to injure them kindly & i would show
them just where to tear me in return.
we come apart symmetrically
just like leaves. i search the bushes 
& no one waits there so i climb.
i sing my apologies to the plant.
to tell the plant to 
hurt me if it wants but it 
does nothing. let's the wind 
trace a finger across each limb.
i ask the wind to touch me the same
& it does.

i'm haunted by my god 

i'm playing mancala on your back 
with frozen droplets of water. 
this is where winter will soon leave us
with a cracked window. a slit of frozen 
air. i will wrap myself in all the blankets
i now keep on the radiator & i will become
a bear. my claws will leave permanent scratches
on the wooden floors. on fridays we
burn our clothes. on mondays we sew all day.
we spend the weekend growing fur
& shaving it off in the sink. i am scooping
hair from the drain & watching it carefully
so that it does not turn into 
a new animal. you have to be careful
with your own debris. the game involves
letting the pieces melt on your skin.
how the back curves less like a valley 
& more like an ocean shelf. i'm collecting 
blushing leaves as if they will
never come back. i am making necklaces 
of them & perching with my legs
dangling out the window. when i pray 
i do it somewhere in my throat as if
there's another mouth down there.
one that's desperate & can only 
ask for love. that mouth is wax &
full of sugar. that mouth is 
snowing teeth. that mouth is opening 
& almost singing. how could i begin
to explain how many CDs i'm keeping secret?
what you're probably wondering is
how i play the game on your skin
& the answer is there are many reasons
to play a game. i play because 
i love touch & i love pretending
you are covered in melting scales.
it snowed hard that summer but no one else
but me saw it. we road our bikes
in the snow. we wore flipflops
in the snow. we climbed a lighthouse 
& watch the white grin around us 
like a world of perfect teeth but 
all you saw was august. once my hair
did turn into an animal. me & you chased it
up & down our short hallway with
the net we thought we'd one day use
to catch butterflies. now i sew leaves together
& tell them to become butterflies. yes,
the animal. it scurried & eventually 
fell apart. i put the hair in a ziploc bag
where nothing can live very long.
it is important to keep track of
every bit that's fallen off your body.
we are buildings at best & at worst 
we are mancala beads slipping from side 
to side across warm skin. searching 
for a divot to sleep in. i'm taking my bed tonight 
& setting it free. pushing it through
the window & letting it fly to the ground
below. how else will it learn how to 
use its legs? everyone is going around
telling me it is going to be a harsh winter
& i laugh because i won't survive 
a harsh winter--not with so few clothes.
not with my sadness talking all day long
from a mouth in my throat-- not with god 
painting all the leaves just to take them 
down he is just like my uncle & his 
half-finished canvasses. end the world
already. give me flyleaf 
of snow. i'll be here letting my movements 
melt on your skin, using the curve
of your back to walk underwater
where the snow is an ache.

i take you to the zoo to make you beautiful 

i want to dip your hands in mauve
to show you how kind certain shades 
can hum-- can live under the fingernails. 
i want you to like purple as much
as i do. not because it's queer but because
we're not sure where it came from.
i'm taking you to the zoo
of colors. it's far away like everything 
worth visiting-- tucked in between corn fields
& hills that roll like a taffy.
we are chewing road. we are reaching our hands
out the window of a car that drives itself.
i look at you & want to pluck 
different colors from your body. i want
the brown of your hair to keep
in a fish tank on my dresser. i want
to make seeds of your irises & plant
bushes to sprout eyeballs like berries.
i'm sorry so sorry that i am such a strange person.
at the gate a machine strips us down
to grey scale. holds our pigments
in a box till we return.
we buy baggies of feed to nourish 
the colors--small paint pellets
that we cup in our hands-- careful
not to smudge any on ourselves.
you say you want to show me 
the yellow that used to come
in through your window in your
childhood bedroom. it sits 
in a terrarium. it doesn't move much
until it notices you which causes
the color to whine & scratch at the side
of the enclosure. you want to take it home
with us but i tell you that they're
dangerous. a color can 
destroy you with nostalgia-- can demand 
you step back through a memory.
you press your face to the glass before
we move on. the colors all remember us 
& i find the purple i was looking for--
the one i thought might make you 
never want to leave me. it emerged first
from an advent candle but then the color
returned in a summer eggplant & then 
again day after day for week in the sunset 
one august. how the color sung to me 
& told me to use it as a tightrope.
you don't see it though-- you don't 
feel the throbbing this purple means
& i tell you to touch it even though
we're not supposed to. your fingers
across its skull. a shuttering.
your bones giving in to the tone.
you, becoming all mauve-- down to your thoughts.
i watched the color eat you & you become 
a candle & an eggplant & a sky.
i take you home in a basket. i plead 
for you to tell me that story again
of the day we went to the zoo.

a string 

i am tying a string 
to your ankle & telling you to swim.
telling you the cave goes deeper still
& i want you to fit yourself 
through smaller & smaller openings
in the rock. together we watched
a video of divers in underwater caves--
two humans turned slick & seal-like
in their wet suites. boxy goggles.
oxygen tank. bubbles escaping 
from their mouths. sometimes when 
i breathe i try to catch the bubbles.
i try to turn them to glass 
& keep them on the shelf. a display case
for each exhalation. as always 
i take things too far & i tell you
we need to go right now--
we need find a submerged cave
to thread ourselves through.
how my fingers have trembled as 
i've tried to thread a needle-- 
the head a kind of thin catacomb.
i take your body & thread it 
through stone. i begin to wonder if
there are caves in my body & if
in those caves you are there
brushing your fingers against 
the walls-- string tracing 
each corridor. i told you to
do this. i told you i wanted 
a lover on a string-- someone 
who i can pull out if they get
too deep. we watch the divers in silence 
as if our conversation could break
their concentration. 
as if the recorded bodies
can hear us-- as if they are 
performing for a couch full of lovers.
what i should of asked you 
is what the divers are looking for--
if they think they might find
a fragment of themselves deep
in the water-- through small openings 
& tight spaces. if somehow 
they believe they're excavating 
their own bodies. does the water 
turn deep dark blood after a certain amount
of time? is all water blood?
there you are & i should
go in after you. i should tie a string
to my own ankle & trade places with you.
i should trust you--should
take turns performing something fearful
but i just want to watch. what does it mean
that i like to observe tremendous
danger? i pretend the divers 
are weaving something with their strings.
i pretend the strings are getting
knotted & they don't know it yet.
they will come alive yes maybe 
in a fish net or a quilt crochet 
the beating of their legs.
the divers get out alive & we hug them 
& we lay them out to dry. you come
out alive & dripping. your wet suite
slippery on our hardwood floor.

in want of purple clouds & more mornings 

i'm not sure how anyone can sleep in.
i can remember this was something i did
use to be able to do. there was this one morning
in a bed i don't remember in a room i don't
remember but yes it was the house on main street
& there was wallpaper with green vines. 
i woke up & ignored the sun through 
all three of my windows. i woke up 
& i pulled the covers over my head 
to make a sort of wanton of ravioli
of myself & i slept & slept. i swam 
in & out of dreams. there was one where 
i was at a doctor's office & they were
feeding me lollipop after lollipop 
& then another where i was riding the swing
at the park & reaching higher & higher
with each motion. today i wake up
& i listen to the fan on top of my dresser.
i press my face into the pillow & consider
what the sidewalk might want for me
& if i can trust a memory from my 
six year old self or if it is just
something i've invented after years
in this body. there were other mornings
too though, i reason. there were
saturdays in high school with the window cracked
& the sound of horse hooves on the street
asking me to consider the hills & 
the farmer's market up the street.
i tuck my legs closer to myself.
i pretend momentarily to be 
a mollusk. a hermit crab maybe.
i will never have to wake up & move 
about the world & pull clothes on 
& ask the mirror what i should look like.
i close my eyes & live in my finger tips.
my room has no windows now & i wonder 
what color the morning sun is making
if it remembers purple. if the grass has
dew or frost. if it is really this 
late in the year & we let all the leaves die
again & we let all the warm 
out of the dirt again & there will be
bare brown branches soon to remind us
of our skeletons. am i really 
made of bark? is this where i should
wake up? did i ever get up
from the morning in the house on main street?
maybe this is still me & i am still there
& i am still arranging my pillows
& i am going to slip back into a dream
where the swing at the park squeaks 
as it takes me up into 
the (hopefully) purplish clouds.
there is always something to look forward to
in color. there is always going to be 
another july. i cannot explain to you 
what i need sometimes but i do know 
that maybe i once had it & i slept
similarly to how someone might drown 
by mistake. i'm holding my breath. no i'm just
standing up. i'm just a tree with blushing 
orange leaves & i pick them from my hair.
no i am a boy with one pillow
& a grey warm blanket i step out of. 

hiding 

if i were jonah hiding from god 
i would have stayed in
the belly of the whale.
or even better
maybe i would have
sunk to to the bottom of the ocean
& become a starfish--moving my limbs
carefully across the ocean floor. 
i understand the impulse 
to want to hide from
everything. to want to 
fold the world flat & stuff it
into your back pocket or 
wad it up & chew until
there's nothing but pulp.
i should print less things out
on paper & save the trees
who have always been on my side
hushing in the wind & encouraging me
to become taller & rooted &
less human. i need bark & leaves. 
i'm fascinated 
by destruction. how i could tear a hole
in the carpet right now so easily.
i could crawl under there then 
& that could be where i hide
from god. but he has to get tired
of all that 
surveillance. there might be
heavenly cameras by now
or maybe that's just the job
of angles. all i'm saying is 
i don't want to be watched.
i'm going to make several mistakes 
in a row & disliking myself 
comes in waves. like jonah 
i climb into boats & push them 
off the dock. like jonah 
god asked me to do one thing
& i ran away & now i can't remember
what i was supposed to do.
i do want to be a good human & 
sometimes i worry all the good 
in me is dissolving--
flowing from the open pours 
in my skin. i don't want to be
a human swallowed by a whale
i want to be as small as krill
or plankton-- knotted in the baleen.
i want to be easily consumed 
by the creature. part of her diet.
to sleep between god's teeth.
to be wedged. i dream all day of 
these comfortable crevasses
i could seek. i could get up right now
& walk out of the whale's mouth 
but then he would see me in my 
pajamas & he would tell me to
take all my boldness & all my shimmer 
& become a gill. i want to breathe
without the threat of the sun.
i want to the deep deep ocean where
every fish is full of fangs.
there is jonah now knocking at my door.
he's going to ask me to 
listen to his story again. 
everything biblical is about retelling--
is about reminding the body of 
the origins of its feet or its fins.
i place on hand on the carpet &
wish that when i tore it open 
there would be a great ocean 
underneath with bruised waves
& jonah floating face-up--
staring at me & telling me 
there no where to go. i don't
believe him. i know i have been hidden
& i know where i can hide again.