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.

i grew up in a house with animals in the walls 

i grew up in a house with animals in the walls.
that deep thrashing marked by scritching.
claws against dry wall. the flurrying of 
a wing. the weeping of an animal tongues.
my wall paper was covered with knotted vines
& if i wasn't careful they would reach out to
wrap themselves around my ankles. i told the 
walls i am not an animal & the walls would
retract their foliage. the animals were hungry.
starving. how did they get in there? how does 
anyone get stuck on the other side of 
a wall in a house? i stole a hammer from
my father & punched a hole just big enough
to slip food through. sour cream & onion chips
sunflower seeds & peanuts. the animals munched
& i stayed up all night listening closely for 
the sound of their teeth. chewing chewing.
a thick pink tongue like a whole other creature.
then of course there was the night where
the animals would call. practicing their voices
& throwing them through the skeleton of the house.
i would pace the halls waiting for it to stop.
i would wish i could be one of them & crawl
into the bones of the house to be wild. 
none of this noise ever woke up anyone else.
i listened to my dad snore along with 
the noises of the other inhabitants. i was 
the ghost in the stairwell. standing there.
not ascending or descending. stuck like a 
light fixture trying to determine whether or not
it would be worth it to live as a human.
that urge-- that need to scream. i knocked
on the walls & the animals hushed. i said 
could you please shriek as loud as you ever have?
i wanted everyone to wake up. i wanted them
to feel the animals in their bodies like i did.
the scream came & made wind chimes of my ribs.
i felt a hollow rolling like a bowling ball
on a hard wood floor & then the volume as
the creatures voices each became more audible.
i rushed back to my room to put my ear
to the opening. i wanted to
be rattled & rattled i was. a tuning fork.
the cheeks of drum. the animals putting their lips
right in front of my ear. my body as a 
receiver. my mom turning over in bed.
dad snoring. the silence after a too loud fracture.
nothing. no one roused. my speaking into 
the hole thank you thank you & the animals
returning to their usual patterns of sound.
i tried to tell them there's animals in 
this house but no one wanted
to listen so i put my hand over the hole
& told them there was nothing to see.
i scritched at night with the animals.
i chattered & crawled & never slept. not once.

like meat 

it rains too fast for the ground.
water coming down in birds-- wings sprawled out--
a spattering on side walk & road. cars begin to drown--
their headlights like eyes peeled open. i walked home
from the grocery store with the water 
up to my waist & then my neck & then i'm
underwater. everything 
holding it's breath. i held my breath for a whole hour
& took a huge gulp of air when i got home
my plastic bags full of water & zucchini & mushrooms 
& peaches bobbing up & down. i've been practicing
how long i can survive underwater. i tell my skin
to grow gills but it refuses. underwater 
a shark passes me weeping to try & make salt water.
i live on an island which never sounds like
something that can be real. what's keeping
the soil afloat? we have to adapt if we're
going to survive the next few decades. 
i promise you there's going to be water. 
the ground asks if it can make another lake.
i live by the side of a lake & the ducks 
paddle by with their webbed feet & their 
green heads. i should have feathers by now.
i should have some kind of survival.
i buy water wings & the rain is dropping
pigs from the clouds. the rain is coming down
like hunks of meat-- is snapping umbrellas--
is snapping the sidewalk. what is left
underneath the side walk? 
not the ocean but something deeper.
a kind of flat nowhere. a plane 
in all directions. do i live in a world
with people or water? i am a kind of 
rain drop drowning in the alley to my house.
i live on the second floor which means
we have some time. i open a window
to get some fresh air & i see people
on rafts. i see the lamp posts
peering out from thick water like
hippopotamus eyes. there are animals here
& by animals i mean there are people
like me under the water. this is where
a mermaid would come in. i take out
my underwater camera & dip it into 
the murk. all the shot come out green
& grey & blurry. i shouldn't have 
begged the rain to stop. i have to go
i should be practicing holding my breathe.
if i love someone underwater is that 
the same as on land? will our words be 
eaten in the pressure? how little 
i know about a life with this kind 
of plummet. tree learning to swim.
their fruit floating beside them.
i pluck a green-red apple from 
the water. this is how we eat now.
the sun comes out & the rain continues.
warm rain like a spigot. hot. steam.
soothing. fogging all the windows.
where are you then? are you coming 
or are you water now too?

what i mean to say is please don't ever stop

your head turned into
a pinwheel so i spun it. hanging over me.
plastic blades of a new kitchen appliance.
the over head fan gone whimsical.
what i mean to say is that you whirled
& i tried to explain what it's supposed to mean
to have a skull. i gave example words like
stone & rock & sturdy & solid but you
tumbled & the smell of fresh grass poured in.
you stuck yourself out the window 
of the moving car & shook with air.
meanwhile even the late dandelions 
turned into pinwheels & there were no
tufts of dandelion down to find in 
the scruff by the side of the road. 
tiny pinwheels growing up 
from the dirt. birds trading beaks 
for pinwheels. a turning body. 
the use of air to stay alive. i hold my breath
when we cross under bridges & 
you spin the whole way. i want to
hold you still & have you remember me
of the pressure to fall in love
that only comes in late august--
the way the whole earth turns 
into a pinwheel because it will be
dying soon. am i the only one who 
imagined that all the seasons happen
at the same time everywhere on earth?
somewhere right now it's raining impossibly.
somewhere right now you are not 
my lover but a plastic trinket 
in my fist. what i mean to say
is please don't ever stop. keep 
whirling. i need it more than you know. 
the blurring of your two colors.
a helicopter can't find enough air
to stand up. a biplane's face full
of teeth. inhale & blow against your
features. the hush of eye brows growing.
i will take you out to the back yard
where the grass hasn't been tended.
i will stick you there feet first
& sit beside you until you're
ready to stop. i will explain 
this is where i run away to when 
all the air escapes the house. i can't
flutter like you. i have important
bones. i have steering wheel for
a pelvis. are you listening or just
taking advantage of the gust?
the stray cats with this pinwheel
meowing & the sun even--
even the sun trading heat for
plastic. cheap beautiful toys all 
stuck in the cosmic. your face still
like that-- still a folded loosed flower.
the last dandelion in my mouth.
chewing the hairs.

waning 

a long thin thread hung across the path
as i walked under the bridge last night.
i resisted the urge to walk on it
to become a tight rope walker
watched by the waning moon.
i wanted to tap the thread with one finger
to continue it's maker. i thought of
all different kinds of strings
of me sitting on the floor of an old bedroom
trying to tune my tired guitar & of 
the broken sewing machine spitting thread
in bunches out the other side fabric. 
as i continued i noticed these clear webs
strung all around. from lamp posts.
all knotted in the branches of trees.
even around the necks of mail boxes.
there must be one great weaving spider
out tonight. at first i think of her 
as the size of a quarter. one of those spiders
with a plump round body as if they were
a berry. then i consider a weaving creature
the size of a human nesting under the bridge.
how lonely that spider would feel in a world
of two-legged monsters who want nothing
to do with thread. i take out my sewing kit
& dip my needle into telephone poles
stringing together the office buildings on main.
this is a note to the largest spider
in the world that she is not alone in her
desires for more seems. i take the sewing machine
outside & mend the cracks in the alleys.
i run the machine all night in the hopes
she would come & join me. i would tell her 
than i was once a spider too. i would show her 
the other six legs i have hidden inside my body.
i would break my guitar again just to free 
the strings. i would plead that show me
where she hides so that no one can find her.
how can one pull a string from their own body
& not dissipate? i'm getting smaller i can feel it.
not shrinking but undoing. i'm attaching 
a string to each tooth so that when i open
my mouth there's an instrument to make new sound.
i return to the place under the bridge
& the string is gone. maybe snapped by another 
human roaming this clear cool night or maybe
taken back by the spider. 
i leave the sewing machine
out on the curb for her. 
i find a loose thread
coming out of my finger. 
i snip it off.

in blanket & skin

we pressed each other into sleep.
a grey blue room. your hand the same 
size as mine as if we slept ourselves
into each other's bodies. a red shirt
on your closet door. me watching your
posters while you became a fold 
of skin. a burst of a gentle warm water
pouring from my forehead & you telling me
it was okay to just go back to sleep again.
first we stayed there a year & woke up 
to check each other's faces. pools of water.
you boy of ripples. you fragment
of everything. the three books on
your night stand getting soaked from
all that blue. the kind of brief love
that requires more slumber. you said
we should go under. i held my breath 
& swam in your curly hair. beautiful 
beautiful human. we stood up one day 
on the bed & made a fire there though
my water put it out. ash & smoke.
your window open & the curtains blowing
as if they wanted to show us a stage.
there was no street or no city anymore.
we went back to sleep & i dreamed of
moving into the same body & having
the same life. this isn't
romantic this is drowning & desperate
& need as sharp as it comes. 
i asked one century if i could kiss
your chest & you said yes. i made 
a valley there to sleep in. i asked to touch
the lines where your skin had healed.
the scars like two loose telephone wires.
from outside birds came to perch there
& i swallowed another i love you because
i knew it was too fast. we waited 
another hundred years sleeping & sleep.
your cat grew up into a tiger. 
your desk built itself with us watching.
the shirt on the door knob became a bird.
i told you i don't ever want to 
crawl out of bed without you but there we were
driving looking for a mac & cheese spot
you stumbled upon alone once. i hated
that you had been alone once.
upon realizing the place was closed my car turned back
into your bed & there we were again.
i was taking off my shirt & saying
i'm sorry i am so needy. you kissed my collar
still wet from my own fountains. 
another hundred years passed & the room 
was another blue & you were gone & i was
kissing my own joints saying
come back come back. i wanted to cut off
my body & leave it in the water
to distort like the warping wreckage of 
a ship. no i want to hang it on
a doorknob. i want you to pull me out.
i wanted you to point to all these places
on my body & tell me i would be a 
kind of skin one day. every time
i tried to say i love you the love turned
into "live" i live i live i live
you in each blue open window.
i live all winter alone in blanket & skin.

the rest of my life

i know we used to have a bread machine
& but i'm not sure where it disappeared to.
mom would pour all kinds of things into 
the basin of the device: brooches, lockets,
thimbles, tacs, pressed rose petals, & so on & so on.
the machine would sing like a bird trying
to sleep & we would all plug out ears in the whole house.
hours later a world of bread would be ready.
my favorite was sourdough because of the vast
tunnel one could find in a loaf. i would take
my flashlight & trek inside once everyone else
was in bed. i loved that there was 
nothing to find in there. empty airy corridors
white & clear. i knew in the morning mom would
take the big knife with the angry teeth 
to make slices of the bread. my spelunking was
a kind of elegy-- a farewell to the unique structures
of each individual loaf of bread. i used to wonder
what might happen if i fell asleep & stayed there
all night. would mom accidentally slice me
along with the bread? would they weep as they
ate each chewy slice of bread topped with cold
squares of butter. then of course there's 
the question of the machine. would it feel 
responsible? i wonder if my mom got rid of it
because of me & my dangerous tendencies. or maybe
she broke it with her ambition-- filling the hull 
with all kinds of beautiful objects like 
bracelets & door knobs. no matter what that bread
always tasted like someone should live 
inside it-- like it belonged to someone.
do you feel like you belong? i don't know if i do
but i know i felt like that inside those loaves
with my flashlight thinking to myself 
i will stay here for the rest of my life. i wish
i could remember the last bake & what if felt like
to roam inside. i wish i could remember 
a funeral we had for the implement. is it still there
under the cabinet unused after all these years?
i have so many trinkets that would be perfect
for a long baking: spoons & tea cups & 
a book that i finished & enjoyed. i know i could
get my own machine sure but it wouldn't know me
like this one did. it wouldn't know what kind
of openings i can fit into. it wouldn't remember 
the family scattered around the living room 
gnawing on slices of sourdough bread. sometimes
i open my mouth & there's a postage stamp of butter
from dreaming too loudly. sometimes i try to crawl into
other spaces to make up for a lack of sourdough bread.
i try shelves & the crease between the floor & the wall.
none of the are the same. i feel like i should be
a child still or at least that i should want children
but here i am. i take out my flashlight & use it
to make a shadow puppet version of myself.
he is hungry & up past his bedtime. he will stay up
& wait for a cavern just his size. he will crawl into
the bread machine myself & feel his body
transformed into hole after hole. someone will
come & climb in him before he's sliced
& served with cold butter on his tongues.