the lion's mane

grows around my hard-wood waist
like a skirt-- white tassels
dangling down. this is a lesson
in naming, a man somewhere 
someday, years ago, watched
a mushroom grow & turn
into a lion. 

the lion roared
& spat spores into the soft earth.
the same man watched the spores
turn into more lions. he was
actually eventually eaten
by lions.

everything is alive,
even mushrooms & the lions 
plant their paws-- their
veins disperse as mycelium,
form a great body underneath
the forest where all 
the lions can speak
in lion. 

i dig myself into 
the soil to become a lion
& i get enmeshed with their
words: the gentle turn of
the soil, the reincorporation 
of dead leaves & dead animals 
as punctuation, i talk
to the lions.

the fungus among us
is me. the mane on my waist
getting thicker in the cool
damp dark of the dirt. i feel
myself becoming a skirt,
a mushroom skirt. overhead 
i hear the faint footsteps
of lions. 

you can eat them. 
the lions are known
to have magical qualities. 
i eat them, chew the strange-texture 
body of each lion. i find that white
cold heart & crush them
in my teeth. the mycelium moans,
i am a lion. 

chocolate bomb 

the server comes
over to our table & asks
if we want dessert.
none of them sound vegan
so i say "no" but you
(with your love of sweet things)
want her to give you recommendations.
she leans in close & whispers 
"anything but the chocolate bomb."
we ask her what the chocolate bomb
is & she shakes her head a moment.
she says "it's full of chocolate."
i suggest to you the carrot cake
but you think cake with vegetables 
is sacrilegious so you order
the chocolate bomb. 
the server's face went pale
& she nodded slowly.
"why did you have to 
go & do that," i said.
before he could answer 
we heard a whistling overhead
followed by the blare 
of air-raid sirens.
the servers instruct us
to get under the tables &
i take a fork, gripping 
the silverware fearfully.
underneath you can't stop
apologizing
"i just wanted to
see what it was, i just
wanted to see-- you know?"
i shake my head, i can't
look at you.
children across 
the room put their
cloth napkins over their heads
& an old woman curls up
between the legs of her walker.
when the bomb hits there
is an almighty flash  
that smells just 
like melted chocolate or
a tray full of brownies.
it falls in the middle of your 
plate above our heads
& scatters the cutlery 
around the room. knives
stick in the wallpaper &
the basket of bread singes black.
smoke fills the room & 
for a moment i can't see 
anyone or anything-- my mouth
full of chocolate bars
melting down my throat--
i choke on the flavor,
running my hand along 
the ground to find you. 
when things clear we
are in the desert somewhere 
far away & there is just 
a white plate with 
an oval of layered chocolate cake
on top. in the distance 
the sound of bombs continues,
it sounds routine. 
i'm glad that i held onto
the fork. we sit down
in the sand & eat. 
 

Personal trainer

i buy a personal trainer
from an advertisement 
on the radio.
GET INTO SHAPE
the radio said. 
i thought to myself
what shape?
only 10 minutes after
i called, the trainer arrived
at my front door 
in blue basketball shorts &
a tank top. his muscles 
were smooth like a mirror cake.

he inspected my kitchen,
throwing all my cereal
in the trash can.
"No processed foods,
only citrus fruit for now."
he said, filling all the cabinets
with grapefruit & tangerines.

"i want my body to
look like this"
i said to 
the personal trainer.
i held up an abstract painting,
a Kandinsky: cacophony
of stray lines & colors--
a big black-red circles 
bold in the corner of the painting,
i pointed to it & said
"This will be my chest."

he surveyed the painting &
said he'd do what he could
but that i would have to 
eat only the grapefruits. 

we started the following morning
& he woke me up at 3:00AM
because he says that less
sleep brings out the abstraction
in us-- makes the body malleable. 

he handed me huge weights
that were somehow very light
& i asked "how come 
they're so light" 
& he said that meant 
they were working.

in the afternoon we ate
grapefruit on the back porch
& it tasted like pancakes 
with syrup.

"What does grapefruit
taste like to you?" i asked
& he said that it always tastes
like bacon. 

at night before we went to bed
i asked "where will you sleep
tonight?"
& he said that he wouldn't
be sleeping, that this was
all he cared about.

scared, i looked down at
my body & noticed the wild lines--
the absurd curves of my elbows
the reds & yellows. 
i couldn't get up.

he said i was so close 
to being done.
i screamed which confused him.
he said this is what i wanted
& he had come & done it.

"Go away! Get out!"
i shouted until he scurried away.
i felt bad but screaming
was the only way i knew to
get back into a normal body.

when i look in the mirror
i still see remnants of
the painting-- the great
big red black eye, a shadow
beneath my chest.

Writer

"this is the end 
of a chapter,"
you said before you left
last night.
i closed the door
behind you like the thin
page of a book. 

i thought to myself, 
if this autumn has been a chapter 
i want to meet who's
writing us. 
what do they look like?

i imagine him in his bedroom
at a wooden desk, typing
under dim yellow lamp glow.
he eats microwave macaroni & cheese 
& sometimes orders
a pepperoni pizza. 
he lives alone. 

his lover died when 
he was 22 & he never wanted
to get over him.

i said to you last week,
"i don't think i will
ever marry more than one
person, not because i believe
in soulmates, but because 
i don't want to go through
it all again. if you die
i'll go live alone
by the ocean."

the writer was talking
about himself, speaking 
through his character,
though, i meant every 
word that i said.

the writer opens his window 
to taste a rush of december air
& contemplates taking 
a walk. we took a walk 
& it was too cold for us
to hold hands. he loves
making us walk, especially
in the city.

he always wanted
to move to new york
but never did, he thinks it's
too late for him. he has
a coffee machine & he watches
the dark liquid fill
the pot each morning.

i appreciate the writer's
attention to detail, especially
the work he put into writing you:
the specificity 
of each ring he imagined 
on your hands, the light 
clinking they make when your
fingers brush up against each other 

your eyes swirl like tide pools
full of snow. i think he took
them from the skull of his own lover,
how else could he have 
imagined them?

are characters allowed to have
hopes for what happens next?

i go out each night
in search of the writer. 
i pace the street, thinking
that maybe he's in one
of these houses.

i look up to the sky full
of shy stars & airplanes
that want to be birds & say
"are you there writer?
i don't want to live
alone by the ocean."

on authorship 

i have a new ghost writer.
i often catch him
sitting at my desk, writing
in all my journals & filling 
my computer with half-finished 
Word documents.

i tell him that's
not nice, that he can't
just come in & write 
under my name. 

this happens more often than
you might think that a dead writer 
will come back 
to haunt a living one.

he won't tell me
his name, when i ask 
he just recites my own. 

it is important to treat
a ghost writer well,
no matter how stubborn.
i feed him dried fruit &
granola. 

i brush his hair when
he's upset, hanging
his head & sobbing.

it's difficult to get
a ghost writer to open up
about anything but this 
one did tell me that in his
life he never got 
to publish anything.

he won't tell me what he
had been writing but sometimes
when i'm laying in bed
i imagine that stories he
might have written. 

the ghost writer doesn't 
need to sleep so i learn 
to tune out his toiling
& destroy it all in the morning:
tearing out notebook pages 
& dropping files 
from the computer desktop 
into the trash. 

he thinks i'm cruel. 
i also think i'm cruel.

there's some days
where i feel like i should
just let him write 
as me. he follows 
me all day after all,
who better to write 
under my name?

i buy him crossword 
puzzles to keep him busy.
we sit across from each other
at the coffee shop.
i watch him while he isn't 
looking: his wrinkled white
button-down shirt, his glasses
on the end of his nose.

i will miss him when he 
finally moves on.

an ode/elegy to the train station & my body last night

i want to get lost alone 
in this big wild bird's nest city. 

i want to climb 
in between twigs & tinsel,
place my blue glittery earring 
on the curb.

on the subway car we
find yellow plastic seats &
sitting makes liquid sleep
of me, maybe orange juice.

i thank the train station
for having so many people.
there's a little boy 
kicking his legs &
a woman who turns 
the newspaper page at every stop.

so far this is a cliche poem
about the city. 
the reader asks,
"what else does he have to tell me?"

i was grateful for my body,
when was the last time you 
were grateful for your body?
no, not appearance-wise,
i mean the utility of it; 
i was thankful that
my ankles could move 
so far in one night & that 
my calve muscles felt heavy 
like mangoes.

a man was selling fruit 
on Christoper street &
i wanted to stop & buy 
a red delicious apple, but
we had to keep going.

the city makes me think
of fruit & water.
water, because the train
goes deep sea-- full of angler fish lights.
fruit, because all the buildings 
are full of nectar. i plucked
a stop light & bit down:
an overripe plum.

somewhere near penn station
a tall man stared me
in the eyes & asked "what
are you looking at fruit?"
my only thought was that 
if i were a fruit
i would probably be 
a peach & my lover, a nectarine.
i also thought how nice
it was that the crowds might
deter him from hurting me.

is there no safe water for
a queer body? an un-forbidden fruit?
the train is an eel or maybe a snake.

the curb swallows the 
blue glittery earrings &  
i'm thankful for the holes
in my earrings that
minnows can pass through.

if i died in the city
last night, i hoped that 
i might come back as 
a cluster of grapes in
that man's fruit cart 
or maybe as the farthest 
sliding door 
of the train back to long island.

i said 
thank you body for
being so tired, thank god
thank god thank god
& out the train window i could
only see rooms full of 
dead people & bowls 
of fruit, never the two
at the same time. yes,
& they were always under water. 

no cars pass me
on my walk home & the train
station behind me becomes
a goldfish in a pile
of glass on the floor.
no more fruit.
i'm happy that no cars pass me.
i look over my shoulder 
& i see the earrings on
the curb but i don't get
them, i hear the man asking
me "what are you looking
at you fruit?"

i thank my body for not
being attacked. i thank
the train station for being
gentle enough to me.
i thank headlines for
telling me gently that 
two gay men were 
stabbed in the bronyx.
i thank the water for 
turning everyone's words
into nothing more than bubbles
rising & turning 
into fruit above the skyscrapers.

at home in the dim
kitchen light eat an orange.

autopsy on a blue jay

the birds dropped from the sky 
like purses, spilling outside,
the sound of feathers on pavement
(if that makes a sound).

i collected them: the cardinals
the robins, the swallows,
& the blue jay, stacked them
all on a crystal plate
to investigate what's ailing them.

with the fabric scissors
i cut them apart, even though
my mother warned me 
not to play with dead things.

first the cardinal, full
of black & blue wires-- 
spitting electric at me,
i look for a plug to maybe
recharge the animal, but there
doesn't seem to be one.

the swallow came apart easier,
Velcro was all that held his
chest together. i pried gently
so that the collection of 
stolen keys from inside didn't 
fall out. i tried them all
in my front door, thinking
that might revive him.

i had to do the robins 
mid-day when no one would
notice the loud classical music
pouring out of the every incision.
i fill balloons with the songs
& send them out the apartment window
for someone to find. 

the last one was the blue jay,
i remembered him from the fence
outside, the tilt of his head
& his chipper pacing.
i thought about how similar 
we were, be up so early
watching nothing.

still on the crystal plate
i hesitate because
i don't want to know what's
inside the blue jay.

i imagine him full of 
gumballs & engagement rings.
full of thimbles or 
blue ring-pops. 

i open the bird from the zipper
on his spine.
he's the inside of my mother's
purse. i remember it well
from stealing quarters as a kid.
the check book, the bank envelope,
the gift cards to the Peanut Bar,
the swishy tan lining & the black
wide-toothed hair clip. 

i steal two quarters
& put them in my pocket which
instantly causes the bird starts 
thrashing again. 
zipping him up quick i throw
open the window & the blue jay 
goes back outside
to pace the fence.

i think what's happening 
to the birds has to do with me, 
i see them on the ground
everywhere & i wonder what 
they're all filled with.
are they that susceptible 
to nostalgia? i should
have been more careful
dreaming alone in my bed. 

when i see you tomorrow
i will tell you about the
blue jay, because you like
him too. if you don't believe
me that's alright, i'll lay
you down on the crystal 
plate & show you what kinds
of trinkets you've filled 
yourself with over all 
these years. 

flowers 1964
After Andy Warhol

the girl i loved's name was orange.
we ate flowers made of fuchsia.
biting the walls, they turned primrose.
our favorite planet was red.
the morning turned the house white.

the girl i loved's name was fuchsia.
we hated flowers, all of them primrose.
plucking them until our fingers were red.
the stems of the flowers died white.
in the kitchen we split an orange.

the girl i loved's name was primrose.
we dyed each other in rivers, came out red.
the inside of apples is white
& so is the under belly of an orange. 
running away we called all the towns fuchsia.

the girl i loved's name was red.
she liked strawberries unripe & white.
we dipped our fingers in sunrise orange 
& swallowed it; the sky tasted fuchsia. 
she told me life's not a primrose.

the girl i loved's name was white.
why didn't she like the color orange?
she would paint canvases entirely fuchsia.
undressing me, she'd laugh you're so primrose.
we'd bite off the other's lips, kiss red.

butterfly sanctuary to be bulldozed for Trump's border wall

when you die you disband into 
a flock of butterflies & you get
to decide what kind you want to be: 
monarch or swallow-tail?

i would pick monarch because of how
wide their wings can get:
4 great inches.
fluttering between the other fragments
of myself i would re-learn how
to sing in the body of an insect.

the word for "butterfly" in
Spanish is mariposa & i learned
that in 7th grade Spanish class.
i would write it in cursive
at the top of the paper 
over & over like the beat of wings.

i've been wanting to drive down
to the boarder for years now,
the savoir complex in me,
but this is the first time i 
know what i would do. 

before the sanctuary is gone
i could teach all the people
trying to cross how to fall apart
into butterflies & re-assemble.

i would shout:
monarch or swallow-tail?
& fall into the desert to 
show them how i do it. 

if that doesn't work my back up
plan is to show them how to 
be the size of ants, load
them onto the back
of the butterflies to fly
past boarder patrol vehicles.

would they take to searching
butterflies then? pinching 
their orange wings & inspecting
their abdomens for passengers.

they would, they would
i know they would.

i don't have an answer 
& everything i say turn 
into butterflies & even
the butterflies with their view
of the Rio Grande want to disband.

when butterflies die
they fall apart into humans &
they don't get to decide
what kind they want to be:
this side of the wall or the other?

i'll stay here, i say,
because i'm not a butterfly.

family

we all go to the hibachi place
because we're celebrating something.
there's balloons tied to our
wrists: all of us have a birthday,
all of us are getting married, all of us
are graduating, all of us are hungry.
my brother gets chicken as his meat
& my uncle gets steak & my father gets
steak & i get shrimp because they're pink.
my mother can't decide because 
it's all so exotic, maybe just a salad.
we love the hibachi, catching broccoli 
in our mouths, the chef feeds us 
& speaks with the sounds of spatulas
on grille, the slick scraping of metal.
we watch him closely, the folds of
his wipe apron & red hat. he points
to me & i know he wants me to stand
on the grille. i listen to orders
as all children should, feet sizzling
in oil. my family claps-- what a trick!
the chef then takes me in his hands &
molds me into an egg; white & clear.
i feel my yolk heavy inside me,
a mouth full of egg white-- what a trick!
i spin for them on the hot surface, 
tucked into myself & he cracks me open.
instantly i cook yellowing on in the heat. 
he chops me into tiny pieces 
for the fried rice & i'm scattered amoung
the vegetables; tiny gem-like peas &
cubes of orange carrot. my brother
eats my shrimp & asks what we had 
come to celebrate & no one can remember.
my mother still hasn't ordered so 
she just eats the broccoli. all the balloons
pop at once from the tension. the chef
keeps making food to keep them there,
he doesn't want them to go him.
when they eat me, the egg, i feel
happy though. i had never know my family
like that-- like teeth on my body,
like the texture of their tongues
like the smoothness of their throats.
let's come back here sometime.