i still have to learn how to play guitar again

i fill my old guitar case with thumb tacs & 
strips of gum. stipes of gum are crawling
across my body. there are animals that want
to live here. the raccoon who rubes his hands together
like a theif. my ferris wheel is whirling inside me.
this machine of noise. i want to play guitar again
one day but i keep selling the instrument--
it keep turning into quarters. i pay for my body 
in quarters--three down my throat. i want to sleep
in the guitar case but i'm scared it will become
a coffin what with the rigid sides & the latch.
i carry the case on the train & the ghost
of the guitar sits in the seat across from me.
no one believes me & they sit all over him.
i cry about their sitting. i cry about my own
skeleton. i have friends over & the ferris wheel
tells me to throw myself in front of a train.
i tell that machine that i can't 
because i still have to learn how to play guitar again.
trembling. fireworks under my tongue.
filling the guitar case with trash & hoping
it will form a musical body. i crumple up papers
of bad ideas & stuff them in the guitar case.
i need to bury the guitar case in the ocean
where it can become a wreck & beautiful fish
can make their homes in my ferris wheel.
the creaking of metal. the thumb tacs
spilling into the water. somewhere that guitar
is playing himself--the rusted E string
corroding a finger down to the bone. i want to sleep
long enough so that the earth heals over
like a great big scab-- red martian terrain.
the guitar swallowing music swallowing ocean 
swallowing metal. stomach for quarters.
the scurrying of change. money is money is money.
no one likes you. no one wants to sit inside your
guitar case. what do you want with a word?
stuff your words in to the couch. a fire 
on the windowsill. friends in the living room
covering their eyes-- covering their ears--
they don't see me they don't hear me.
i climb into the guitar case & the tacs dip into my skin
like paint brushes. i miss being a student.
i miss closing the lid & hearing the guitar sing.
where did he go where where. i wish for a pocket large enough
to hold a whole guitar. i wish for the ferris wheel 
on a tuning peg. there is a place to rest 
& it is in my guitar case. the sound of turning.
the sound of tight orange. they're talking about me.

a description of the moment before you see the ocean

1.
the car ceiling is made of foam.
pressing upwards our hands go through
& dip into the blue outside like finger paints.

2.
remembering a story a friend told about
a boy who brought her sea shell after sea shell
saying nothing. a pile of sea shells at her feet.
stepping on sea shells.

3.
eight years ago i was floating
facing the unpeeled sun while it tried
to make a fireplace of my skin.

4.
skipping a stone & watching that hardness
become part of the folding. mom folding towels
on her bed. a friend folding her laundry 
on the ground of a dorm room.

5.
saying we should drive to the ocean 
when really i mean i'm tired & i want to see
the end of the earth.

6.
taking a drinking glass to the air.
gulps of salt. taffy coming in through 
the car window. a collective chewing.

7.
i lay in bed & sometimes my blankets mimic 
the motion of waves--they lap my body.
the fan moves them like a breeze
over water. there are bird wings 
in the room. there are deeps blues.

8.
my mom knitted me a dress from a sunset once.
she sat down on the porch & pulled yarn
from those spilled colors. i put the dress on
in a temporary room that smelled like july
& we drove towards the sand.

9.
like throwing a drinking glass against a wall.
like smashing an ice cube with a stone fist.
like clutching sand in both fists.
like asking the sun to come back when it's too late.
like bare feet bare feet.

10.
someone tells us to keep our eyes closed
so we walk with our arms outstretched
feeling for the nearby depth. the call 
of a glistening world. 
weep for ourselves & all the other gill-less animals. 
holding our breath.

the danger of crossing 

prehistory in her face.
we found a snapping turtle 
in the middle of the road. dad explained 
you pick up a turtle by its tail as he maneuvered
around behind the animal. i stood on the other side
as trucks drove around dad & the turtle.
the grass was bright green & full of dew.
it wet my feet in my sandals & i wanted to know
how the turtle could be so unaware 
of the danger of crossing. i don't see my dad
much anymore but i do call him on the phone.
he tells me he's tired. i tell him i'm
doing wonderful because i don't want 
him to be another vessel for my sadness.
i think of the turtle with alligator 
in her eyes & reptile around her ankles.
the glare she had at dad for trying 
to lift her safely to the other side. 
the double yellow lines lay like broken strings.
i wonder if he's come across another 
snapping turtle. i wonder if he'll go down 
to the creek with my brother today.
are there turtles in autumn? 
or do they go to sleep? the deliberate nature
of her blinking. the eyelids of a monster.
her short tail & dad gripping it tight
to fling her near where i stood.
she snapped & the closing of her mouth
sounded like horse hooves on asphalt.
she looked at me. a deep burning stare
& i stepped back away from her
terrified that she would bite. her gaping 
mouth. the human pink of her tongue.
i tell dad that i am doing great.
i'm doing so perfect. he talks about 
money like it's a snapping turtle--
ancient & unpredictable-- ready to snap
& remove a finger or two. i stood in the grass.
turtle shuffled away toward the stream.
grey & rock-like. dad continuing his instructions
give him space & we climbed back into 
his jeep & i never asked why he thought
the turtle was walking toward
the other side so i have been left
to consider this myself. no i don't want science.
i want the turtles to think as humans do. 
the turtle yes have to see the whirling cars.
yes have to know that it could die crossing.
maybe though this pull into peril 
is not so strange & so animal.
dad standing there laughing as he lunged 
to grab the snapper's tail. dad sitting on 
a bench by the creek. dad driving the jeep
with the rusted out frame. i'm calling him
& i'm still standing in the dew soaked grass
on a morning in April. a car rushes by.

i pick small objects from my dog's mouth:

a paperclip, a thumb tac, a knot of hair.
i reach between small white teeth and 
underneath her tongue. i wonder about
her desire to eat small dangerous things.
i crawl on all fours with her & we walk out
early in the morning while the sun 
in blue & orange
& the sounds of doors closing
echo in the distance. how will i teach her
how to use a mouth when i haven't mastered 
my own? i kiss a window. i eat a 
knob. i swallow a few earrings. 
i tell her that it's hard 
for creatures like us.
that we crave what does not belong 
in our jaws. 
as she walks she presses her nose
to the ground & the ground is so gentle
& it allows her inspection. 
grass damp in the morning.
it is almost october & soon we will lick frost
off our fingernails. 
i tell her i am sorry 
for being demanding. for asking 
that she listen more than an animal 
is capable. i once told Jack about my fear
of sleeping through a whole day. he laughed.
this morning i am tired & i want to 
eat wads of hair 
& have a larger animal 
pull each strand out from between my teeth 
telling me that i need to survive. 
i want that kind of protection. Benny was pacing
last night with a thumb tac in between her teeth 
& she set it on the counter. i played with the tac 
between my fingers 
before placing it in the drawer.
my dog begs for sharp objects & she wants
to chew on cigarette filters & i want 
to gnaw them with her. sometimes i wonder
what would happen if i just let her 
do whatever she desired. let her eat 
the trinkets of garbage. what does 
she want with them? she falls asleep again
& i bite down on a tac to show her 
how to hold it without cutting 
your gums.

the afterlife for gnats 

in the kitchen we fill a cup 
with apple cider vinegar to catch gnats. 
i sit by the trap to watch 
each speck struggle in light amber liquid.
i can't pin point where the gnats are coming from.
i inspect all my fruit: the bananas still greenish
around their foreheads, the acorn squash thick & sturdy,
the single peach's skin not yet soft to the touch.
i start to think of the gnats as ghosts & 
i imagine them entering through the walls--
their tiny bodies pressing themselves into 
this world. i tell the gnats this apartment
is important to me, you have to understand.
by which i mean this apartment is where i live
& i won't be haunted again. maybe then they roll
like periods, like endings, from beneath the front door.
maybe they mean no harm-- just want company
like all ghosts do. i tell the gnats i have
been a ghost just several days ago & that
i will be a ghost again. the gnats go on 
lapping up the vinegar. what sounds does it make
in their mouths? a whole mouth fit into 
a dot. they must not eat very much. no matter
how many die in the vinegar they keep coming back.
in moments of anger i slap them from the air 
& wipe their red splotch off on my thigh--
smash their endings on my wall 
their ghosts returning to somewhere 
in the ceiling.
maybe the afterlife for flies 
is in my house.
i wonder how i could 
make them more comfortable.
doesn't everyone deserve that?
i could fill the room with dying fruit 
or maybe just keep each trash bag open 
in the living room. a circus of smell.
a part of me knows this is wrong that these
are gnats-- that it is their purpose 
to take three bites then vanish 
but i want to be a good host.
i know what's it's like to have a small skull.
to be easily vanished.
to be a type of punctuation.
to own a see through abdomen. 
look at the organs-- 
only enough red
to burst a moment.

electric factory 

you show me a trick where you 
stick a light bulb in your mouth 
& it blares neon bright-- 
filament sputtering & sparks.
you say we're all made of electricity 
but i stick a fork in a wall socket 
& nothing happens.
my body is quiet. i try putting batteries
under my tongue. i try an extension chord.
you touch me with all your static. my hair
stands on end. 
goosebumps all over my skin.
call me a good conductor. a metal ready
for the charge. it won't thunderstorm 
again this year but i go outside anyway 
under the grayish clouds & ask to be
turned into something alive.
i have this memory of watching men
fix the wires outside my old house--
they had to lay down mats of rubber
& even with the mats they were still
getting shocked-- i could see 
the static-- miniature lightening bolts.
i feel you three rooms away.
you are the right kind of pain.
a throbbing that can't be placed.
i install a lightening rod down my back
for your to play with-- climb up & down.
who should i tell that i'm in love
with an element? 
that i love your static & nothing else.
we turn off all the lights in the house
& you ask me to hold out my arms.
great bolts leap from you to me.
we make a circuit. you feed me wires
& i bite through the copper.
the texture of rubber. how rubber
ultimately is the only thing that saves me--
the only thing between us. where does 
your body start? i grab hold of your hair
& say to myself yes this is
another human. lightening 
invites itself inside-- 
doesn't ring the door bell. electricity 
sits at the kitchen table charging 
all the utensils with sparks. 
i tell myself i love this sensation.
i tell myself i want to be
part of your mouth--
a knot of shock 
& thrumming.
i want that all over my house.
i want you in the walls
& the door knobs. 
make me feel like
i'm not an animal. 
you put the light bulb in my mouth now.
bright orange scream casting
scabbed shadows. you put one
in your mouth too.

not-forest

that night i said let's go into the bar-code
& you followed me because each day i was composed 
of mostly water. you called me ocean, river, creek,
stream, girl & i held up purchased items
to offer us a place to escape to. you had 
a skull made of glass. i had hooves to knock
on the wooden floor with. you had a fear of
forests & i had a fear of the flood happening again.
i told you i was listening to an audio book version
of the bible & the sound of god came echoing.
if we have children what will we tell them
to explain our bodies? no, no we'll say nothing.
& i was scared of bar-code but it pretended 
to feel safer there for you. we stepped between
the tall blank strips of black. varying lengths 
& sizes. nothing can survive too long in a bar-code
because there's no food or air. we held our breaths.
we clenched our fists. you wasted air
to speak, saying i feel at home here. between
the thinnest stripes we too became slivers
of life. i griped a tall black beam & looked up
wishing it were a sapling & that above i might find
a nest or a rustling. no rustling. you loved
the bareness-- the crisp truth of two colors.
the faint hum that suggested scanning & the knowledge
that we were traversing a space where no one else
would ever find us. i wonder still if this is
what went wrong with us. if maybe we sought out
the corners void of air. you strummed a black bar.
you pressed your hands to the white background.
you told me to take out your tongue & leave it here
among the not-forest but i refused. i was 
running out of air. i was thinking of
windows & how i could use one for a face
if all else failed. all else will 
almost always fail. tell me, though how do you
ask someone to stay while you go? how do you
learn to just see a bar-code & not think 
that it might be a way out. in the bar-code
we had the wonderful bodies of eight-year-olds.
we had fingers made of soft clay. we heard
the sound of eating-- everything eating.
eating clothes eating glass eating bones.
my hooves on a different planet. your glass 
mechanisms left up to god. before i go 
i tell you that the bar-code will,
like all worlds, eventually come undone.
you said you wanted to come undone with it--
you wanted to feel that distress. you wanted
to experience gray on a molecular level
& yes i left you & i walked right outside
& i didn't stop walking until i found a sapling
to climb up into in case of the floor.

another night

a sleeping bag crawls out the back door
of my boyfriend's house. we were swallowed
in its stomach. comfort & zipper. waddling
to the edge of the yard where 
the dying pine tree dropped limbs 
& needles. inside like the shell 
of a snail. the spiral of an ear whirling deeper
into the night. i loved him enough to make
every bad decision. 
here take my skin in exchange
for clothe. here take my teeth in exchange for 
a zipper. his hands as my shoulders. a mash 
of bone & bone. the sleeping bag nudging us 
to give over & fall deeper into the cool
black-blue earth. a kind of bruising. 
the dull press
of a thumb over top of the moon to keep it hush.
this happened each time i slept over--
the feral sleeping bag writhing in the closet 
& then sneaking out to get us-- 
scoop us from
the bed & make off with us. he snored &
it shook each strand of hair. i tried to fill
his mouth with anything: 
socks, flowers, a fist. 
in the sleeping bad the snoring felt like 
it was coming from inside my body. 
rattling. aching. 
how do you collect your body?
the cool deep backyard telling us we needed
to get a bus & run away. i'd wake him up
& he'd say the sleeping bag again?
i'd take out my pocket knife 
to slice us out.
like skin though the bag would heal. i would
pull him free & he'd say that these kinds
of things wouldn't happen if we were married.
all this strangeness was because we were 
running out of something. i found gold rings
under my tongue each morning i swallowed 
rather than tell him. i knew it was
coming undone. 
there he was another night
crawling into the sleeping bag by himself
as if he wanted to be carried away 
to the edge of the neighborhood
just so i would save him. the open window.
the cool night leaking in like water. 
his fingers gripping the zipper & speaking
softly to the device. him saying
please capture us i need her i need her.
how one will make alliances with objects
if necessary. 
swallowing a ring in my mouth.
getting used to the taste of metal.
the limbo between love and fear of
being alone. asked if he would ever try
& eat me & he promised me he wouldn't so 
i said good & the sun bled into 
the room so yes of course the sleeping bag
crawled back into the closet 
& of course we got up 
& put ourselves together 
in the same bathroom mirror.

the deepening 

the hallway is not part of the house anymore.
none of us discuss this 
but we're all sure we're walking 
in a telescope or maybe
a train tunnel. 
are we trains or rats?
not a train tunnel though a cavern 
& there have been stalactites growing from
the ceiling like crooked teeth for months.
the landlord won't like this. 
i take out my flashlight to search the hall. 
glowing rocks.
bats folded up like paper notes. they dangle
by their feet-- swing like wind chimes. 
or maybe the hallway is
the inside of one of our bones. that would
explain the redness. the grainy marrow 
all along the walls. i feel everyone 
walking in my arm. no this is a hallway 
just a hallway. always getting longer.
have you ever met a hallway that doesn't 
keep trying to be longer? 
the stretching
of the tunnel. 
the train approaching
but never arriving. yes we are engines
& the trains screech 
from lack of use.
no this is the torso of a sapling. 
thin & wiry & considering thickness. 
a torrent of water sucked 
from the dirt. the roots
woven across each of our doors. 
an organism throbbing in between. 
i want to live in the hallway
& have everyone else step over me. i want to
wrap myself in grape leaves-- keep myself
soft & touched with oil. i pluck a rock
from the ceiling just to find that it was in fact
a tooth. veins trailing down from it. the hallway 
is a throat with teeth. we don't want to know
what animal we're inside. everyone else
sticks to other areas of the house. no one
leaves the hallway the same. 
the teeth are mirrors
that show you more 
& more versions of your own face.
a sense of swallowing. 
the muscles that force a body
all the way down the wet red tunnel. 
there are so many
openings on the body. 
there is only one hallway
& it doesn't know what to do 
with itself just like we aren't sure 
what we can do with it. 
it's a disobedient hallway. 
it's supposed to be wood
& it's supposed to stand there stagnant with 
the light on 
& we're supposed to walk to our rooms.
the hallway is volatile-- 
not to be trusted.
we could have the hallway surgically removed
but then what would be 
without a hallway
to get here & there & here & there.
there's a hallway for what you need.
there's a no door 
just the deepening.
i invite strangers over because i have to.
i put them in my mouth one at a time
& swallow.

do you remember when we were jellyfish?

we came home to a bathtub full of jelly fish.
swirling veins of purple & blue--their tentacles
mixing like wires. circuit board. electric box.
we stood around trying to count them as 
they moved. oscillating animals. their dangling fingers 
their blank visages. i counted seventeen but 
you counted twenty. we weren't sure
what jelly fish eat so we Googled it & they eat
plankton eggs & plankton larva. i caught gnats
from above the fruit bowl & dropped them in.
you cracked an egg into the water which i told you
was silly because of course they don't chicken eggs.
the yolk swirled with them until it just looked like
one of the animals. then of course we started
to blame each other. i imagined you carrying
the jelly fish here in buckets-- one in
each hand, lugging them up the staircase
salt water sloshing all the way. late at night
when we both wanted showers you said you knew
i had done it-- that you knew i had always wanted
a strange pet. we stopped talking. we took turns 
washing in the kitchen sink. i still think
it might have been you but by now i still
also think it could have been myself.
we asked other friends if they had ever had
such a problem & none of them had. we stood
to watch the jelly fish like a television.
one night after we'd grown used to their company
you said you wanted to go in with them & i said
i wanted to be first, so we shoved each other
& both ended up in the their midst. i felt my head
grow lighter. i felt my fingers drew loose 
like the strings of a wind chime. i saw you too
with your silk-dress body & your disappeared-eyes.
i told you with my not-mouth that you looked
stunning like this. that we should give up
on everything else & stay in the bathtub
slipping between the jelly fish. we were hungry
but we couldn't care. he didn't know yet
how to sleep in these bodies. i said 
try folding inside out. you said try 
counting stars out the tiny square of a window.
none of it worked & i felt the purple. 
the loud purple & the heavy blue. ache of colors.
why so thick colors so late a night. you take
some of my colors & i'll take
some of yours i said so no one because
there was no words just movement.
the other jelly fish whispered. i tried
to whisper too but my tongue was a leg now.
we woke up years later in the tub
drenched in water. tub drained.
we wept & search frantic for 
our new family members. we turned
on all the sinks. we visited tropical 
pet stores. we slept in the tub but we were
at least as far as we could tell 
bodies. human bodies. tongues in mouths.