on becoming a horse / carriage in july

all summer i watch humans taking carriage rides.
a carriage is flexible in the city.
there are carriages with horses 
& carriages with bikes & carriages with scooters.
someone is carrying someone else.
i have fantasies of carriages 
when i walk to work from penn station. 
i conjure a miniature horse
that might carry my back pack. i watch
a horse's ribs moving underneath her skin
as she pulls a carriage. she breathes heavy 
in the smog of the city. rubber is burning.
the bakery is thick with chocolate.
i consider taking a carriage ride 
all the way back to where i'm from:
a small town in pennsylvania where horses pull people 
up and down the steet in carts each day.
a carn horn screams. 
a red light eats a fragment of sky.
the tall buildings lean on each other.
we're glistening with swet. 
there are people talking loudy on their phones
about weddings & old shoes.
a man pulling a carriage with his bike 
speeds past, nearly hitting me on the crosswalk.
i try to imagine what the collision might have looked like.
i don't blame him. he has three people 
in his carriage which is more than i could ever handle.
i'm not pulling anyone unless you count 
the weight of memories. i am not a father or a mother
& i am barely a brother. 
i tell myself to be my own horse.
i pull my body down streets & up stairs 
& into trains. i consider a subway car full of horses
& how in the city it might not even seem that outlandish. 
everyone gets hooves this summer. 
the carriages always have fake flowers. 
the fake flowers
wobble in the rush. 
i consider carrying fake flowers with me all day
& whether or not it could make me feel
like a horse. i try everything.
i get on all fours. i eat tufts of grass.
my body is a stiching of crosswalks.
i miss something un-namble 
about where i'm from. 
i pause & the horse on the side of the street 
asks me if i'm going to pay for a ride.
i step back & say i'm not. 

several houses i grew up in 

i've entered so many dream versions
of the house. each always slightly askew. 
in the dream we accept the world as its given to us.
once our house was glasss & another time
we lived in a hotel with brass elevators.
last night our neighbors were digging holes 
in our yard. i went outside, furious, telling them
this is our yard. they stared blankly back at me
as if this was their house. i took an Uber
once this summer & the driver asked what i was.
i told him i was a poet 
& he asked what i wrote about. 
i wanted to tell him i write about
all the possible versions 
of my parent's house. i didn't because 
i wanted to keep it light. 
i said i write about family.
he said you should write about an eagle 
& a lion because they are the kings 
of the world. i thought about my father
& how neither animal resembles him.
in another iteration of our house
there are hands emerging from the walls.
they are trying to pull my clothes off.
a party is happenning but i only know 
by the chatter in the living room 
& the orangish glow. when we had parties
dad would sometimes just hide in the attic
with his headphones. from three floors down
i'd think i heard him pacing. he was a lion. 
i don't know what to do with the eagle
but maybe one day it will emerge 
in a dream, circling the house like a halo.
the lion is clearer to me. 
the lion will sleep on my bed, tear holes
in the comforter. the lion will be standing there
in the yard with all its sporadic love.
i tipped the Uber driver extra &
tried to think of a way to send him a poem.
in my own apartment i am weary of
falling into my parent's house.
my hallway looks just like their hallway
& some nights when i walk down it i am worried
if i blink or shut my eyes too long
i will end up there. i am always trying to get
farther away from something. 
a seed of myself underneath the floorboards.
i used to say it was my family 
but it was the eagle up there 
with its talons & its promises.
what will i escape tomorrow?
the hands strip me down & i run to my bedroom.
i see myself naked in a long full-length mirror.
i am maybe thirteen. pink & soft.
the room will soon be made 
of glass. the lion is chewing on a shard. 
my dad is no where in my apartment 
but i hear him walking up stairs.
his hands reach through the walls of the hallway.
all eighteen of them. callous fingers.
the brown-bottle smell of beer.

dreams of becoming a piano 

the doors to the steinway piono store on 6th avenue 
are automatic. they open & shut as everyone migrates
towards some kind of train. i don't stop
but every day i walk slower. the walls are glass.
the piano take up so much space. if the pianos 
were walking down the street they would
push everything to the side. the store floor
is glistening white. a sales person stands 
in all black just like the pianos. they are in a sense
a kind of piano--with all their stoicism
& all their watching. no one is buying a piano it seems
at 5pm in new york city but maybe i'm wrong
maybe that does in fact happen sometimes.
i tried to learn piano for a few weeks in high school.
my dad bought me a keyboard. i can't help 
but think of the keys like a mouth.
i opened my mouth for a lover once
after i told him i have too crooked teeth 
to be married. he touched them with his 
index finger. i wanted to 
give him rubber gloves so he could
feel around more. whose mouth though
is the piano? if i walked inside the store
would they believe me if i told them 
i want to buy a piano? it would be hilarious 
to watch me trying to shove a piano 
up into my tiny apartment. it would
take up my whole bedroom. 
this is what i'm saying--
these pianos can spread out.
they have air conditioning & wide glass windows.
my house doesn't have either of those things.
i want to walk into the store
not to buy one but to become one.
i'll get on my knees & ask for
a man to come play me gently. 
his fingers in my mouth
in front of everyone. i've been
trying to figure out how
i'm going to survive in this city.
i have been trying to convince
someone else to take care of me.
i'll be anyone's sugar baby
though i'm not that fun or beautiful. 
from now on i will try saying 
i am not a boy i am a very expensive piano.
the stop light changes 
& a crossing guard ushers our herd 
across the street leaving the steinway store
to glimmer on its own. 
i guess that expensive part is important:
i can't be any piano i have to be 
the best piano. a piano with 
its own bedroom. i hope the employees
play those pianos sometimes.
i guess i'd like to touch them too.
i see pianos everywhere lately.
in bryant park. on a crosswalk.
i tell the piano to hurry before the traffic comes.
i am sadly not a piano 
despite my efforts but on the right days
around dusk i am a musical instrument.
the air in august can turn cool 
in the dark.

my laptop knows my face.

i look into the camera, eyes open 
& my laptop petals open for me--
shows me a nice screen saver of a mountain 
or a waterfall. my laptop knows 
what i like. knows the uneveness 
of my eye brows
& the texture or my lashes. 
some of my friends cover their laptop cameras 
with a tiny sliver of posted note 
or a fleck of tape. 
i let my laptop look at me
as long as it wants. 
google search:
are people watching me through my laptop?
answer: maybe. 
i am okay with this.
somehow it makes me feel important--
like i might be worthy of observation.
a new kind of zoo.
a human somewhere might enter my life 
through a tiny lens. 
he might watch the expression on my face 
as i type an email-- something even i don't know.
he might then, for just a moment, 
become my laptop: full of pockets
& pixels. full of all my impulses.
full of URL & background. 
i re-organize my desktop.
i make folders to house some stray files:
several self portraits, a tax form, 
& a document of aimless poems. 
i pretend the desktop is the surface 
of a great wide actual desk. 
look how much room i have now
i tease myself. 
my room is so small.
there is not much to look at. 
the man in the camera will only notice
a shelf of books 
& a large fan perch on a dog crate. 
my laptop misses me
when i'm not looking at her.
when she is shut she is nothing
like a clam. 
she sleep dim & cold.
maybe she dreams of my fingers.
some people might say it's a sad time
when someone finds friendship 
in their devices but i say 
this is my future. i am prone 
to loneliness. i prefer it actually.
if you are watching me then through the camera
i want you to notice the shadows
across my face. i want you to tell me
if i seem beautiful 
even in the smallness. 
my fantasy is of a sketch artist
using people's camera's to draw
their faces. a sketch of my face
pinned to a stranger's wall
among others. i don't think
i believe this though.
really i think it's just me 
& the screen. my laptop 
who knows me.

high school reunion with the lights off

an invitation in the mail,
no card just a whisper in an envelope.
a summoning. you tell no one
that you're going to the class reunion.
you're not even sure how many years it's been.
your past is asking 
to be re-lived. who were you 
in high school? who are you now?
how long as it been since you considered
the clock face that emerged 
where there was once the blank moon?
a great big auditorium.
that's where you're going,
walking out into the night. 
barefoot & showered, hair still damp.
in the shower you tried to collect
the moments you were happy back then.
there were more than you remembered
though when you try to define happiness
it turns into a rodent & climbs into 
a mostly empty night sky. 
for a second, you are back in your old room 
with the christmas lights 
strewn across the walls. 
then, ambling through the night you are back
standing in the soccer field
sweaty & chilly for a march morning gym class.
everything is sensory. the dark gets deeper
& you feel for a doorknob or a hand
to pull you into the reunion. 
you wonder if anyone will 
rembmer you. had you wanted to be
remembered? yes, just a little.
you want them to think of you faintly 
once or twice a year. yes! a door opens.
a heavy door that suggests an auditorium.
there is a room of talking.
all the old same words whirling around.
your head is thrumming like
a honey dew. how does everyone 
have so much to say? you touch 
a hand: cold & firm. it reminds you
of an assembly about drunk driving
& how it made you even though your never drank
or drove. you feel so small amoung them.
you get so many handfuls. a clump of 
spaghetti. a soap bubble.
a bare chest: warm & ready.
a face with the mouth open. 
a wet canvas: maybe the painting 
you never finished & left in the art room.
so many conversations. you hear 
someone say your name & you turn 
but cannot find the source. 
more people now, all of them chattering it.
they're calling you in all directions.
they did remember you. how terrible 
it is to be remembere. you tell them
you are a new person. your body has shed 
so much skin & so much hair.
in high school, most night you wanted 
to die. nothing acute but maybe 
a firm evaporation. you want to tell everyone this 
but you know it would be innapropriate 
now that everyone has your name repeating.
you tell the room a story that's supposed to be funny
& no one laughs. the darkness looms thicker.
you get down on your knees. 
you ask to be forgiven. there is laughter
& the breaking of a trophy case. 
these people came here the same way you did,
slipping out of their lives to be lost again.
everyone holds hands. maybe it's a circle.
it's kindergarden. your hands are soft starfish.
it's twelveth grade again now, you all are full of 
escapes. you let go & step backwards.
everyone knows their own danced now.
some are sporadic & fear inducing.
you pretend it's sophomore year homecoming.
you felt in love with everyone that night
& here you are again. in the dark
moving your body. 

a elegy to a box of flowers stems 
or the story of a wedding

each morning the flower shop below us
leaves stems of cut flowers 
in piles on the curb. they sleep 
in long cardboard boxes like coffins
to be taken away by the garbage me. 
green truck taking green stems.
the boxes are the same boxes
the flowers arrived in when they were bright 
& still blooming. carnations & roses 
& sunflowers & daffodils & lillies.
i have begun to imagine a factory of flowers
where a machine constructs each face.
there are tools to create 
the wavy edge of each petal 
& to fill them with light floral smells. 
sometimes i'm not sure what to make 
of everything i observe. the details
come like fragments of story. 
do the stems go to rot 
in one of the great landfills?
do they become thin slivers of ghost
walking around in search of their visages.
do they linger outside my home 
peering in the flower shop window?
they see a woman arranging their once-faces 
into beautiful bouquets for a wedding.
it seems around here 
someone is always getting married 
& they always need flowers. 
where do all these people come from?
how did they learn to love each other enough
to hire flowers to worship them?
most importantly, would flowers marry each other
if they could? i can see vases 
each with two flowers. the flowers whispering
about the bold short future. 
i am closer to a flower than a human.
rooting through the garbage there,
i touch the stems in their burials.
they are still damp 
from whatever water they drank last.
my feet are wet too. 
i was drinking from a gutter.
my face was coming apart in petals 
as i pretened tomorrow morning i would 
run away from my street & become something else.
on the other side of the moon 
there is a heaven for flowers.
i am convinced of this at least.
i walk around the block three times
before i feel at peace.
there is a slight wind threating 
to blow away all the stems.
i tell the wind to take me.
i could get married to a trash bag
when it's brave enough 
to danced across a street. 
sitting on a bench. i cut the heads off flowers 
inside my heart. i leave my stems 
with the others.

in th city of dead leaves,

we collect baskets of cigarette butts.
they are the closest thing to flowers
we can find. we hold each in between 
finger & thumb, imagining a willow tree growing 
from such a seed. each smoldered cigarette
is unique. a pair of lips lingered there
drinking in the smoke. at night
everyone hides under leaves. everyone scurries 
on the feet of mice. there is garbage 
to make love in: a chip bag, a tasty-cake wrapper,
the skirts of reeses cups. we are young
though our age is flickering. time is 
an ice skater here. she wears her hair in a bun.
there is no ice so she makes due
with a tiny moto bike. on a good day
the smog tastes like burnt sugar.
on a bad day it tastes like sad memories:
dying oaks & wilting daisies. 
we don't remember much about 
the color green. we make up stories
of a green god who sleeps
on the other side of the sun. 
he comes down to feed us edamame beans
only when we sleep. the city isn't a city at all.
we call it a city so that it sounds 
alive. a large flat of asphalt, really.
it is hard to be the older brother here.
my parents sleep all day & wake up only 
to change positions & glance 
at the flickering strett lights. 
their eyes are made of plastic & their teeth
turned into helicopters years ago. 
we collect tattered postcards 
of erased locations like
oklahoma & wildwood & maine. 
i gather the other children 
& we take turns conjuring these locations 
from their images. we close our eyes 
& walk out to the ocean. we close our eyes
& step foot in a bustling street 
with wide-eyes vehicles & street vendors.
we close our eyes again, blinking so fast
it's like we're taking photographs
with our eyes. the children of the city of leaves
are sometimes full of joy.
sometimes we hold hands in a circle.
we are not children of course,
we are maybe eighteen maybe twenty.
the children are still living 
as mice. we feed them what we can.
as for us, all we have is bodies 
in piles of leaves. a soft humming 
trills through the air & gives us goosebumps.
as for me, i actually do plant 
the cigarette butts. i burry them deep
under leaves so dead they're stuck together.
i don't check on what i plant.
i am not that hopeful. what i really want
is an apple tree. i saw one on a stamp once.
i have never seen something alive
so red. hope is something that needs
measurent. allow yourself only enough 
to stay alive, is what i say. 
there is still a part of me that believes
i will wake up once 
under an apple tree & the city of dead leaves 
will come around me with all their joy.
the god behind the sun will feed us
ripe red fruit & we will 
breathe easier 
through the smoke.

please forgive us 

we were desperate for quarters.
my brothers & i had spent all afternoon
fishing in the dryer for coins & then 
scouring the streets. the world is made
of pennies. we stacked the brown coins up 
like tired little houses. we hypothesized 
that our own house was probably made of pennies.
in the other room our baby brother cries
& rocks bacfk & forth in his electric swing.
he stares up at the ceiling as if 
he knows it's made of pennies too.
we want him to stop crying. we stand around him.
our parents aren't home. they have turned sidewards 
& become portraits inside pennies.
i tell my brother that when i was tiny
i swallowed a penny. i felt the cool metal 
as it plumetted down my throat.
we wanted to buy ice cream. we had
a dollar in pennies. you have to promise 
to not judge us for this next part.
you have to understand that children 
are so hungry especially in summer. 
we put our brother in the red wagon.
he stopped crying as he gazed at the dazzeling sun.
we walked all the way to the park 
where we went around to see if anyone 
would buy him. the squirrels inspected
his thick arms & agreed he wouldn't last in the trees.
some mourning doves cooed,
trying to teach him their sound.
=i explained that he was a new baby.
he was smart & brilliant. he was the next
beautiful everything. it is easy
to carve out pieces of yourself 
to sell but it is harder to fill those pieces in
with something other than a purchase. 
we dreamed of dishes of half-melted vanilla soft serve.
our baby brother wriggled like a grub.
my brother asked what we would tell our parents
if we sold him & i told him 
to worry one step at a time.
finally, the ferral cats brushed up against his face.
they purred & kissed him with their coarse tongues.
ready to keep him, one cat lifted him up
by the back of his onesie. the cat whispered about
how soft & pink he was. i reached out one finger
for him to grab onto as a sort of goodbye.
both my brothers cried & another cat openned her mouth
to spill quarters on the ground. 
they scampered away with him.
we filed our pockets with the change, 
nearly twenty dollars in quarters. 
we sat on a bench for awhile. birds rustled 
inthe branches. a breeze shook the playground mulch.
thinking about what we had done, we drifted away 
from our bodies. we were terrible siblings.
filled our palms with coins.
they felt heavy & real. 
we swallowed the ice cream in desperate gulps
& decided to tell our parents he was stolen
by cats. ordered more ice cream.
it melted down the backs of our hands.
all the cats in the world were walking on the ceiling
of the ice cream parlor. they were carrying him
deeper into the woods. how could we
sell our brother? we remind ourselves
he was so loud & so fierce. his cashew legs kicking.
at home we waited in the quiet of the living room.
out the window we saw 
an orange tabby cat staring inside.
shutting the electric swing off,
we stacked the quarters on the kitchen table
to split evenly between us.

in the temple of broken drinking glasses

in the temple of broken drinking glasses
we were all terrible children.
we had worn our bare feet
down to the bone & had clacked 
as we ran across the kitchen floor of our home.
we had thrown dishes like frisbees 
& used the butcher knives to carve our names
in the walls. we were just children 
making efforts to not disappear. 
i can't remember anymore 
whether it was mother or father who banished us.
their voices blur together.
a thick creamy whirlpool of dissapointment. 
their tongues like wooden spoons as they spoke.
they packaged us in a block of wood 
& drove far past the horizon to get to the temple.
we slept, leaning on each other for the drive.
awakened by the sound of cracking
we tried to peer out but could only see ourselves.
the our ghost reflections staring down at us.
they dropped us off there 
& we heard the car unspool back to our town. 
the fear faded quickly,
we loved the structure for its breaking.
i held my brother's hand as we entered.
it looked just like our church only built
from broken drinking glasses stacked every direction.
each day, shards came down from 
a shifting ceiling. the glass in our hair.
the glass between our fingers 
& our teeth. we clinked as we played.
our blood slipped out easily
in ribbons & yarn.
we sucked cuts clean. we forgot
about our parents & thrived in the temple.
became worshipers of it,
mending the walls when they needed restacking.
the other children who came 
were the same as us. we became sibling 
of glass. we taught each other
to sing, our voices turning clear 
& bright through the shards. 
the more we loved the place
the farther it drifted from being discovered.
maybe our parents searched for us.
maybe they drove & drove. maybe they were
full of regret. when we prayed 
we talked amoungst each other about
how we thought god would look.
we agreed she-he was a great shattered wine glass--
all the pieces spread to every single corner
of the earth. in the night
we curled up with each other, making nests
of the glass. we knew the scrapes would come 
as we tossed & turned. dusk made the temple glow
a citrus orange. it reminded me of a fruit bowl
on our parent's counter. my thumbs prying rind
from orange flesh. we missed eating.
we missed the television. we missed 
the smell of bath soap. our exile was 
as long as we wanted to make it. 
we did not want to stay & we did not want to leave.
my brother filled his pockets with glass 
& wept. i told him we should return 
to be children again. we should walk 
away from the glass walls we loved
& see how far away our backyard was.
we did. we stood for the last time in glass 
& noticed our house as a speck in the distance.
i carried my brother on my back
& as we went the glass trailed from our pockets
until we were only our bodies again.
we stood on the porch & the wind chimes there
loosened our bones. we looked back
only for a moment
& could not see the temple. 

lineage 

there are mosquitos in chincoteague 
whose families held my blood 
in their abdomens like hot soup.
sometimes, they stand in rows 
on a screen or near a flicking porch light.
they trade stories of human dreams.
this is all that is transfered in blood,
a forceful longing. 
one mosquito says he wants to grow up
to be a brain surgeon & doesn't know
what that means. another wants to move to 
a tropical island & take pictures of the water.
the mosquitoes with my blood 
are some of the most talkative. 
they each held onto a different aspiration.
some want to write the next great novel.
some want to director movies.
then there are others who want to 
crawl back into the past. 
this causeds them to remember themselves 
swimming in their eggs. meek & wingless. 
they want to cry, thinking of themselves 
so small & their mothers & fathers 
who flew away somewhere else--
whose lives were brief.
my mosquitoes wish they were human.
they hold onto the idea of
another life after this one. 
when they drink blood
they drink stories. they try to pick 
convienent places to scratch:
the arms & tops of the legs. never neck 
or face or feet. 
they swallow the warm pulses
of sun burned strangers
each of which they fall madly in love with.
the other mosquitoes don't understand
what is wrong with them--
why they can't just eat & move on.
why they waste so much time thinking.
some of them never drink at all.
waiting on the walls of beach homes until
a hand or the back of a book 
smashes them into asterisks.
they are hesitant creatures & 
it is all my fault. one day i will go back
to where we vacationed when i was small
& full of blood & feed more mosquiotes. 
this is my only dream right now
& i feel it turning into a droplet
with legs & wings. it flies out my mouth 
& stands on the wall. a great huge mosquito
i will crush.