new neighbors 

i was a binocular child.
i wanted to see the seam where
the sky met the earth. i take things
apart to love them. stich by stich.
once, i gutted my favorite stuffed animal. 
i filled her with hair & she came alive.
the new neighbors have so many cars
i am convinced they are rich.
either that or they are in trouble.
i don't know how much looking
is too much. my partner tells me
that i have a problem with staring
but i think i am just trying to take
an apple-flesh bite out of the world.
i don't understand the neighbors. 
they come & go like pigeons. 
i have never heard them playing music
or laughing. this is where i miss the city
where someone always had a folding table
out on a porch or a cigar full 
of cicada wings. we all crawl into the sky.
we all crawl down from the sky.
i get their mail by accident sometimes.
it's only bills or junk mail. i know that
one of their windows has string lights 
in it & i wonder what a portrait
that makes of our yard. we live on a weird street
where no one tries to know each other.
if the neighbors are watching me
like i watch them they might witness
me shapeshift one night when 
the air is right. i wonder how they would
make sense of my deer body & my antlers.
i hope that maybe they might join me.
if we cannot be human together than maybe
we could be animals. it is so strange 
how distance means something different 
to each person you meet. these bodies come
& go & come & go. smoke outside the front door
by the porch light even when the nights
are this cold. 

seed eating 

in the garden i hover palace-like
without any arms. you tell me i am
the snake but there are no apples
& no gods to be seen. i love snakes.
i think they know what's going on
& so they tie themselves into knots
all winter. i do not know what i want
& so i swallow someone who does. 
when i lived in the city i saw winters
as tabs to dissolve on the tongue.
feel better feel magical. the goats have
built a ladder to heaven. there is 
a party tonight that i am not invited to
& that's okay (i tell myself). i am hoping
that someone looks around & notices
i am missing. the cold warning does not
warn me. i buy firewood from 
a gap in the universe. the coyote brought us
fire or was it the raven or was it the spider.
i love the part of the story where
the animal look at us & think,
"they are so sad & cold." i wish we didn't
think of ourselves as superior. i mean 
if you really think about it, the birds
have it made. they fly & they love
& then they become pillars of salt. 
the bible is not that well written. if i redid it
i would probably choose to start with 
the cross & tell it backwards. then it becomes
the story of a god receding into darkness.
in my dream last night i never passed
fifth grade. i am a child & an adult 
at the same time. everyone things i am in
the wrong place. i don't have my schedule.
i go to everyone & they drop seeds 
into my hands. they say, "eat." i realize
then that i am dirt. a lovely plot.
soon to be sunflower or gourd. i open
my mouth for the bloom. pick it for you.
put it in your hair & lay down. 
water me. water me & wait. 

sweet mirror

i have been feeding my mirror
turkish delight. i have been
feeding my mirror honey.
i have been plucking my eyebrows
& day-dreaming about a park i used 
to walk to in the old times when 
the mirror was just a way to feast.
i haven't worn makeup earnestly 
in years but sometimes before a shower
my partner will put lipstick on me.
i prefer the strange colors. the mirror
eats us & leaves nothing but bones.
when i was younger i used to cut mirrors
into cootie catchers. who loves me?
who wants to feed me? i could eat
a whole bag of grocery store bagels
in one sitting. the raisin & cinnamon kind.
i like my sad music loud & my horrors
in mason jars. just a sniff. one big huge
icicle is dangling from the roof.
i joke with my brother "what if it fell
& cut us in half?" i cannot drive so he takes me
to a little fun house where 
all the mirrors are sour or bitter. 
i turn into a worm. no one loves me.
he turns into a girl & i tell him,
"isn't that easier?" it is true what 
the conservatives say. transness is contagious.
who wouldn't want to braid their own body
in this dark & horrible place? i buy juju bees
& think of my dad's blue jeep (long dead).
i miss riding with the roof down. i miss
the rear-view mirror & how toothless,
it still saw me. my round face.
my crooked heart. freckles like hoof-prints 
of deer who wandered across my face
while i was hairless in the meadows. 
i burry the one mirror & it always
crawls back out. full of me. full of us.
candy spearmint leaves. a chocolate arch. 

fossilized 

when two dinosaurs are fossilized together
i am convinced they were gay for each other.
what other kind of love endures the absence 
of bones? i used to think that fossils were bones.
i didn't understand why they couldn't 
just clone them already. yes, i watched
jurassic park. no, i did not learn anything.
i am an unnatural natural person. edit my genes.
make me an iguanodon. we could guard
our eggs from the apocalypse. i hope if
we become fossils that when they find us 
there is some future scientist who discovers
that we were lovers. maybe he'll see my broken
& healed rib. maybe he'll see your crooked 
toe bones. being a poet is not about creating
it is about surfacing. i am a language paleontologist. 
i take my brush to the word, "tomorrow"
& i remove dust until it becomes, "morrow" &
then "furrow" & then ends up as "yesterday." 
we walk backwards towards an answer that 
is not there. at least i love you though. at least
we are the best kind of lizards for this lifetime. 
at least sometimes we get to eat red bean cakes 
while watching tv. when the future bone diggers
stumble upon us we might be monsters to them.
they might re-invent the dragon. they might 
see us, for the first time, as we truly were.
magnificent specimens. our bones that made broth
of the earth, grew the pines & the apple trees. 
i want to be found facing each other. there are
dinosaurs we have like that. mouths open.
mid-shout. time peddling its little bicycle 
towards honey dark. tails full of vertebrae.
their memories like skipped stones in the dirt. 

dog toy

i am the idea of a limb.
you can chew on me 
until you're bored. you can 
give me a little hat. tear the clouds
out of my chest. make a sky.
see an animal in it. i am going 
full insanity. there are symbols everywhere.
i say "crazy" too much. i don't know
if it is okay because i've been in 
a mental hospital (i kind of feel 
like it is). when i say "crazy" i mean
"wow even that is flammable."
i called my friend in the middle 
of the night & ask him to drive me
to the ocean. he told me i needed
"professional" help. please don't help me.
i want to run headless. i want to
go to the ocean & wash myself. 
yesterday someone pointed at my hands
& asked, "are you a witch?" i said,
"well, yes." i didn't mean to be. 
i just woke up one day with a desire 
to bathe in milk. as a girl scout
i never did any of the hard badges.
instead, i took a health food class
& spent most of my time running
in the graveyard & looking for fun
headstones. i started to dream of 
my own badges. ones for necromancy
& one for picking wild onions.
i will tell you a secret. if you by a dog toy 
& leave it out on a full moon
you will turn into a werewolf. that is
how it starts. i'm too chicken to do it.
instead, i sulk & wait for a vampire 
to decide to make me one of their hoard.
i would be good at that. becoming 
the hunger. for now i pretend to be a dog
only when i am alone. my owner
is an old man. gentle who keeps
a jar of treats on the top
of the fridge. 

phone burial 

i'm going off grid. i'm going
viking burial. my father used to tell 
a story of driving to arizona 
with his father in their jeep.
was it a jeep? i don't know. sometimes
when we retell stories, we just
turn them into what we need.
they would go into the desert to visit
a friend who lived outside of the world.
he built his own radio tower 
& he talked all night to ghosts. 
the ghosts would circle the house & enter
through all the cracks, filling the place
with smoke. i think i was there too
with my dad & my grandfather
& the smell of burning. i want less light bulbs.
i want less screens to tempt me with 
bites of ugly sugar. i take the phone outside.
i hate how much it has become
a limb. little flipper. little fist. cut it off.
i bury it in the worst place
in the yard. i don't want it near 
the quail bones or the cat. instead,
i want it to slip deeper & deeper until
the land has lungs. until it is spring
& onion grow like thick hair from 
beneath the sycamores. i cover the phone
with earth & wonder how i will
tell my friends i am on fire now & how i will
make the tiny thumbs of money that
keep our fridge stocked with green grapes. 
the phone is gone though & i am wild.
i am in the desert. the house is a waterfall.
all the ghosts are coming fresh & smelling
like dried rose petals. they leave foot prints
on the ceiling. a bird offers to be
my carrier. i whisper a secret in her ear
& tell her to go & spread rumors.
my grandfather's cane thumps against
the wall. a conversation plays as if 
there is a radio. there is no radio 
that i can find. in the morning the phone,
undead, has crawled from the soil. 
she rings & announces there is 
a software update. i contemplate
burying her again but i don't have
the arm strength & the ghost endurance.
i pick her up. use my body noise
to open her face. dream wildly of what happens
when we escape. my father told me,
"the stars were like fireflies there, glowing
loud enough to light the red earth." 

how to make a bow & arrow

i have been trying to grow out
my hair in the hopes i can use it
as a violin bow. there are objects
all around the house waiting 
to become weapons. water bottle 
& window & wooden spoon.
my partner is making a bow & arrow
from our bones. he says, "this is
how the ancestors did it." i let him
take what he needs. a tooth. a rib. 
i am trusting & untrusting. my instincts 
are bad. we chopped the land up
& now all i know how to do is
make mac & cheese from a box 
when someone is sad. the bow & arrow
is as big as us & then it is as big as the living room
& then it is bigger than the house.
the tip of the arrow, sharp. our canines.
i learn it is best not to ask questions
of myself or anyone else. he asks me,
"what do you think you want in life?"
i have no answer. all i know is i want 
to eat lychee berries some nights
& the i enjoy the thrum my brain gets
when i watch a bee's nest. 
i have less & less ambitions &
the ones i do have sound exhausting. 
why isn't the arrow softer? why do we have
to hunt? the deer come & i always
shoo them away. i say, "don't you know
that is a bow & arrow?" they are though
just like me. they explain, "we are we are
we are." i do not know what that means.
whatever. i am a poet so meaning can be
like grease. it gets all over you 
& then you are weeping. the bow is 
bigger still. my mouth, a flower pout.
supple & toothless. there is not enough
to make the bow we need. the net to catch
the stars as they try to escape. 
once we caught a fight with our bare hands.
my partner said, "i'm sorry" to the fish.
the fish said, "please." 

rotten eggs

we could not keep up
with all the planets the chickens
insisted on making. you have 
to eat the sun as soon as it arrives. 
this is what the cinnamon hens told me. 
i need summer like a glass
of holy water. cartons full.
blooms haloing each shell. 
it is winter now & the chickens
are slow to prophecy. i search the wood chips
& sometimes i find a frozen egg.
in summer though i would often
find one buried & rotten.
the putrid apocalypse. i could see
through the shell. myself in a tiny room
working on a spreadsheet of terrors. 
my eyes gone sick in the soup. 
what if each failure was a site of worship?
sentences punctuated by 
divine rotten eggs. unchickened & 
reeking of the future gone sick
from waiting. if they are really bad 
the eggs will just about pop. 
tension from a life still unsaid.
i crack open doors. i ooze onto greased pans.
the chickens do not stop though.
there is always another room. another 
mother. another sun coming 
into the sky like a body into a claw-foot tub. 
outside the city is eggs. the sky is eggs. 
rotting pockets of old wanting. 
i go out when the sky is still orange.
in the coop i find a chick still damp
from her egg. she is soft & terrified.
i take her inside to warm her. 
we talk for hours about the taste 
of our respective yolks. in the end 
the rot is not talking to us. it is asking 
for soil. it is running headless toward
the spirit world with our thumbs 
still twitching in its belly. 

neighbor poem

i do not know the names
of any of our neighbors. 
they have little terrarium lives.
i collect brief intimacies:
the woman picking up dog poop
on fridays & the teenage son
blasting music late at night. his match box car
up & out of the driveway. 
the argument between him &
his step father. 
i don't always practice what i preach.
i tell others, "get to know you neighbors."
when i lived in the city, i did know
my neighbors. we talked 
in the apartment hallway
& sometimes on the front steps.
we bitched about the landlord. 
once, i baked lackluster bread
& shared it with the old man
who listened to the radio too loud. 
i try to understand our neighbors.
no american flags which is a relief. no
political signs. which is
a relief. the corn field behind us
like the ruffles of a wild skirt. 
there is so much room to run. another neighbor
has two dogs that sometimes walk out 
in the middle of a winter night.
their shadows run without them.
i have a vision of us all in the field,
walking to the patch of trees. 
what would we talk about? 
i want to know more. about what it means
for us to draw & undraw our borders.
to un-own the land & cradle it. 
we know more of each other 
& less of each other than it seems. 
sometimes their packages are delivered
at my door. i always walk them over. 
consider ringing the doorbell or knocking
on the door. i don't. why don't i?
we become the patron saints 
of the distances. my favorite nights 
are the ones when all our lights are out.
it is like we are sharing a fistful
of dark. the dogs chase each other. 
the stars chew us down to the bone. 

ice maker 

a cold mouth is a growing one.
i cannot name water without 
thinking of terror. an empire
begins with gender-horror.
the land as a woman. a woman
as a vessel & an apple tree. chopping down
the mother & dragging her to watch
mountain-scarred with faces. as a child,
i loved to eat ice. we bought a cheap
plastic tray &, as the day grew long,
& i waited for my parents to come home,
i would suck & bite until my teeth
rung like bells. i was born 
in a furious heat. july with her hair down.
i always realized what was different
in other people's houses. the ice makers 
built into the doors of fridges. 
a light on in the middle of the purple dark.
skirt slit glow on the kitchen floor. 
sleepovers where, when others were in bed,
i would go to chew ice in the kitchen. 
groaning mechanism. bowls & bowls.
all kinds of feast. no one ever caught me. 
i learned to take only what will
no be missed. the ice maker, refilling
before anyone else was awake. water coming
& going. the rain on the roof. barefoot july
eating a hole through the wall. now, i still
keep a mouthful of the cold. bite down 
harder. years of practice. they think
i am scared of creatures that eat our flesh
but i eat bone. i devour the cold. 
make oceans from the ice. the empire
did not consider that we would still be here.
they say this weekend it will
snow again. i will be here, mouth open. 
i was made to melt ice.