feet

i had a purple rabbit's foot key chain.
the fur on it was soft & 
i caressed 
it for luck on the way 
to grade school, 
i felt each notched toe.
curious, i'd grip the cool metal base
where the limb stopped.
i check my limbs.

somewhere there are thousands
of three legged rabbits
in all different colors.
they hop askew & they spend 
their whole lives looking
for that one limb.

as all rabbits are shapeshifters,
they try becoming
three-legged horses 
& one-footed owls.
they attempt different bodies,
trapped in their uneven-ness.
i check my limbs

& i ask myself at night,
when i go looking for the keychain,
who it was who cut off
their feet-- was it me?
if it was, i don't remember.
do you remember all
the things you've done wrong?

i check all my limbs
& i ask the rabbits to cut
off my left foot, so i can
be like them. 
for luck.

there's so  many rabbits
all of them in my house,
in the yard,
knocking over bookshelves 
& digging in cabinets
for the foot but it's 
no where to be found.

the rabbits cry
& the purple one lays
down on the floor by my bed
i feel guilty of something
but i don't know what

& i ask to see where
the foot was taken from,
peering at the marred fur
i get an idea.

i take them all
to the curious shop up
the street 
where they sell
rabbit's feet, all dangling
around the check out counter.

we buy one 
& tie it to the purple rabbit's leg.
he tests it out 
& thanks me.

none of them seem alarmed 
by the use of the limbs
of another rabbit. 

i ask them if these rabbits
will also come for me 
someday, if i go looking for
my rabbit's foot again
they laugh & laugh 
Oh yes.

& at home i consider
cutting off my own limb
& making it into a key chain,
but i don't think it would
be much luck.

instead i feed 
more three-legged rabbits,
i pray to them 
i ask for good fortune
& all night they stare 
at me, waiting for 
me to fall asleep so 
they can tear apart
the house for the foot

a poem to other men at the gym

this is a love poem of sorts.
i explore muscle like
topography & i watch other men
at the gym. not out of lust,
but out of desire to know 
what my body is supposed to look like.
the same man in a red tank top
works his chest each morning
like a great swan, pumping
& sighing Ah! i observe
him & he makes me love birds.
i want to be a swam like that
& i wait for him to be done
with the machine. another man 
paces the locker room barefoot
in a suite. i'm drawn to
all these men who go right from
the gym to work. i imagine they're
cold in their cars, damp from
the showers. i don't take
a shower because i don't
have the right anatomy for it.
in another life, i would, &
i'd marvel at their bodies
there too; steam strewn 
around their ankles. water
can make anyone seem like
a god. then there's the men 
who sit on the benches
& watch themselves
in the big open mirrors.
stone faced, they take
in their own features. do they
think of themselves as beautiful?
probably not, but i do.
these men don't move often,
pinch their muscles & 
they want more. i also want
more muscles, whatever that
means. i've worked
up to lifting 115 pounds,
but only because i get 
to watch the others, i don't
want to  be other men,
i want to be their arms
& their thighs & their calves;
their calves are my favorite.
& when i leave i get 
my sweater from the locker room
& i feel like the eyes
of all the men there are watching me
& my body.
i used to mind, but now
i love it. i hope they 
make maps of me at home,
drawing each hair like 
a thin river on the face
of a mountain. maybe they 
love me like i love them.

acetaminophen

white & small & with fins;
i feel the pills come alive
as i swallow them,
their thrumming in 
the tributaries of my veins.
this one is a goldfish &
this one an egret stalking
the marrow of my bones,
feathers dropping in the 
red river, everything
is dyed maroon in me,
a one-note kaleidoscope.
i wonder what will happen
if i swallow the whole
bottle & i look inside
at the pills & they're all
white ants, circling 
the container so i shake
it to make them stop moving.
fever reducer, these animals
are made of december &
they're too small. the bottle
gone empty in me, i want 
to call my mother to ask
what the appropriate dosage
should have been but it's too late. 
my liver becomes
a salmon & swims 
out my mouth. i don't tell
anyone because they would
be worried. i just eat 
more white creatures,
pills in a cereal bowl,
lost in milk & scooped out
with a spoon. how dulled
can it get? all the lines
of the world gone out of focus
& soft, even my finger nails
become velvet. i wander
outside, barefoot 
in the winter & all
the lines of my body disappear 
into the tails of kites,
the strings of balloons,
i stand, a collaboration
of colors: white & orange
& pink. what keeps them together?
i eat more acetaminophen
until the color too disbands.
over the course of several
days i'll resemble.
one of the colors will
call my mom & tell her
that i have a fever &
that all my bones are
full of fish. another color
will write love letters furiously
to a block cell phone number,
another color, the pink color,
will dangle on 
the ceiling of our bed room,
trying to whistle.
white ovals, matte texture.
i lay the last out on
the palm of my hand &
i fill my pockets with 
them before leaving. 
i hear my mother
saying 
take two every 
6 hours 
& so i take three

hamburger

there's an Andy Warhol piece
where he just eats a Big Mac.
he looks past the camera;
a bottle of ketchup & 
the white burger king
bag sit on the table. i watch
it over & over again. i become
aware of the crinkling 
of the wax paper as he unwraps
the sandwich, of the quiet
clink of the ketchup bottle lid.
it's old noise,
held in a thirty-year-old video,
a fraction of the sound that's
been gone for decades.
i sit down & pretend to eat
along with him.
i don't eat hamburgers
so i pantomime. i want
to keep him company even 
if it's only a moving image.
Andy's been dead for just
as a long as his sounds 
but here he is, his mouth 
moving, his fingers touching
the food. i wonder what 
it is that makes someone
really dead & whether or
not Andy is really dead.
i crawl into the video & ask
him questions while he eats
what does it taste like?
can i have a bite?
i lean in closer but he doesn't
notice, eyes fixed forward
towards the camera.
the video ends & everything
goes black so i start it 
over again from the beginning.
he unwraps again. 
i go to a burger king alone.
i don't eat hamburger 
but i want to get food
for Andy. i pick up several 
dozen bags of hamburgers.
i stack them in the passenger
seat & bring them home
where the video  has been
playing on loop for days.
passing him burger after burger,
Andy eat more each time.
i feed him & he thanks me 
for breaking the cycle.
as he chews he cries
asking am i dead
am i dead
am i dead?

applesauce 

we saw a rat crawling below,
between the subway tracks &
you said "look at him
he's not ashamed."
thick coarse brown fur
& glossy black eyes, 
he scurried off into
the darkness where 
the trains make their 
mischief. 

i want to be fed to
the rat, go along
with him & walk 
the hot underbelly
of the city.

help me come apart 
as gently. i want 
to be a palm of apple sauce
for the rat to eat
our of your hand.
soft & topped with cinnamon
so he won't forget me
while he walks.

dipping plastic spoon
in a little cup, a little
girl sits under the city,
eating apple sauce &
talking to the rats.
she got lost on our preschool
trip & now she lives there.

the rat, with me inside,
returns to her & 
she speaks the language
the trains do, clicking her 
tongue to mimic the tracks.

she's me, six-years-old
& feeding the rat her
apple sauce & telling
him a story about
darkness. she lays down
when the train comes
& it passes over
us like the angel of death.

the rat is kind
& take me back to 
the platform where you
have been worried. 

skin still moist,
freckles made of cinnamon,
i get my body back 
together & sit on the bench.

i can't tell you about
her, not yet. she had white
eyes & malleable skin.
she was not me 
but also was. 

lavender disaster 
after Andy Warhol

elect-trick me daddy &
i'll repeat my name twelve times
across a plane. 
your color's 
a cliche you say but i'm dying
for some release, a chess board 
a dollar bill. 
bow my tongue,
it's a present. they do needles
know you know? fill a vein 
with euthanasia; there's
youth in asia & i'm here
your purple-paralytic
prize & prop me up. how cruel
is that? to go without 
a show or some god damn 
repetition? the o-c-d in me
loves the symmetry.
if you're going to use
capital punishment it ought 
to be even, saved for
the really mauve people.
the chair sit overs & over
again in my living room,
gone lavender with waiting.
it's angry color, really, i think.
the straps hold me upright
& the electrodes tongue
at my brain through my ears.
we're made of shocks & 
standing at a distance
from things we don't like.
i watch myself 
get into the chair 
eighteen times, one for
every year i was a girl.
yes, kill her off.
what better way to go?
a lavender disaster 
just like me.
every hair stands on end,
the body crashes 
onto plasma globe. 
hurt me, yes hurt me. 
i want the tingle & the burn,
the flesh gone poultry white
& pork peeling.
becoming wall paper, 
i climb across 
the electric chairs,
find one that suits me 
& the light switch 
is the lever. 
come home
come home 
come home. 

hip bone 

they took photographs 
of my bones with a polaroid camera,
the doctor took a moment
waving the picture so that 
it would develop. 
caution radiation.
he showed the image to me:
a view of a glacier melting.
we watched, white rock cracking,
dropping bone 
into the black ocean 
are my bones
made of ice? 
i asked even though
i already knew they were.

i don't want to
know how much time i have left,
that is an answer only for salt.

the process of melting
involves pocket knives 
stuck in thighs &
elegies to each fragment.
will you stay with me
as a witness?
 
the sea levels rise 
in me & i spit out salt
water on the street
with bits of ice or teeth.

at home you keep me company
& we look up projection images 
of Long Island when the whole
planet is 4 degrees warmer.

we point to all the streets
that will be underwater,
but, at least our street
will still be safe, 
possibly a waterfront.

we'll put our fishing poles
out the windows & catch
ice burgs.

now, i pin the photograph
above my desk &
there's only an image
of a bone:
black background.

the ear of a monster 
a broken sculpture
a mound of salt.

sea water comes
into our bedroom, soaking
the wood floor. you're
asleep so i don't tell you,

i wade in deeper,
amble down the street,
water up to my waist.
   

your order

every friday night 
someone rings our doorbell 
& leaves a white takeout box:
the little metal handle poised up
the red writing on the sides
may or may not say something
in another language.

neither of us order takeout
but it comes anyway & 
the box always feels heavy 
but when we open it 
in the kitchen there's
never been anything inside.

we're don't feel disappointed 
because we're used to it,
in fact the emptiness
is thrilling, like 
the empty Easter tomb.

lining the takeout boxes
on the book shelf, we check 
on them from time to time 
to see if anything has
arrived in them.

occasionally they 
will all smell like rice
or sweet & sour chicken
or lo mein so 
i go to check on them

& i feel tempted 
to climb into, to sit
all night in the clean
white vacant box.

maybe it would make me
into fried rice; eyes
falling out as green peas
& limbs spoonfuls of grain.

& maybe you would smell
food & come out to find
one of the takeout boxes full,
eager you'd plate me & eat.

when they opened jesus's
empty tomb i wonder if
rice poured out, warm soft
white rice.

i think the man with
the empty takeout boxes
is god, who else would it be?
who plays with uninhabited 
spaces like him?

it takes will to not crawl
inside one. i think about it
just about every night.

i think about your fork 
in my fried egg, your spoon
scraping the last bits
from the walls of 
the takeout box.

doors

they stole the doors
off my car while i was sleeping.

i walked all over town
that day trying to see
where someone might 
have taken them, peering
down driveways 
& alleyways.

i posted pictures
of the doors of my car
on the telephone poles.
my signs read IF FOUND
PLEASE CALL [inset 
my number here].

there are so many
uses for a car doors;
wings, planes, plates.

i entertain the thought
that they could have left
on their own, joined
a flock of car doors
headed south for the winter.

i wouldn't blame them,
it's cold here. 

whenever i hear geese 
i rush to the window 
in case it's them.

(i don't often hear geese
but i do hear airplanes,
none of which are the doors
of the car).

driving is an encounter
with wind now without the doors.

i try to be thankful 
for it. doors off:
i pretend i'm flying 
to Buenos Aires 
(or some other
beautiful place i've only 
encountered in 
Spanish textbook photos).

at least there's nothing
to lock anymore. my car

lays open in the parking lot
& i tell her to not be afraid.

the wind moves through her
& the seat belt clinks
against the door frame.

peeling

in the winter, prickly pears 
grow all over my body, mistaking
me for a cactus. they're plump
& full of purple-maroon juice.
bumpy & smooth, their surfaces
are like the bodies of some unknown fish.
i pluck them off when i come home
but they re-grow more vigorously.
fruit is most most wild at night.
contagious, they
sprout all over the house. 
they love desserts & deserts. 
the fruit crawling
up the archways of doors
& up the bed posts. 
they assemble to form a chandelier 
hanging from
the ceiling of the living room. 
they don't get you though, 
they leave you alone. 
is it because you're
not like a cactus? 
the heater makes the house 
into a dry yellow cake
& the skin on my finger nails frays 
like sand, but that's not
why this is a desert. 
it's a dessert because
the sand has always been sugar,
brown rich richer. 
you tell me again 
about the Sonoran desert
as i work, picking the pears, 
you talk about the alien creatures
that scurry across it 
& they come into my living room, 
sidewinders & javelinas,
eating prickly pears off
the coffee table.
i remove the fruit   
from my body as i stand
at the sink, peeling 
the purple-green skin off 
each one, digging my fingers
into the grainy flesh inside.
it hurts my own muscles, 
but only vaguely, 
& i eat the insides 
of each fruit. 
this is routine now
as december walks into
the house &  lays on 
the welcome mat, 
a fallen cactus.
i look down & the skin 
on my legs is bumpy & 
purple-green. i dig in
with my nails, peeling it off gentle 
so as to keep 
the sweet purple flesh
intact. it tastes like
watermelon & gravel.
we share it & wash
off our bloody mouths
in the sink, 
peel off the cactus
skin on the bed
& crawl inside
to become sand
or sugar.