trumpet practice

i played trumpet only for a year.
it was like holding a monster 
by the lips. there was never any where safe
to practice. angels were always listening
& pleading with me to get better.
the notes thrummed through our house's walls.
on occasion i would play outside. 
& it always brought storm clouds. 
i would have to cover my eyes to get them
to go away again. i was in sixth grade. i was 
so sick of having a throat. i stopped saying
aloud what i was thinking. the big question,
"will i ever feel at home in my body?"
some kids played soccer. some kids wore 
eyeliner perfectly. i bought a dollar store 
dark green & smudged it around the corners
of my eyes. lopsided. the trumpet voice came
like a metal shout. i don't know what i thought
i would ever be able to play it. maybe it was
wishful thinking. like "if i choose a loud instrument
maybe i will be as loud as i feel."
years before i had played the oboe.
which i made sound like a sick trout.
still, it seems now like an instrument 
much more suitable to me. the trumpet always felt
like trying to hold someone else's tongue
in my own mouth. in band, most of
the other trumpet players were boys. 
they played with their mutes. pretended i was 
not at the end of the row with them.
i imagined myself inside their bells,
the rush of sound & air blowing across my skin.
everyone once in awhile when no one else
was home though, i would have
a chance to play a few notes that felt
like my own. a brash call to the orange sun.
my body, a corridor of mouthpieces.
eventually, i laid the instrument to rest. 
practiced for the last time. still, worried about
my bones & their spit valves. 
the boys kept playing as if i were never there. 

other underworlds 

i dig my own underworlds 
wherever i go. a place to keep the truth
to dry like bouquets hung by
their toes. when i was a girl 
a boy was trying to eat me. he handed me
a shovel & took me out by the apricot tree.
i do not have good judgement. i dug.
earth & stones & alphabets until
we reached his underworld. 
it was where he stored his desire 
to be a ruler. i crawled inside because
he told me i looked nice there. i waited.
the moon died over & over leaving 
her exoskeleton. his underworld
had holes in the walls. it smelled
of black licorice & mildew. he talked 
to me like a fortune teller machine.
"will i have a son?" "will you ever
be happy?" i escaped when he wasn't looking.
shot my gender full of holes. told him,
"oh no... i guess we can't." i am a master
of escapes. the window & the trap door.
i built my first underworld 
when he was gone. i laughed in 
the mud. it was march & the soil
was still cold. grass roots snapped & tossed.
down there i laid down & wept. i dreamed
the place velvet & then moss. i wrote
a poem about my father on the walls.
imagined dragging him there. locking the door.
concluded it would not save us & so 
i just formed a bird from clay & breathed 
life into her. she kept my secrets. we all need
someone to keep our secrets, if not 
they start to turn into ghosts that follow you
into the purple night. i discovered i could
not have just one. an underworld 
beneath the house & one by the mailbox
& another on the side of the road where
the foxes go to plot. the digging & the darkness.
sometimes they connect to one another.
my bird, flying between. her eyes made
from pennies. when you ask me,
"where did you?" on a hot afternoon & there is
dirt on my hands. it was an underworld.
how do i stop? did he, that boy who buried me,
did he ever stop? i make an underworld just for
my grief. it is smooth & tender like a throat.
i wake you up, about to take you there.
i get nervous at the last minute so i 
concoct a lie. i tell you i just wanted to see
the moon crack herself open & crawl free. 
we watch. the trees glow in her light. 

polka-dot couch 

we got swallowed whole. 
it was only a matter of time before
the lump couch decided it was
hungry enough to take us.
inside, everything was warped.
no matter how hard we tried
we could only ask questions. our bodies,
spiraled like dead centipedes. 
i used to everything with my sibling.
eat dandelion heads. jump on the couch. 
break the walls. call the firetrucks.
harvest the window bees. 
in the couch everything was easier.
no more older sibling & younger sibling.
just the opposite of polka-dots 
(swiss cheese) & laser trip wires
to try & evade. we worried about
our parents coming home
to find nothing but the old couch 
a skew on the living room floor.
we debated whether or not to leave.
"what if it is easier to be a seed?" 
"how will we find enough sugar?"
i do not remember so i will take the blame.
i left first. crawled out from between
the smashed cushions. the couch was worn
from us jumping & climbing 
& laying to look at the dusty ceiling.
the couch tended us all day, especially
in late summer when the heat stole our eyes. 
did i reach inside to grab them or did
they come out on their own? 
we never managed to get swallowed again
though sometimes on a bad day 
when rain was like wild sweat we would
consider it. my sibling said,
"i do not like who i am in there"
or maybe it was me. maybe i am the one
who said that. when you are small
you can easily sleep inside one another.
all i know is that the couch is gone now
& that it misses us. maybe it is sleeping
in a dump full of gulls & crows. 
maybe sometimes it sucks on our questions
like throat lozenges. do they bring
the couch relief or is it just left longing? 
i could find it if i needed to. i would
wake my brother up in the middle
of the night like i used to. i would walk
with our eyes closed, hands outstretched 
until we found the mouth again. 

homemade 

i let my old face thaw on the counter.
i need it to make shepherd's pie
from scratch. 
we have been canning tongue
all morning & there is condensation
on the windows. i write my name in sweat.
when i want to speak i think of 
the cookie sheet with the burnt on 
languages. baking sugar until it sings.
i buy a house from costco & it comes 
all wrapped in plastic with 
an allen wrench. we make a car from
hunger for the mall town. a search light comes
& we burry the knives. everyone has
a fear of the future, mine is remedied
by learning how to talk to birds
& feeding them pound cake. when i lived
on the shiny people street i didn't have
anyone to feed. i had to feed the birds.
the woman with the horrible son who lived
above me would feed them too. 
we never crossed paths. her soft flat bread
left grease on the stoop. my thumbprint cookies
spotted the concrete red. the birds got
beautiful & fat. gathered in the winter window
to watch me mix the dough on the tiny counter.
none of the knives belonged to me.
my room had a hole in the floor. sometimes 
i slipped inside. read old recipe cards 
but never made the dishes. i want to know
what my grandmother argued with 
her mother about. i want to know if 
& how those frustrations showed up
in what she made. our hands afterall
are spaceships. take me to jupiter where
everyone is gay. 

intern in heaven

i took an internship in heaven
& it wasn't all it's cracked up to be. back then,
i lived in an apartment without walls
in the city of sound. all my boyfriends
smelled like sawdust & basements.
i stayed with them because they had cars
& could drive me to the cloud's edge
where i entered. i took the job thinking
i might learn about the afterlife. 
that did not happen. instead i learned that
earth is actually much bigger than i thought.
everyone is always going on about 
how beautiful it is that we are small
in the universe. i learned it is also beautiful
that we are huge. the oceans in our throats.
contrary to popular christianity, all beings
go to heaven. most of my days were spent
processing flies. one by one by one. 
the angels were horrible. gossipy & vapid.
sometimes though i would break the rules
& those were my most joyful moments. 
i met a moth who was so soft & glorious 
i stole her & took her back to my block
where the train sliced the street like a paper-cutter.
she was dazed & astounded. a second life. 
i considered that maybe cats had nine lives
because that was how many times interns
smuggled them back from the gates. 
there is a lot of error up there. rules were broken
much more easily than i anticipated. god does not visit.
i was told i would see him but i never did
in my whole summer of work. one angel though
came to watch me for a day. i saw him
using his sight to peer down & watch
a couple arguing & throwing dishes out the window.
i could see it too. a little television. 
"hey is that my block?" i asked. "yep," the angel said
& never spoke to me again. 
i never got paid. they said i would receive
an envelope of gold. i did but i took it to
a pawn shop hoping to make rent
& the man laughed. he said it was plastic. 
plastic glitter. i looked up. imagined the angels
using that gold meant for me to buy a case of beer 
or something. angels love human vices. 
despite all of that it was the best job i ever had.
the moth visited me often. i would ask her
what she loved most about the night.
she would tell me what she had named the stars.
her language, sweet & twig-like. 
when i moved & said farewell to her.
she was reaching, tirelessly, toward the lamp light. 

backyard mumification 

we had to use leaves because
mom said it would be a waste of
toilet paper. the day before we'd learned
about ancient egyptian tombs
in school. our teacher decorated the room
with gold symbols. pictures of 
the sphinx. i was fixated on figuring out
my own afterlife. i loved the idea
of taking all my stuffed animals with me.
in the yard, we ran out of oak leaves 
& moved onto just handfuls of grass.
i had enlisted my sibling & my neighbor.
in the garage we found the purple sled 
as the sarcophagus lid. i was almost complete.
all that year i had been more & more
afraid of death. my death & my parents
& my sibling. a man had been hit by a truck
on his motorcycle up the street. i don't know
if that was a catalyst or just incidental. 
they cleaned the road. added a helicopter pad
to the tiny air field up the street. whenever
i heard sirens i was convinced they were
headed for my house. mumification was 
such a welcome remedy. i imagined starting 
with my dad & moving on to everyone
i loved. the garage was the closest thing 
to a tomb we had so it would have to do.
we could close our eyes. feel each other's breath
in the dark. the backyard mumification
was just a practice, i told myself. i was not sure
if i should shut my eyes or leave them open.
arms crossed against my chest beneath 
the purple plastic sled. i forget who got worried first.
probably my sibling. they pulled the lid off.
were relieved that i wasn't really mumified,
just resting in the shade of the pine tree. 
it ended up being a good thing we didn't use
the toilet paper. i didn't last long. over the next
few weeks we would practice a few more times.
once, i swapped places. let my neighbor be wrapped
in make-shift gauze. he fell asleep. admitted
it was hard to sleep sometimes in his house. 
we put the lid back on & waited for him to get up.
somewhere in the practice i gave up
on my vision of the tomb. every once in awhile 
we still played the mumification game. 
seasons changed. the game was best in october
when we had red & yellow & orange leaves
to work with. inside the sarcophagus, 
the earth smelled like sweet rot & old wood. 

don't touch

i promise i won't do it but
i want to put my hand on the van gogh.
up close, there's a painting where i can see
a single brush hair lodged in the paint.
texture has surely morphed over 
the years but there has to be something
of the first strokes on the surface.
i luckily do not believe in genius but i do 
believe in divine conversations.
some art you look at & you can tell
ghosts are talking & the future is talking
both at the same time all over the bend
of a line. when i make something i ask myself,
"would a spirit visit this color for 
a brush with the past?" in the museum
all the walls say, "don't touch." there is 
a chair from the 1700s with a rope across
the front. a little sign reads, "please don't
sit on me." all preservation is about loss.
a shrinking thing. once, handled. kissed 
& sat on. now watched from farther
& farther distances while it shrinks 
to the size of a thumb. as a child in the museum of 
modern art i touched the corner of a painting.
i don't remember the artist but
i remember the color red. i like to imagine
it was a rothko. whoever made it though, there was 
enough blood & firetruck to last a lifetime. instantly
alarms sounded. the footfall of guards.
i was four or five. they towered above me.
i do not know what they said 
or what they told my parents. i see us
standing outside the big building while the rest
of my preschool continued like good disciples. 
leaves were starting to fall or maybe 
those were petals. i don't think my parents 
scolded me or if they did i don't remember.
that painting i touched sometimes emerges
on the wall of my bedroom in the early morning.
it is huge. maybe even bigger than it was
in the museum. one day it will be bigger
than my house. i am not advocating for touching
fine art. i am just saying i think it was glorious.
the brush. the color. all of it for a moment 
just a breath away from my skin. the artist pausing
to consider whether or not she should
leave the hair in the brush stroke. then, forgetting,
the hair, like a tilde, left inside. 

hairlines

i jump rope with my father's hairline
when he's asleep. in the morning
there are footprints i don't recognize
in the front yard. another ad on my phone
for hair loss medicine promises
we can be men forever. i disagree.
i know gender is like a new car, always
depreciating in value. i am stubborn
& so ads always have the opposite effect. 
i lose my hair in defiance. then, i spend
the next five years harvesting flax 
to get it back. in high school i discovered wigs.
cheap ones from amazon. blue
& lopsided. i brushed them in the bathroom light.
my father tried them on when i wasn't
looking. i am convinced everyone i love 
is trans (secretly or not). i think it would
be more fun that way. what if part of 
being alive was expecting impossible change?
would that make change easier? my father
has my favorite hair of anyone 
in my family. long. black. the hairline, a low tide.
i remember drawing him in elementary school
& my teacher pointing & saying,
"no one has black hair." what a strange 
thing to believe in a world of radiant 
dark-haired people. my hair is not his. instead,
it was grown from a packet of dollar store seeds.
i brush it. i talk to it. in the rain, it frizzes.
in the cold it paces like a fox. i am going to keep it
for as long as it'll have me. someday i will be
my father & he will be me. i pull put on 
the cheap wigs again only this time,
i'll shave down to the scalp. the hair, underground
in ant colonies waiting to return. 

sweet teeth

my love of sweetness 
is hereditary. i crave it like 
a night car craves a parking lot moon.
we chew the gummy cow 
until our teeth are caramel dark.
catch blue sharks in the alleyway. 
my father hides in his secret drawer 
full of sugar. licks his fingers. 
biting the shell, the drip of nectar
down the chin. 
i have watched my family
become dragons. a stash above the fridge.
a box buried in the yard. the closet
with the dead light. 
this week as we cleaned out my aunt's house
we found three bags of licorice &
a cookie tin full of nonpareils. in her forgetting
i imagine her searching the home
for those morsels. fingers in the afternoon light.
i like to believe there are spots we didn't find
& when the house is owned by someone
less hungry than us that they find them
& turn all werewolf from our desire.
i hope it is contagious. the year my lover 
met me he ate more sugar than ever.
one night we spent inside a peach ring.
i woke up to nothing but the color pink.
another lover years ago bought me 
a chocolate house. we sat inside until
our bodies melted the place & all we had
was a warped doorframe. i would not change
my hungers if i could. it is sometimes 
a gift to be so wanting. to have a mouth
prone to fountain. opened wide so that
the kids can toss in pennies 
with their wishes. i used to buy my father
a pound of twizzler for his birthday
& watch him eat the whole thing.
he would always feed me a rib or two. 
 

written in stone

all the gravestones were blank
that morning when the bus didn't come.
had they been fading & we just
didn't notice? we were children on
the ghost hill that overlooked town.
winter, in the closet. summer dying 
like a road worm in the after-rain sun.
we went around looking for language.
evidence of our memories. all the shops
had empty open windows. i thought of
the cicadas who burst from their
own bodies. was the town molting or
were we lodged in her teeth? 
i wrote a poem once about foxes 
that the corn fields managed to eat.
they bit down & chewed all pop rocks 
on the tongue. you got the kitchen knives
& i watched as you tried to write
new names into the headstones. we took turns
deciding who was part of the soil.
someone rang the church bells. i do not know
who because we hadn't seen an adult 
in years. an ice cream truck sound played
but we could never catch the vehicle
to beg for something cool & sweet. 
the leaves changed. the dead remained dead
despite our attempts at necromancy. 
there were still landlords somewhere.
the people who owned the blank shops
who popped champagne bottles at night.
we never saw them either. sometimes though we
broke the law & slipped into the empty stores
to pretend to be a record store
or a cookie shop. a bell hung above the door. 
sometimes it would ring & we would hide
just to find no one else there.