the whole cow 

in the smokehouse there's meat hanging
on the walls like paintings. red muscle
& tendon. on a drive through my home town
you can count crumbling piles of stone
where there used to be smokehouses.
where they used to fill the meat with 
grey & soot to keep fresh longer. now we have
refrigerators but there are small tiny fires
lit all over the house. i find a fire 
in the kitchen cabinet & i smudge it out
with my thumb. we have a chest freeze 
& mom talks about buying a whole cow's meat
to last the winter. it makes me uneasy
to consider that a whole animal's body 
might live in the frost of our machines.
yes not the eyes or the bones--but the meat
where all the movement happens. we might
awake one morning to find the animal 
re-assembling itself--a bleeding cow
un-thawing in the middle of the kitchen.
i try to consider the routines of 
the ghosts-- how they carry meat to
these crumbling stone sheds. wild grass
grows tall & bows all around. turns yellow
in the heat & the sun. there's one
in the woods by the creek that we used to think
was a tiny abandoned house. my neighbor, my brother
& me would crouch on the stone floor & 
etch our names in the faded soot. wipe hands clean
on our thighs. i want to be hung up 
in a smokehouse. i watch the clouds to 
crawl down my throat & into my muscle.
there are ghosts whose meat is heavy.
there is a cow alive now that might
live in our freezer all winter until
there is no meat of her's left. i want to
live in the freezer. i want them to see me
one piece at a time. a thigh. a rib.
a hand splayed out becoming a hoof. 
how thankful we should be for our methods
of preservation-- how the devices 
let us keep eating whole animals.
will they find our fridges in centuries
& want to crawl inside. i'm going out
to rebuild the smoke house. there are 
tiny fire under my fingernails. there is
a sense of slipping in my teeth.
there might be a fire under my tongue
where a boy left it. all smokehouses 
are of course women-- the only ones
who know what to do with dead things.
i want to live there-- where she can
tell me what to do with this flesh.
there is so much body. a cow weighs about
2,000 pounds. 2,000 pounds of edible.
i want to be that much feeding. here i am 
in the debris of a smokehouse once used
by a farmer who is now bones planted
in tall grass. there are many small graveyards
speckled across the hills. a stone fence.
headstone headstone headstone. all worn
clear of names. hunks of frozen meat
in the dirt. what we make of stone 
talks to the tall grass. what we make
of meat is eventually given 
to a tiny fire to erase the bleeding.

in safe places

the grey clouds up there are drones 
& i know this because just yesterday 
instead of rain, i opened my mouth & caught
a bullet shell. like the tooth of a metal dinosaur.
i took the object out to inspect & i pushed
it into a patch of dirt. you never know what
it's going to rain anymore. sure there's
a lot of people who count on water but
what if it's thumb tacks-- what if it's
weaponry-- what if it's an open fire--
a barrage. i know nothing about drones
other than that their faces are blank
& their pilots live in safe places.
there are safe pilots moving these clouds
so i wave a them to let them know
i'm a human & i'm down here wishing
that if i'm going to die today that maybe
i could have gotten more sleep. a drop
here a drop there. red. the drones/clouds
leaked blood & a fragment fell on my
open hand. catching blood like minnows
as it wriggles from the sky. no one believes
me though when i explain that clearly 
the clouds are drones. actually, it's not
that they don't believe me it's more
that they love the clouds & don't want
to know anything new about them. they point
& say no not that cloud at least & i say
yes even that cloud. how can you trust
a landscape to not be man made? when i was
small i think the clouds were real clouds.
i think i might have stepped onto one 
just once in a thick fog that ate the whole town.
i opened my fingers wide like a frog's palm
to touch the cloud-- to try to scoop it
up in palmfuls to take back inside with me.
yes, trust me i know a cloud when i see one
& these aren't clouds. no anymore.
will they hurt us? i guess the real question
is how much will they hurt us? i watch
a neighbor boy outside who names the clouds
after distant family members. i want to
tell him to stop naming drones but 
i want to believe like he does that
the clouds are buzzing because there 
are insects nearby & not because
they are mechanisms. in my house
i cloud the blinds. i pretend i live
in a calm place where there are no bullets 
none at all. i eat an apple & find a 
metal shell inside. i spit the artillery 
out into the sink. sometimes though
yes sometimes i wake up & i look outside
& i forget where we are & i see the clouds
as just clouds & i make animals of them
& i think of the fog thick enough
to grasp a handful of.

clergy

the soften & wilting pages becoming skin
this man shouts a bible toward the morning foot traffic 
each day as i walk from penn station all the way up
6th avenue. sometimes he raises one finger
to point as if conducting an orchestra 
of un-manned violins. i feel me strings--
the ones that go all the way down my throat
& end between my ribs. of course, i never touched it
but i want to know what his bible feels like
if he reads from it every single day with more 
reliability than subway train times or electricity.
that summer there were power outages & we stood
in the dark streets like ghosts & though i wasn't
on 6th i know the man was reading from 
this bible. if not the texture of skin 
then maybe the texture of a newspaper 
left out on a street corner week after week.
the smell of newsprint crinkles with rain.
i miss walking that street & miss the man
spitting the bible towards me-- how i could look up
to him & make eye-contact with words.
how i want poetry to do that to me--
to move me to stand with an umbrella in the rain
balanced on my shoulder so as to protect 
the pages. the words emptying me of a form.
his black suite. his black shiny shoes.
his fingernails like little peach moons.
the first time i thought he was calling us
sinners & maybe that's because despite it all
i haven't unwoven the knots of god in me.
maybe he was trying to give it to us
or maybe he did believe us all to be evil.
maybe he was exorcising this old city
of all these bones. my only impulse was
to tell him to stop & breathe. he read so fast--
a kind of spilling. a block or two away 
after i passed him i would pass radio city music hall
& tourists pointing at the red bright sign.
i would pass a vegan ice cream shop &
a store full of i heart new york shirts & magnets.
i don't know if he's still there but i hope
he is. i hope his bible is made of feathers.
i hope the rain stops & he eats something
warm & crisp. i want to stop him to tell him
i'm not a bad person--that i walk fast because
i have to-- because there is a hurry 
i am part of but no of course i don't. he reads.

high school graduation speech 6 years later 

why did i ever want to give
a high school graduation speech?
i don't know what i would have to say to 
a room full of bodies i knew very little about.
there was a guest speaker who told some 
story about cows though i don't remember
the moral. in 6th grade i became acquainted 
with a pervasive discomfort. the school was
made of paper & my skin was made of 
water balloons. there were a lot of 
birthday parties. there were also a lot
i didn't get invited to & i scrolled through
photos on facebook. there were lights 
at all those school dances & our shadows
obscured on the linoleum floors of cafeterias 
& gymnasiums. not once did we ever play 
dodge ball though i felt as round & as red
as one of those games. was there something
i intended to say? one afternoon they piled 
old books from the library into a dumpster
& told us we could take whatever ones we wanted.
i found a psychiatry guide book from the 1950s.
our school was old & in the one hall i remember
they had photographs of each class that ever 
graduated. aimlessly we might comment 
on the students hair styles or their stoic faces.
there was a sense here of digging like one day 
they might hand us all shovels & tell us
to encounter the earth beneath us. we had no pool
though we swam laps in soupy september heat
that made murky the second floor halls.
there was fog on the windows. no one was
dissecting sharks yet. how the years came around
in perfect circles-- the return of the sticky heat
as a sign that we were almost nothing & no one again.
i never did anything interesting with a summer
though in middle school once i went to a dog training camp
& once i might have been in a play. what happened 
between? i'm asking not for closure but 
as a body who lived in rift. i wore the same
gym uniform from middle school to high school:
grey shirt, blue shorts. maybe i too would have told
some story about cows, about pulling over on 
the side of the road & marveling at these great
huge animals. how they eat almost all day 
to have enough energy-- faces to the the grass.
the smell of sharp green. a few times we noticed
deer out the window of the one science class.
a doe & two babies & all the sapling legs.
that pause while everyone looked to the window
& the teacher glanced too. i would have told 
everyone i only ever wanted to be
one of those animals.

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.