we fed the squirrels

the stale gingerbread houses last night,
set them all out in the yard like a village
to be ravaged. in the morning they came,
breaking off corners of roofs & gnawing
on candy cane entrance ways. it's deep into
january now & the thrill of everything has
gone away. i helped your family take 
down the christmas decorations & thought
about how i don't think i'd ever want so
many ornaments & how i'd probably never
have so many ornaments. today, while
you're at work i've taken to feeding 
the squirrels more. i open up your fridge 
& start by just tossing them apple slices
& baby carrots, normal person-feeding-animal things.
next, i made a cheese tray from the leftover
bree & sharp cheddar. i even set a little
cluster of grapes on the tray as garnish &
then go, walking out into the light snow to deliver 
the arrangement to the squirrels. they're just so 
frantic about food. i want to keep feeding
them until they calm down, chew patiently.
i guess i'm turning into my grandmother then,
she used to always point at me & say
"chew slowly, savor every bite." i still
don't chew slowly, but maybe there's hope
for the squirrels. after that i make them 
slow cooker chili, pour it into bowl
with espresso spoons in them. the squirrels
learn to use the spoons & they all sit
in a row, waiting for the next course. i have
to keep it coming so i bring out dinner rolls too,
teaching the squirrels to spread the butter
on how they like. i know i have to stop, 
i know i do, but they're so excited, 
the squirrels are. do they know it's 2019?
Google, how long do squirrels live? 10-18 years?
they're so young. they must be thrilled about
the new year, they only get so many of them.
then again, we also only get so many of them
but i'm older than the squirrels, i must be,
even if only by a few years. for dessert i made
macaroons because i thought they should have
something really special. the squirrels 
watched while i got the egg whites to peak
& dolloped each wafer onto the parchment paper
to bake. i perched the cookies delicately on
a serving plate & ate with the squirrels,
crouching in the grass. the squirrels actually ate 
slower than me, wiping their little faces 
in between bites. i asked them if i could join
them & be a squirrel too this year, 
which confused the squirrels, so they scattered back 
towards the trees at far end of the yard.  
back in the kitchen, the cabinets & the pantry 
were ransacked, only a few crumbs remained
in each. i fed the squirrels all our food,
but it was wonderful while it lasted.

Chile Relleno 

when i go out to eat with my mom she always
gets chile relleno & i still don't know 
what it tastes like. after this last time
i looked up recipes, i crafted a story 
that one day she would come & visit 
my apartment & i would surprise her by
making chile relleno. i would have her
watch while i carved out the insides of
two green hot peppers. i always think that
the hot peppers resemble mummies or coffins,
all coated in breading & oozing white cheese.
the version she got this last time the chile
was in a pool of sauce (floating down
the red tomato river styx).
i guess in a less morbid vain 
the swaddled peppers also
kind of look like kids in sleeping bags. 
after the peppers are all hollowed out
i would invite my mom to climb inside one.
crawling on all fours, i'd show her what
i meant by nestling into the other.
us; two fistfuls of white cheese ready
to melt, the skin of the peppers 
going soft & charring around us. 
when i go out to eat with my mom i always 
get a salad with the dressing on the side.
i don't know if she thinks about making
this for me; it's not warm or comforting
or spicy like chile relleno. i think i will
make it for her one day, just like that.
when i come home from lunch with my mom
i always find my bed has turned into 
a great green pepper. i take the knife
& carve out the middle, flicking 
the seeds into a waste basket. as i work
i recount all the things mom & i talked about
over our separate plates 
& glasses of diet coke with lemons:
my brother, my father, my uncle &
in the last five minutes a bit about
her job at the newspaper. newspapers are
always dying. i imagine her driving back
to work & finding her office building
is just one big green pepper. she takes
out a pocket knife & sets to work
removing the stem to take out the seeds.
before we parted i told her i loved her
because i do. we hug in the parking lot
of a Mexican restaurant & both of us
turn briefly into sticky piles of seeds
in the belly of an even bigger green pepper.

Georgia Peach

there's one flavor of ice cream at this
parlor on Old 22; it's a soft orange color
& it rests nestled between the black forest 
& peanut-butter tin roof sundae flavors. 
the parlor itself is like an island 
in the middle of quilted corn fields
& vineyards. we stopped there yesterday.
i hadn't been there since middle school but
the place was all the same; same christmas 
lights strewn through the trees in the courtyard,
same italian rum-cake behind the glass 
of the bakery, same infinite rows of
homemade chocolates in the candy shop;
mint melt-aways, maple truffle, caramel-filled.
occasionally i believe the whole place might
have been a reoccurring childhood dream,
but now we both know that the place exists. 
yes, i started off by talking about the flavor, 
Georgia Peach, because it always reminds 
me that there's a period of time 
when we're younger that we haven't decided 
on our favorite flavors yet. i was a small
human enthralled with flavors & combinations.
one time i begged my uncle to let me get
a triple-scoop & he caved. the top one
was a classic: mint chocolate-chip, 
the next, another standard: chocolate marshmallow,
& then all the way at the bottom: Georgia Peach. 
i've never technically been to Georgia 
(but we did fly over it once on the way
Disney World) but when i got down to the bottom
scoop i imagined Georgia was a state 
where everything was tinted this mild orange 
color & there would always be the faint taste 
of cold peach on your tongue.
i don't think i ever got the flavor again,
not because i didn't like it but because
there were more flavors to try. i don't
think that i want to eat it again either,
i think i'm happy with however i remember it.
maybe someday we'll all go to Georgia &
figure out that i was right, we'll be driving
& see the state line marked in orange
& the sky muted & calm clementine colored.
we'll  stop on the side of the road just
to  open our mouths & i'll tell you that
it tastes like an ice cream flavor
from a parlor i used to go to when i 
was a small person who didn't have
a favorite flavor of anything yet. 

i don't think i'm an especially happy person 
but i do love ripe bananas, right before they 
go bad when the skin is all brown-speckled 
& you can smell them from across the room
& the peel comes off really easy. i'm a person
of routines. i eat a banana everyday now & they're
not always ripe. there's a park by your house
i walk while you're at work & in the week 
i've been staying with you i have established 
a routine there. i walk the length of the creek
& then i circle the pond once. there's always
different dogs each time i walk. i do love dogs
& how they tug at their owners leashes & how 
they don't seem to mind much how cold it's getting.
the cold doesn't make me happy. whenever i walk
across bridges on the trail i imagine the wooden
slats breaking & me falling into the water & dying.
i know i'm happy because the thought of falling doesn't
thrill me or haunt me, it just exists. i love creeks 
& there's none like this in all of New York &
i don't think i'll ever be at home anywhere.
the cold doesn't make me happy by my red nose does,
i tried to take a picture of myself & i didn't
post it online because i looked ridiculous with 
how red my nose was. i love the color red, all 
the different shades; cardinal & stop sign &
jacket & blush & holly & cardinal. i also like
graham crackers, but i don't have any right now.
they don't need anything on them, just plain ones,
broken apart into nice even squares. i think i am 
happy though. i love so many small things.

what a cardinal means this late in the season

when i stayed over at your house  
this winter i watched the bird feeder
in your yard each morning. i'm not one
of those people who can name birds,
so i just watched them eat, imagining
what i might be like if i had a beak
to eat my bowl of peanut-butter balls cereal.
i loved the cardinal & i pretended he
was in charge of making sure everyone got fed,
even knocking some seeds to the plump squirrels
who circled the base of the feeder.
the night before i asked myself terrible questions 
like "what do you want out of life?"
& "who are you?" i repeated the questions
to the birds, who all looked at me
strangely wanting nothing to do with 
my human problems. this winter was mild 
& every time it snowed the dusting 
of white melted almost immediately. i had just 
had gender surgery which is a clean way of
saying i happily had my breasts cut off.
i wondered where all that skin went.
i asked the birds again &  this time the cardinal 
responded that he assumed they disposed
of it appropriately. i told him that i wasn't
thinking literally, i meant that maybe 
the skin grew on another creature, maybe became
a embryo or something like that. the cardinal
was confused. i didn't know your family
hired a woman to clean that morning so she startled me 
coming up from  behind me while i was staring at the feeder, 
talking deeply with birds.
she said "a cardinal this late in the season
is good luck." i told her i was sorry i 
hadn't introduced myself earlier
& "i see him every day, the cardinal."
she shrugged & replied, "well, it's still good luck."
when she left i asked the cardinal himself 
if he was good luck & he said he wasn't sure.
i opened the back sliding glass door 
& all the birds scattered. i said "it's just me,
i watch you all every morning." inspecting 
the perches & the seed sprinkled all over the ground
i hoped that maybe my skin became a cardinal.
the name cardinal comes from the latin word 
"cardo" meaning axis. i think axis is another
word for scar. my scars started to hurt
so i went in  the bathroom to change the gauze 
& out flew two cardinals so i opened the window
to let them out with the others. 

my dad talks to football players

i'm 22 & right now all i know about football
is that my dad can talk to the players through
the TV. this realization occurred when i was 
much younger (maybe 10) & we were watching
a game (maybe the super bowl?). dad leans
in close when he watches football, like a
diver on the lip of a great big blue pool,
clutching his beer in one hand & a remote
in the other. he shouted expletives at the players,
like usual, "come on you dumb fucker!" 
"you're a homo!" this is how men show they 
care about each other. when he got too loud
mom would mumble "they can't hear you" from
the kitchen. she wasn't looking though. occasionally,
from the field, the players would hear dad, 
they'd turn around where they were standing on
the sides of the field & look up towards him. 
tiny, colorful men, searching for my father's
through the crowds cheering. that's when 
dad would say different things, he would
say "you can do this" he would say "we have
to do this" he would say "come on come on
come on" & the small figurine-sized men
would nod to him. even if they lost dad would
linger on the television channel awhile
as the recap played. i imagine that, maybe,
after we were all asleep, that he would
go downstairs & flick the television on
to really talk to the men. maybe he would put
his big callous hand against the screen
& the little players would use his arm
as a bridge to step out of the TV & into
our living room. what would he talk to them
about? maybe us, his two kids (one boy one girl). 
maybe pork chops (what mom had made for dinner).
maybe he'd take back the terrible
things he'd said to them; the slurs & the curses.
probably not though, this is how men show
they care about each other after all. 
only, this isn't true, i did walked half-way down
the stairs that night after the game & 
the living room was dimly lit. dad watched
the weather channel & popped a cap off 
of another brown bottle. yes, then i guess
i don't know anything about football.  

gravy volcano 

my uncle taught my how to make a gravy volcano,
he took his thumb & patted down the center of 

a mashed potato mound. back then, on sundays we ate KFCs 
off china with our great-aunts. they changed

the table clothe for every season & put
two tall un-lit candles in the middle of the table.

i thought all this was very fancy. the whole point
of the gravy volcano was for the gravy to spill

over the side & make a mess; a formulated disaster. 
there's no a whole lot of those. my took the gravy 

boat & poured more & more, overflowing past the edges
of the plate & onto the (blue) table clothe. 

no one seemed to notice. i told him to stop,
that gravy was getting everywhere & i realized

i don't actually know what gravy is (meat?).
to be polite, i used my spoon to sip gravy off the plate.

my uncle didn't get older but i did & time moved slower/faster. 
the china stayed safe in the big glass cabinets

& no one changed the table clothe (blue). no one 
brought mashed potatoes but still my uncle held up 

the cruet of gravy. the table got bigger, so big
that it was hard to hear someone talking on the 

other side. what? what? i say as they talk without me.
i wonder sometimes if i have become one of the tall un-lit candles.

i haven't. my uncle gestured again with the boat of gravy. 
confused, i shrugged so he poured it slow over my head.

i had expected it to be warmer but it was cool
& fresh like water. when he was done & the boat

was empty & there was no one at the table. i got up
& lit the two candles humming volcano, volcano, volcano.

orecchiette

we're in the pasta aisle
trying to pick a shape
& i never take things like
this seriously so i go opening 
box after box & spilling them
on the dusty linoleum floor.
i pick up a farfalle (the bow-tie)
& press it to my neck &
say "look mom i'm a boy."
you shake your head & sigh
so i put the farfalle in your hair 
(because you're a girl). when we
were little (my brother & i)
we never had the patience for
spaghetti, we would pick up
the dry sticks & munch on them
like rabbits from the floor
of the kitchen until i grew 
up & learned how to make boxed
macaroni. the hallways in our
house (every house really)
are made out of macaroni.
i pick up some manicotti, which
can easily be used as sleeping
bags if we can't make up
our mind tonight & have to camp
out at the grocery store (it's open
24/7). i tuck you in 
& i ask where the star-dotted  
sleeping bag i used to have for 
sleepovers is hiding. in the attic? 
in a pot of red sauce? we left 
sauce on the stove at home,
silly thinking we'd only be gone
a few minutes. the thing i love most
about you is when we go to 
the grocery store & buy things 
that are over budget. we have a strict 
budget & wagon wheel pasta (rotelle) is not 
part of the budget, but we need it,
we need it to get home in 
the big old stubborn station wagon.
i roll rotelle down the aisle &
they tumble all the way out the auto-matic
doors of the market. we could 
use the screws in dad's workshop,
they're almost fusilli, corkscrews.
do you remember that spiral staircase
at the beach house we stay at when i was ten?
or was i thirteen? it all blends together?
i wore farfalle in my hair. i don't know
what i wanted to say about it
other than that we should make some
screw pasta to climb up to bed
at night. we confess that our bones
& our grandmothers bones & our great
great grandmother's bones are all
made of penne, stiff, al dente. 
we decide on orecchiette
tiny shells like the ones we would
collect on our nighttime beach walks. i always 
ate them uncooked alone in my room,
did you know that? you tell me
that orecchiette means "little ears"
& we make a pot of little ears to eat.
we love each other like little ears,
a sound bite & sound bite & chew,
are you listening? then what was i talking
about? the farfalle, yes the farfalle,
that's what i'm always talking
about. goodnight.

Intravenous Therapy

the nurse says pick an ocean
& i say Mediterranean because
i've never been there but
it sounds wild & warm. a beach 
with white sand & fruit washing
up on the shore. she fills
the IV bag with the entire
Mediterranean ocean & tells
me i need to take it all in.
drip by drip. the sun enters 
my blood with stories of bare feet
& red burnt skin. all the pieces
of fruit are unripe & i hold
them up high asking god to do 
his magic & make them sweet.
when i was younger i would dare
myself to eat the skin off 
unripe plums, bitter scabs.
i tossed their pits into
the ocean & the trees grew
underwater. i feel the pits 
crawling through the tube
like beetles marching
into my blood, planting themselves
somewhere deep. i open my mouth
so they will have sun. i ask
you what those things are called
that keep time & you say an hourglass? 
& i say yes, an hour glass. 
the nurse sets an hourglass 
on the windowsill
& says this is how long you have left.
it doesn't seem very long but
then again it's relative.
i think my hourglass is made of
salt not sand. the family tree
was at plum tree at the bottom
of the ocean & the fruits 
washing up on shore were all
pink people that i don't know
the last names of. the nurses 
says generally family comes
along for things like this & 
i give up & crawl into the sea,
the Mediterranean sea. this is 
the farthest i've been from 
the northeast. there's no car
horns, just my grandmother stirring
the ocean with her one leg 
in the water. i have little desire
to travel not that i can feel
the whole ocean inside me. 
i invite you inside to collect shells.
i felt them each as they expanded
my veins in to currents. i open my mouth
again, only this time it's a tide pool,
my tongue a starfish.
feed me plums.

to Victor Frankenstein,

yesterday we talked about
you & your monster. no, not in
a judgmental way, we were just 
feeling bad for you both. when i 
was little i used to cut apart
my stuffed animals & sew them
together into new creatures so 
i feel like i might understand
you to some degree. i would hide them,
my new creations, because i didn't
want my parents to think i was 
doing something wrong. was i doing
something wrong? possibly. it goes
without saying that everyone makes
a lot of monsters in their life.
poems are sometimes monsters.
did you ever write a poem 
victor? if you did i hope 
it was full of sutures & that it
stood up & talked to you. i'm full
of stitches right now & touch them
in the mirror, only i think
of them like rows of corn sprouting
from my chest. the surgeon, a farmer
who tilled the skin to lay the crop.
the sun goes white for us victor
& this is a glorious operating room.
there was a song playing that
i don't remember no matter how
many times i try to surface it. 
when the corn is tall & ready 
will you walk with me, victor? 
we can go find your monster. i know
his favorite haunts. there's 
the honeysuckle bush on commonwealth ave.
& the dumpster behind letterman's diner,
there he sits & writes poetry on
the backs of his hands. strips
down naked to count the rows of
corn that will one day turn him
into soil. victor, will you turn
into soil? i think i already have.
i want you to pull one of my strings
& help me come undone. keep pulling
until the horizon pulls away 
from  the earth & we all fall
down in squares of fabric, pieces
of a quilt that the real god 
was sewing. was the real god really
sewing? or was it us? there's a hole
in your jacket pocket where
your house key always slips out.
your house key is a seed & 
it plants itself in the dirt to 
make a house-key tree. the fruit
tastes metallic, is this one of
the monsters? yes, you remember
i said that we make a lot of monsters
but i think i might of been wrong.
i think we make less monsters than 
we realize, either that or 
monsters are wonderful. i want 
to show you all the mix-matched
stuffed animals, will you show
me how to bring them to life?
the frog with butterfly wings
& the boar with an ostrich neck.
i myself am likely also 
a wonderful monster,
& you victor? will you let
me pull your thread?