terrible tender

tell me how i got here with 
a small hammer looking for pigs.
i left a penny on the street because it was 
tails up. where do you get your money from?
i ask each tree if they have anything to spare
& sometimes one takes mercy on me. i have
organs made of plastic bags. i have 
a backpack full of used lottery tickets
as a reminder about hope. i sat at a bus stop
not waiting for the which is when someone told me
about the pigs & how if you go out just 
before dusk you can sometimes find one
the size of a few humans hobbling
along near the train tracks. i don't want
to kill it i just want to smash it open
to find the dollars & coins inside.
we had blue piggy banks when we were younger
& i sat mine on a shelf in my room.
i was a terrible child. i am a terrible human.
when he wasn't home i shook my brother's bank 
to free quarters & dimes for myself. 
how much of me exists because of money?
i've tried planting dollar bills 
in the dirt. i've tried standing on the sidewalk
& staring at the mansions two towns over
hoping something might rub off on me.
i wouldn't call it greed, it's something deeper,
something more like thirst. i carry the hammer
& i take test swings. i carry a bag of feed 
to toss & hopefully lure a pig near me.
i don't want to hurt them but i have 
to get all the tender our of them. i imagine
bills wrapped around organs & coins
filling each corridor. what did i do
to deserve this? if i were born on top
of a mountain of quarters would i 
know how to hold a hammer like this.
i think of striking the pig
the impact the hammer would have on flesh.
i weep by the railroad tracks as an engine goes by
so that the sound of the machine will eat
my crying. i don't want anyone to hear me.
i have things to be grateful for.
i hear money in pockets three street over
& i don't want to steal it but i want a stronger
to put it in my mouth like a parking meter.
i can't hurt the pig wherever it is
& yes i listen & hear the hooves clicking
on the pavement & the jingling of change.
above the moon surfaces huge & full of silver.
i tell the moon i need money to buy strawberries
& the moon turns over. i toss the hammer by the side
of the road & walk home where there is
empty waiting for me. i wished i would have stole
us something huge & round. i wish i would
have stolen us the moon.

i want to leave you & become a deer, is that so cruel? 

on the night i grew antlers 
there was something missing between us.
there you were standing by the window 
brushing your long invisible hair 
in your wild invisible dress. the window 
made of saran-wrap quivered with 
the deep blue breeze. i walked up back 
& forth down the street in search of 
the jingling sound of a chain link fence.
we had both heard it but i was 
the one to go hunting. earlier i told you
that i felt un-grounded, like gravity
might give up on me soon. i could feel
the grip loosening. the train was made
of ivy & it swung through the station 
with the yells of several wonderful birds.
on each windowsill the town has set out
cups of whipped cream to appease the
coming autumn. i'm tempted to steal on
but before i can i hear that rattling again 
like someone is breaking into 
our chests. it's the nose bones make
when they turn metal. no source though,
none at all & i begin to believe you might
have sent me out to have the house 
all to yourself to grow your hair longer 
& longer until it fills every single room.
i hate when you do that. last time 
i had to be careful even when 
closing doors. the truth is i'm terrified
of what happens to us at night &
i knew i would be growing antlers.
i sit behind our house in the stone yard
where no one ever sits just in case
the source of the rattling was there.
their six black eyes stare up at me, the three
fawn with pinkish noses & thin sapling legs.
i have never seen one in the city before.
i ask why they come & they say because
i should come with them. i explain that 
there are many human tasks i need to complete
before i could entertain the idea of 
being a deer. they laugh & say that 
i'm passing up my one last chance
at happiness. the antlers grew from my head
wild as the tall grasses by the sides of highways.
my head feels so heavy, as if i'm holding up
a whole forests worth of trees. the doe's hooves
clop on the stone & they say i could have hooves too
if i gave in & joined them. they are so soft 
& so free. i consider myself 
with their nimble legs & i think about how
if i were a deer i could run away 
from you so easily. 
how you wouldn't know to miss me. 
how i could visit your back stoop with 
my deep black eyes & wet nose 
just to hum a song that reminds me of you.
i wouldn't blame you if you decided to become
anything but human. 
maybe then it would be easier to know
what to do with our limbs. i want less language
to use on you. i want a less complicated 
vessel. i want fur & four legs & 
a hunger for leaves. 
i take nail clippers to the antlers
& you ask from the other side of the door
if i'm in there & i say yes i am
and i will be out soon, 
i just have to
remove something. 

the child-parents of an avocado tree 

you want the avocados to ripen
so you throw them at the side of the building
like tennis balls, each colliding 
against bricks without making a noise. 
inside each fruit the pits
are actually bouncy balls. we kneel down 
to peel back the skin & soft green
to find what colors we got. yours is blue
mine is yellow swirling. for fun
we squish the avocado guts between
our fingers & pretend these are carcasses.
pretend we're going to eat the heart
of a lion. pretend that hearts are buttery
& easily split in half. we can't remember
where our own hearts came from so we
throw the bouncy balls & follow them
to the very edge of the picture frame
made of wood & nails. we're on the wall
in our parent's house. we're brother & sister,
did i say that? i can't remember which one
i am but we're hunters now so that 
doesn't matter. hunters plucking avocados 
from a tree by the schoolyard where they grow
despite the Pennsylvania weather despite
no one planting them there, despite 
no one knowing what to do with them,
despite each fruit trying to run away,
rolling like footballs towards the creek.
we have nothing better to do for 
the rest of our lives. we have never actually
left this town. a journey means the skin
of fruit & our curiosity. we imagine a microscope
to look at the big colorful seeds.
i wipe the fruit-guts on my shorts
& my brother cries that his hands are dirty.
i explain to him that summer is dirty 
& that he should get used to it. we break
another avocado but this time there is 
a small white egg inside instead of 
a bouncy ball or a pit. we hold it carefully.
we name it. we decide that we're the egg's
adopted parents. we hold it to keep it warm.
we tell the egg that when it grows up
it can be anything it wants. we love the egg
& build it a nest of avocado rinds.
we wash our sticky hands in the creek
where herons the size of people stare at us
bleakly. we nod to them to avoid confrontation. 
the egg stays & egg for the rest
of the summer despite our encouragement
& afternoon after afternoon where we
perched like animals around it,
taking turning standing up to throw 
avocados at the wall. none of them ever
ripened or tasted like anything but clay.

how to never grow up 

in the basement there's a piano made 
of children. each of them recalling 
something bright & loud. they live
in the pedals with their thin feet
& their teeth make up the ivory keys 
that were once on the faces of elephants.
i go down the wooden steps alone
to talk to the piano, to ask the piano 
if it might know what to do with
a human like me. i'm always doing this
asking for advice from inanimate objects.
they talk back more than you might think.
i once wrote love letters to
the lamps in our living room, 
pressing the paper to hot light bulbs 
till one caught fire. how did the piano 
end up here? this has been
a procession of childhood after childhood
wandering down the basement stairs.
we all know that's how you disappear,
you explore a dark basement 
or climb up into an attic.
i wanted to be swallowed up. i wanted
the void & the catastrophe of a lost 
daughter-son. i wanted to hear 
their voices searching for me.
as for the piano, it plays itself.
as for the children inside they 
don't know any music so they just
hit the keys. they just meander
through the body of the instrument
& marvel at each other's bones.
i show them my bones & they plead 
with me to join the piano. i consider 
the mallets inside & the possibility
of being struck over & over. i imagine 
being stretched out on the neck 
of a guitar. fingers plucking me
& making me quiver. i want to quiver
down here in the light 
of a single flickering bulb.
when it goes out we will still
have the instrument of ourselves.
i want to be terrified. i want to run
up the stairs & jiggle the locked door,
crying to be let out but i don't want to
i want to stay & the piano creeps closer 
all slow & measured with the same 
dexterity of a wild cat. all the children 
are mixed together so they can't find
a voice to speak with. the noise of 
banging pots & pans comes from
their mouths. some let out the sound
of sirens & i wonder how anyone 
above me could sleep through all this.
i have been listening to the basement for 
weeks. i have been counting the children
going down there. i counted on my fingers first
& then on my toes & tongue. so many.
were our parents ever pianos 
like this or are we changing
as animals? i ask the piano what i should do
with my hands & the piano asks 
to be touched one more time
before i become part of the body.
i play a not-song i wrote myself
on the plastic keyboard 
i used to play in my bed room.
this is a piano you see. this is different.
the notes were all off. the children
laughed at me. i told them i would 
walk inside like i was supposed so 
i closed my eyes. the flooding sound
of snapping wood. the vibrating
of strings.

how 2 ride a bike

acquire a father & love him more
than anyone has ever loved god. feel guilty
for loving your father more than god. 
wonder if your father is god.
wonder if when they say 
"god the father," in church, 
they mean that a little piece 
of god is in each father. 

never tell him this. let god believe
you think he's an average man with average
human needs. fill his glass with ice
& diet soda. make him dinner when you can.
leave his shoes side by side nice
at the front door for when he wakes up.

leave the bike on the porch so that
he has to pass it each morning. the blue bike
that you pretend is a dragon or a horse
depending on the day. feed the bike 
bowls of oats & brush its imaginary hair.
never play like this in front of god,
wait until he's gone.

don't ask for what you want, you wait
for god to offer. you can pray sure
but you know that doesn't work. you have tried
praying for lots of important things 
and so many unimportant things. god might
have blocked your number by now.
there is a dial tone in the center
of all the trees you find. 

wait for god to offer. sit on the porch
in your best patience. sit with your 
good sneakers tied, the black & red ones
the ones that used to light-up but now don't.
wait there. they said it was going to storm
tonight. you can test out his love
& ask if maybe it could not rain tonight.
tell the sky you wanted to learn
to ride your bike.

listen to the crash. know you
did nothing wrong but that the earth is busy
washing its face & god is busy measuring
cup after cup of rain & that inside
god is holding a remote & is walking 
barefoot. his feet always look 
paler than they should to you. you wait
for cracks in the sky where heave
will leak white loud color.

[un]dressing

i watch them strip the clothes off
the plastic mannequins 
in the shop window. some just torsos 
& others with long thin sapling arms.
the woman undressing them undoes 
the clothing one button at a time
as if these mannequins were beautiful people
standing till in the window all day 
looking out at the sidewalk & whispering
to each other about the passers by.
none of them have heads, and, looking in
the window, i can see my own head 
on their bodies. i feel the worker
gently putting on the next days clothes 
the way a mortician might dress 
a quiet body for their funeral. 
i tell the mannequins that i wish my days
turned over like this. with a new 
world of cloth-- with a view of the street
becoming night. everyone who walks past
is on the phone. are they calling
their mannequins? are they asking
their still bodies to put on
the next days clothes? this is not
what i do, though i am not sure
what i do to believe the sun has really
climbed down into the basement
& come back. the woman 
who dressed the mannequins
ambles through the aisles.
the store is closed but all the lights
are all. i sleep with my lights on
sometimes when i am scared. all the clothing
wants to be worn by the mannequins.
i want to knock on the window 
& ask if they'll take me-- if they'll
teach me stillness. teach me
how to pose like i'm not breathing.
teach me how clothing goes on 
& off like light switches 
all over the walls. a street lamp
flickers out & i convince myself 
i've broken it. i apologize to it
for wanting too much at once.
it winks again & i begin to
walk home. in my house i stand
in the kitchen just to listen 
to someone knock on the neighbor's door.
i hear them climb into the world
above me & i wonder if they are 
a mannequin. if upstairs 
the neighbors are friends with 
the mannequins, if they let them
try on clothes & those are the noises
i hear above me 
all night.

siblings made of meat 

in the year of salami
my brother billy & i split the package
of lunch meat while we sat at the counter
& listened the sound of flickering summer
outside. we probably should have
spent more time in the yard. 
we probably should have made friends
with cicadas & the stray neighborhood dog
that could have just been a legend 
we made up. instead we bite holes 
in circle slices of salami & pointed out
the white spaces where
if you peered extra closely
you might be able to see through.
meat as a stain glass window.
we saw figures moving behind 
these portals. silhouettes 
of people made of meat or maybe
they were of the ghosts who stole
cracker from our cabinets & left crumbs.
we went through several lunch meat phases,
before salami was pastrami 
& before that was simple thick 
splices of turkey which we would
roll into periscopes,
looking at the far off mountains 
also made of meat & turning
to jerky in the white sun.
with our salami slice we would 
take guesses about the other 
ingredients-- i would say 
honeydew & cantaloupe & 
he would say smoked gouda & glass
& candle wax. we never questioned 
each other's responses,
but rather held up the slices
to try & locate a fleck of evidence.
what animal does salami come from? he
asked one day & without hesitation 
i said all of them
as if that was something 
i was sure of.
we savored the package,
only one slice per day
but every once in awhile when billy was
distracted i was sneak into the kitchen
& devour one piece alone
in one monstrous bite.

an ode to the taste of stars

the grass in the parking lot behind our building
is strewn with wrappers & cigarette butts & 
the innards of a cassette & bottle caps &
a smashed clear bottle. at night the children come out
to pick through the knotted scalp. they're building 
nests in the tired thin trees. they have kicked out
the birds. they have invented feathers. they are
roosting with their friends & hanging their hula-hoops
from the branches as evidence that this is where
they'll thrive. i sit on the stoop to watch them.
i bring binoculars though they are only a few feet
away. i peer & they tell me to join them. i don't know
if they mean that i am also a neighborhood child 
or if they think i'm an adult who should spin himself
backwards. i take a handful of scraggled cassette tape
& a few shards of glass. i ask them to help me
arrange these scraps into a nest & they flutter down
like angels or doves. they give me my own branch
& ask me what i'm going to be when i lose my 
feathers. i have feathers like those of a pigeon.
i told someone not too long ago that i think
pigeons are spiritual animals. they laughed & i said
no really have you see their different patterns?
green shine reflecting moonlight. the neighborhood children
help me into a tree. we pluck stars & share them
because they're never in season here. they're are shy
& few. they are mostly sour but occasionally &
surprisingly sweet. a boy with a glass crown is best
at catching them. the fruit buzzes as if we're eating
those thick houseflies. i had always wondered
who was laughing all through the night & it was me
i was laughing & the children were laughing
& i was supposed to be there too instead of my room
where i shut the door & told the darkness
to make me into a real human. i want nothing
to do with that. i want night. i want the branches.
i want to spit feathers at headlights & shoo 
the wolves away from town when they skulk by
& remind us why we sleep in trees.

salt 

my grandmother kept a salt & pepper grinder
on her dining room table. 
her apartment was small.
it smelled like sun & smoke. 
the blue arm chair.
the glass coffee tables & glass bowl of candy.
it was like visiting a church 
or museum. i remember the sensation
of twisting that grinder over top
a plate of green beans & pasta, how 
i could feel the crystals breaking
into smaller pieces. i knew very little
about my grandmother. i wrote
a poem about her in fifth grade as if
she was already dead. i called her once
to talk about pearl harbor 
for a school project
& she said she learned about the attack while she was
sitting on the end of her bed
alone in her room.
i never saw her fill the salt & pepper grinders
but they were always full. her thin 
tree-root fingers
wrapped around the wooden part 
that twisted. what did alone
mean to her? the flecks of salt 
twinkling on a plate. she completed this act
everyday alone in her apartment.
crinkling sound. crash of rock.
over root vegetables & chicken breast
& salmon cutlets & roasted potatoes.
her palm full of rocks
filling the inside of the grinder
in the morning? at night? just 
for when we visited? her bathroom was
a soft pink & i would go there to escape
ambling conversations between her & mom. 
looking at my face
in the mirror i would try to see
traces of her. alone with the cardinals?
alone with the rocks of salt?
alone with the ghosts of neighboring apartments? 
outside were holly bushes 
that i liked to carefully 
pick the leaves off of & if she was nearby 
she would say careful careful &
i would say yes i am careful.
that kind of careful marked the position
of each bust & sculpture on her cabinets.
it is morning & she is filling 
the grinder & she is frying
a single egg & she is opening the curtains
of the sliding glass window.
there are stray fragments of salt
on the counter & she is sweeping them
onto the floor
to disappear. i want to write
about her now & always
as if she's alive.

the origin of sleep 

at the end of this hallway 
there will be a nurse's office 
where we can go to sleep. grey mats 
to splay out on & the soft angelic drone 
of the white neon. inspecting
the shelf of first aid items: rubber gloves
& band aides & vials of pills. a medicine cabinet
made of glass opening by itself. the nurse 
reminds us that we should be sleeping more.
the nurse reminds us we can't 
came back here every day and we say 
yes of course we won't. sleep comes like
blotches of yellow. a raining fog.
a fist of sand. a tree branch falling
on the playground. i would rather sleep her
than have recess where it's cold outside 
& the other children know what my name means.
i sift my body for something to think about
as i stare up at the panels of the ceiling.
i want to tell the elementary school nurse
that i'm too old for this. that i'm
twenty-three now & still escaping 
to this room. the nurses office 
means you can pause everything.
means crinkling paper. means checking
for illness. means sometimes going home.
i want a full autopsy. i want
the sleep to be located & held up
to light in all its navy blue burning.
i don't know what i'm doing
inside this specific possibility 
other than the fact that i need fixing.
i tell lovers that i am 
no worthy of love & that they should
hurt me if they want to do this right.
i don't them about the nurses office
& how in my younger body 
i'm taken care of. how they're gentle
to the smallest scrap on my skin.
i invent wounds. i hold up my finger 
& point to the bare skin saying
that it hurts-- that it hurts so much
& the nurse peers closer before
asking where & how & why.
here i sleep & sometimes others come too,
pretending i'm not here.
pretending this isn't an invention 
of both of our needs. 
one boy gets covered head to toe 
in band aides & another swallows 
fist-fulls of pills. the nurse
informs me these are just what they need
& that we all need something different.
she tells me i should go to sleep again--
that i should count the panels
on the ceiling & sip my name
letter by letter from a straw.
she is no one i've ever met
& i don't try to remember her.
she has curly & straight hair.
she has black & white nail polish.
she flickers before i fall asleep
& wake up in my average bed
at the end of no hallway
inside of no school made of glass
where there is no recess children 
crowding at the window & asking
to toss my name like a rubber ball
from tongue to tongue.