mystery machine

standing at the mirror
i trace my finger around 
the seam where my face is
attached to my skull & consider
peeling it off
remembering the ending of
each episode when someone 
would be unmasked, faces torn
off in one careful twist of Velma's hand
how easily the mask turns into 
a leaf & blows off screen
i had a plastic mystery machine 
& dolls of all the gang shoved inside
on my hands & knees pushing them
around the kitchen floor, towards
another mask, i wanted all 
my mysteries to come free with
the pull of a hand at the corner
of a face, i try to pull, i do
but my face refuses, stares
back at me & declines to be plastic
i wanted to go with them 
in their blue & orange & green van,
traveling far away from 
family & hometown &
all obligation to live in one place,
moving fingers over necks
putting clues into mouth
& chewing them till 
they turned paper 
girls who grew up like me 
always knew we were Velma,
thick orange sweater &
glasses reflecting faces 
back to everyone she met
i am want to be her now more 
than ever, lining up everything
knowing who i can put my hands on
to reveal everything
i look at strangers now
& wonder whose faces 
would come free if pulled just right
i see them tumbling 
into the street, the faces,
shopping bag ghosts
i pull at my own face 
each day now
& sometimes it comes free,
but i always settle it 
back into place
i don't want 
to see yet

snow globes

it's all a series 
of snow globes, really.
everyone has them.
i know it's inevitable  
that somedays i'm in someone
else's jar of water & fake snow 
& other days i'm shaking it.
on monday it snowed out
of no where & i blamed 
my neighbor.
i make one for every
house i've lived in, 
line them up in a row
on the shelf & pluck one up
to shake as i pace 
the hall, sleepless.
the one i'm holding now
is of the house on main street
that they tore down
right after we moved,
there's no house there
at all anymore so as i
handle the cool sphere 
i wonder where on earth
i might be making chaos
if you shake a snow globe
too hard the snow turns to salt
& then to red, which 
could be ash or blood or
even just flecks of red confetti
i've never shaken one that
hard but a few summers ago
i walked outside my dorm
& red flecks fell all over me
dyed my skin in the places
where they dropped
no clouds out 
bright too-loud sun
the hands of an unknown person
shaking in a steady rapid rhythm
i have a snow globe
of my parents house
but i don't shake it
i often take the clunky
thing to bed with me
set it by my pillow
or wrap my arms around it
as i sleep i imagine i cause
light sporadic snowfall
it makes me want to drive
there in the morning just
to park in their driveway 
& see the layer of dust 
on everything
i don't think my mom
uses her snow globes
she doesn't seem to care 
for the kind of intimacy
i assume then
it must be all my father
like me i think he might
sleep with them
maybe in the old rocking chair
he holds my house 
never never shaking it 
just staring &
thinking about what it
would feel like if
salt rained down 
on me.

rock climbing

the floor is dissolving 
one foot print
at a time, first the hardwood 
then the gnarled living room carpet & 
slick bathroom tiles
i keep thinking of our childhood games
of "red hot lava" climbing
on furniture to escape the invisible
calamity waiting for us on the floor
of our parent's house
lava in the carpet, lava between 
the legs of the round kitchen table
lava swallowing & burning the TV
when i was in 5th grade you 
had a birthday party 
at the rock climbing
place & you said you were practicing 
for when the bottom eventually falls out from the world
how did you know all the way back then?
i didn't believe you 
the next day
my arms tingled like they'd been squeezed all night
feeling every muscle i raised
each limb slowly, 
pretending to pluck 
my ceiling light down, a ripe white fruit
you snuck in from your room to lay 
next to me & we compared muscle shapes
you said you wanted to nail 
rock climbing rocks to all the walls
of the house & i imagined climbing
everywhere with the lava licking
at our shoes
all night i'm nailing rocks 
to all the walls
each foot step counts
because where it was will
then disappear as lift my foot
i wonder if this is happening where
you are too, 
i haven't seen you 
in months & i hope your voice
sounds the same,
where is the whole floor 
of the world going?
i imagine each foot print building 
a new planet 
house by house
maybe each step the people there make 
adds ground instead
of taking it away
you of all people will be okay though,
i remember watching you 
at the old rock climbing place from below,
you didn't need the black harness
you moved, a spider far above 
all the other kids
gripping stone after stone 
after stone, 
i hang onto the wall,
planting rocks of all different colors
all the way to the front door
where i hold on & wait
i'm so scared you will come
& open the door just 
to fall in
i practice saying 
"the floor is hot lava"
so that you won't 
tumble away
as your take 
your first step inside

gold coins

my uncle hides chocolate gold coins everywhere 
i see them  out my window in a line down the sidewalk 
but i don't follow them because he wants to take
me somewhere & i know he does & i don't know 
where that is it could be all the way to a museum 
to a museum with their metal clawed teeth
& revolving doors sharp with wanting i love him
i really do when my brother & i were kids we would
each get a sack of gold coins from god/my uncle
they would appear in shoes & in trails on the carpet
leading us into the bathtub or the closet
i spent three years in my closet eating the aluminum 
outside of chocolate coins while listening
to foot steps inside the walls of the house i ate
them slowly stacking them up first in little towers
sometimes gold coins fell from ceiling fans: 
scattering across the living room &
eagerly we'd rush to pick them up i think 
i punched my brother once for the last one
a clean swipe to his cheek followed by the glint
of falling flecks of gold more than the chocolate
i liked the taste of the metal like the shiny
wings of metal moths i'm not following those 
gold coins who knows what he wants me to do 
it might take me to box with a lock on the side
like the one he kept on the top of his fridge
full of sweet he called it a treasure chest
we don't talk much now when we do it's brief
a phone call with both of us chewing on either
end mouthful of gold coins gnashing shells
he takes the doors off my old closet filling
it with gold coins there should be more guidance
for how to remember people after they hurt you
i feel like i hurt him when i became a boy
i step on the gold coins like fat beetles 
their milk chocolate guts seeping out so i crawl
up the wall to lay down on one of the blades of
the ceiling fan thinking i might be safe there 
not tempted to follow any trail of coins 
but there he is up there too crouching on
the opposite blade he's got handfuls of coins
he puts a finger to his lips saying "i'm going
to surprise her, i've been waiting" he passes 
me a coin but i don't eat it i just drop 
the gold circle on the hardwood floor below.

cuttlefish REM sleep

fill body with invisible color
oh glory grey scale, turn
inside out red & get black
the cuttlefish changes textures 
& shades but only sees in black/white
i'm going to tell her about
all of the prisms ringing 
on her skin, outstretch 
my arms till i have only
three of them, like her, the blue
water not blue but clear 
thick with sound waves
thick with animal skins
who wouldn't want to know
what it's like to sleep in the body
of each fish & shark
& octopus & cuttlefish?
i'm here chewing mollusk shells 
till all the bones 
inside me fuse like hers,
the one long bone inside
the cuttlefish often washes
up on shore, used to sharpen 
knives, i'll pull mine
out through my mouth &
use it to sharpen the paring
knives in my mother's kitchen,
i'll show her my new beak 
& my new undulating eyes,
turned tie dye as i sleep
in the sink with the dishes,
when cuttlefish enter REM sleep
they pulse with rainbow waves
& patterns flickering across
their skin, 
watercolor projector screen skin
maybe inside
they can know their colors,
invent new words for 
red & purple & orange, maybe
naming them after other cuttlefish 
who they once enjoyed
the company of
in the sink i think how 
i would name yellow after you
& purple after my mother
& maybe name red after myself
i stand there, on 
a sandy beach, picking 
cuttlefish bones off the shore
& slipping them into a backpack
at home i'll hide them
in case i need to sharpen
a knife or re-teach hardness
to my bones, 
swallowing one
all my skin turning grey 
then the walls of the house 
& you even though you're
far away
i wanted this 
for us

killifish

feed me baby spoon swallows
of dioxin/ PCB 
jars in my throat
i'm here to talk to 
the killifish
to open all my fingers
& have them swim between
knots of yellow 
glinting scales
mouthful of minnow
the gulf of my blood where
they dump all the bad stories
killifish have evolved 
to survive the bay's deadly toxins
their deformed hearts
like salted strawberries
bodies all see-through 
in the eggs
i ask to be be see-through
& soft like that
let the chemicals 
play with my genomes
i want to mutate
with them
thrive in their strangeness
this is the only option left
as far as i can tell
so i talk to them
i nestle in their muck
the ocean 
all yellow with hand lotion 
plastic bottles float 
by & the killifish say
someday we will gnash plastic too
someday there will be
nothing we can't turn into body
clumps of their vein blue eyes 
never blink
stare louder
i cup my hands to catch 
killifish, open to 
let them dart away
they shriek with evolution
they call me 
drowning monkey 
i cut gills in my neck 
to prove them wrong
i say 
i'm one of you
i'm one of you

diorama  

with the same impulse
that Noah built a great wooden
arc i've started making 
a diorama of a one-room school house
this is where i will move to
if i get too small for 
the real world, i imagine
waking up one day as tall
as a pen. i collect coins 
& pine cones,
setting up match boxes
for desks & a chalk board 
where i'll write the date
desks in rows as if
they were planted 
by a farmer. desks turning
into plants, tomato vines 
& soybeans, there were
all sorts of school houses
floating in the midst 
of the fields where i grew
up & i wanted to crawl
in through the windows
& live there, become
a nice match box,
listen to the laughter
of wind playing tag 
in tall corn,
when my house floods 
over i will have this
diorama, 
all the detail, 
the care it takes to
make everything smaller,
have you ever tried
to build a model?
i have, i left them all unfinished
on a table upstairs,
a half-painted titanic 
& a biplane with one wing,
maybe i'll put them 
in the diorama too,
just for safe keeping,
what i haven't decide yet
is what people will belong
inside, taking handfuls
of ants to make the school children,
crawling on the shoe box walls,
on their desks, what misbehavior,
did god do this? feel like this
about his animals? all over
the place, i will be 
a pen, tall & full of blue ink,
all this life i'll write
on the classroom walls,
i'll look out the window 
& see the seasons swimming past
each other, summer with
its six legs, autumn:
the shell of a peanut,
winter: a rolling blueberry,
spring: pink eraser
i take the school house
& i dump it in the lawn 
to start over, i need
it to be perfect,
i ask the ants
what they'll want
to be when they grow up,
but they just scatter,
i wonder about
the real school houses
if anyone ever crawls
in through the windows
lays on the cool floor,
listens to the seasons whirl

cougar

we were careful not to travel
to class alone: claw click
on linoleum:  florescent flick
light through long hallway
towards the science wing. 
a low growl rattling throat.
cougars are now endangered
but not in the high school building:
there they paced: on the roof:
in the bathroom: lapping water
from the sink: stretching out
in the corner of the kiln room 
where the cougars 
ate four students: last fall:
their bones:
used for sculpture class:
it's best to make something:
of misfortune: at lunch 
i told a secret aloud that 
i wanted to meet one 
of the cougars: face to face:
alone with no one else: 
see if a cougar would devour me:
everyone else left the table: 
fearful that being close to me was 
asking for danger: i tore
crusts from my cheese sandwich:
dangled them out in front of me:
making cat-calling noises:
hoping to coax one out of 
a janitor closet or down 
from the ceiling: none came:
i left the scraps of food 
on the floor: went alone
to the bathroom: to the big stall
where i'd go to be alone: 
it took me awhile to notice
the big cat: sprawled out
on the window sill:
tail moving like a charmed snake:
i told the cougar i wanted
them to eat me: but the creature
averted their eyes: pretending
not to see me: i said
"really it's okay, i need this,"
but that only made it get up:
paws to tile: the massiveness:
put its pink tongue in the sink:
opened mouth to yawn:
i wanted to say more:
to say that i loved the cougar:
that i was sorry they're going
extinct: the i hope one day
they'd decide to eat me:
bone for the art students:
make me into a chair:
a wind chime: 
i'd like to be a cougar 
some life: if there's any
left by then:
thick fur:
glossy eyes: 
perched at the end 
of a: hall

green

the eye of a humpback whale:
a plum in my hand: rolls down
the hallway: barefoot me: 
following the fruit to the living room
where a whole whale carcass
lays: belly up to the ceiling: 

i read last week: they found
a humpback whale in the depths 
of a mangrove forest: tried
to list the reasons that could:
happen: probably got lost:
in the mouth of the amazon river:
blue artery: did the whale notice:
the color green:

look up from the water: see vine:
leaf: tree: the soil animals:
fearing that this was: finally god:
running from him: because that
is all that can be done: when you 
see massiveness: the spilling
of river onto ground: belly up:
flukes asking to become legs:
what limb will you use: if 
it comes to this: i will use 
my tailbone to grow a tail back:

the whale in my house: like
the one in the forest: has gone:
soft porcelain: days of: our air:
gnawing at skin: i put its: eye 
back into the socket: but its stare:
is long: blank: full of green:
dead: i ask it to be: not dead:
but that never works: i tell whale: 

my bed room in my parent's
house was a mangrove forest:
some nights: i counted green: 
i took out my eyes: held them 
as plums: rolled them up: down
the hall: woke my brother up:
made him look at how big: i was:

the roots jutting out of carpet:
took my body to the floor: belly up:
flukes prone: a wet crucifix:
jesus fish symbols: swimming 
like minnows in the trees: 
pull green blanket: over the whale:
get beneath: 

give me dirt

you blew on my face till
all the hairs of my dandelion beard
came flying off: each parachute seed
planting himself in the dry grass lawn:
a crop of small boys growing: gold weed boys:
saw-tooth leaf boys: boasting about
their fathers: each saying: mine is bigger:
mine is bigger: i don't tell them
i'm all their fathers because: i like to
see them arguing: builds character:
they think it might: make them taller: 
they imagine turning: from weed to tree: 
that's not how this works: they look:
at each others: dress shoes in the soil:
each lace's leather roots: dug into earth:
i remember pulling weeds out from the church
garden by their necks: my own father's:
green garden gloves: the feet of each weed
dangling as we ripped them from
beneath a bush: of lamb's ear: pick
one man from the whole bunch: how many:
children's feet: baby shoes as planters:
i could fill every inch of the house: with
tiny: match box: beds: for all the small men:
all my fault for letting hair: crop up
on my face: where all weeds come from:
you don't have to know about this: i tell myself:
as i get on my knees: in front of: all the men:
they don't recognize me: they come over:
touch my smooth bare face: i don't tell
them: this is where you came from:
but maybe they know: i tell them i have
no home for them: their shoes get bigger:
the size of my dad's shoes: great size 13s:
pushing up grass: dirt: calm down men: calm:
i don't have enough: soil in my chest:
for all those shoes: for all the learning
how to tie a tie: for all the yellow clamor:
pick the seeds off strawberries: to feed them:
i don't tell you: i'd be embarrassed: plus
i like when you blow: all the hair off my face:
you don't need to know: i'm full of growing:
i try to keep the seeds inside: under tongue:
in freckle: in skin: each screaming:
father: father: father: give me dirt