instead of catching on fire

the house catches into hummingbirds
a whole hoard of them
making pink where there door knobs 
& hallways. i want to sleep until i get my feather back.
i want to wake up flickering & orange.
the humming birds drink nectar from all my pores
& one perches in my mouth. 
someone calls the fire department 
who doesn't know how to deal with 
an emergency like this. all the men 
in their fire suites stand out in the front lawn
& watch the humming birds--
they think to themselves
i have actually never seen a humming bird in person.
pulling the covers over my head,
the covers are green green leaves.
me, a droplet of dew making my way
back towards the soil. i want 
to put the moon under my tongue.
i put the moon under my tongue that's
where it must have gone. 
the fire men have an invisible tea party 
on the lawn while they watch.
they are so stupid. they should know
that the humming birds demand attention
or they get worse. i compliment 
each individual animal-- telling them
i love their souls-- 
lying that i can peer under their plumage 
to see each glittering chamber.
they pick up our fish tanks & carry them off
into a cloud where they're probably
going to eat the gold fish 
& teach the beta fish to fly. beta fish
would make good tropical birds.
some of the humming birds pry open my books 
& slip inside. they flatten themselves out
to slices-- book marks. they want 
to be taken to a library. i'm crying
& only feathers are coming out.
i'm hungry but all there's left to eat
is nectar from my own skin.
i am a bush of dripping. i am glowing
in a house all alone. the fire men
play with matches. the fire men 
decide they don't take care of birds.
they're off to plant kittens
in clouds to rescue-- no more of this 
humming. so i hum, genuinely hum 
& the birds hum back. i don't remember
what song it is i hum but they
they it into their beaks, hungry
for my sounds. i tell them i want
to catch fire with them--
that i want to be a humming bird hovering
over the debris of this bed room.
the closet breaths. 
the end table is a wolf with a light bulb
in its mouth. all the rest of my family sleep 
through the fire-- become ash 
in their beds. the fire men, gone 
i alone teach my humming birds to lay down
in the soot.

we would fast on fridays in lent

& i believed the food we didn't eat 
was going elsewhere--
that god, in all his justice 
& all his mathematics
would harvest that uneaten food
& bring it to starving children somewhere.
i imagined him arriving 
with boxes of our frozen waffles &
peanut butter potato roll sandwiches.
the children would drink the nectar
of fruit cups & plastic dishes 
of mandarin oranges just like me,
getting the syrup down their arms.
they would believe in purple 
& doves just like me & maybe they too
kept saint cards on their windowsills. 
maybe they waited 
for lent like i waited for christmas.
maybe he delivered the feasts 
by stacking our food on the doorstep 
or maybe he left them on the kitchen table
where the families could easily reach them.
i lined little baggies of candies from the market
up on my bookshelf-- peach rings,
spearmint leaves, & red licorice--
determined to let god take them.
he would walk in at dusk with his 
white robes & tell me how wonderful
a child i was for giving up all these treats.
he'd go place sugar on the tongues 
of the starving children, one bite for
each of them. the starving children would come 
to know me & travel from all directions to
sit on the floor of my room.
we would play tea party where i'd 
feed them tasty cakes from the pantry 
& i'd just drink invisible earl grey
& eat invisible finger sandwiches. 
the starving children slept all in piles there 
so i told them to climb into bed with me
& we were so warm all together.
i told them i was sorry that lent didn't last
all year & that i would try to eat less for them.
they forgave me & in the morning when i woke up
they were all gone--
the stories we make up
to absolve ourselves of our earliest guilt.
why was i born in a warm house 
on a farmhouse road where the only sound
at night is that of a freight train in the distance?
more bags of candy on the book shelf.
a bowl of pennies for the collection at church-- 
priest in purple robes 
a dove eating licorice 

god began sending items down to earth

on parachutes, right before dusk when they sky 
is orange & murky with clouds.
we felt silly, lining up with the neighbor children 
as we waited for the baskets to descend:
a bowl of unripe blueberries, a few cans of sweet peas,
a knot of roses, a whole lot of tiny espresso spoons. 
the kids got a basket of yellow butterscotch candies
& we got one packed with zucchini noodles.
there's a rumor that in the town over 
a little girl came upon a basket full of twenty-dollar-bills
& another rumor say that even the more mundane baskets
sometimes have gold pieces at the bottom.
i think to myself that we are greedy with our miracles--
that it is wonderful that these objects have started falling
& that i will be happy with whatever comes my way
but i find myself there searching frantically 
in the strands of squash, hoping to find something more.
i start to fantasize about what i would do with 
all those twenties & i walk myself up the street
to the grocery story would i could have 
plastic bags full of coconut milk ice cream.
i fold one up & put it under my brother's pillows.
i give one to the hair dresser to shave my hair closer to the scalp--
telling her where it came from so she knows 
i'm not showing off. another basket comes down
& it's piled with candy bracelets so i give it to the kids
who put two or three on each arm.
i can't understand yet what god is doing with us--
what he means when he sends down these trinkets
on parachutes. all the pastors in town
& religious leaders all over give thanks--
they come out in to the grass to pray
& try to give answers. some say we're preparing
for the end. i think god missed us
or maybe she was bored--
craving the way small baskets from the sky
spread manic joy over each town.
i will save the baskets so that
when it is over i can send something back up 
into the sky-- a loaf of banana bread
or maybe a picture of all of us in my house
with a note reading 
we are down here & we always want more.

back & forth 

i pour out a hundred bags of doritos 
on my living room floor for when 
dad comes to visit. 
we will sit with each other
in the cheese coated corn chips
& he will tell me how much he loves me
by eating handful after handful &
he will know i love him because
i poured there here.

dad emails me late at night
ties his letters to bright pixel pigeons
made of doritos. they peck 
at my window to be let in.
he says that he will always catch me
when i fall & builds 
trampolines all down the street
in case i try to jump out a window.
i'll test them out one day 
so that he doesn't feel like his work
was for nothing.

we love each other back & forth like this.
like stacks of wooden pallets broken down
to make catapults
which i use to hurl 
bright blue rock candy.
he picks them up before bed chews 
the sugar crystals.

so he has to send something back 
& he tries to remember what kinds
of foods i eat so he buys fridges
of pineapple Chobani like i used
to eat in middle school, lines 
the fridges up on every wall 
of my living room.
i pantomime eating the yogurts--raising 
a spoon & performing a swallowing gesture
so that he feels useful & doesn't know
that i don't care for them anymore.

he builds me a bed out of
fishing wire so i can dangle
from the ceiling 
& never touch the floor again-- 
he invents a pulley system to cradle me--
to let me swing from room to room
i don't tell him i can't use this all the time--
i tell him it works fabulous.

the next time i visit my parent's house
i wait till he's asleep to get him back--
sewing thick protective gloves
onto his hands-- the kind one might use for welding
i use the same 
thin invisible fishing wire &
i hold his gloved hand while he sleeps.
i tell him i will never let anyone hurt him
& i will sew a thousand gloves on every
surface of his skin.

we go out to the garage 

where the hula hoops have gone pale & cracked
from trying to throw themselves around the sun
& the lawn mower sits 
on its metal haunches waiting 
to chew up our bare feet.
we go for the stone floor 
& for the bees making their nests 
in the rafters on the opposite side
as the birds. we go to pretend we've moved 
away from our parents house 
& we're on a dirt road to nowhere, 
stopping at this garage 
in the distance where we
set up camp. we talk to the bicycles
like they're horses. we pass back 
& forth a box of saltines 
taken from the cupboard. 
i go venture out to pluck onion grass
from between other prickly weeds--
lovely white globes of translucent skin.
i dream of boiling them with the meat
of a bird we catch with a sling shot.
me & my imagined team are wild farmland children.
if i close my eyes i can see them each so clearly.
i gave them names & quickly forgot them,
thus needing to rename them again & again.
we brought sleeping bags too 
& i let the youngest made-up people sleep beside me
so they weren't afraid of the bees.
i kept watch & made sure
each bee crawled back into the holes
of the hive. the hive was like 
a knot of doors & i thought about 
how much it resembled a garage 
& if maybe the bees were running away 
from their parent's house too & if maybe
half of the bees were imaginary bees
used to keep the other bees company.
i thought of the honey & i was hungry for sugar
so i cried. i wanted so badly to 
flourish in my new home. i wanted
my parents to knock on the door
& me to show them around-- 
point out my frisbees made into dinner plates
& my bowl of onions.
i wiped the dirt off the white onion 
& put it in my mouth whole,
listening for the notes of sweetness
while i pictured the bag of sugar 
by the coffee machine, ladling spoonfuls
of sugar into my mouth.
i drew a TV on the wall in chalk
& scribbled lines on the inside
to indicate static. i opened
the back door of the garage to 
get a look at our house & its windows gone orange 
in the crepuscular blue. the others
urged me on, telling me they would be here
when i came back. ceremoniously we stood
in hula hoops before parting
& i thought of the bees
entering & exiting their hives
how small & soft they were. i saw myself
as a bee, i had to, crawling
back in through the front door,
carrying a bowl of onion grass bulbs.

people in stained glass houses 

my uncle replaces all the windows in our house with stained glass
while we're asleep. 
he starts with the small rectangular ones 
on the way up the stairs.
he doesn't use glue or adhesive--
he just tells the pieces of colorful glass
that they must stay in place. 
he barters with them
he says if you stay here 
& let the light pass through you
i will come here every night with new colors 
for you to wear.
he doesn't know where this idea
comes from or how he knows that the windows
are ravenous for new colors.
the windows agree though & let him
fill them each with shards
green & brown broken bottles
from the drive way where the beers
through themselves after he finishes them off. 
i hear the crashing from my window each night 
& i count them. sometimes twenty 
sometimes ten. sometimes just one or two.
sometimes when they break they turn
into moths right away-- moths with glass wings
tinkling as they flutter & break more
when they smack against the porch light.
my uncle used to work in a stained glass shop,
but that was a long time ago.
i never saw the shop, so i would imagine him
in a building where all the walls 
were different glass colors
making a collage of bright oranges & red 
& yellows across his face. 
he steals from church windows
each night to appease the ones in our home.
he brings them all shades of red 
& blue & purple. the churches 
all over town have missing teeth 
but only a few people notice & 
the ones who do are scared of what missing
shards of glass could mean,
so they tell no one. 
one person reads it as a prophecy 
& prays for god to choose someone else.
my uncle doesn't tell the family about 
the windows & none of us say anything either.
in the morning i make my rounds
through the house to peer out each one
& check for the new pieces of color 
stolen the night before. 
i talk to the windows & ask them 
what they see when they look through me.
i tell them i see the backyard full of fragments--
the tree wearing a red slip.
my uncle isn't satisfied & starts
to replace walls with stained glass.
the saw rattles the house at night 
& we find the living room a box of color.
none of us have the heart to tell him to stop.
the bottles break themselves
loud the next night
ten twenty thirty. he constructs
a room of brown glass
a glossy scab-- a bottle for a door knob.
he closes the door in our house made
of beautiful beautiful glass & we're scared
to move-- everything is so fragile
clinging to itself 
only for the promise of more colors.

fragile 

i build all my furniture from eggs:
cold white porcelain ovals 
perfectly stacked together.
kneeling on the ground
i lay them in rows-- 
talk to them ask them 
which other egg they want 
to lay next to.
you have to be very careful with 
a house full of egg furniture.
only one person can sit on that chair
& the sofa requires you to 
lower yourself slowly--
listen for shifting so that they 
don't all spiral apart.
i hold the furniture together
with promises & sometimes encouragement.
i tell the eggs that through this
they might learn how to 
hold an embryo & hatch.
i say imagine a whole couch 
bursting with animals 
& each egg has its own dream 
as to what creature it wants to hold.
i lie to them & say that some humans
are even born like this--
that i emerged from a kitchen table 
my mother & father meticulously built together.
i am creative. i teach
an egg to be a light bulb & another egg
to be a windowsill. i suggest stained glass
& the eggs try to make their shells
into more beautiful colors.
this doesn't work. 
my house is bright egg shell everywhere.
i lay down in the bed of eggs 
& move my fingers across them.
promising to keep them all warm. 
none of them will hatch but 
i have to pretend they will 
so that the eggs don't lose hope.
it's hard to have a lover stay the night
because i always have to explain the eggs--
have to tell them why they have
to be careful as they climb into bed.
i want to meet someone who isn't afraid 
of my furniture-- who wants
to run fingers gently over the surface
& imagine themselves 
submerged in golden yolk.
every once in awhile i'm reckless
& i pluck one egg from the structure 
sending the whole thing tumbling apart.
i know i should but a particular egg
stares at me & seems to say 
that it will be the living one--
that it holds a great bird 
or a lizard or a sibling.
smashed eggs all across the floor. 
i clean them up with my bare hand
so as to feel the fragments & the yolk
before rebuilding

potluck but with dirt

everyone brings their own
dug from the yard
bought from big warm bags at the hardware store
scooped from beneath a favorite tree
cull from under a bed
removed from the floor of a closet 
ladled from the park with a silver spoon 
the guests arrive on my porch 
carrying pales & fine china.
no one talks. 
everyone looks stoic because they've never
done this before.
pour out their containers on the carpet
one at a time & i eye up the selection.
my favorite type of dirt 
is rich dark soil, the kind you 
want to plant you hands in
& see what they might grow into 
if left with that texture for too long.
we add layers till the floor is thick
with different blotches on dirt
outside the trees peer in & are jealous.
we're not sure why we're doing this
at least not yet. 
i never knew any of these people
i just made a flyer that said
"dirt potluck" & they came. 
some plant their eyes, removing them
carefully with their shovels or spoons.
some plant a tooth, making
a hole in the dirt to place it.
others, like me want to bury
more than just appendages.
i take whole photograph & cover them
& then i move on to necklaces & rings
& vases & coffee mugs & books--
all tucked under dirt.
the thing about a potluck is there's 
something for everyone
the dirt mingles & urges each
object to burst-- 
leaves, necks, wings.
my objects because a skeleton
in the dirt & we work to dig it up
while other people's body parts
become a see-saw, a fig tree,
& a lamp post. the potluck seems
just like none sense
like a strange mishap
but it was what we needed &
me & the other people weep
for our dirt.
we lay down in our dirt
& feel the warmth wriggling through 
feel the dirt almost as another being.
i take fistfuls of dirt & fill my pockets.
the guests follow my lead & do the same,
helping each other get ready to 
remove what they have grown. 
i should have asked for help cleaning up
but then there's more soil for me 
& i reach in to see one 
of those great bones peer out at me. 

on the curb i watch the steam coming from a manhole cover 

a bowl of mircowaved soup below the city
i try to guessed the flavor
from the steam. 
or maybe it's a baked potato 
with mist coming from two fork holes in the side.
microwaved potatoes never cook evenly
but i never cook them twice.
i chew through the raw bits
warm but crunchy.
underneath the city a woman lives alone.
she loves to cook 
but all the recipes are for big families.
she doesn't want a big family but 
sometimes she sets a table 
with food at every station
pretending some guests don't like 
the spinach & others want only white chicken breast.
she wraps the plates up to eat later.
the steam turns into yarn
gray strings sticking out of the manhole cover.
i tug on one & a bell rings.
coffin bell i think yes let me out
of this box.
by box i mean city because the city 
is very small 
& holds so many people.
i counted twenty seven just
in my subway car. after i counted them
they turned into moths. 
i said farewell. 
the woman who lives down there 
just wanted some of her own space.
she doesn't have a sofa 
so she sits on a plastic box of 
her old shoes she won't throw away.
i lift the manhole cover
to follow the yarn. bloom of steam
smelling of broth.
chicken noodle soup
maybe she's sick i think.
but she's not & her house
is also a box with no windows.
she's scared to have a guest 
so i lay on the floor flat out
like a bug so maybe she won't notice.
she doesn't at first
taking me for another one of those 
baby roaches but then i sneeze
& she laughs at how silly she was
to think a whole human was an insect.
we eat from the same microwaved bowl
& she tells me how she works remotely
& doesn't have to leave her bed room.
i tell her i'd like a job like that
but also that i wouldn't mind 
actually being an insect
in her home. she says she would feed me
& treat me kindly. she doesn't mind bugs.
they're quiet & shiny.
i become quiet & shiny though still
not a bug. we finish the soup 
& i follow the grey yarn back out.

how to eat a shadow with everyone watching 

my shadow becomes so ripe
that fruit flies gather
singing their radio static into the house.
i want to kill them like i usually do
but there's something human about them today.

i scoop out the seeds from my shadow
like a pumpkin
great handfuls of flat black seeds
knotted with flesh
fingers scraping skin & the flies 
inching closer
each trying to play a different song 
from their mouths 
as if there were 
a pile of speakers  
turned small & buzzing.

everyone has been telling me i should eat 
my shadow but i was scared.
i watched it swell everyday 
heavy with syrup & nectar.
it grew more detailed too 
sometimes my shadow had eyes
& other days it had finger nails.

the branches of dead trees tell us 
if you let your shadow go too long
it will live your life for you--
wrapping its fingers around your wrists
& pulling you onto the ground.

i set the shadow on the cutting board
& i use the largest knife i have 
even though i could easily just use
a paring knife.
i want to feel in charge.

the flies sit in rows watching
hoping to catch flecks of sugary water
as i slice.

the shadow stares up at me
& i try not to look. 
i tell the shadow i am sorry 
& that i wish things were different
& that i could let it grow into a full human
with hair & teeth & eyes.

i eat chunks as i work
& the shadow tastes like a peach with
the texture of a watermelon.
grey-ish juice down me arms 
the flies ask if they can kiss me 
& i say no but they're persistent
with their long blue tongues.

the shadow is deeper than
it looks on the outside.
in the final bites
as i eat it's face 
it starts to cry & i tell it 
i loved its company 
& i imagine all the days 
walking home from the train 
with my likeness stretched tall 
on the sidewalk outside.

the flies lick the counter top
& go back to singing their different songs.
i plant a seed from the shadow
in the floor boards so another on 
can grow while i sleep under the
sweet glow of the street lamps.