comet in a velvet ring box 

what i can't find is evidence that
any heavenly body has ever been named for someone.
i had always falsely thought 
halley's comet was named after
a scientist's daughter named "haley."
i invented a story where he sat this girl
on his lap while they peered into a telescope 
& he told her this rock will orbit earth 
with your name. she would say prayers to 
her comet. she would look for it in the murky sky
as if it might be visible only to her 
because it wore her name. this is of course
something i invented. the comet was named
after the scientist whose ghost has
crawled into that rock after all these years.
out of all the comets & moons & planets
how could each scientist have always 
missed that opportunity? i want give away
moons. i want to put comets in velvet 
ring boxes. slip planets in to lockets.
when i look up at strange objects
my impulse is to call them the names 
of people i no longer know or people
who are distant. i sit down on a bench
between buildings where people seldom walk at night 
& i ask mars if i have permission
to give him a new name. the planet shrugs
& moves like a lady bug between stars
so i reach out & pluck him out. the planet
doesn't resist & i whisper his new name
because, dear reader, i don't want you to know
who i want to gift a planets to. that's too vulnerable
for us right now, i'm just getting to know you.
if you had a daughter would you name
a comet after her? if i had a daughter i would 
take her down to this street & give her a butterfly net.
i'd show her how you fish a meteor or a comet
right out of the sky & the hunk of space 
would throb in the net, uneasy until she'd name it. 
are no scientists romantic like this? are there rules
about naming that i have not been given? 
i won't take this back. mars is crawling up
into place with a name i can't say & i'm going to 
go through one planet at a time.
i want you to go out & take one down
tomorrow night & ask its permission
to give it a new name too. hold the planet
in your hands. it might be warm or cold 
or wriggling. listen to it's surface &
remember all the people you wish you 
would have known more. recently, i feel 
you can never know anyone enough. after all this
would anyone name a planet for me? is one already 
up there keeping my word safe in its mouth?
this has something to do with 
being saved. this has everything to with
trusting rock & stars over skin. their lights
move gnat-like in the darkness. i catch one
& name it my own name (don't tell anyone) 
for myself because
i am selfish or maybe because i am afraid
or maybe for none of these reasons & i has 
want to say my own name & have a body up there
turn in recognition.

i eat the same thing 

everyday because
banana & peach & measuring cup. i crawl
into a bowl. i crawl out. 
i thump a spoon
against my tongue. 
i scrape a fork across
the sidewalk. i drag my nails through 
a patch of dirt & stone. i eat the same 
thing everyday because of ribs 
& the centipedes they suggest. i eat the same
thing everyday because of something
my parents did that i can't remember.
i buy shovels to try & remember. i go to
a supermarket full of orchids to try
& pick something new to eat & i meet 
all the more-beautiful people who eat
only flowers. they put samples in their mouths
& wait for the petals to dissolve. 
there are white-pink orchids 
& purple-yellow orchids & orchids made 
of glass. people carefully sliding 
each face into their mouths. i eat
the same thing everyday because 
the supermarket tells me to. i eat the same
thing everyday because i have hands
& i can't imagine living like these people
who eat flower after flower.
i stay at the store for hours not to browse
but to watch people eat. they seem like
they have never used utensils--
that maybe someone has always held 
a flower & told them to open wide.
i tell myself to open wider &
i think of the way snakes unhinge 
their jaws. i want to unhinge my jaw
& eat everyday--the whole fucking day.
no minutes left ticking in the dirt
just a gaping whole where the day 
was supposed to be. they offer me flowers 
to try & i refuse but they insist.
they say the flowers will 
make me feel better-- that i would be less 
morose if i ate more flowers.
i eat the same thing everyday because
the sun is loud & as indecisive as me.
i accept a flower & stuff it into my pocket.
i set the flower on my kitchen table
& cry at the flower who doesn't know
how to cry back. i tell the flower i eat
the same thing everyday because i'm scared.
i tell the flower i eat the same thing
everyday because rain is turning 
into seed. the supermarket snores 
loudly so i open my window & tell it 
to please please stop 
that i am trying to get
some rest so i can wake up 
& eat the same thing tomorrow.

a field of hair

our house is full of stray hairs 
so i collect them. i started awhile ago
by just laying the hairs out flat on 
my book shelf but now i tend to them.
now they're a field. now they wave 
in the breeze of my fan. now they're vast
with their varying shades of brown.
i like to believe if i had them DNA tested
they would find these hairs belonged
to three or four tenants before us.
long black hair. short bleach blonde.
i inspect the root. the white tip 
from which the hair's plucked.
a bit of skin or something else. 
i run a hand through my own hair 
& feel all the roots. my brother & i
would take turn pulling out each other's
hairs when we were small. i'm fascinated by
this kind of crop. the thinness of each strand.
i could make instruments but i choose to 
harvest the hair for a landscape.
i take a brush & comb the hairs.
i take a bit of shampoo & i 
wash them gently so as to not 
pull them free from their dirt.
i add my own hair on occasion,
kneeling before i remove a strand.
a knot of fishing wire. something to be
strummed. the bow of a violin is made
of horse hair & i wonder if someone
is keeping a field of horse hair too.
course & thick. i'm not going to share
my collection with anyone. i want it to be
something they find when i die.
i want them to stumble inside & get caught
in tangled of each other's hair.
there's so much of it around this house.
i get on my hands & knees & check
the baseboard. check the space between
the carpet & the door. hairs come free
& ask to multiply. all hair wants
is to be a full wide head. i don't
have a skull but i do have a block of dirt.
i wish i could give all the dirt
new skulls to spread across. maybe a field
of skulls for hair to snake across 
reptilian in its need. i feed the field
my own hair when there's no more 
to be found. i pluck it out by the root.
i offer up the sting. i sew the strand
in between others & there is a great sigh
& a great thankful ache. a scalp
quivering like the face of a drum.
maybe one day i'll show you.

i thought i grew up in town of cows 

my neighbors were cows
& they went out to graze early.
despite my efforts i could never wake up
before them. i would go out to the yard
first thing just to find their whole families 
chewing grass & buttercups. their tails
swung like pendulums. their huge wide eyes
saw everything. i was convinced they could gleam
the past & the future. they remained stoic
& for a long time i believed my neighbors 
didn't like me. i brought them morsels 
as peace offers: the ends of green beans 
& wheat crackers but they refused 
to eat from my hand. it probably has something
to do with pride. cows are proud animals.
no one believes me that i grew up
in a town of cows because i live in a city
full of humans & pigeons & the occasional 
rabbit or squirrel. i introduce myself 
by describing the cows. i explain that they
have four stomachs for digesting grass & that
they are not the best at tending their gardens.
in my town, cows made quilts & hung them
on their living rooms walls. in my town
a cow sold apples at the farmer's market
& another cow scooped ice cream at 
the malt shoppe. yes it was strange 
growing up there with my human body
& my human skin but no one ever seemed 
to notice & i simply didn't point it out.
i assumed until i was older
that i just was a cow like anyone else.
i got down on my knees & chewed grass.
i crave that greenness even now where 
the grass if riddled with garbage.
me & the neighbor kids trotted through our yard
mouths full of onion grass & weeds.
there was something delicious 
about realizing nothing & believing 
the whole world was the same.
the neighbors rolled their grill outside 
each may & brought it in early october.
the neighbors sang songs near bedtime
to help their young children sleep
& i was jealous of them. where i live now
there are no cows & i search for them sometimes,
hoping a figure approaching in the dark
will turn out to be one. they're always human.
i even returned to my town to find
all the cows gone & human neighbors 
in their place. when no one is home
i get down on all fours,
pretending to be one, mourning their 
patience their vast bodies.
no one knows how much i miss them.

where un-nameable weeds grow

i cross to the other side 
of the street 
to avoid passing someone. 
i go all the way up
Willis Avenue like this. 
back & forth.
a boy on a bike. a man carrying groceries
in both hands. 
a woman pushing a shopping cart
full of trinkets. 
i don't know what
i'm afraid of or if i'm afraid of anything.
i don't want to make 
bad conversation. girl who looks to small
to be walking alone
i don't want to know 
whether or not we're all
ghosts on one of the first cool night of September.
as long as none of us speak a word 
this might be a haunting. 
this might be
a house of asphalt & street lights. 
our shadows
might be beautiful slanted animals. 
i step over
an empty box of Newports & consider
the cardboard mouth 
& how it opens for me,
a whole human, to crawl inside. 
i'm always searching for a smaller space 
to fit--there's the alley between 
the deli & the day care
where twisted un-nameable weeds grow 
& then the spot between 
the metal fence & the sushi place.
i scope out these locations 
& decide that if i had no where else to go 
i would slip into them
but yes i do have a home & none of us are ghosts,
at least not yet. that comes with winter
& the days shrinking to the size 
of a thread.
we can all feel them dwindling. 
i tell everyone
that i don't miss summer 
so much as i miss
that kind of sweat & those kinds of nights.
that's a lie though. 
the truth is 
all i do is dream about summer. 
that thickness. that heat.
the kind of body it promises. 
the beach aching
to be full of aimless people who look into it 
like a breaking window. 
i could circle the world
to chase summer. yes that's what i'll do.
i consider this gesture almost the same as
crossing the street as another person approaches.
what kind of avoidance? 
that's where i'm left unsure.

slicing the lemon 

the waiter comes to refill our glasses,
his pitcher clinking with ice & metal.
we order nothing but wait for the planes
to land in the middle of the street.
we watch out the window & drink water
with lemons hanging on the lips of each glass.
we talk about diners & how the menu has
everything you could ever want & the waiter
comes back again & again & again
pitcher after pitcher. he doesn't ask questions
just examines us unsure if we're actually humans.
i want to tell him that we're not--
that we're ghosts of ideas we once had.
that we walked all the way here as invisible 
as windows-- the water like swallowing ourselves.
it rained earlier that day & neither of us noticed.
we were inside & fixated on furniture & walls.
i walked on the ceiling & you told me i should
get down soon because i promised we would
do something romantic for once. i took too long
to respond. i had sent my head to several planets--
each of them without water. i was parched.
i needed so much water. we were two lakes
that no god ever bothered to fill in. on the way there
i picked up old losing lottery tickets & told you
they were art. you said they were sad. they were
limp & wet from the rain we didn't see.
i asked how we can be sure it rained since 
we didn't actually see it rain & we agree 
there's no way to be sure-- that it is quite
possible that the entire earth flooded 
between the time we last crawled into our house
& this afternoon. we both see how long
we can hold our breath. at the diner i dare
myself to climb into the glass of water 
& hold my breath there. the waiter fills it up
& walks away & truth is that he is 
a ghost too & that all waiters are reborn into
more waiters slicing lemons into sixths.
i put the lemon in my mouth as if 
i'm smiling. you tell me to be careful
because the water is cold. i want to be preserved
in ice like arctic mammals. i pull you in too
by your tongue. i tell you happy anniversary 
& i can't remember what that means so i sing
underwater like a whale. you cry & your tears
come out as ice cubes. you tell me to drink 
so i drink & the waiter comes back around
to fill up the glass. ice laughing over our foreheads.
outside it might decide to rain again
or maybe the sun will squeeze itself like a lemon
& hang over the edge of the world. maybe we will
taste sour on everything & chew ice for relief.
i pressed my face to you, you beautiful window
& you said you were hungry.

you can't sit here 

the chairs say do not sit here
& so i keep moving down a hallway of chairs.
there has got be one at least that lets me.

what photographs do you make up for yourself?
i pretend we have an picture of me
sleeping inside the spearmint bush.

i talk to chairs. i tell them
i'm a mostly sad person. someone should have
at least put them in some kind of order 

instead of just leaving them strewn about.
someone could trip. i could trip. 
there should be an image of 

my brother & i standing waist-deep 
in the snow after that one storm when
furniture fell from the sky &

broke on the ground: a sofa, a dining table
& so many sets of chairs. him & i 
playing with scrap pieces to write our names

in the layer of white. do you ever
forget your name? the chairs insist that 
it's not a good time-- that they don't want

visitors. i explain to the chairs that this
is my house as far as i know. they chatter.
my chairs have knees that buckle.

i want to go back & hire a photographer
to stand in the corner of the living room 
& ask us to hold still. i tell a chair

that i'm going to sit anyway & it shrieks
so i say okay okay i understand
even though i don't understand. 

there are a lot of moments i've forgotten.
my brother filled a car with broken chair pieces
& drove off someone. my house where i grew up

is now full of clutter & i don't know
how it got like this. i want to move somewhere
the ocean is within sight but then again

the ocean is closer each day. sometimes it
whispers through the windows & floods
the kitchen & the halls. all the chairs drowning

& begging me never to touch them. if i were a chair
i would hold a human up. i think of those afternoons
where my dad would ask me to be 

an ottoman. put his feet up on my back. 
i wish there was a photograph-- i can feel it
in my fingers. i loved it. i loved it. 

the weight of his limbs on my spine.
the knowledge that my frame could be useful.
a wonderful piece of furniture. a camera

only in the back of my throat
snapping photographs & letting me swallow them
as they printed. the chairs kneel for sleep.

the night comes without warning & so 
i lay down with them. i pray for a body of
wood. i pray the ocean doesn't leak. 

the gossip of grass 

i would bury dad's microphones 
when he was at work. holding them up
by the chords like captured fish,
they'd wriggle as i descended the stairs
from the attic. up there we had all dad's
music equipment: the drums, the speakers,
all kinds of amps & sound machines
& yes the microphones. i want to listen 
to the words of plants. on myth busters 
the night before they had tried to make
a fern talk. dad thought this was ridiculous
but i watched intently wondering 
if it might say something hushed
on the audio recording. i thought
about all the plants that i had killed 
on the windowsill of my room & wondered
what they would have to say to me.
all night i stayed up imagining their words
circling me like moths. i had one potted
african violet & i leaned down close,
pressing my ear to face of the flower.
nothing. it didn't trust me. 
i had to hear them. i resolved that
of all plants the grass must be 
the most talkative in these parts 
though in the rain forest it might be
a type of vines of moss. before leaving 
the attic i spoke into the microphone
just to hear the wild strangeness of my own
voice. it's so cruel that 
our voices sound different in our heads.
i tried to speak my voice lower 
& more steady but it just wavered more
in the speakers so i gave up.
i wondered if my voice had plants
inside it. maybe a spider plant
or a succulent. maybe somewhere 
my voice was finding a bowl of dirt
to sleep in. the grass was 
loud. a crowded room. aloud in the yard
with the speaker hooked up 
i listened. voice over voice over voice.
i spoke loud & clear saying 
this is a person but none of them 
stopped their chatter. i leaned in closer
& said i'm sorry for stepping on you
each day & the grass grumbled like a herd
of grandfathers. i stood up. the voices
never became clearer. still a muck 
of sound & i felt more lonely
than ever. all these small mouths 
making slipper language & there i was
a giant. bare foot. dirt under my nails.
i hadn't spoken to anyone all day 
besides the grass who wouldn't talk back.
i pulled the microphone out of the soil 
& brushed off the mesh steal head.
taking the equipment back upstairs 
i wondered if once i stopped listening 
the grass began to talk normally again,
if maybe they were just tricking me.
alone i sat on the floor of the attic,
using the microphone to practice my voice.
my voice loud & crisp & filling 
the skeleton of the house.

watching Rachel get her nose pierced

on the wall of the tattoo shop
i focus on a painting of a pin-up girl.
she's undressing, working her panties down
around her ankles. her head is throw back
in a laugh. i stand a few feet away as the piercer
explains the structures of the nose--
the cartilage at the center & the soft spot
at the front where the piercing goes.
he traces the arch of her nose & comments 
on the asymmetry. i flicker out of the room
& across the walls. i think of my own face
& the metal going through my septum,
my old boyfriend standing a few feet away
asking does it hurt & the brief pain
prickling through my face. later that night
i would keep telling him to stop kissing me
so that i could check the piercing, 
to make sure it was still there, as if
the metal was a handle bar on some sort
of train. as if the piercing was 
in the face of a bull with tags on
her ears. the chair she sits in
is different than mine. she leans her
head back. she looks off into the ceiling.
the piercer is calm. he has long hair
& leathery skin. his voice is steady.
i watch as he moves the needle swiftly.
he uses his own hands. he focuses.
as if skin were clothe. as if skin were 
so easily moved through. he has old tattoos
that are almost indiscernible climbing 
across his fingers & arms. he slides
the surgical steal jewelry in.
i want to be like him when i grow up
i tell Rachel on the way home. i don't 
elaborate. i could just of easily said 
i want a man like him to visit me
every single day & tell me what he's
doing to do to my body. i imagine more
piercings in my face. my tongue. my cheeks.
my eye brows. my old boyfriend telling me
not to get anymore-- that i look so good
without them & how that lit an anger in me.
how i wanted more metal nestled in my skin.
how i wanted to show him how easily 
a needle could re-enter. how i wanted to be
a man in front of him instead of a girl
& how i wanted to wield a sharp object 
so close to his face & tell him when i was ready.
i still want to learn the distinction between
pain & harm. between self destruction &
control. the metal looks good on her & before 
we leave the piercer explains how to take care
of the wounds. he suggests soaking the nose 
in salt water. i think drowning.

this night it's my fault my books turn into birds 

in the middle of the night
i take all the books off their shelves
& they turn back into various birds:
a heron, a crane, 
an owl, and so on.
i am sixteen or fifteen 
or something like that.
i have soft fingers & reptile knuckles.
i am trying to decide if i ever want 
to sleep again. i am writing down the names
of authors so i can ask to switch lives 
with them. i am writing down the names 
of poets so i can pray to them like saints.
last names to create order. dust from 
the bodies of the books on my hands.
birds flapping the dust off their shoulders.
the birds are loud & they call out 
in all directions as if to ask for
a larger shelf or a larger bird
to take care of them. i ask the birds 
to remember what books they were 
to consider their pages. to settle down
so they don't wake up my family. 
i tell them that i would also consider
becoming a bird if they had any tips.
i explain that i would do anything 
other than be what i am now--
a girl awake in an over-sized t-shirt.
the birds circle me overhead.
my ceiling is painted with clouds &
the birds fly above the clouds.
i wonder if they'll come back
or if my shelves will just always be empty.
i recite names to try & calm myself down
emily dickison, virginia wolfe, proust
kurt vonnegut & they all start to 
sound strange as i repeat them--
murky like a spell. i know it is
my fault for scaring my books away
but i wish they would land & let me
alphabetize them. i lay on my back
to look up at the painted clouds.
i try to feel where in my own body
i might be harboring pages. i feel my spine.
am i a bird or a book or a girl 
or a ghost awake all night again?
the birds don't land
they fall
they plummet as books again.
they couldn't sustain that kind
of lightness for long.
the books thwack on the floor
& i know for sure the noise had to have woken 
someone up. i leave the books there
& pull the covers around myself
to pretend to sleep. the books grow
mouse-legs & crawl into bed with me
whining & squealing. 
i tell them that's okay as long
as they quiet down. 
they hush.