lost items

no one has ever actually seen 
st. anthony of padua, the patron
of lost items & amputees, a barren man.
i think of him as i watch 
videos of phalloplasty, 
the careful folding, oh bloody 
origami body & the teal doctors
playing with stitches. i wonder
if he is the patron of absent parts 
as much as ones removed. a skin 
graph, make me obelisk, make me 
a manhood, oh please, oh no.
maybe he wandered 
off in search of someone else,
a lover? a pair of earrings?
i want to ask if remembers 
a small girl rummaging in the 
laundry closet looking for
a claddagh ring. he finds the ring
& puts it on, silver & glinting
in the neon. speaking outloud
i tell him that my relationship
to my dick is vexed, that sometimes
i want one very badly but
i can't know for sure why. it was 
a growing absence, a part i learned
that i needed. stuffing underwear
with claddagh rings & rubber 
penises; soft & toad-like. 
the doctors marvel at their work,
they take pictures of the body,
they wipe away blood as the camera flashes
flicker. i feel my own skin & 
swallow & Our Father, we don't
say that anymore.
church doctor 
st. anthony where are you?
i hide my dildos in the hopes that
he'll come to find one; 
in the potted mums on the porch,
in a cereal box, stuffed in a rain boot.
he must have because they were all
gone the next day but we didn't 
cross paths. i shoo the doctors
away from my bed side,
they draw lines on me 
when i sleep, marking where
they'll take the skin graph from.
i say no & pull the covers 
over my head.

hurling rocks at the front door,
st peter stood at the end of driveway in his slippers,
the last to leave, fury-weeping & red-faced.

he remembers the cocks, screeching 
two times & himself denying god out of fear,
hoping his life would burn up in that sun.

the roosters lay eggs this time,
i fill my pockets with them, they're
heavy with all of st peter's guilt,

the rocks 
on which he build churches 
on which he built a fist-made god 
on which he clenched body so 
tight that the fish around his boat 
turned granite & sank.

on which he prayed to wrath 
until it festered into a body,
a throne-man like we all have known,

his chicken bones on the dining room floor
without the saint women to wash & clean.

we throw the eggs, shells smashing 
on the windows, one shattering glass
the glass becoming egg shell, the egg shell
becoming stained glass, red & blue & green 
& autumn yellow-- the cocks laying oranges
made of glass-- shards or feathers?

our cocks crow, loud & confused.
what is a man then if he renounces everything?
if his god has been a god of hurt.

if brotherhood is gravel & always leaves 
the mouth dry & bleeding.

what is to be salvaged in a screaming cock?

i take mine off & put it in the drawer
with the rest of the rubber dildos

st peter's gets louder & louder
& louder-- an alarm clock-- a red-flicker siren,
a plague. 

the roosters eggs are all yolk,
no whites at all. i crack one over
my head & it runs down my back,
griddle sizzling on down spine--

the roosters give me green shiny feathers.
i tell them i'm some kind of man,
though i'm not sure what kind yet.

nail polish 

cracked & seeping on the kitchen floor,
the burgundy-- the near-blood tongue.

oh poltergeist have mercy on my nail polish,
the bottles flung from nightstands & shelves,

angry at me for becoming a boy-girl-thing.
the nail polishes gritting their teeth--

they snarl & shake. i try to soothe
them with sleep over stories of braided

fingers & blankets on floor. a purple
stain in my parent's bedroom, the bruise where we

spilled. it expands, throbbing & vein.
i dip my hand in the broken glass & paint,

make half-hand prints on the walls 
as more of them start to hurl themselves,

smashing, a jar full of some animal's tears,
an animal with no finger nails.

i want to pull them out like teeth, instead
i take a brush from the mixing puddles 

of polish, tint each tooth. become fang.
become neon blue & sixteen. 

i grin at the mirror, all wild & color.
collecting the brushes, i find them all,

picking off the glass, i sneak into bedrooms.
painting nails while people sleep, first 

my father & then my brothers. i choose carefully:
black & stop-sign red, brushing even their

door knobs as i exit. the whole world wakes up
with colorful nails, i laugh at home, safe 

as a bed could ever be. the polishes still bleeding 
out on the hard wood floor, a shard of glass 

in my foot, making nail polish of me, bleeding
auburn & green on the sheets. i don't take it 

out. i don't wash it off. come color,
make a fingernail of me.

st. afra smacked, pounding nails into wood
& i sleep-walked to where she stood in the yard;
her fishnet stockings, halo snapped into headband.

about year ago i started touching myself again,
first just a fist over top underwear,
mortar pestle me, i ground into sand, spilled

out my window. she's rebuilding the temples of venus
like the one where she used to be a hierodule.
a sacred sex slicer, a shrine shaking 

slut like me. she says she can't believe
she ever sealed off her clit for god, for christ.
laughing we make sacrifices to her,

the love goddess, chopping my dildos
sideways & pouring lubes into basins,
oh holy mother water. no ivory columns here,

just a tree house. a ladder dangling
that i climb with my lover. we make sacred 
our queer bodies. i show her how 

i touch myself & st. afra dresses
us in fishnets, roses blooming where
we once had genitals, the scent of evergreen,

the altar where our blood comes out white.
myrtles pollen pucker our throats, she prays 
for us, that we find pleasure there.

delicata

I
a squash, my thigh & the red cutting board.
the big knife & leaning to push it through
the flesh. the thwank, the pieces. the scooping
out the pulp & threads. squashes sew inside
themselves-- they make necklaces from their 
white-nail seeds. a knot of hair in the sink,
a handful in my fingers, i cup them & kiss
them before tossing the pale orange innards 
into the trash. a handful of salt on,
the scattering, the hush the grains make
as they fall on the grey pan. you say
next time we should slice them in half.
II
delicata squash the size of your jeep,
in the driveway, we use trowel & shovel 
to remove the muck. we have to work fast,
the sky turning murky & fog & grey. the flood,
a pot on the stove coming to a boil. we only
need one canoe though we make two. the soft 
sweet texture of uncooked squash, a yellow smell like 
daffodils. i tell you about the butternut 
squash soup that i'll make when everything
is over. we talk orange. we climb in 
the water craft as the first droplet falls.
water, rushing down our street, mailboxes
becoming buoys in the pouring. pulling
a blanket over us, the rain doesn't fill
our bow, we no longer hear it even. 
kissing each other in the bow, the squash 
grows back its other half, trapping us.
we tangle of necklace, we white seed. 

The Will of God

i find st mejella on the back gravel road
where the neighbors leave

out cantaloupe rinds for the foxes
& where the black beetles leak from soil.

he prays into the corn, shucking
ears & hoping to come upon an infant 

inside one. patron to the unborn, i wanted
to ask him if he guards my body

each time i buy pregnancy tests
& wait for the single line telling me

that i'm empty. i draw single lines in
the dirt. i ask him if i swallow 

the peach pits & strawberry freckles
& apple seeds if anyone of them will curl 

up inside me & become human. sinews 
& stems. i used to be so scared of it,

swallowing cum & feeling it thrash like
minnows in my throat, the fish assembling 

into a body. i spit children into napkins.
st majella, finding the raw corn,

touching the kernels till they become
fingers. i ask what he does now that

he's left heaven & he says he's been
planting seeds. he remembers my mother,

her blood clotting like bubblegum 
when she was pregnant with my brother,

the syringes that huddled in her 
closet like a choir; a medical song. 

he once revived a boy who fell
from the side of a cliff, yes 

miracle that was me, the stone inside 
without a heartbeat. a boy in me with a 

womb around him, a husk. boil us
tonight in the heat of the moon.

he says that this is all the will of god.
my brother & my mother & the organs that 

grew in me like melon. i slice my stomach 
i feed the foxes, he sings. 

home video 

a ghost
film reel, flickering
across a room. 

god with his video camera,
kneeling & catching each moment.

all the tapes stacked in library
shelves, the angels, begrudgingly 
organizing them by name & year.

in the summer i got my first
video camera, the tapes the size
of smores. 

aimed at billy & ryan i made
spirits of onion grass 
& ukulele.

waiting by the desktop computer
for the snippets to download,
we lived twenty minute lives,
as long as the camera could remember.

all the while, god standing at 
a distance, taking his own version
of our young bodies,

playing them back in his 
living room that night, all alone.

in one frame i aim the camera right
at him, staring at each other,
only on my recording we never see him,
just a rustling in the pine trees,
the unshakable feeling of father-ness. 

long after we're all dead &
my own video fragments 
are crunched down & used 
for backyard guts he'll take
his projector & turn the handle,

gently, slowly at first,
he'll release our apparitions
onto the house on noble street
& the space behind the garage 
where we buried all the goldfish,
them too, swimming in the soupy 
august night.

video children, we'll record ourselves
again & again, god, sitting in 
the adirondack chair to watch.

i don't know where my old
camera went or the little tapes
we used. i've checked closets &
shoes & under pillows.

i like to think that it's continued 
the work without us, at least for now.

growing glassy insect wings &
darting from ceiling to ceiling,
one eye blaring open,

swallowing the house's 
every movement. not me, not me

it won't find me.

dymphna oh duchess oh diaphragm,
her severed head clutched in her hand.

this is for girls who father each other, one to another,
a hallway, sinew smothered in sorry.

pacing the street, blue called her feet
i comb her to couch & she carries me.

doll limp & licorice, we share silos of
men's lips, wedding fathers, blood slips

down legs. i ask her what churches she 
keeps now the Geel is gone & grieve-able

& mad people suck the steeples for air.
where heal the girls when god is done?

what churches, what churches &
lurch the ledge that un-birthed me.

when i want to kill myself i say
st. dymphna oh darling of depress

& derange-- we're chewed up & strange,
a church, a church, a pew, a name.

produce

each morning i wake up 
with a fruit sticker on my forehead.
i take it off & leave them
on the lid of the trash can.

some one is trying to make
produce of me, of us. the great
big hand gone window-perusing.

you have one too; i peel it
off. i keep yours for myself.
oh pineapple oh pear 
call me peach-kiwi-orange-apple.

all plum-gut & mash, 
i want to bite
my own cheeks-- the sweet
flesh beneath 
i feel pulp-chested &
green melon juice

by the dim light in the kitchen
we eat fruits. you use
a fork & i lick the sharp
knife to prove i don't
mind being pared down.

the hands come, each
proud from the dark doorway

moving over our bodies: touching
pinching caressing squeezing
thumping gripping 

i whisper
my father was a produce man

the hands ask each other
is this the fruit i want?

i'm sorry i lay apart from
you last night, i was thinking
about knowing bodies & how 

occasionally i realize how
illegible i am

i thought of cutting myself 
so you could see 
everything, sick & sweet ripe.

plums pound on the side of
the house, i'm throwing them,
smashing purple
purple smashing

in what ways do you 
fantasize about 
devouring yourself?

mine involve fingers &
nectar & chewing citrus, wild
the fruit sobbing honey 
down my chest

i want to sticky love 
with you

wash me in the sink
weight me

i want to hit your
tongue, a whole 
island of sugar

chrism & stir fry & grill

breakfast smell has a body 
& his name is st. lawrence.
pacing the house & slapping 
a spatula against the walls.

his entrance makes everyone
hungry, it's one of his miracles.

he asks why i'm not eating
& i tell him it's because
i don't know what to make.

he says it's time for stir fry,
assembling the ingredients
by the stove top, i help him,
water chestnuts & leeks &
bok choy & sugar snap peas.

it's late, past midnight
& he insists that no one
in the world can go to sleep 
less than full.

i don't keep oil in the kitchen 
so we leave to get the chrism
from the glass case at 
the back of the church.

i tell him about the bishop
dipping his thumb in oil
to make a cross on my head
to confirm me.

promises to god often
taste like spitting oil 
& garlic.

we cry because we're hungry
& because we're blasphemous now.

i touch his scars: great big grill
marks, like a panini press
bit his torso-- charred cheeks.

he asks if i know what skin
tastes like & i tell him 
that i can make some assumptions.

the patron of grilling
on account of his own body
over the hot coals-- 
a martyr a martyr

we escape with the chrisms,
the amber tint to the oil &
measure tablespoons into the wok

placing his open palm in the pan
to prove it doesn't hurt,
he invites me to join him
so i do & the churning feels
cathartic. he bites his thumb
but i don't eat my hands
because i'm still vegetarian.

hush & hiss as he stirs,
the rice on the stove.

eating at the breakfast table
late into the night

fork scrape & the big spoon.
st lawrence says 
we still have mouths
we still have mouths