when i grow up i want to be a live stream 

i refresh the page like curtain--
like the lapping of milk from a milk.
my grandmother had cat after cat after cat
& all of them live in the internet now.
there is a whole menu of instant food
waiting to be here in an instant.
i have no patience for these such things.
the eggs are dried into flakes. the ceiling
is a gaping wound made blinds. i pull
them back & outside there is nothing
but waiting. i want to wait longer
for this than anyone ever has. there's an oven
that we never use. there's astronaut ice cream
on the counter readying itself for the first 
footsteps on mars. when they make a colony up there
i'm going to lose so many friends--
all of them zipping themselves into 
onesies & grabbing that dangling rope.
i love the smell of burnt hair. i am refreshing
the page & hoping to find a garden there.
a live stream of birds hatching because
none of us know where they are.
i check my hair for ticks--nails to scalp.
there's enough frozen here to last me 
a lifetime. i keep frozen planets 
& frozen skylines & frozen birthdays &
occasions. these are all my innovations.
i am creative to a certain extent. i have 
had my fair share of siblings though
none of them will emerge here on 
the computer screen where i want them.
he gets down & licks my feet humbly
like jesus washing the heels of each 
apricot. i have a light fuzz to my skin
& i am acidic when bit down upon. 
the page is loading & there's no telling
what kind of bird this will be. if i'm 
being honest i'm praying for an albatross
or at least something else big & angel-like
something that suggests i am very small
& at a desk & doing nothing until i too
lay a nest of pixel-eggs & become a live stream.
i want so badly to be a live stream--
i want to call my parents & tell them
to refresh the computer. i need an instant
swallow to keep me company. the walls
are petal-ling apart from the latest arrival 
of winds. some say they come all the way
from dangerous planets-- down from 
mars to tempt us. i don't know who says that
but maybe i'm just listening harder
than i should. when the page finally loads
i'm going to speak through the screen 
& become one of them. a nestling & i'm going
to be sticky with egg white & i'm going
to teach the birds how to freeze everything
they need. no rotting none of it & even 
the unhatched eggs we will slip into 
that beautiful cold to become light as 
ping-pong balls. we are so close.
i am so close. the cats were so close to 
a life other than the one they had &
any day now everyone of substance
will live on mars. it will be me here 
& everyone will watch my live stream & say
they feel each echo of my face & each 
angle of each bone. i will drink milk
& they will watch--
tongue into curtain, an opening.

an apology to the crickets 

there are piles of crickets 
talking over each other. they crawl on 
crushed egg cartons in their terrariums
at a pet store somewhere. all that summer i bought
bags of crickets to feed the two toads 
i caught off the side the of the road.
five crickets. ten crickets. the insect-green
of their bodies glinting like an old metal.
the crickets are telling each other stories
of escape. the crickets are praying into
the cage window, not because they 
know they'll be devoured but because they are
unsure what purpose they serve once they're scooped
into plastic bags. they call each other 
all the same name in a language i can't know.
dad once told me that crickets tell the temperature
with their number of chips each minute
& we would stand on the porch counting 
the cricket words. oh rising heat of june.
oh crickets pouring from a slit in the wall
where they were all multiplying. i'm telling you
i have missed the crickets. i have been
trying to get them back to apologize for feeding
them like potato chips to those animals.
what is an animal but a kind of 
movement? i want to fold my legs up
like the cricket--i want to play them 
like harpsichords. my legs are thick & useless
in comparison. i want to drive & buy the whole
terrarium of crickets & let them loose
in the parking lot behind my house.
how their round eyes would glint in 
the morning as it opens. how they would 
tell me that autumn is falling quickly.
i would go out & make an instrument of myself
along with them. when i say i want to be a cricket
i do mean everything that comes with it.
i want the threat of being devoured more
concretely. i want the promise of running.
there doesn't seem to be a place
for a body like mine to run. i crave creases 
& a damp alley way. we dissected crickets 
in 7th grade. we pinned the body down
& poked at the organs with a needle. 
so small & unreadable. grey mush
as if the cricket were stuffed with organs 
just for us & in real life the crickets
might just be empty-- just full of 
gears & air. then yes maybe i am like that too--
a body filled with helium & voices.
the crickets are scrambling on top
of each others faces. each face the same.
i do feel like this sometimes. like there
is a pile of humans & i am stepping 
on faces & the humans are talking into phones
connected to no where. i bought the crickets 
yes i did & would pour them in the terrarium
with the toads. i would pull up a chair
& watch the toads corner a cricket.
waiting totally still & then striking--
tongue to body & one swift swallow.
eat me just like that.  

i slept in my old bunk bed  

does the bird catcher tree mean to
leave burs in the feathers of this gull? 
small spiked seeds. thousand-toothed. little rusted nails
hooking to the bird's body. passengers. 
i sit on the forest floor waiting for summer
to be overcome with snow. you say again
please let this be a harsh winter & all i can think about
are the bird-catcher trees & the carcasses
of the ones weighed down by their seeds
& how the seeds stuck to their body might try
to make trees-- trees jutting through their light bones
trees aching through their calls. my father
plucked burrs from my hair when i was a little girl
still roaming on all fours through the grass.
still preening my feathers--still stealing eggs
from the fridge & pretending they were my own.
i tell myself that nature kills & kills & kills
but can't ever mean to do it. at least i have to tell myself
that the bird-catcher tree is different than myself 
& my brother as we toss a football back & forth 
or argue about god. who is the god then
of the animals? of the bird-catcher tree & do the trees
pray for the souls of the birds still trying
to gain flight as they struggle wadded up with seed?
we never had a bird-catcher tree but we did
planet a pine tree in the yard & i'd go out
& hold the cones as if they were its gifts to me.
how much of my understanding of nature comes from
my desire to own it--or maybe rather to 
use it as a mirror. a bird-catcher tree grows from
my forehead & i snip it off restlessly with 
nail clippers. my nails grow with bark this morning.
the forest floor is damp & there are no more warm days.
would you love me even with this tree growing
from my head? yes, even though there will be
dead birds & they will be my fault & the birds
might tell their children that i am something
awful & i am to be avoided. my brother & i believed 
that we could catch a bird if we ran fast enough.
common cardinals & a sparrow or two. once my brother
got close kneeling in the grass with his hands outstretched
like a statue. yes i'm picking birds from my hair
& burs from my feathers. there's a bird in my mouth 
who flew in while we were talking but 
i don't tell you about that. a bur in my mouth
like a jewel. i would make a bad organism.
i'm sorry bird i'm sorry.

the sun turns over like a coin 

in the field we plant light bulbs,
cupping the dirt & feeling the texture of soil
between fingers. this year was for corn but 
no one has wanted to eat since june 
when the bugs screamed from each tree &
the sun grew tired of herself & floated 
like a tennis ball in the creek. we are working people.
we are makers. we take the plastic sandbox shovels
& we get to work. this bulb lit my bed room
a life ago when i was a girl & i lined up
my boots in pair at the bottom of my closet.
this bulb is from the hallway long & yellow
that we all walked down to each night. a hallway 
is sometimes more like a staircase than
the staircase. oh, the dirt is asking to 
plant more so i unscrew more bulbs from
the house. we are growing light. we are growing
lamps & sconces & chandeliers if we're lucky,
what with the sun shrinking each day.
we all go down to stare into it. we don't go 
blind at least not yet. the blaze burns small 
pin-prick holes in our vision. i want 
to escape through one but no we are growers.
no we are making something alive. 
the lamps are starting to bloom now
& we are stepping back to the edge 
of the field. come harvest we will need
extension chords to keep all these lamps happy.
there are lamps with shades & tall lanky lamps 
with adjustable heads & lamps that are supposed 
to hang from ceilings. all lamps are edible 
in a time like this. i watch another 
pluck the ripe hot bulb free 
& stuff it into his mouth. the crunching of glass
between teeth. i wonder if this all
could ever make up for the loud sun 
we grew up underneath. i go alone to visit it
& see it the size of a snail shell. it's caught
between two rocks. the algae bubbles.
the water is boiling & cooked fish 
rise to the surface. i tell the sun it can rest now
that we've built a field of light. i tell
the sun that it worked so hard that it doesn't need
to feel guilty for going out. the sun turns over
like a coin. the sun closes its one eye 
& the darkness that envelops us is tangible & soft
like stuffing bursting from the background.
i sometimes wonder if this is just an intricate
diorama. i go back to the field where everyone else
is huddled underneath the lamps.
i pick one to sit under. oh lamp, if i could
plug myself into the dirt. if i could bury 
a fragment & make another version of myself
full of glowing. the bulb, like a fruit,
glares at me & i remind myself that we don't
need to eat anymore. that temptation 
is for the sun & not for workers who do good.
who wake up each day full of productivity
& take their hands, thrusting them into the soil.
tomorrow when i awake the world will be brighter
& so on each day until there's no memory of 
that yellow tired orb. we have nothing to do with 
landscape. we have everything to do with 
beauty. i had a bed made of wood. i have a window 
the sun used to come in. here though, here is
where i will stay. if i sleep at the field
i will be more ready to work tomorrow.

a return

submerging them in the quick flowing river
there's saint john dipping all the boys 
in water. he knocks on my window & tells me
that he has to make me clean. he munches on crickets
& leaves crumbs of legs & antennae. i am so very old here.
i am tired of having to bathe all the time--
rubbing soap between my fingers till the lather
turns to clouds in the steam. i am a maker 
of clouds. i want to let him clean me. his fingers
sticky with honey. saint john is always there 
by the river that flowers & bursts. a rupture
in underneath the building. the river gushes 
in the basement. there are drownings-- not like
how they tossed witches in the river to see if
they'd float. no this is just john holding boys
underwater & instructing them to hold their breath.
some boys try to go without him. my father & my father's father
& my father's father's father all drowned.
water behind their eyes. whole fresh currents
& crayfish & rocks to be overturned. yes there's
saint john pulling brown dead leaves from their mouths.
every body is made of only water. what kind of
body do you want to be? i tell saint john
i'd rather be a tide pool. i'd rather be full
of starfish-- watch their limbs get sliced off
& grow back. what does it mean to return 
to the father? what does it mean to need 
cleaning. i'm told we came here through 
a great river but i only believe in this 
present moment. i tell saint john that 
i don't want another baptism. that i don't believe
that it will save me or any of the other boys.
saint john weeps & his water flows down
the staircase to my apartment. i would like
to live less & less & less-- a decrescendo
like slowly turning off a faucet. 
i'm washing my head in the sink. there's no
water here anymore. none of the spigots 
are yielding. i want to live wet. dripping.
a source. not a geyser but a gentler releasing
like water from an open wound. all these boys
with their faces dunked under. all there boys
not me. i want a god with fingers
to pull through my hair. washing each strand.
where is the careful scrubbing. no i'm here
& i am waiting for it to rain again
to wash all the leaves down the street
& all the chocolate bar wrappers & cigarette cartons.
there's saint john laying face up 
in the yard behind my house. i can't keep
doing this. i cup my hands & catch rain.
pour the water over my own head. 
his voice tells me not to stop--
not to ever stop.

i want to be a ukulele un-tuned on the shelf

the ukulele is un-tuned on the shelf. i want to 
break the neck off gently the way your might
boil a pot of crayfish. i want to sleep longer
till it hurts & my eyes become two shell fish 
to be pried open. i don't miss sleeping next to 
each other. o! the ceiling light with its three bulbs--
two went out this week. this is a small room.
i'm playing ukulele with everything but my
fingers & the fan keeps the silence away & by silence
i mean the hushed noises of a house in the morning.
i never hear these neighbors & it troubles me
that i never want to. i'm not curious about them
though occasionally we'll meet in the stairwell.
if i never left this room i could last for longer
than i might think. i could tune the instrument
& learn a song to sing to the light bulbs. i could
mark my height on the far wall like a child who 
had this room before must have done-- each line
near my waist & then just below my chest 
if i stand up next to them. o! how strange time is
that i know this other human from the crayon marks on
the back of the door & a stuff toy i found in the closet
but they will not know that i have a ukulele on the shelf
that i've never played & that barely exists.
i'm tying my hair in knots. i'm missing train after train
as i listen close to hear the horns as they pass.
no, i'm not going anywhere today but it still feels
like i'm missing them. i wish i had a car parked
down there on the street but i don't. the town
is waiting for me full of cigarette butts 
& slumped trash bags & here i am in a room wonderful
because it has no windows. o! window i don't have 
i can feel the blinking. there is nothing 
i want more than to be folded. there is no greater
feeling than the need to pull a tongue out
& watch it turn into a wonderful banana slug.
no one should ever wake anyone else up. there's never
enough room. i'm looking forward to the other end 
of my body & i'm standing to do nothing but feel
the carpet under my feet. all the gender neutral words 
sound empty of skin. person. human. being.
i want to be a ukulele un-tuned on the shelf with no 
possibility of being touched in the near future. 
i want nothing asked of me. i want a loosening
& to feel the vibration in my teeth. i want wood.
i want smoothness. i want the sun to exit through
a window i don't have.

a wedding 

in winter the wedding tent behind the museum
becomes a metal skeleton. just a frame
with its white plastic skin stripped away. 
the dead leaves whirl through its body. 
all january i ambled through that museum park-- 
around the metal bones trying to guess 
the species of the sleeping animal.
a great beautiful whale beached from the tiny stream
that trickled through or maybe an elephant 
who stumbled through in the night. 
i walked there from your house blocks & blocks away.
my chest wrapped with gauze & my fingers 
red from the cold. as i circled the structure
i would try to imagine that place as it was 
in april or may with all the flowers talking wild
into the air & crowds filling the tent there
to exchange vows. i have never been to 
a wedding & i'm this old but then again
maybe those strolls counted as weddings,
each a moment to speak to the dead leaves 
& the naked branches. my first boyfriend & i 
used to walk in this same museum park before
they set up the wedding tent & before i had left
for college & left my body & grew feathers & had
them each plucked out. back then we would talk 
about getting married & i would imagine 
him in a white suite & me in a goddess-like 
white dress. the whole planet would be white.
now i think if i ever get married i want to be 
wearing something auburn or brown. something 
worthy of walking through a skeleton in--
maybe even black. i watched the snow become grit 
& mud. i watched my foot prints. i watched 
the wedding tent lilt in the breeze. trees bare
of everything but their own frames. i imagine us
like that--skeletons for a whole season & i feel
on those walks sometimes just like a skeleton--
like all my flesh is falling off in crisp leaves.
like the breeze is undressing me. 
by the window of the bedroom i stay in
i unwrap the gauze & replace them with 
new fresh white ones. the old gauze are 
yellowed & red & brown around the edges.
yes, i won't be here in the spring
when they put the walls back on the wedding tent.

over-ripening 

some with their foreheads already bursting open,
at the farmer's market stand 
they sold wooden buckets of fading tomatoes for sauce.
gnats telling the red fruit stories 
of their mouths & larger flies hovering nearby
waiting to see if they would sell. 
mom & i would pass & contemplate if we had time
to make tomato sauce as soon as we got home.
the tomatoes sat there pressing into each other
demanding to be cooked down-- each a red planet
seeping with sweet acidic juice. telling each passer by
that they needed to make time for the tomatoes,
change their plans & get a huge metal pot
to make use of the fruit before there
was nothing left to do but give them over to insects. 
we never bought them though occasionally mom & i 
would stand above the baskets & she'd press her fingers 
into the surfaces of the ones on top
to see how much time they had left. the loose skin--
the stems coming loose--the rupturing of flesh.
the tomatoes felt old and young. like sleeping infants 
in a basket together all red with wanting. 
i imagined picking one up & cupping it in my hands--
carrying it home & speaking kindly to it.
maybe that gentleness could buy us more time--
maybe the tomato could regrow thicker skin again
& not leak into nothing. above the tomatoes 
mom & i would turn into those fat buzzing flies
& we'd speak in a language reserved for hunger.
we'd talk about spaghetti & we'd talk about trash
& we'd talk about needing the tomatoes' urgency--
craving the tomatoes' arresting language--
the instruction to make use of a body before you can't.
landing on the table of the stand as flies
the clerk would wave his hands trying to shoo us away
but we'd come back-- insistent that there was something
happening to us because of our proximity to the tomatoes.
the season has passed now & all the tomatoes 
at the grocery store are made of water.
these ending tomatoes were fresh with heat & sun.
these tomatoes had ideas & grandmothers. 
i wanted most of all to stick my hand down into the basket
& mash the tomatoes with my hands--feel their warm guts
between my fingers-- their seeds & their folds 
all becoming gush. no we passed by them &
at the end of the day the farmers dumped the tomatoes
in the big green trash bins for the flies 
that we no longer were. 
we were home or elsewhere

cars that drive themselves 

they're building cars that drive themselves
& soon they'll pace the world like any other animal.
i make believe tonight i'm sleeping over 
at the house i grew up in.
i go out & lay on the hood my old green volvo
like i never have before but have always wanted to. 
the car breathes as it sleeps 
in its reptile skin & worn out tires.
i think about the first day i had the car
& how i drove three hours to pick up
each of my friends all around Pennsylvania.
the toll roads sprawl with forest on either side.
a deer standing between trees & staring
at the river of cars. i put my ear
to the car's cool skin to listen to its organs.
soon it will be hungry & i'll bring out
the left over bones from dinners & 
the scraps from peeled potatoes. on my phone
i read about an accident where a self-driving car
killed a pedestrian & i ask my car
if it would be careful-- if it would always
promise to look both ways. i wonder if 
the car felt remorse. maybe & maybe it 
crawled on all fours to a junk yard
where it's now still waiting to be crushed.
i could trade places though. i could try 
having less of a consciousness. i wonder what
that feels like to just listen to what
another body decides-- a key in my mouth 
the steering wheel twisting inside my chest.
i tell my old car that it doesn't have 
to do anything it doesn't want to-- that it
doesn't have to be alive even if all the the other cars
start taking road trips by themselves. 
i see empty cars parked at the beach &
outside the supermarket at night. 
another car drives itself around the block 
again & again as if it's watching us.
i tell myself it's just curious though i do
worry it's the car that killed a person. 
i open up my car's hood to see all the intricacies
like dissecting a shark but without 
the gloves & scissors. i don't know anything inside 
but i do know that my car is alive 
so i should be gentle. i trace my finger 
across the top of every object that interests me.
i want to sleep forever & wake up mechanical
in a body that makes decisions more easily.
a few houses down a neighbor's car turns
its light on. two bold eyes in the night.
i don't live at this house anymore & my car
does not drive itself. i am really in my bed 
in an apartment long away. i speak as if 
anyone can hear me & i go to the dark living room
& check out the window to see if there's any cars outside. 
no. none at all. no living cars taking themselves
on a nighttime drive. i pretend my old car
can hear my thoughts & i tell it to arrive here
& pick me up & drive me into a new frame.

the robots who suggest Facebook ads are just ghosts

the bar is crowded so we'll have to lean in 
to hear & misunderstand & misunderstand & misunderstand.
each voice a like of mallet on the wall or yes maybe
a bird caught in a hallway. we take out our phones
like you do when there's a lull in conversation 
& there might be something happening. something is always
happening & there's an article to read the title of.
a friend's mouth is moving but the room is so loud 
it's like there's no words coming out. i miss 
my bed room & i missing having a window. Facebook suggests
i buy a window & i know yes that's what i want
i want it right now. Facebook suggests yes i should buy
a very small night light just like the one i had
when i was six or seven years old-- the one in the shape
of saint mary glowing blue & mom plugging in
the night light & saying that i won't have to be
scared anymore. we don't have to be scared anymore.
my smart phone knows who i am & this proves to me
that maybe i am knowable. that maybe there are 
formulas floating around under my skin. or yes 
the truth is i've always thought that maybe 
there's a sea of ghosts working long hours
to pick the right ads that i want to see. i get one
about discount hotels in new jersey. i want to leave
this city i want to lay on the ocean. no i want
to go farther. i get an ad for the rocket to mars
& i scroll past. yes they know me too well.
no i can't go that far. i want small actionable items.
a rainbow tooth brush. a trans flag. 
yes my phone sees me. face recognition. this isn't
a poem about disconnection. the room is loud
i told you & there are items to make me feel 
more tangible. an electric tooth brush.
a pair of soft pajamas. download a new design program.
i want to design a new skeleton. the ghosts
are passing me notes. they're saying 
we know you need this & i do need all of this.
not just the items, but the attention. the ghosts 
endless working to find what i need. in the room
we're all sitting with our ghosts & the haunting 
is thick in the air. i speak a word aloud
& it turns into a screen. a brilliant lovely screen.
i text the person across from me that i love them.
she loves up & smiles, puts her foot on top
of mine underneath the table. the ads tell me to buy
her something beautiful. the ghosts perch like
eagles on our heads. my mouth is full of light
so i don't open it & the room thrums until we leave
& step out onto the open street where silence rushes
long & black as the asphalt.