fruit bats

it helps, sometimes for me 
to think of my body as a piles
of fruit. i find bananas clavicles 
& papaya shoulders. the bees
follow me for my imagination.
the handful of grapes i find 
where there were once mosquito bites.
in the mirror, melon teeth,
my father cutting the honeydew 
over the sink. 

i have always had this habit 
of abstraction. in elementary 
school i took to drawing myself
with animal parts, most frequently
giving myself bat wings. i knew
about bats. i knew that they glided
unlike birds. crudely, i detailed 
the veiny skin beneath each arm.
i made sure to tell people that
i would be a fruit bat but also
that vampire bats live in 
the rain forest & 
won't bite you here.

outback by the porch light
my father would point out bats 
silhouettes against a dusk-blue sky
before the stars arrived with their
bowls of fruit on their hips. 
i wanted to be them, so small & 
mistakable. was that one there?
was that a bird? alone in
bed i would imagine myself 
hanging upside down, hugging myself,
the blankets, the rinds,
making sweet flesh of me.

outback without the porch light
i'm older now & still made of fruit.
it helps when you dislike your body
to make believe with it. i find
my breasts to be oranges. i eat
oranges over the sink because
of all the juice. a man with breasts 
can be a bat. i take the pairing knife,
slice the fruit into sixths.
i offer them in my hands, hoping
a fruit bat will come land & eat 
with me. that he'll tell me what 
he does with his body 
to make it bearable. fruit bats
are also only in the rain forest.
i hang upside down, 
lick the pairing knife. 

posable

even though we live near time square
i wanted to take a picture with you
there last night. throw the camera
in the air & let it eat us.
each billboard a cape or a blanket,
hot to the touch. lay down on 
the sidewalk with me, will you?
i want to look at all the posable people
with their posable arms & their 
posable mouths & their posable pockets.
everyone went wooden to me,
like those movable figures you
use for figure drawing, fixed to
the earth by a metal rod. my uncle
used to have one on his mantle 
besides a row of beer bottles &
sardine cans. there was a sardine can
on the bench at the train station where
i got off & feel myself still
posable. i took a picture then only
you weren't there. you told me,
that you can't see any stars in
new york city because of all the light,
which i knew but i preferred to
hear it from you. i begin to think
that maybe each time one shows
up that someone swipes it,
tucks it under their tongue
like a throat lozenge. no one
would notice it gone in the all
photo-taking festival protesting
i wished i would  have spotted one. 
i was feeling wild
& willing to take.
i would have made it into a stud
to pierce your ear with or
would have taken a thread through it,
a button maybe or a necklace.
humans have no right playing with
stars though. i could probably
watch people taking picture of
themselves & their lovers
for eternity if that meant i
could take pictures of you too.
i'm imagining the whole place,
maybe at just one time of night
being empty. we could lay down
on the filthy asphalt sidewalk world,
feeling the unfulfilled footprints
as the passed across our backs.
i would ask you to pose for me.

dear casimir pulaski,

what could i know of 
your home in Warsaw 1779, i imagine it blue.
if you hear me, will you just
give me a one-word description of the city, 
preferably a color?
there were sirens all over
your parade yesterday up 5th avenue, 
lights eating the folk music with forks,
all flickering red & white,
an ambulance driving up the side
of a skyscraper. i have to admit
to you now that i didn't know 
what the parade was for but i should
have. i should have known. 
of all your accolades i want
to thank you most for saving George Washington
in the battle of brandywine.
i bet there's still canons left in the dirt 
somewhere outside philadelphia,
the horses of your ghost calvary 
still searching for their knees.
i found one of their bones in bryant park
& i mistook it for a chestnut &
ate it. we meandered about a room where
every painting was of George & somewhere
a portrait artist is still telling
him to remain still. he crosses
his arms & thinks of you. we all
need a father, don't we? 
what did yours think of you?
a boy of revolutions, first in
poland & then in the states. 
will you, then, casimir pulaski
come back? i think we might need you.
i no longer believe in justice or
all the other words they brand into
the thighs of big buildings. 
maybe this is justice in someone
else's mouth. wooden teeth, obelisk.
ride a horse & tether it to my porch.
i'll let you in. i'm not usually
one to put my trust in dead white men
but there's something about you,
all the George Washingtons watching
your movements from their frames, 
their jaws locked,
their eyes gone dull. will you tell
us what to do? i hope it will
involve shovels to uproot
the old cannons. teach me how
to load a musket. i have to
warn you that the cops flanking your
parade had black semi automatics--
we, of course, have no chance.
tell me, have you ever thought 
you were going to die? i have,
but it's silly, it's all in my head;
the bayonets & the smoking earth.
i brushed up against so many bodies
in the city. maybe maybe one of 
the was you. can i call you 
uncle? a relic too my relatives 
who also dropped out of the priesthood.
what made you leave? was it god?
i can understand that. i think
that maybe god is red & white,
but certainly not blue. 
blue is too easy a color. 
it's not even a sky.

automobile

i wanted to open the hood of my car
to investigate the thrashing
sounds that seem to occur at 
every stoplight. like a smashed-wing 
pigeon of a rabbit without a leg.
sometimes a chirp, sometimes just
wincing. i wrestled with
the hood, clutching a dull spreading knife 
to try & pry it open. does anyone
have a father i can borrow? 
i tried to imagine what men do 
with the engine once the hood is popped.
leaning in, breathing deep the fumes,
hands over warm metal. the car,
asleep & unaware of being caressed.
all the young men gathered around
the skull, an opportunity to 
be tactile animals. something to be
unscrewed. something to be tightened.
finally i managed to prop up
the hood only to find nothing
at all inside. a great big empty 
cavity. i ran a finger along the bottom,
thin layer of black gunk.
the smell of gasoline or oil.
wiping the black off on my thigh
i marked a line from my pelvis 
to my knee, a piston. an axle in me. 
i contemplate crawling inside
despite the residue. i imagine 
all the fathers congregating around 
the car, their fingers made of tools,
chewing pages out of auto manuals,
unlatching the car's face just
to find a small man laying there.
would they kill me & claim
gay-panic? like a vampire nailed 
into his coffin or would they 
climb in too? let's make an engine.
i give in, i get inside, i shut the lid.
i feel like a sliver of canned peach 
or maybe a colony of sweet peas. 
i wish you were with me, kissing me,
pressing me harder against the hot 
metal carcass. feeling along the edges, 
i do find one thing;
a map of the whole country, only written
on a series of brown paper napkins.
i stuff them in my pocket before 
getting out. i was too scared of 
men finding me there. i tape the map
to the ceiling in the car.
when i come pick you up i won't
tell you about the engine, 
i'll tell you i made this map for us.

i mistook a thump in the basement
for the washing machine on its 
last spin cycle. iPhone flashlight out,
i crept down the wooden stairs 
to find St. Gabriel & St. Michael
sitting on the cool cement floor.
they were so bright, all over, 
skin made of neon, only,
less harsh & more like honey.
their hands were full of feathers,
move dropping from their wings.
michael, with their arms cradling
feathers, a dying child,
i brought them trash bags to
clean the plumage up & 
glasses of water because i did not
know what angels drink.
they poured the water on each 
other, kissed necks,
caressed faces. came around me,
pressed lips to my forehead.
bodies the texture of stone.
i invited them upstairs but they
declined, scared of walking earth
where god could see them.
it should be a well-known fact
that all angles are queer & 
god was fed up with it. 
with all the women leaving
there's only so much a man
can take. 
now each day when i wake up
& when i go to bed 
i bring them two glasses
of water. they crawl into
the washing machine & pray

i wanted to text you when i found
out that they'd confirmed Kavanaugh. 

i play white noise in my headphones.
it's not a metaphor, i do this.

i wanted to text you when i found
out that they'd confirmed Kavanaugh.

i play white noise & it comes 
in like a flock of benevolent gnats.

the type that eat everything,
whiteness, the insatiable angry mouth. 

i want to belong somewhere with less
teeth & trees. the green skink

running from us into the brush
outside the library. he knows 

what to do. i wanted to text you.
i really did but i couldn't. 

i have told people i've been raped
so many times times that it's emptied

itself of emotion. a 17 year old boy 
grabbed a fist full of my 14 year old hair

& held me down & told me i liked it.
justice has many hands & i know

all of them as fists. i want to have
something to do, but i don't. 

i don't know what i'll do. to some
degree i exist with the knowledge that 

the boy who raped me could be justice.
i play white noise. i do. i think i have to. 

the company i keep by a window;
a plastic bottle cap, an un-answered phone

call from my father. a news alert
A New Conservative Majority Bench

photographs

i want to lay our family photographs
next to each other & let them talk,

the bodies crawling out of muddy 
film-born water. the mealy grain of 

the images is contagious & you
watch as my face changes texture.

my uncles in their cassocks standing
up & stretching, each about a foot tall,

pacing the table in the kitchen.
your mother with long hair again,

sitting on the edge of the table.
there i am, an eight year old 

in my puffy purple winter jacket,
i pluck you out of the frame, 

you're an infant, dazed & looking
up at the ceiling fan. i hold you

on my hip & tell you facts about 
dinosaurs. my father helplessly

cleaning a background counter top,
running the sink till the water 

in the photograph runs out.
your aunt smiling & making faces

at my little brother in his high chair.
the house on Franklin Street 

with its doors glued shut. 
your old porch & the moths uncanny absence.

all the while we stand at a distance,
watching. it's like seeing a train set

build itself. we're scared of them,
mostly because they each reminds us 

nothing of our families. these bodies
born only in snapshot spaces. 

i tell you again that i'm i don't 
miss my family, that i miss 

the idea of my family. i boil a pot 
of water on the stove, drop in pasta. 

you pick each person up by their 
shirt collar, dip them back into

the photographs, but, not before
holding me, eight year old me

for a second. you notice her
cluttered teeth, the screw driver 

in her back pocket. she grins, &
startled, you drop her. 

a splash. i pour the pasta 
out into the strainer. we eat

with the the photos all sprawled out.
the people sitting at the edges

to watch us. they make me feel like
we're the photographs,

i kiss you to make sure we're not.
that might not prove anything.

what you might
not have guessed is that heaven 
is nothing but a house at 
the end of the street. 
a very big house, but a house.
it's bigger on the inside than
the outside. a front door. a lock.
st. peter born again & again
into the body of a jack russel terrier. 
jesus feeds him bones beneath
the kitchen table. he barks 
angrily when people arrive too
early. purgatory, the freshly
mowed front law. everything 
is domestic, but especially violence.
oh god of love 
oh god of mercy & 
the broom handle & heavy 
granite fingers. 
oh god of love
oh god of mercy &
blue the color of bruises. 
what is to be assumed of 
a powerful man who demands 
worship is just about always true.
call him lord or yahweh or father,
he will find a way to hurt you.
halos hung on the coat wrack,
all the lay people in the attic,
mary, again, tucking jesus
into the cabinet below the sink,
putting her finger to her lips.
hold your breath
while he passes
his steel-toed boots by the door.
his hunger & the kitchen table.
his flickering love in the form
of newly created flowers
in a mason jar on the table. 
fear is the color white.
what no one suspected 
was her to leave that sunday night.
the table all set. 
holy mary mother of god
having laid down each place for each 
person & angel, the innumerable all.
our mother ran with only a backpack
full of roses. her halo 
still on the towel wrack. she wouldn't
need it anymore. 
earth, strangely warm & grey.
ambling through the Bethesda Terrace 
in central park she laughed 
at how much she had missed 
having a real body. On the lip
of the foundation, standing a step taller,
pressing her hands together & praying:

Me, Mother who art not in heaven
hollowed make my name.
I will run till 
thy kingdom's undone 
on earth as it is in heaven.
I won't forgive you this day
you fucked me dead,
and had the nerve to 
call me virgin.
what kind of god makes
a son like this?

human beings

you tell me that when we get married 
you want to be pronounced human beings

& i hear a cliff grow where a whole herd 
of dresses fling themselves in to the water.

from a distance they look like bed sheets
or possibly like the body-less wings of large birds.

a husband is crawling into a light bulb 
to become a filament & the wives plant 

their heels in the potted lilies on an altar.
i think of us as orchids, everyone wants 

to be orchids. i now pronounce you orchids.
the wives all chewing their jewelry & 

discovering that it was always just 
rock candy. the husbands trying to find 

their rings in the mouths of other people
they had once loved too hard. i want to

take your rings off the nightstand & plant
them in the yard behind my house, wait for

them to burst open as seeds, grow a bush of 
all kinds of rings, each always ready to

fit anyone's fingers. the amethyst
& the sapphire. the husbands & the wives

looking in the windows, jealous of 
humans beings. a veil sprouts from 

my forehead & i cut it off with 
a pairing knife. everything turning

white frosting, the kitchen table,
a soft chiffon cake, take a plastic forkful,

the coffee mugs sinking in, the chairs;
sugar drunk strawberries. this is all

so sticky. the husband & the wives
feed each other the house, breaking 

off the shingles, gnawing the mailbox.
i ask myself each day what it means 

to be a human beings with you.
the answer is again & again

pronounced, your mouth a ring.

blue 

this morning i ran my body
78 sidewalk squares wide,
around & around passing
a plastic front lawn statue 
of st. mary. (our mother).
on each pass the house's
automatic lights would
blink on & she would be 
posed different, kneeling
on the stoop, cigar in between
fingers, i stopped &
asked her what she was
doing here on Long Island.
she stood up, slithering
over to me, something
uncanny about the motions
of her body. we went behind
the laundry mat where
all the pigeons trade gossip.
i told her i was worried
that my only
faith occurs when i run,
my sweat wet hair chilly
in the grey air. she tells
me she gave it up,
everything to be here.
she gestures down at
her feet & the snake 
that she's usually stepping
now coiled as an anklet.
staring up at me, he winked.
we sat closer together
on the back stoop
& she held out her arm
to me, tracing her veins
with one finger & prompting
me to touch. her skin,
winter metal. 
blue blood to match.
i mapped my own pulse,
warm & rushing. 
what a human, what i wouldn't
give to be only flesh again.
the snake, kissing my neck.
the punishment for turning 
away from a strong man 
is always reptilian
even if he is your son.