white out, blueberries, & firefly 

i had forgotten what it feels like
to sleep the whole night through-- a panic
sweeps over me & i wonder what my body had
been up to for all that time. we drove up 
the back roads & didn't feel our skin
disperse into clouds of fireflies. how
much distance can one person spread out
until they are no longer one body? felt my
legs walking soy bean plants-- felt a throat
full of incandescence-- it tasted like a metal
bowl of cantaloupe or tongue pressed to a
disinfectant wipe. at the desk again 
while the velociraptors aren't watching i unscrew
the lid of the white out that they keep
in the top drawer. i don't seem to have
the ability to fill out a form without needing
to blot something out. i drink it fast like
a cup of cold medicine-- erasing down 
inside me. i wonder what will be canceled out.
the bone marrow? arteries? lungs? 
don't lungs look a lot like a meaty
butterfly? am i trying to take off?
the runway is an unmade made that i 
want you to come back to. i drank 
the white out because there's a list 
of words i don't bring up-- keep
the ceiling comfortable. if a commercial
airline breaks in through your window--
you keep calm & tell them they can surely park
on top of you. when we were picking berries
that one time, all together 
in the metal simmering sun i picked one
up & it blinked at me-- all the berries--
bush after bush of eyeballs. i had to
eat them before they saw me like that. 
mom took so many home. blinking in the bowl. 
by the time they were rinsed they
were blinking like fireflies. i open
wide to show you my tongue cut out by
white-- deleted all but four teeth.
avoid smiling so as to not give myself away.
i don't recommend this as an antidote--
it's bitter & tastes like a mystery-flavor
(because you know they'll never tell you
what you were really eating). for now
i'll catch the fireflies & press them back 
into my forearms until i have a whole 
skeleton again. wash the berries in
the sink until they shed their eyelashes.
i wanted to lay in that field there &
just let it happen. let the bugs come out
of me & stray further & further apart
until i was just a legend of a stopped 
red van on the side of the road. openning
the window to shoe the airplane back outside.
it leaves tire marks on my pillow that smell
like hot rubber. i wanted to just let the distance
happen. stop resisting the pull-apart--
the miles between each blood vessel. but then
i thought of you. i drank the white out
& here i am making the bed-- stray fireflies
smashing their skulls against the closed window.

afterlives

when there's dry thunder like
this i imagine that there's storms
getting lost wandering off to a different plane--
the afterlife for weather-- where the hurricanes
go when their spirals come loose--
the untying of shoelaces-- the turn of
a pinwheel. this particular sound is the
storm from fifteen years ago when the
lightning formed the veins of our father's
legs & the thunder snake bit our ankles.
the clouds are behind the wall paper--
up the stairs-- kneeling in the ceiling lights.
it is a little known fact that the 
spirits of storms are the ones responsible
for power outages-- convincing whole houses 
to open their mouths-- electricity
set free like cockroaches into the yard.
i feel the carpet because underneath 
the cloud is standing upside down--
an underworld body-- he has a suite press
& hanging on the closet door. he is a bible
salesman. lights flicker & we gather around
the lanterns. i ask you if you have
any candles & you say no. i like the 
flicker so i teach you how to ignite
your thumbs. this all reminds me of the apostles 
in the upper room-- the gothic columns &
the prayers for the coming of jesus so soon.  
i feel bad for them thinking that he would
rise again so quickly. the coming again
of storms & gods is a process not easily
understood. the best you can do is open
the windows & beckon the storms back
out of purgatory. i see the cloud sulking 
up the staircase-- hand on the banister.
i ask why he insists on pounding the walls
today. he gives into a drizzle-- droplets
on the front windows. sometimes i try 
to cry & all the comes out is the ache 
of typhoons. they whisper inaudibly--
you ask what language that is but you
won't let me take the matches to your tongue.
this is how we learn to speak. on days like
this when the thunder insists on solitary 
tantrums i follow it down deep inside--
i take a pairing knife & cut a slit
in the wall paper. the house on franklin
street has new owners but the same paisley
prints in the kitchen. the openning
is the size of a change purse but lets 
me in easy. our bodies contract. 
i wander until i come to a place where
it's down-pouring & my thoughts are read aloud
by the hurricane gales-- ripping out 
old earrings & putting them back in again.
i came back here so that i could remember
that even the weather has a memory--
in god's vinyl disks on the book shelve   
am i a divot or a disk? the thunder has 
a fat tongue that becomes a snake. 
it makes a gravel-puddle of me. 
i ask if the they're all looking for
an afterlife & they ignore me & go on. 
i'm not either. 

dye

the first time i dyed my hair blue
i washed it out in the big plastic sink
where you rinse your paint brushes.
there was can of sardines open at the bottom
& a bowl of shriveled grapes. knuckle-deep
in blue. i tried to scrub the dye out
from under my finger nails but my cuticles
went indigo & the creases of my palms
made mosaic tile blues. on the shelf
in my bed room a tiny framed picture of
the virgin mary observed me with her
blue cowl. i used to want to play many in
the Nativity. i don't know why but
it might have had something to do with
the color blue. i need to find something
to do with a bucket of mismatched hair dyes.
the pink reminds me of the cherry blossom
dress & the green that never took even
after three layers. i lay outside
in the grass & hope that the green there
is contagious. the splotches that will
never wash out of the bathroom sink.
do they remind you of me on a hot summer
afternoon when you go to wash your face?
i came to take showers & let the dye
drip down my body like i was a melting
wax figurine-- clumps of red-- the maroon
blood spilling from my nose & my ears--
the copper orange making a sunset
to drip down my chest. i don't know what
to tell you when i explain that i don't
like to dye my hair anymore. i feel like
it would be a lie to call it a passing
adolescent impulse. there is something 
religious about wanting to summon a color
out of your body. soaking into my pillow--
i bleed purple & blues-- pressed into 
the case like a stamper. i'm here dumping
the dyes in the shower-- using them
to stain my skin-- streak of teal &
violet. maybe i will go outside & tell
all the trees to kneel down on the bathroom
floor while i work the colors down to their
scalps. you will come out this morning &
in the rain the trees with wax-doll melt
like it do. there are waters that still
draw inks out of me-- i hemorrhage prism
until i'm an empty glass triangle
to hang in the window. what will
the light do with a boy like me? 
that first time you told me it looked
uneven & together we sat at the kitchen 
table-- layering the color on again.
Vaseline-crowned girl. saint mary in the
stairwell-- washing the blue out
of her hair. all the saint's fingernails
are cerulean & you color me cobalt.   

call me mountain-boy & walk me 1143.61 meters deep.
there's a train somewhere but the body responds
better skin-to-skin. tracks running away from us 
on the nimble-legs of the tahr, it's eyes plucked
from goat faces-- hooves cracking off & becoming
stones. you ask me how far we can fall from &
i find you a tunnel through the mountain where
plummeting is a horizontal action.
the longest tunnel through the Himalayas comes
right after Barog station. named after the
British general whose ghost hide's its face
in a shroud of fog & engine smoke. as they
dug the tunnel from both sides, no matter how
deep  they could not make the sides connect.
i take my shovel & you take yours:
disrupt the body god & go deeper. i see the teams
of men alone as the darkness makes itself
vaster to mock the human drive of exploration:
within the rocks an infinite distance-- the hiding
place of the night sky when it folds up
like a chess board  at first sight of the sun.
the general wept when the news came--
that there was no way all the way through 
the mountain. you slip your tongue
in my mouth as if there's another side 
you're going to reach in me. is this
us giving into the illusions of our muscles,
that somehow we could make a railway of each other.
i don't want that from you, i do, however
want to find the bones of the general--
his gun shot from within the darkness
making a wrinkled face of the stone, horse
wild and shrieking as he slumped 
to the cavern floor. the hooves keep 
pounding forward & i try to catch them
to show you what my heart feels like
falling horizontally. are you there still
on the other side of the cliff? shovel
under your tongue? the generals bones 
proliferating the tunnel into a rib cage
for us both to climb into, talking by the 
that leaks in between the window blinds.

ispy

i tied a string around each of
my teeth with the blue yarn. tethered
to the door knob, i slammed it until
they all came out, dropping onto
an open page of our I SPY books. 
who came here & made such a mess of us?
i tripped you so you'd fall in 
& later apologized. that's what siblings do,
make sure you get thoroughly lost.
i always liked the I SPY pages of
the city-- the roller skaters & 
the corn cob lined fountains. i often
stared into the images with no attempt 
of finding anything. i would see myself
ambling about-- building a home from 
thimbles & dog biscuits. a handful
of gumdrops glows in a stop light. 
as night would come like the spilling
of marbles you would become more frantic,
a need for some sense of order emerging 
in you. so, i'd let you line-up 
the match box cars in rows of five. 
a universe bound by chaos, when
we'd wake up all would be dispersed again.
this was the nature of I SPY gravity.
alone i came to beneath the wooden block
underpass. you told me later that you 
roller over & stabbed your side on 
a pencil. we yelled each other's
names across page after page until
finally reuniting under a colander
like the one mom used to strain the 
wagon wheel pasta & the shells for 
mac & cheese. you told me you didn't
like it-- you didn't like always having
to search for everything in the clutter.
we're older now & the I SPY books have spread
to our childhood bed rooms. when i visit
my parent's house i stumble into
both yours & mine. i don't ask you to
come with me. god cut-out pages
of I SPY books & taped them to the door frames.
tear paper. tear walls. i'm looking for
my teeth in all this mess. you don't
follow me. a folded note on line paper.
a key to a rubble-house. a desk
lamp without a bulb. I SPY a shadow
box with nothing inside. i wish i knew
where those books were. i want to 
build the house of dried corn kernels 
& loose string. you fold your own door
like a paper football-- flick it into 
the tangle. if we hold hands when we
sleep, will gravity still scatter us
like thimbles? 

the best places to watch the fireworks

1.
glowing titans follicles-- 
the men pounding the earth
a town over. what did we do to make
them to red-angry?

2. 
we talk about
the best places to watch them. i'm
thinking about last year how
i didn't try to see-- openned
the blinds of my window &
let them try to win my attention 

3. 
the first always catches me 
off guard & i think
to myself-- what kind of country
reenacts the legs of war?

4.
your birthday is the 4th of july
& it's still in my calendar. i don't
take it off because i want to
remember what it was like to 
chase the tails of dragons on
long beach boardwalk-- the ferris
wheel lights 

5. 
in pennsylvania you can open-carry
with a license & sometimes at the super
market i see someone with a gun on
their hip-- i imagine them
all-- arm raised skyward as they
shoot into the stomach of the night sky

6.
are fireworks made of blood?

7.
if you go up on the hill you can
all the surrounding towns-- sit on
the sidewalk & feel the stone shuddering

8.
do the stones know these
are only games?

9.
do we know these are only game?
i imagine them encroaching on us from
all directions. 

10.
in another country children would
duck & cover at this kind of sound.


11.
my brother wears earphones 
because loud noises scare him--
last year he closed his eyes

12.
sometimes i want to take
those earphones & put them
over the world-- great big sound
blockers-- it's quiet now
it's quiet now 

13.
do you remember how to load 
a musket? powder down the barrel
follow by the charge--
flintlock me for safe keeping

14.
whose backyard are you?

1.
on the roof. that's where you
go when the spark-flood happens.
when the explosives turn against you.

1.
happy birthday in a bottle rocket. 
i don't get the same kind 
of thrill i used to out of them
but at least i remember us
up there-- collecting the fragments 
of dried sunset-- using them
as chalk on each other's skin 

prayer book underwater 

underwater the car moves slow.
there are eight door bells &
i know one of them is supposed to be
yours. they all ring when i hestitate
to touch. i hold my father's had & it's
dry like plaster. it comes apart: 
hunk of dry wall. i forgot my shampoo
so i rub my fingers into a lather,
down to the knuckles. which hand
will you use to hold a pencil? which
hand do you use for scissors-- pulling
three of them out of my backpack
& laying them in the grass. i use scissors
like prayer books. there was that
tiny leather bound book of the Our Father
that we found at the flea market.
sometimes i forget the words & the book
shows up on my windowsill, a dead bird.
it's empty now, you spoke the text out
of it. sometimes i do that to myself
i speak the text out of me & last night
in the molasses night i felt everything
stop: bugs mid sentence mandibles open.
i'm sitting in my aunt's living room
while we plan to depart again, like before
we left for disney world. they're boiling
hot dogs & the a re-run of the Phillies game
is on. they play underwater. the catcher
drowns & they fish him out so he doesn't
get stuck in the filter. i crouch on
the blue ottoman while aunt joan cries--
her facing smearing, a bowl of foundation.
i make empty promises with my thumbs--
smoothing her back into place. 
it's okay it's okay it's okay.
one time she told me she was shrinking
& ever since i've become aware that gravity
seeks to push us like zucchini seeds
back into dirt. underneath her layers 
of makeup is wrinkled  elephant skin--
grey as stone. we all have this-- we all 
have this. outside in the honey 
i thought of you & him &
how much better it is to watch
two other people fall in love than to
fall in love yourself. i saw both of
you breathing underwater like i can't.
i kissed your foreheads which were 
also the hood of my car. no--
my father is driving. my father is
driving even with a crumbling hand. 
you never found the nozzle on my neck
where the air comes out. i would have
asked you to bite it. the prayer book
gets up to stumble out like you before
i turn the light on. tell me
tell me-- are you a prayer book or
a pair of scissors? 
i'm looking for the door bell-- all
eight of them-- spreading fingers apart
to press them all at once. 
you talk about loving him like the
whole world could flood & you wouldn't
notice. i want to stop noticing. 
i convince myself to drink but of
course it's salt water. the night bugs 
float to the surface. up high beyond
the moon-line i see both of your bodies 
holding hands like new star formations.
down here i look for the foundation
i used to put on when i was a girl. 
it's in the medicine cabinet. my father
is there. i put on his face too.
he closes his eyes as i paint over
his lids & then my own. 

 

the poplar seeds in late june 

i have a habit of mistaking them

for angels-- the downy orbs riding

am exhale across the field behind my house.

the children we were pour out of me

from my double-kitchen door chest,

fingers frantic to catch the poplar seed

before it lands alone in the grass. i hear

your sewing machine late into the night

& i imagine that god picked up the earth 

like a sheet cloth-- set it still with

the presser foot & used it to plant 

the lines of oak & pine that flank 

the back roads, embroidering each 

stop-sign in our skin. asks me to lay my

arm on the table so that he can insert

the telephone polls up the length of 

my veins. don't move-- it'll hurt more.

not the poplar seeds though-- for whatever

reason he trusted them. will you trust

me like a poplar seed when i lose all

weight of my frame? when my bones turn 

translucent & soft? there's too many needles in 

the second drawer of my desk. there isn't

a poplar tree near by. these bodies are 

travelers. you ask me if they ever grow

or if these are just aimless knee-caps--

yours keep coming off-- i go out to find

them & we duck tape them back on--

why waste the thread?

i stay up with the moon-- without you--

as your sewing machine is commandeered by

god. his thimble clicking fingers. i'm waiting

to see one plant itself & start growing.

instead i pluck the tufts out of the air--

i swallow them-- parched & salty like dried meat.

they stick to my insides & the roots take.

i write you a farewell using thread 

bunched up inside my syringe-- injecting myself

in the thigh. the trees erupt-- branches

scrambling. they make a poplar seed of me.

oh at last, at last.

a list of things i want to break

place your right hand on the bible
& state your name. my mouth fills with
sand: open to a court room floor--
you hourglass you-- you time pouring ghost.
row on row of seat with bodies: 
assembly-line me-- don't trust the stones--
they're rotting from the inside out.
the metal detector goes wild on me--
sees all the spoons under my skin &
the letter opener lodged in my spine
from that time you mailed me a mouth.
i open my lips again & think time 
the only thing that comes out our the names.
there's a list written up my esophagus of 
every trans person who went supernova 
this year. the street uses their clothing
for quilts-- sequin squares & cashmere
parallelograms. there's fabric born
sometimes out of grief. i tell the judge about
the time i opened a jar of raspberry jam
& all the words came out-- the glass
tongue flicking, shouting:
they're sick, disgusting, how can we 
legitimize a mental illness? 
there's 2 gender 2 genders 2 genders
& i didn't cover it-- i let it keep
talking until it's voice echoed in
the kitchen. i stood naked in the mirror
& took the silver scissors to my body--
the pieces of felt drifting to the bathroom 
floor. wash the soul down the sink if
it refuses to take. i tell you
i find comfort in churches but i don't
tell you that sometimes i wake up
in them-- on the altar, empty. i look
up at the skylights & birds smack--
trying to shatter the window. a cardinal
a blue jay. a swallow. there is no priest
only the laughing of the baptismal foundation.
the shower is hot & i leave the curtain open
so that i can watch the mirror slowly
fogging over. when the mist clears there
is no reflection. i want to tell you that
court houses are made of wooden blocks
i want to tell you that your body is your
& yours alone. there are certain locations
that make real our own smallness. i tear
the pages out of an old bible. only,
they grow back so i take the book
to the shower, open the pages. ink drip
down to my elbows. what is it god what 
is it god? what could he know about water?

seal the record 

with the big metal shovel
that dad keeps in the back of the jeep:
the shovel he uses for mulch & stone.
with a handful of sand. with a pot & pan--
take the lid from the shelf my the kitchen
cabinet. they named me after my grandmother.
with the wooden spoon & the vegetable oil.
pour me down your throats with the good china.
i'm crouching patient in the tea cups.
i'm on all fours, sliding into the mailbox.
i dug her up from calvary cemetery 
for this--shook her in her box. 
she blinked & was startled. i brushed
the dirt from her face. she made me 
wash beneath my fingernails like all
grandmothers do. hot sink water. no one
was home & the screen door banged like a shotgun.
i told her i was changing her name (my name)
& she said we should get a bible & 
erase it from every page of the old testament.
she peeled the name off like shelling
peas-- tossing the husks onto the living
room carpet. a few she put into her
pocket "for good times sake"--
what will we call the wife of abraham? 
i ask & she doesn't look up from 
the book. in front of the judge i'll
tell him that my grandmother says it's okay.
that she doesn't mind having a grandson
instead of wife of abraham. 
seal the record with the envelops &
the gravel driveway. with the broken scissors 
& the plastic tablespoons. she picks up
the names in her dress & pours them
into the coffin with her. she says she'll
take good care of them-- lays them out
like a blanket for her to nestle back down
into. i apologize for waking her up & she
puts a finger to my lips. always
always always. again i use the shovel 
to place eight feet of soil between us.
mud on my hands i climb into the kitchen
sink & pour the water over my head. 
i sit in the spaghetti strainer.
i pick myself up by the handle &
walk home. with a locked front
door. with a shovel. with a shovel 
with a shovel.