murmuration

i have decided that i can't 
understand ballet dancers,

somewhere you're sitting &
sewing the tips of your shoes

walk on wood not water,
that's what god meant.

a murmuration of starlings 
dances in the ceiling of 

my bedroom. the birds seem
much farther away than physically

possible, tiny pin-prick bodies,
oscillating in a massive moving 

sculpture. today, i steal 
your ballet shoes & walk like

a bird out into the morning
to get the paper. i'm not graceful 

enough to be a starling, maybe 
a morning dove or a pigeon. i feed

the starlings each day when 
i come home so that they'll

keep dancing. i bring pints
of blackberries & sliced apples.

they swoop down one at a time
so as to not disturb the ballet.

i play Mozart from my phone
as i watch them & they move 

to the pull of the music. 
when you come visit i put

the starlings in the closet
& from outside i can feel them 

dancing. i caress the knob,
i put my ear to door, i say 

give me just one moment &
then i'll be out

& i sit on the closet floor
to look up at the starlings.

one day i'll show them to you
& we'll break apart into

our own flocks of birds.
then will you show me how

they know to move like that?

Broth

Dad's work gave everyone 
a turkey for Christmas, 
leading up to the holiday,
for weeks the bird would 
perch enveloped by ice
in the corner of the freezer.

Early in the morning &
late at night I would go 
check on the bird, running
a hand over the plastic wrapping,
feeling the little bumps across 
the bird's pinkish pucked skin.

On several occasions I climbed
into the freezer with the turkey,
curled up just like the bird 
& we chatted about death.
I lied & told the turkey I was
vegetarian. It mattered little
to him. He was okay with 
ending for his body.

I told him that mom was great
at roasting turkey and that none
of his meat would go to waste.
I explained that we even save all 
the bones to make broth with.

With our conversation over,
I went to crawl out, but this
time my body wouldn't budge,
frozen solid just like the turkey.

Rocking back & forth into 
a bag of frozen green beans 
& a bag of breaded chicken fingers,
I tried desperately to escape.

The turkey told me I had
to stop. He said that for animals,
being eaten is God's will. He imagined
a heaven for all the animals
that human fed on. In his 

heaven all the animals would 
have open fields to explore, 
no holidays or gravy or broth, 
just animals.

Am I an animal? I asked.
But before he could answer 
my mom scooped us both up from
the fridge, left us to un thaw
in the sink, the melting gave us 
the illusion of being alive.

& when the dinner was over
all our parts were put into 
mom's great steel pot; the bones,
the gristle, the fat, the tendons.
Our bodies mixed together in the boil.

The turkey's voice danced in & out
of my head. I saw the golden broth
being poured on in heaven, God 
putting us back together, one bone
at a time. My family drank soup.

ghost orchid

i filled a row of clay pots
with soft rich soil, sat
them in a row by my window.
i have killed a lot 
of plants in my short
time on this earth so i decided
to try something different.
instead of seeds i bought 
some pieces of costume jewelery
from the flea market, pressing
them into the dirt with my thumb.
a ghost orchid is born when 
a living person becomes interested 
in the trinkets of a dead person,
i figured one of the rings 
or earrings or necklaces might work.
The earrings were clip-ons,
tiny cranberries & they were
the first to bloom. a berry red
orchid blinked open. to water 
a ghost orchid you need to tell
it stories. i told the red orchid
about how when i was little
my mother would take a to the big
flower show in the city. i the orchid
that we don't talk much anymore,
mom & i. when i visited home
she used to bring flowers, sometimes 
using collecting dad's diet coke cans 
to use a vases. as i finished
the story the orchid turned 
into a young woman with one of those
red feathery church-going hats.
we shook hands & she thanked me 
for bringing her back this way,
a ghost flower. i made myself small
as her so i could sit beside her on edge 
of the pot, both of us dipping
our feet in the warm dirt.
if i was the orchid & you the 
gardener, would you treat me well?
i asked.
of course she said.
she hopped down & burrowed 
in the dirt at the first glimpse 
of sun. out grow the same 
berry red orchid.
below the soil the ghosts
clutch them seeds. i plant
all my mother's jewelry 
in the backyard, not for flowers
but in the hopes
that i would meet her out 
there, digging for her colorful
brooches, i could make
her an orchid too, maybe several,
a whole garden of my mother
& at night she would all 
come out & we could feed 
each other the stories
we hadn't before.  

woodpeckers

on new years day
we saw a red-headed woodpecker 
out the back window. i'm thankful 
for woodpeckers because anyone
(regardless of bird-spotting ability)
can identify them. i used to
date a birder & i'd only point
out woodpeckers. (& occasionally
blue jays). the woodpeckers have
always liked me too, clinging 
to the ceiling & walls of my bedroom.
i tell it hush when i'm trying to sleep
& let them take whatever they want
from my pantries.
the creature moved his beak like a sewing
machine needle,
sewing the trunk of the tree.
we all watched the woodpecker; 
us five fleshy pink animals getting older
alongside the earth.
the new year stopped feeling
like much to me.
i'm scared to be old enough
that time glides feathered now. 
what i don't tell
everyone else is that i woke up
to the woodpecker perched 
on my chest; red plumage face,
grey talons scratching my skin.
with gold-coin glinting eyes
the bird looked at me
& i asked him 
what he wanted.
the bird just stared.
i cried & told him 
that i was terrified 
of the new year & he paced
my body searching for
a place peck. crawling 
up to my neck he drilled 
for grubs & found nothing
but old jewelry under
my skin. he set earrings 
& necklaces on the nightstand.
pecking between my fingers 
he found rings i had lost 
for years. i told him 
i was thankful for woodpeckers
& he fluttered off
out the window for
us to see all together
out the glass back door.

8oz of water 

the day of surgery you can only drink 8oz 
of water & i want to use mine to house
a goldfish. i want to get it right this time.
it seems like all my goldfish died too young.
they ask if i have a living will & i say no.
the thing about goldfish is if they get sick
no one tries to save them. i asked my parents
to take my goldfish to the doctor when the fish sank
to the bottom of the tank, staring blankly into 
the blue pebbles, i imagined a doctor in a white coat 
dipping his stethoscope in the fish bowl. 
He would nod & give us a little jar of pills to save 
the fish's life. we never flushed our fish 
down the toilet like normal people. i ask
them where the parts of human bodies go
that get cut off during surgery & they
say "medical waste." we buried the fish
behind the garage. i made them tombstones
from scrap wood. another one of our fishes 
had a stroke which made the fish bend in half
& swim in circles. i hadn't realized until
then that fish could have strokes, that fish 
had so much body like we do. blood & organs.
no one performs surgery on a fish. it's 
not worth it. the oldest goldfish on record
lived to be 43 which is nearly twice as 
old as i am. if i met that goldfish i would
grow gills & crawl into the tank with 
the fish & ask him about what he knew
of life. i would tell the fish that i imagine
"going under" for surgery will be a lot
like living in water & it excites me
fish stares forward beyond the walls
of the tank. i wonder if i would be a more 
insightful creature if i also couldn't blink.
i kiss the fish on the forehead & thank him.

video games

the problem is our house 
is made of video games, all pixel 
& patchwork & promise. i go downstairs
each  morning to unplug my youngest brother
who has all sorts of wires coming out 
of his head. no, this isn't the classic
argument that video games are rotting 
our brains, this is something else.
all the furniture is easily moved
with the game controller. the fridge
is full of health points. i glance
at my life bar & i'm embarrassed
because everyone else can see i'm dying.
don't you want to beat this level?
he asks. i go upstairs to the attic
where the video games haven't reached yet.
i crawl into a pile of stuffed animals
& think about the video games 
i used to play when i was younger.
there was one where we'd speed cars
& run away from cops. i hear the sirens
outside in the driveway. there was one
where you had to kill dinosaurs
& i hear the metallic screech of
a velociraptor. the video games 
come to find you, they always do &
the stuffed animals turn into real
animal, wriggling in a great pile,
elephants & lions & bears & lizards,
scurrying around me. there stand my
brother, with a controller in 
his hand. he says 
let's play, play, play.

Burial plots

i've only ever seen 
one person get buried;
my aunt Joan, who crawled
into the hole in the earth
on her hands & knees,
a little girl laughing 
her way into the soil.
her mind had come out like
ribbon for years, so 
we tossed it down into the hole.

on my chest they will dig
two burial plots side-by-side.
the doctor asks who i 
want to entomb there &
i can't decide.

i drop sea shells into
them, equal, one for each,
the shells from the trip
to Chincoteague Island 
i took with a boy who
dug the girlhood from
my body & made earrings 
out of it.

breaking my father's pocket
watch in two, i plant
one on each side. minute hand
to the left, hour hand 
the right. keeping time 
deep down in my rocky earth,
this is for aunt Joan 
so she knows how much
we've grown.

i think i might not 
believe in anything after 
death & that scares me. 
i try, i really do. i tell
people that i believe in
energy & i do think
i believe in god, but 
then i look at the dirt 
& i can't trust any of that.

dropping clothing into
each burial plot they fill
up with dresses. each dress
is a buried girl, not me,
but some girl somewhere,
if you were once a girl you
can't bury that, there's
no hole deep enough.

i want to crawl into
my own chest before
they sew it up, deep down 
where the roots make yo-yos
of human corpses. down there
i could find my aunt Joan
& tell her that i loved
her even though i couldn't
cry at her funeral. 
i'd ask if she loves as
a boy & she'd nod.

instead i get the shovel,
throw in a handful of jewelry,
which clinks on the coffin lids.
whose coffins?
i don't think i'll ever know.

aunt Joan gets a shovel 
& helps me. when we finish 
i tell her she should be getting
back home so i dig a hole
in my yard for her to
crawl into.

sanctity

"Marriage should
be between a man & 
a woman"
a booming voice 
from above said.

Marriage had been eating
a cheese sandwich 
in the park,
minding their own business
& feeding the crusts
to the squirrels.

so, a man & a woman
came & put
Marriage between them,
each held one hand
& Marriage wriggled.

Marriage is something blue,
borrowed, & new. 
they prefer crawling
to standing.
they prefer being alone,
sometimes reading a book
in a cafe & drinking coffee.

they have seven fingers
on each hand
& doves tend to follow
them wherever they walk.

i have a bad habit
of imagining weddings 
with lovers i've barely known.
it's not even that i actually
want to marry them, but
i want to picture what
it would look like,
i'll call it fantastical
scrapbooking. 

Marriage escapes often,
biting the hand of
the man or the woman
or tricking them to let go. 
this is easy because 
the man & the woman aren't
very bright.

when i was younger
i would capture Marriage
when i saw they had escaped.
i hated to see them so happy
& i feel terribly about it now.

i would scoop them up
from the kitchen floor
& scold them about 
midnight snacking, telling
Marriage that they were
going to get fat

& then i would say "there's
just a nature order to
things that has 
to be maintained."

when Marriage comes
now i apologize & we take
a walk to get ice cream.
Marriage likes Neapolitan 
& i like caramel swirl.
 
after that, we raid the cabinets
& i watch them eat Oreos.
They eat them funny,
peeling the cream out
& eating that part first.
They tell me stories
about people kissing,
the way lips taste
like chocolate & the way 
that some people never wanted
to be married.

last night they Marriage 
paused to say
that they think that's sweet,
that they wish more people
would get NOT married.

"Then what about you?"
i asked.

Marriage shrugged &
continued chewing. 

we strolled the block
late at night & Marriage
ate a few stop signs & 
sidewalk squares.

they told me i should
never get married &
that i should try 
eating more inanimate objects.

i agree & we split a 
stoplight, crumbly
like shortbread. 

before Marriage left
that night
i kissed their forehead
which left my mouth
with a blue taste.

when you kissed me
you felt it too. 

blue is a strange 
kind of desire.

i want to eat everything.
i steal engagement rings,
swallow each at the glass counter.

Marriage stocks
the fridge with wedding cake.
i eat it all each night
so that you don't notice.

holes

it all started with bagels,
fitting two, then three fingers 
through the center. you asked
me if bagels would be better
without the hole in the middle
& i wasn't sure but
i realized how unsettling holes are.
i took all the bagels out
of my bread box & filled
the middles with various
snacks from around the kitchen;
ritz crackers, oreos, &
little plums. much better
i thought. that wasn't 
the end of it though, my brother's
maroon sweater tore open
at the dinner table, a great
big hole from armpit to waist.
my mother & i fought over 
who would get to sew it up.
she won, & excused herself.
once you start thinking
about holes you can't stop.
i paced my room, stopping
to observe my own reflection
in the window, one big hole
in my face, accented by teeth. 
i thought of shrunken heads,
with their mouths sewn shut
so that they wouldn't speak
in the afterlife, how comforting
the face is without holes.
i went looking for holes,
i wanted to fill them all in,
close them all up.
while my family was asleep 
i went about the house fixing
everything from gaps in
the dry wall to windows
(which i realized were also holes)
late at night, searching
on the internet i read
about the biggest hole
in the world: dragon hole,
an abyss off the coast 
of china, a great blue eye
leading deep down into 
the depths of the earth.
i hated it, i had to fix it.
with my mother's sewing kit 
i walked across the world
(all in one night)
i thought to myself
if i can just fix this
one thing...
dragon hole laughed at me,
a small man in a foreign ocean.
i told the hole i came to mend
& the hole showed its
rows of teeth, just like
my own mouth. i opened 
my mouth at the hole & it saw
my teeth too. staring into 
each other's openings
we stood for some time.
i dove down & found its blue
edges, tugging them shut
with the thread. it thanked
me as i worked. the hole spoke 
only in shades of color &
muffle under-water noise.
you're welcome,
you're welcome
i said. back at home
i opened my mouth 
in the mirror. my mouth
was blue.

Movers

i saw a sign 
on the side of the highway 
advertising a moving company.
writing the 10-digit number
on the floor of my house 
summoned them, 
eight muscly men, repeating
where would you like it?
where would you like it?
i told the movers that i
wanted them to take all
my belongings & scatter them
across the country for me
to find. the men were confused
at first, looking at each other.
i said 
go on, start
& so they did, beginning with
the bed, four men lifting 
it & walking towards 
the city. i've always
felt like i have too many objects,
but this wasn't about that.
do you ever want 
to scatter yourself?
i was thinking about how 
suns/stars go super nova 
when they die
(not to compare myself 
to a sun/ star).
they look beautiful, 
a destructive electric sting
& even that goes mostly
unnoticed to the humans
who live in my town
& buy groceries
& walk their dogs. 
i guess i want to put myself
back together. i want
to drive my car all
over looking for the part
of my life i can track down.
the movers take all 
my mugs, sending them off
like boats from the north shore.
the movers throw my books
like frisbees out their 
truck's window, the spines
thawck against tree trunks
in a town up north where
the winters bury everything.
eventually, the movers 
return to tell me that 
they've finished &
i said they still have
to scatter me. exchanging 
glances they shrug & drive 
me to a small town 
in Arizona that my father
stopped in years ago. 
i lay in the desert &
ask the sun if he's thinking
of going super nova.
he shakes his head & 
buries me.