a forest is eating a ferris wheel

teenagers still try
to climb up into the baskets 
to kiss-- 
peeling vines 
off one another's bodies--
watch nameless white flowers
unfurl from their lover's ears & nostrils.
the rusted seats wince 
as they rock--
neither considering 
how precarious this all might be.

the forest thinks of the ferris wheel
like a thicket of pretzel sticks--
the humans there like glinting 
crystals of salt.
the forest is jealous 
of the humans though because they 
get to hold each other.
the forest hold onto the ferris wheel
& pretends it could be a knot of trees--
that maybe by clutching it 
the trees might ascend from 
their rust & replant themselves
in the earth.

the couple considers the clouds 
& whether or not they would support 
the weight of their bodies.
they laugh & one reaches
balancing on the ferris wheel,
catching the edge of a cloud.
the cloud is coarse as steel wool
& so they let go & decide
that the only place they 
can be in love in the ferris wheel
& they will stay there for 
the rest of their lives.
they regret that this isn't a carnival
& that the ferris wheel has no light
& there's no thick sweet funnel cake smell.

the forest makes a carnival of itself--
light bulbs swelling from the necks of trees
& flickering with brief electricity.
the forest pretends these humans aren't
in love with each other but rather
are in love with the depths of the trees
& the green all around them.
the forest finds apples in the chests 
of trees & wild blue berries tangled
in the thoughts of bushes--
dropping the fruit around the ferris wheel.

the couple eats by feeding 
each bite to the other--
berry by berry. they are young & 
carnival music naturally comes from 
their warm skin.
they kiss with tongue 
like neither of them have before. 
mouths full 
of candied bone--
calliope tongue. 

the forest tries to make itself
a body, casting shadows 
in all directions, none of them
becoming flesh. the forest
churns the ferris wheel faster 
until the couple is dizzy,
stumbles back onto the earth
where they fall out of love instantly
& leave going separate directions.
slowing the ferris wheel down 
the forest sits with itself--
flicks the carnival lights 
on & off

someone's birthday cake

flat white-icing playground-oceans
all lined up in the open supermarket fridge
like a map of square states. 
at the Weis bakery it's always someone's birthday.
red icing balloon--red icing rose--
sweet thick yellow cake.
billy & i hover over the fridge
& take guesses about what people might write.
i make up sad things because i like the idea
of icing holding phrases like 
farewell & i hope you come back someday.
the hopeful sibling, billy wants
the cakes to say 
hello & guten tag &
i'm so lucky to know you & 
let us thank god you are here on earth.
i imagine a future where my brother & i
only communicate by sending each other 
messages on cakes.
right then i would hand him one that says 
i wish i saw you more.
we open the lid of one of the sheet cakes
& step one at a time onto its surface.
a great wide sweet expanse of land.
i say we can build a fort
on the far corner near the burst of icing flowers.
together we trek there & i tell him 
a story about how one birthday dad & i got up
at 7am & no one else was up
so we went to the store right then 
& got a cake for breakfast. billy asks 
was i there? & i can't remember.
what is a family but an exchange of faint stories. 
what is a brother but someone 
to sleep beside on your birthday cakes. 
we pretend the icing flowers are a garden 
& we eat them in handfuls.
billy says that he used to never want anything
for his birthday because it seemed selfish.
i do remember that-- years where we 
kept celebrations small & just with family.
i ask him if he regrets it & he doesn't.
i wish i was more like my brother.
when we leave we put a sign on the fort
that reads: gow brothers
just in case it's there still when we return.
i ask my brother 
if he remember my birthday
& he doesn't. i know his, october 21st,
though i'm not sure when i learned it--
there had to have been a moment 
when i committed it to memory.
i tell him july 20th & he repeats it,
saying i won't forget this
we write that on the cake:
i won't forget this. 
i won't forget this. 

there's just a diving board

in the middle of the yard.
no pool,
we didn't have enough for that 
so dad bought the diving board &
told us to go have fun.
solitary in the middle of the yard.
diving board surrounded by grass 
& the hum of carpenter bee who eat the garage.
my brothers & i rubbed globs of slick sun-screen 
on each others shoulders--
put on bathing suites.
we took turns standing at the end of the board,
shimming closer to the ledge.
my brothers & i were all scared of jumping
even on those afternoons we walked
to the public pool.
i had a fear i would jump &
all the water would fly out of the pool--
i didn't used to be scared of that but 
boys started chanting that i shouldn't jump
because i was too fat.
i'd try to point my toes to slip in the water
as quietly as possible.
no matter the splash they would laugh.
or, maybe worse, there would be a prehistoric
shark waiting beneath the surface & he might 
snatch me from the air the instant i touched
the chlorine stinging water.  
we were scared of 
our back-yard diving-board for different reasons.
one brother believed the board
was the ledge of a building. he cried
& turned back, saying 
he liked his life & didn't want to die yet.
on the ledge, another brother 
wept the he couldn't turn into a bird.
he crouched down & dad had to come outside
to get him off the diving board.
i was the least scared because i'm the oldest.
i mostly go stand on the diving board
at night. i won't jump because if i do
it will all turn to water--
everything: the garage full of scrap wood,
the pile of red stones by the big tree, recycling cans
& the big tall tan house we live in.
i'm bold, so i bounce up & down 
on the diving board, feel the plastic wobbling.
i consider all the water
& wonder if i could 
hold my breath that long. 
i want to have fun with the diving board--
want to make a whole summer of it. 
each day i lead my brothers out to the yard
first thing in the morning 
so dad can see us before he leaves for work,
all of his sons standing on the end 
of a diving board. 
his brave sons 
who appreciate the diving board,
who won't get eaten in the deep end
of the public pool, and
who love the dirt enough to not turn
it all to water.

i won't be lonely now that i have a SHAM-WOW

and i can spill anything.
my last partner said that loving me
was like dating an over-turned glass of water-- 
that i'm looking for someone 
to soak up all my stress & all my pain 
for me. i think of those info-mercials 
that came on between early morning cartoons
how a man would shout & demonstrate all the ways
the rag could absorb--
i imagine ringing like lovers out
over the sink & the liquid coming out
all whirly-rainbow like pools of gasoline in parking lots.
i start off simple with
glasses of water clear across 
the hardwood floor so that i can really
witness the flow--
get to pretend i'm making new bodies of water
in the kitchen of my house.
maybe i do want someone to take in 
all my grief for me
or maybe i just want a SHAM-WOW in my chest
to fill up with those throat-sobs 
you can only conjure every once in awhile.
i'm not having that bad a time.
i'm not that big a mess--
i just happen to be not the most fun
to be in love with. i just happen 
to keep lists of all the items
i want to splash on the floor:
orange juice, melted butter, blood.
when i say blood i mean like blood
from a package of meat even though
i don't eat meat. 
i wipe down all the surfaces
in the house. my favorite is 
the stainless steal fridge-- how when polished
you can actually make out some semblance
of your own reflection. i ring out 
the SHAM-WOW in the sink again & again 
& each time i have to think of that partner 
because when someone says something like that
it never goes away. i wonder if they 
spill glasses of water without me.
i go to the lake near my house where i grew up
& i dip the SHAM-WOW in & out of the water
until i mop the whole thing up.
i can't stop i move onto oceans.
i hope all the people i loved know it's me
when they arrive at the beach 
& find it early empty-- just fish 
writhing in the sand. i spilled each ocean
but especially the atlantic because 
it deserved to be spilled. 
i watch the info-comercial again & this time
the host tries to convince me to give back 
my SHAM-WOW & i say NO
because i am alone & 
i need someone or something to witness 
all of gorgeously water pools
on the hardwood floor.

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.