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.

Bluetooth 

i traded all my teeth 
for blue ones: cobalt & sapphire.
i watch them flicker as i
talk to myself in the mirror.
everyone's getting blueteeth now,
you can turn on your laptop
just by chewing. you can make
a call on your cellphone 
by pressing your tongue
to the backs of your incisors
& play videos in your head 
by clenching you teeth.
in my bed room i'm chewing 
pink gum & something goes wrong,
i feel a click, in my head  
like a cassette tape being slid
into place. i hear my own 
7-year-old voice 
on the television downstairs.
i feel all my thoughts 
crawling there, memories
mixing together. i try 
to catch them but the blueteeth
have made me wireless, 
i grasp at the air.
downstairs my father watches
the memories but doesn't
know they're me.
a boy pushes me in 
my friend's pool
over & over, a loop.
another me eats fried pirogues 
on a park bench.
another steals 20$ from
my mom's open purse:
a collage of things i 
never told anyone. 
i come down & sit next
to him on the sofa & he tells
me that he's seen this movie before,
but never the ending, it always
shuts off before the ending.
i nod & watch. a photograph
of us playing catch fills
the screen & he says 
that he loves this part.
i touch my blueteeth 
with my tongue & they feel 
hot & angry.
that night i take them
all out with a pair
of my father's pliers,
drop each in the gravel
by the side of the road.

coconut cream

each Christmas Eve my uncle
brings a box of assorted chocolates
(two layers deep).

each family member takes
turns becoming small 
& stepping into the box.

my father eats 
the chocolate covered
peanuts, one by one,

they're each the size 
of his head.

my uncle eats
all the cordial cherries,
red dripping from his mouth.

my brother curls
up in an empty spot
where the cherries was,

he falls asleep there
& i wake him up
so that he doesn't 
get eaten.

we all go to bed 
while my mother stands
in between 
plain milk chocolate
squares & raspberry filled ones.

she can never make 
up her mind. 

once everyone's asleep 
i sneak downstairs &
take the map of flavors
from inside the lid.

i hold it up & notice
that everything 
in this world is 
a piece of chocolate.

the sofa: filled with
chocolate mousse
the porch light: lemon
cream center

i walk outside
to bite into the house
because the map tells
me that it's caramel

but the coconut filling
gets me. i spit it out
in the trash & feel 
guilty for wasting 
sweet things.

i  try to cover up
the bite mark so that
someone else might
eat the house

& i eat the sofa
instead.

everyone gets up
on christmas & also 
sees that everything 
is chocolate.

we almost eat my brother
but we catch ourselves.

i know i'm a cordial cherry, 
my uncle eyes me all day.

styrofoam

this year they decided
that all the snow would
fall as styrofoam,

a new recycling effort
gone array. the flurries clump
in chunks on the lawn.

i catch some in my mouth
& it tastes bland, like 
stale hot dog buns.
 
i chew/swallow & the foam.
it gets stuck in my teeth,
smiling in a mirror

i pick out the pieces.
as the foam collects over
the streets, people stop

driving their cars,
unable to navigate the new
texture of the world.

as we all known, the styrofoam 
doesn't decompose, it collects,
several feet now &  when

i step outside it comes up 
to my waist. i miss you terribly 
& i had wanted to kiss

you in the snow, like
all couples do the first
winter they know each other.

i had imagined your 
eye-lashes collecting frost
& our cold fingers forming

snowballs. i wish
we had been together when
the snow started, even

the phone calls come in
blurry, like speaking through
a layer of insulation.

only the mail trucks 
& ambulance have adapted
so far, so we send each other

small fragile objects,
packed with snow from our
backyards, i'm sending you

a small ceramic parrot
from my desk & the glass you drink
out of when you stay over.