what do you want to be when you grow up?

there are anatomically correct hearts
growing on trees this morning-- 
thick with summer 
& heat. the children take sticks &
smack at them 
&, for better or for worse, 
all the neighborhood cats 
have all disappeared. the children are 
doing that thing that kids do 
when they're scared, making fun of it.
they don't like to see such bold body parts--
they don't like to think of the world
beneath their own skin. they tease
one of the boys & tell him that he doesn't
have a heart & that his hearts are the ones
growing on trees. i take old shoes
& fill them with dirt: converse &
running shoes & a pair of white heels.
i go to plant them 
& i shoo the neighborhood children away 
with a fly swatter. they buzz. i buzz.
there's something too throbbing about nature lately.
there's something sticky on the sidewalk
which might be bold or might be syrup.
i eat syrup from a bowl & ask the trees
if they want any but they're carnivores now 
which i think is a little bit extreme.
the kids decide to follow the trees lead
& also only eat meat. i tell them 
that the grass is free to chew on 
but they want hearts & liver & kidney
& feet. my shoes love the dirt--
they swallow it so i feed them more. i ask them
what kind of plant they'd like to grow up
to be & they all want to be trees with big
thick hearts. the children answer too
they want to grow up to be rich & if not rich
they want to be useful-- they want to be loved--
they want to be influencers or at least
made of muscle & bone. at least edible.
most things are edible if you try.
there was some man who had a chef prepare his shoes--
he eat the whole thing bit by bit & i think
now why would he do that? my shoes are happy 
getting to become something with roots
but maybe i should have eaten them.
i warn the children that the hearts off the trees
probably don't taste very good but they're 
kids so they don't want to listen--
in fact the whole place is so full of beating
that they might not have heard me.
they were told a story in school about 
hunters eating the hearts of the lions they killed.
they knock the heart down & break it into pieces
like an orange-- the lobes come apart.
the color of a grapefruit & the taste of 
a balled up piece of aluminum foil.
they chew. new trees grow 
from the carcasses of shoes. i see the shoes 
on the kids feet & i wish i could steal them.
i could plant such happy new trees & maybe
those new trees would grow something bright
like lemons or cantaloupes. the hearts are 
everywhere & i'm sad. 
they go at all different rhythms. 
i know everyone's scared it's like living
in the barrel of a drum but this is how
a community like this solves a problem
they just ignore it & send the children.
my shoe-trees are weak & thin.
i go out to water them with pear juice
& pray it inspires fruit in them.

landscape

I wondered lonely as a cloud
-William Wordsworth

clouds are the ghosts of old dead mountains 
& sometimes they tell each other stories
of wild animals they used to feel across 
their skin: bears & wildcats & 
all the different grey feather birds & yes
hawks we can't forget the hawks 
& i'm sitting outside & wondering
how hard i would have to pray to become a cloud
like all of them--i think to myself 
i'm a mountain i'm a mountain but i always 
get smaller. yes i remember this is due 
to erosion. i am the hunk of rock shrinking
in the rain & asking to please get taller
but never getting taller. all the mountains
i know are shrinking & in not so long
they will look like scars & not like mountains.
i wonder if the scars on my body turn into
clouds too. i look for my pain in the sky
among the bruised sunset. i look for the sunset
in the color of my body. the mountains are tired
& deserve to live so light up there--
deserve the opportunity to rain. as for me
i'm not really sure what i deserve. someone tells me
i deserve better. someone tells me i deserve
to be loved but i feel like these things
are not special or specific to my body.
maybe my body deserves the color orange 
or a hawks with it's white & brownish feathers.
maybe i deserve clouds talking to me
& telling me that it won't be long now
before all the tall things are air. 
i asked a cloud if skyscrapers count
as mountains & the clouds thinned out--
growing thinner & more depressed. i shouldn't
have asked. how do you know your landscape
is real & not just a painting? i don't know yet
but i did see an airplane & the airplane
drove right through the cloud & i want 
to knock on the window of the plane &
say hey do you know you just 
went right through the center of a mountain?
& the pilot would say that he did know--
that when he was young he would take a shovel
& try to dig through mountains & now
that he's older & has this machine he can.
i can fly sometimes. i can hurt myself in flight.
i can feel the droplets of water in my skin.
i am a pouch of marbles. i am a so much
a cloud especially if the cloud has hints
of acid rain. i am caustic. i am cancerous
but only to trees. i am looking for a mountain
to help ascend into the sky. 
i take handfuls of earth & tell the mountain
to get up off its back & go where 
it's cool & blue & uncluttered.

in case we shrank 

small as a pencil or even smaller 
the size of small espresso spoons,
we collected
the cock tail swords from the counter
at the tavern. there's always 
the possibility of becoming
a miniature version of yourself.
my younger brother admitted he had this fear too
& that when we'd play with the doll house
in the attic that he would 
take inventory of all the details
in preparation for the chance
he might have to take shelter there.
he noted how loud the door bell
would seem to us if we were that small.
we got dinner at the tavern about
once a week & started filling our pockets
with the tiny plastic swords each time.
my favorite were the blue ones
but my brother wasn't picky.
all the while we watched our dad
sip from tall glasses with frothy
amber beer. we considered that if 
we all were small we might
have to protect him. the swords
in our pockets jabbed at our thighs.
you skewered fries on your plate
with the swords & i held the sword
between my thumb & index finger 
considering how i might duel 
with that small weapon. there was 
always ketchup on our plates 
& cloth napkins folded in our laps.
dad always offered us his spears of pickle.
i considered how if i were tiny 
i would be able to climb inside
his giant burgers-- how i could hide 
among the lettuce & feel the hot cheese
melting against my skin--
how he might bite down without
noticing i was there & with my plastic sword
i would have to prick the top
of his mouth. the truth was 
i wasn't scared of shrinking-- i was eager.
i wasn't sure what phenomenon
might cause it to happen but i was 
thoroughly prepared-- i prayed for it.
i was ready for something
to change. in my bedroom i piled
the cocktail swords up on my dresser.
i considered how the scene resembled 
the aftermath of a great battle
where a kingdom of small men had died
& left there swords for a small strange girl
in a rural town. i don't know 
what my brother did with the swords when he got home.
i wonder if he kept them like me
or if he took them 
right to the trash 
or if he became small 
without telling me. if, maybe, he crawled
underneath his bedroom door & 
down the stairs to the backyard
where he would be able to 
watch the fireflies glow
as big as himself.

i believe in you

over text, mom & i agree we
hate the way people in exercise videos talk.
she wants to find a video with just stretches.
outside a tree is touching its toes.
outside a telephone wire is cracking its neck.
i consider my own body & what muscles 
want to be stretched & which ones 
want to feel ache. i lay on the floor
& look up at the ceiling, considering
all the rubber bands under my skin.
just then a person from 
one of my fitness videos is in my room.
she's talking about how to get flat abs.
she's in blue fitness clothing
& has a perfect straight pony tail.
she made sacrifices to the ocean--
burning the limbs of trees & setting them
out into the water. she ate only the rinds
of lemons & drank vinegar from a jug.
she wants to help me get lean & fit.
she offers me a special protein shake
& i say no, so she drinks the whole
blender-full in front of me--
great huge gulps. she says she's made
of protein. she says she prays
to protein & that she'll teach me too.
i say i don't pray anymore--
that i'm not sure how i would 
begin. she shows me a starting position.
she says this move is great for your
obliques. she says this is the kind of move
that god loves. she says you can do it
& i believe in you
& can you feel the fat cells crying?
i can. i can feel a great weeping 
underneath my skin & i want 
to make it stop. i feel each muscle 
asking for a quiet shell to lay down in.
i hear the ocean hungry for better
offerings. i hear the rain coming down
outside the window. she leans in closer
& tells me i'll never learn how
to die if i can't dedicate myself.
she says i have to commit--
that if i'm not careful i'll become 
my mother. i know i must be getting older
because for the first time i can remember
i don't mind the idea
of becoming her-- in fact i feel
there's no avoiding it--that part
of having a body is feeling the channels 
of your parents. the women from the exercise video 
was brown from the clear egg
of beautiful frogs. she is glossy 
on the inside. she deserves perfect legs 
& perfect arms. she is toned.
she is standing on the windowsill 
& telling me to not stop yet--
that i'm almost there. i ask
almost where? & before she can answer
& plummets down 
turning into a perfect song bird 
before hitting the pavement. 

to explain the glass 

i sometimes imagine someone
hurling bottles at the sidewalk:
brown & green. they've been 
saving these up for this purpose
a great big bucket nearby the door.
now it's that day,
the same every month where
they go down to the empty 
grocery store parking lot 
to release something. close to the ocean
in chincoteague the sand is just smashed shells.
when i was small i would think 
that with enough patience they could all 
be put back together.
i would take handfuls of shell &
feel the sharpness like a bowl
of dinosaur teeth. now this person,
let's call them a boy, still throwing bottles.
this person is me. i'm throwing bottles
at the asphalt. each is bursting like
a firework & the glass scatters.
i like to pretend 
there was something precious inside
each bottle that disappears on impact:
a wedding ring, a secret,
a pair of baby shoes. there are baby shoes
stepping on the crushed shells.
there are bare feet roaming the glass.
this is my parking lot & i will 
break what i need to:
soda & beer bottles. a lover sleeping 
in a room of brown glass.
a pair of legs wading into the ocean.
the ocean always pretending 
to be so much farther away
than it really is. a shore of broken bottles.
i'm throwing shells at the pavement
& they're not breaking so 
i take a rock & i feel like
a piece of nature to be 
so forceful. i smash them with
bronzed baby shoes that aren't
my own. i break the whole basket
of bottles & when i'm done 
i touch the fragments.
i pretend a church window died here 
or maybe a ship in jar.
i want to put them all back together
as an exercise in patience
but i don't have patience so 
i go to that shore
drive all night to get there.
wade into the water
feeling the snapped edges
under my feet.

a fire escape grows on my back

& i tell you to take it--
i tell you to hold onto the railing 
& savor the touch of cool black metal.
in bed i often consider fire.
tonight i'm thinking of how flammable
rubbing alcohol is & how easily 
i could write my name in it across my wall
by using a paint brush
dipped in the bottle.
touch a lighter to the letters.
i don't actually think i could step in front
of a moving train but i stand nearby
in the rubble & watch several pass
until i go back inside. you shouldn't 
let yourself in. you shouldn't use the key
underneath my tongue. you should stay home
where there are windows in every room.
when i say i don't love myself i mean 
i eat the pennies i find on the sidewalk.
when i say i need to move somewhere far away 
i mean that i want you to find 
other boys with differently shaped imaginations.
i don't imagine you with fire
but i imagine you covered in ivy.
i see you as a knot. there is water
coming out of all my cuts
& most times i wake up not remembering
how they got here. how did you let me 
be so cruel to myself. weren't you there
with a bucket full of milk &
a bowl of red plastic apples.
when i say take the the fire escape
i mean get out. i mean there will be 
better nights. i mean there will be 
better boys who you won't ever have to
have an evacuation plan for.
have i told you about each vertebrae? 
have i told you that if someone goes wrong
to call the moon on her cellphone
& tell her that her son is acting irrationally.
yes, you please put me back together.
demand more bedrooms. demand curtains
hanging from the corners of my mouth.
i want to be your straw doll--
your bowl of perpetual burning.
you pick my hair out 
like scraggly dead grass.
i wanted to sleep last night but
i thought & thought & thought myself 
onto the back porch.
onto a frame of sky. onto the throat
of a match. there is gasoline
in the air & it reminds me of stopping
on the side of the highway
& finding refuge in pockmarked bathrooms.
i call a phone number i found on the wall.
it's you. you're the phone number 
on the wall. you love me harshly.
you fall asleep. i wake you up
& tell you to hurry--
that i can feel my bones 
begging to ignite--
that i know you'll burn easily--
a scrap paper--
climb away down my back
& into the warm shimmering night.

i used to want to eat golden delicious apples  

just because of the word "golden" 
in the name-- as if the skin were made
of real gold leaf 
& might flake off as i bit down. 
soft marble flesh. 
i ate them careful & slow as if 
having patience might conjure more magic
out of the fruit.
uncle rich too my brother & i to Mr. Food
every day after school where we'd pick
one snack & one drink. i was determined
to understand golden delicious apples
while my brother plucked his usual piece of beef jerky
from a jar by the register.
cold from sleeping in a fridge, 
the convenience store apples were small & tired. 
it was late may 
& none of the apples remembered 
where they came from. i was in 4th grade 
& i imagined new worlds on top of this one.
i often laid in my bed just looking at the ceiling
pretending i was somewhere else. i made up boyfriends 
& girlfriends to lay next to me. i made up 
clouds to find shapes in. i don't think i had learned yet
how to be lonely. i spit the seeds out in my hand &
i talked to them. i asked them if they 
would grow if i watered them & 
uncle rich said i could try if i wanted to.
so, out back, i took 
my five little dark-brown seeds. i kissed each
before pressing them into dirt.
i watered them. i imagined a vein of gold 
bursting underground. i imagined a tree with shiny apples 
unfurling this summer. i would come inside
& lay the gold on the kitchen table 
where dad would weight each fruit & tell us
how much money it was worth. we would 
buy all kinds of snacks each day with all
that money: skittles & licorice & gummy worms.
we would have so many apples that we'd invent games 
to play with them-- throwing apples at the sun
until it bruised white & yellow--
until the sun was a golden delicious apple
bright with sweet skin. 
i watered the ground & i waited
though i always knew the seeds wouldn't grow.
if it were that easy everyone would happy
a golden apple tree. i drew pictures of them.
i sat under their imaginary shade.
i got sun burn in the shapes of clouds.
i picked the fresh translucent fruit 
& told no one about my tree.

somewhere my ears drown graciously

my headphones are made of salt water 
& are full of bivalves--
those types of calms that talk like beaks.
a perpetual chirping.
the ocean covering its ears.
the headphones dripping.
kelp in between fingers & the silhouette
of a mermaid perched
on the ledge of my out ear
like a promontory. she's probably
brushing her hair. she's probably 
listening to a CD inside her head.
i snap disks in half & drop them
into the water--
watch the light rainbow 
in all directions-- fragments of each song 
muttering in the water--
becoming fish. i close my eyes 
as we all do when we think of 
view finders-- when we look out a window
& think next next next
show me something else.
all my friends have gone wonderful places
& have brought back clams.
i tilt my head till a tiny mollusk comes out my ear.
i let the snail crawl on the walls of
my room & he writes alone alone
alone & i can never tell if he's talking
to himself or me. maybe the message
is for both of us. 
underwater there are no people 
besides divers & they want nothing
to do with a boy with his headphones on
conjuring an ocean.
coral is alive & asking if i would 
be willing to be a rock for them
to grow on. i ask how long that takes
& they laugh & start plating their polyps,
pink & white & dull green.
i want to show my friends.
yes i have something wonderful 
growing on my skin. the reef has snakes.
the reef has sleeping mermaids.
the reef has clams with pearls just
made of sugar. i take a handful 
& sweeten a tea i'll drink in the future.
all this time i'm not actually
underwater. i'm just walking down 
7th avenue with my eyes closed 
& the ocean thrashing inside me.
a car horn turns into a riptide. a mermaid 
is a street light. i am a boy 
who holds his breath-- who crosses street
after street until they become 
a vivid blue. i open my mouth
& the bubbles come out like
apologies. i'm always leaving my body.
i'm always asking what the foliage 
can do for me. i'm asking the stones
how they do it. i'm crouching down
to the asphalt & kissing hot rock-- i'm saying
teach me how to grow traffic like coral.
i'm spilling the ocean from my listening.
not just one ocean but every single one--
all the water combined all safe inside my ears 
where the mermaids are wearing dresses
made of trash bags & singing static.
i open my mouth again 
& out comes an eel-- long & green.
it's on it's way to bryant park.
i'm proud it for deciding to follow
its dreams of living in the city.

god is winding up the cows

& setting them down into the fields 
this morning. they are made of tin
& they wobble as they roam--
a mechanical mouth movement.
chewing on something.
someone pointing out the car window 
saying look cows 
& god with his long fingers 
tucking himself
behind clouds so he's not caught.
god with his new wind up toys.
god with his workshop &
a row of keys to wind each different species.
he's done with blood & skin.
he's done with organs. he loves 
the resistance of metal.
the thing is 
he created death by accident
like how when you spill paints
across a piece of paper sometimes
it looks like art & other times
it looks like a gunshot wound 
or another kind of the mistake.
he loved the shades of blood 
& the malleability of skin
& was thrilled boy bones--
shaving them into all kinds
of wonderful shapes,
his favorite being the pelvis
which he held up & wished the had
a father to show--
wishing he had someone to be
proud of him.
yes, that's why he made jesus.
carpentry is the closest human profession
to making bodies. jesus studied 
the making of bodies.
he wants the shift to be gradual.
not just one morning that whole earth
is full of tin creatures.
he slowly takes a few away--
a patch of cows,
a cage of rabbits,
a few lost deer.
the humans will be the hardest
to make out of metal.
he considers the uniqueness 
of each face. he leans down
to look at his work while part of the world sleeps.
with his long fingers he traces 
a nose, a cheek bone, a forehead.
he cries. he hates skin & he hates blood 
& he hates that his work 
always dies. he imagines painters
canvases growing sick & falling asleep for good--
sculptures no longer holding their postures,
going limp on their pedestals.
he shakes his head & thinks that they
will never understand & he will watch each fall apart
& float to the surface
of heaven's great algae covered pond 
as a flicker of soft spore-like light
barely remembering the body he crafted them
alone in his shop 
by the boiled light of the sun.

there are bird baths

stone. marble. smooth.
splash wing & water.
sprouted overnight in my bed room like
great wide heavy mushrooms.
the bird baths are full of holy water.
the bird baths are warm
like pots of water on the stove 
ready to boil the feathers 
off visiting creatures.
when i was little my father built
bird baths in my room so that 
i would make new friends.
hawk. owl. vulture.
washing their faces in the pools
& yelling loud enough
to crack light bulbs. they never
let me sleep. they insisted 
on sharing secrets & washing each other
all night. i opened the windows 
& told them to get out but each day
they would be back some how & 
the curtains would blow open like flesh
around a wound. i tell the song birds
to whistle in the morning 
to wait for the song, but we're
all prone to loving the moon 
& that's what the blue jays 
& the finches sing to. i pick feathers
off the carpet. i splash water
in my face from the bird bath.
i consider climbing inside--
crossing my legs & sitting in the shallow
bowl of water. i know for a fact
that my father is in love with all birds.
i know that he lets them sleep
in my old bed room. the birds tell
me the whole story & they add
that i should be angry at him 
& that i should fall in love with my own birds
out of spite. to be honest i try
every single night. i stare at their faces 
as they splash water--
as they preen & some of them lay feathers 
on my pillow. i try to imagine
a future with a bird. it would have 
to be a vulture. you have to concede 
the pink skin
of their faces is almost human.
i caress their skulls & they thank me
for letting the bird baths grow.
i let them grow everywhere.
i'm open to considering a whole world
of bird baths--
up & down the street. i just want 
the birds to be happy.
i just want them to stop yelling
at the god damn moon 
yes we know it's glowing
yes we know it's beautiful & 
unreachable. 
yes we need it to be closer & broken down
into edible pieces. will you listen
to the sky for once? 
i'm sorry i should have
more patience. 
yes, yes i love the bird baths.
another blooms where my bed once was
& i know where i need to sleep
& i know what company i'll have
& my father is a bird sleeping
in another bath. he is a vulture.
black feather. hooked beak. 
wrinkled skin.