in mom's car

the floor of
the station wagon collected us:
white grease-stained fast food bags
handfuls of sand
smashed pine cones. 
held our relics close
and asked us to bring more,
opening all doors
the trunk gaping mouth
seats giving into soil.
together on long car trips
trees would have time enough to 
sprout tall
the car imagining a world
for us 
folding us deeper inside
her blue metal skull 
the doors miles away,
did the car plan to keep us?
my brother and i, 
meandering in 
different forests and deserts
losing a bracelet 
a ring
a kazoo a clementine
we ambled
seat belts slung over our shoulders,
sometimes, calling out
each other's names
just to hear how deep the echo would go. 
forgetting this was our mom's car,
that, somewhere, 
she was holding
a steering wheel like a sun hat. 
did she wander too?
barefoot maybe did she
forget that she had children?
we never talked about it 
when we found our ways out
back to the doors
brushing dirt off legs
from the jungles 
and prairies the car build
from our own discharged items 
we were going somewhere
there was somewhere outside
the car
i wonder though, if, sometimes, 
she took long rides alone. 
if on those rides 
mom might have wanted to stay there
bringing sandwich wrappers to her car
like offerings 
asking to go away somewhere
with a faint breeze,
wearing the steering wheel on her head
as a sunhat. 

blue bike 

bicycles with no riders
cluster together in packs
rushing through down my street 
at 11pm making squawking goose sounds
a flock of them 
searching looking for others
i pear glance out the window
to watch view them
all different types: 
tricycles
ones wearing with training wheels
old rusted face flat tire bikes
beautiful white wall tire pastel pink ones 
their owners have to miss need them
i think remember my own bike 
with the shiny blue body
and bell we fixed screwed to handlebars
the noise chirp it made 
as i rushed road through alleyways in town
& back up to my gravel driveway 
i wonder ponder if my blue bike
ran away escaped with a pack of bikes
like the one that comes through
my street at night
i check scan the pack closer 
with the idea i might see my old blue bike
that i might convince persuade 
the bike to come home
& sit lay in my living room
while i tell speak stories to the bike
about how much i loved adored it 
all those years
changing shifting gears
to make it up the big hill by
the playground 
laying resting the bike
down in the grass while
i played wallball against on 
the brick back of the high school building
i imagine think it's contagious
the bikes tell teach each other
one by one
that they can move with no rider 
and soon enough they're following going
with the group
all the bikes laughing chortling
in the street
my street each night around 11 
and everyone just hears mistakes 
them for geese 

find someone

the carnival sprawls,
first just a block,
outside my house with a few
booths: a dart game, a ferris wheel,
a tilt-a-whirl,
now every street i know, all
of them blocked off,
we have cars but no one uses
them anymore
we go to the carnival 
& i forget just
where i lost you in the midst of blink
& laughter but i count the 3 tickets 
in my pocket saying 1, 2, 3
1, 2, 3 as if that might summon you
from out of the whirl of color
& metal, last summer
i would pass by the carnivals
& say to myself that i should
go back, that i should 
find someone to go to the carnival with
but i never did &
i now they've come for me
or at least that what i think,
maybe it's something else entirely
a new plan for the city,
every street full of amusements
full of people i don't recognize,
i don't know anyone at the carnival
they're converting all the apartments
into fun houses, men with gloves
installing mirrors on all our walls
i wonder if i pace the halls
if i might find you in the glass
pull you free & we can go 
to the carnival together,
i could show you my favorite ride
or we can get away, though
i don't know where we would go
or if i want to leave anymore
i miss those nights where
i was so in love with you 
there was no where else
we could go but my room 
tracing each other's
bodies, laying up against the wall,
taking a pen & leaving our
outlines there, i spent a
ticket to get inside my own house
& there's glass where we used 
to sleep together,
i press hand prints there
i have 2 tickets & i'm saving
them for us, 
so much carnival
so much carnival all over,
ringing in my teeth
my teeth also turned
to mirrors, 
i hope wherever you
are that you ended up 
in a beautiful patch
of carnival & that you remember me
& that you eat fried dough 
with powered sugar &
the glittering noise of machine 
reminds you i exist,
maybe you'll even think 
about my outline on 
the bed room wall &
i'll say outside
& will go inside the fun house
& stay there, watching
our reflections as they
move closer to each other
touch skin 
carnival churning
outside

eat sugar 

the moon crawls
on all fours in through 
the window after watching me
all night, great white eye with
the pupil gone wandering in the dirt
as an ant. hungry moon, i feed it 
spoonfuls of sugar in the kitchen,
sand-like white piles, i consider each 
grain a different word i would have said
if the moon was someone i loved or if the moon
knew anything about how much glow a human body
can have. i want to peel the moon open to look at it's 
organs. what kind of organs do moons have? maybe just 
the same as ours. there might be houses somewhere 
with no windows. the moon grows more legs 
the longer it stays on earth, unspooling,
a knot of centipedes, i pour sugar 
on the floor because the moon 
is impatient, i open the fridge,
get eggs to throw at the moon
who runs, hiding beneath 
the sofa, turning into
an egg itself, do you know 
that if you spin an egg
on the counter you can tell
if it's cooked or not? if it spins 
perfectly it's cooked, if it wobbles it's
raw, the moon wobbles, is a raw egg, i don't have
time to cook the moon, i step outside 
in the cold March night, which is supposed
to be spring but fucking isn't,
where i throw the egg at the sky 
hoping it will go back up there 
but instead it splats against 
a neighbor's window
so, i run back to inside,
peer out my own window,
through the blinds to see 
the moon sitting up there again,
this time as a hand mirror,
reflecting just my own 
face back at me,
close up. i go back
to the kitchen
spin eggs on the counter,
eat sugar. 

The Gospel of Jesus's Husband 
-After Morgan Parker

I'll tell you what I remember
because there is no written
language that wants to hold onto
my name. I'll tell you about how

when pressing your hands together
the space in between is a kind
of tomb, where a man can exist
if you loved him more than 

anyone else. This is about his
skin, the color and softness
of clay. I left my hand prints
in him on cool nights, when alone

we pressed into each other.
The angular shape of men touching
men, no where to put shoulders,
holding him afterwards and him

telling me that he was scared.
That he could imagine a life 
for us. That he wanted to save
us both for a different time

where we might have lived
peacefully by some river. 
Laying naked together, he told me to
touch his hands, callous from

his father's work with wood. 
Pointed to the center and said
that was where there would be
a hole. I touched, could feel

his skin give way into nothing.
Empty, my finger through his hand.
I did not cry then, but asked
if anyone would ever know of us.

I opened my palm for him
to touch as he said, 
"No, no, I don't think
they can." His light touch,

finger at the center of my hand
where the skin didn't part.
I wanted it to, wanted holes
in my hands. Wanted to share 

whatever horror would 
take his beautiful skin apart.
But I lived and told no one.
On nights like this I 

lay down in the empty tomb
and imagine us here. Bodies
against stone, bodies molding
together in the orange dusk.

reptile show

i keep details about 
the reptiles 
my secret
i won't tell you how many i have
because this is my house
with its glossy scales 
you are just visiting 
when you go home
i have them to talk to
if you don't ask about my reptiles
i won't ask about yours 
that's how this works
but to tell you the truth 
you seem like gila monster 
kind of man
& i love you for that
do you ever shed your skin
like they i do?
i wish i could see it
bunched up in the corners
of your house 
like stockings 
when i was younger my dad  
took me to a reptile show
a whole hall full of people
showing off their reptile-ness 
pulling up sleeves, 
their scales underneath
opening mouths to reveal 
thin fangs
blue tongues
i knew then i would
grow up to be like them 
my snakes sun themselves
mid-day on the windowsills
so sometimes i lay out with them
i lay long
tongue flicking at the air
they crawl under 
the bed at night
at be near the heater 
that's where they are right now
do you hear them? 
don't bother them
just focus on me
did your father ever
take you to a reptile show?
everyone's father should
that's a shame you didn't
you would have liked it
you would look good with scales
would you touch them?
you can touch me
you can feel my scales
& i can feel yours
we can lay near the heater
with the snakes in the dark
but i won't tell 
you how many i have
that's the whole fun of it
has anyone told you that
you have four fingers?
i noticed
climb me 
call me tree branch 
call me your terrarium
walk me like a glass wall
blue tongue on my ceiling 
we reptile houses
have to love each other
because we understand
what it's like to
not know how many we have
men who love men with scales
i have to tell you 
another secret though
i want more 
i need more
more snakes
& lizards & maybe frogs 
& salamanders too
i want more
if you fuck me again
we can 
count them

hot air balloon

in the city 
no one else seems to notice
the hot air balloons
on clear days they gather
like a flock of strange animals
oscillating patterns of color
yellow  navy  maroon  orange
they must land somewhere
maybe the top of a building
to picking someone up
where do the balloon take them?

the sky was wider 
where i grew up
the bell of a french horn 
the wide eye of a pin
the hot air balloons were rare
all of us standing at the edge
of the park
sand box toys in hand
as we watched a hot air balloon
drifting towards the farmland
did those balloons have people inside
or were they just searching
from one to keep
in there nest?

i know for sure 
that one will land to take me
maybe not this year or the next
but i think of that woven basket
i think of the expanding
colorful membrane
like head of an octopus 

i want a hot air balloon 
to take me
to land on the roof 
of my apartment sometime near dusk
when the sky is orange  grey
to hold me high above everything
tell me stories about 
what the earth looks like
just below clouds
knitted scarf fields 
thumb tack houses 
rat snake road

never come down
pass back over the city
some years later to remember
what the sidewalk 
sounds like under flip flops 
or what texture wind against
a skyscraper makes

bodies i loved 
all moving spider-like below 
some of them stopping
to stare up

36 hours

the corpse flower blooms
for only 24-36 hours
resembles a human turned inside out 
all frill & green lipped
gigantic
a pot in the living room
where the television used to be
i bring you 
& we sit to watch
the corpse flower come alive
arms around each other
braced for the unfurling
the seed
i tell you
has to have been someone's
skull 
us watching
what happens when 
memories are covered in dirt
& told about humidity
the green house we've made
of our living room 
sweat glossy on our foreheads 
waiting for the corpse flower
praying to the corpse flower
you tell me that when you 
die you want to be planted
in this same pot
like a television 
in the living room
where all your loved ones 
can come wait for you to bloom
monster tongue flower
mammoth inverted iris
the corpse flower begins
crawling up from the soil
prickly neck
i think
this is what i look like
turned inside out
horrifying & 
full of yellow
pollen tendrils 
we hold each other tighter
afraid of the corpse flower
but we have to keep watching
a vigil until 
it slowly folds itself
back into the dirt
staring all day
the sound of static
as it declines
all that bloom for
only 36 hours
is that what we look?
little pink buds turned 
green fringed florescence
tucking knees
into chests
laying down in the earth
where the television 
once was 

Nocturne

my neighbor walks so loud upstairs
i know it's purposeful
he knocks on the floor in threes
he walks on his hands upstairs
a perfect handstand  
my head is upstairs
just my head, heavy with my neighbor's shoes
my neighbor walks in my head,
taking steps only in threes
i remember my uncle who told
me that one summer he decided 
he would stay up for as many days
as possible
he last three
i see my uncle as a boy who walks 
in my head and also walks upstairs
i see my uncle who stands
in the corner of my room for three days 
all the days in one night
and tells me to stay up with him
tells me to keep him company
i never asked him what happened
past three days 
i stand on my bed which 
makes me feel tall
i walk on my bed, back and forth
and there are no neighbors below
me but i wish there were
so they could hear me
so that i could be like
my neighbor walking upstairs 
in my head 
my head walks upstairs
with shoes on 
dressy shoes that i don't own
they sound leather brown
they sound heavy like hooves
my neighbor has hooves
and walks upstairs in my head 
and i have hooves 
but i just stand up
and decide that at nigh there
is nothing else in the world
other than neighbors
and i walk on the ceiling
of my head so that he can
know what it feels like
to feel so full of heads 
and full of walking
and full of not sleep
my uncle puts his hands over
his eyes
shakes his head 
i tell him that it's time
for the both of us 
to get some rest but
he says he needs to keep going
says that his neighbors
are living right behind
his eyes 
and he opens them
and i see their silhouettes
men with heavy shoes 
maybe they're my neighbors too
maybe i made him stay up
all those days
and i tell him that i don't
want to try to sleep anymore tonight
that i'm scared to try 
because that just makes everything louder
my head stomping in my neighbor 
my neighbor rolling back and forth
like a bowling ball
his body gone heavy and smooth 
across someone else's hardwood floor
i tell my uncle he should
sleep and he tells me that he won't
not until i do
and i say not until my neighbor does
so we make him stand with us
on my bed where the mattress 
muffles his heavy shoes  
and he can walk in my head 
without so much noise

Need

i know i need to break something
& it reminds me that
i'm here in the soil with all 
the other animals,
with our impulses to hurt
anything we can. 
what kind of frustration 
calls this out of us?

you tell me to take a plate 
& throw it down
on the tile kitchen floor 
& i remember all the times 
i broke plates by accident
at my parent's house, 
all the dishes 
with the blue & yellow flower designs
the shards of plate: 
prehistoric teeth
jagged on the ground,
picking the fragments up with
my bare fingers & wondering if 
it could be worth it to try &
piece the plates back together.
instead we'd slide the pieces
carefully into the trash.

when no one
is here 
i do give in & open the cupboard
& i do throw just one
plate onto the floor,
one of the thick clay-colored plates,
it breaks nice & clean,
& i do love the sound it makes
the sound of impact
& i do love how it shatters
no tiny slivers just triangular hunks
of ceramic
& i do need to break more 

taking all the plates down 
i move onto glasses & mugs
i don't pause to think of you
& whether or not 
you might tell
me to stop, whether or not
you might tell my that 
i've done enough
this is the issue with watching 
objects break, it's never
quite enough

until all 
the dishes are broken
every bowl & glass &
tea cup, a glorious pile of bone.
i walk through in bare feet
because i can, because all 
of it was mine,
because it was my house
& because i am an animal too
of the soil 
with teeth 
made of broken plate.