shark teeth 

my father has shark teeth
& i'm the only one who knows it.
he sheds them in the bathroom
& i keep a jar of them with the rest
of the fossils. the trilobites & nautilus.
all the river spirits who have long
taken to poetry. once in the river
we found a fern fossil. the prints 
of ancient hands. i tried to resurrect 
the humidity. summer used to be less hot
or else my body was more ready 
for history to spin us. i open my mouth
to find shark teeth too. they look
just like my fathers. if we stop swimming
we die like sharks do. i have seen my father
walking the house in the night. 
a shark waits in the field, star-bathed 
& hungry. his teeth turn into seeds
to grow the world. i lose so many bones.
i begin to wonder if my hunger
is changing or if i'm becoming my father
or if both of us are just becoming
more & more cartilaginous. more prehistoric.
a wave gobbles up the chimney. 
ferns grow where windows should be. 
i saw my father eat a hole through the wall.
he saw me do the same. in some ways
we are mirrors & in other ways
a taxonomy. one of us will have
to grow legs. it is not going to be him.
the shark knocks on the windows at night
with his snout. i open them just a crack
to feed him hunks of meat. tuna & 
salmon. dried squid & chicken dumplings.
it is never enough. i am not sure if he is
my father or if my father is just
the bathroom man with a shadow 
tall enough to cleave the world. 

secondhand moon

sometimes we take the road gill-less
& it just involves a lot of breath-holding.
i always wanted to be a fish but i never quite got there. 
my dad's old jeep used to be able
to drive through rivers. i miss the goodwill
off main street & how i used to be able
to see all my old dresses there waiting 
for lackluster rebirth. once, the moon drowned 
in the sky. i saw it. i tried to lift it out
with no luck. i was panicked. sometimes i am
the only one who realizes a tragedy is unfolding.
i don't waste time alerting the masses.
the news stations are just hubs of propaganda
(& not the good kind). we have to take language
into our own hands. 
i went to the thrift store & i found a replacement.
the moon is duller than before but
it gets the job done. the neighbors are jumping
their car & it sings like a fire alarm. 
i grew up next to a fire station. the trucks passed
at all hours of the night. sometimes they were
the size of toys & the fires ate them like
hoagies. i got used to the different ways
destruction can take place. i sort them
into three categories: capitalism, wild capitalism,
& on occasion, bad luck. i have good luck
bad luck. like, when i slip on the ice
i never die. like, when there is a rough bullet
it is never magic, only punctures a party balloon.
everyone i know is turning thirty. i guess i thought
so much more would have happened. 
i have never left the country. i have never made
another human out of clay & brought him to life.
i guess i have thrifted the moon. i dust it off.
she asks me on cloudy nights, "do you think 
they can tell it's not supposed to be me."
i explain to her that no one is ever paying attention.
that gives her comfort & me grief. 
i see one of my old dresses knocking on windows
as it sulks up & down the street. i try to chase her
but she just gets all car kill & i don't have
any napkins. i go home without her. 

howling field 

i used to think we have coyotes but
it is the field itself howling 
in the middle of the dark.
we take a walk because there is 
nothing else to spend the day on.
my body is a colander. i catch a few noodles
but never enough. there is rice
in the fridge & nothing worth devouring.
i love a cancelled plan. i love a shut-down mirror.
the trees start whimpering & i try 
to soothe them. you never like it with
i go embrace them. you say,
"people will see you." the truth is that
i am mostly a vampire. people do not see me.
i know that's not the mythology
but sometimes we need to reinvent the
folklore to suite our metaphors. i have
fed the field shoes. i have brought her
plates of bells. in the old apartment 
i never felt alive. sometimes we went
to target just to smell candles. 
we never bought any. i know we 
don't have enough money. when i was born
my father sold his guitars one by one.
i like to believe they are in the field 
waiting to come home. i am not 
the most materialistic but i am also
not the least. at my saddest i bought toys
i never had as a kid. i didn't just
stare at them, i played with them. it did
actually make me happy but then again,
we shouldn't trust our own memories.
instead we should check the walmart footage. 
we should see exactly what we stole & how.
i am not as good a thief as i would like
my friends to believe. the field is really
going on tonight. i walk out there & it only
gets louder. the wound is often so big
that the land is left holding it. fire bomb.
broken winder. in the field there is an old
bottle dump. shards of tongues in the gritty dirt. 
i hear them talking underneath the howls.
they say, "put us back together."
the desire to return to a place that 
does not exist is different depending on
if the place really existed or not. 
one is yearning, the other, grief. 

ride home 

no one has a ride home or a ride at all
& so we set up camp beneath
the chin of the ragged field.
my father is turning ten years old again
& he's eating caterpillars from
the sidewalk. i come to join him.
it try to hide the fact that i didn't
get him a present. no one ever knows
what to get their father. 
we don't have a dust pan anymore
& so i use my hands to sort the dirt
from the gold. there is no gold.
a flock of crows comes to visit 
& says, "we don't recognize you."
we admit that we don't recognize us either.
living through times like these feels like
putting your face in the washing machine
over & over until it is threadbare.
i taste soap on our dishes sometimes 
but it really doesn't bother me. i have
stuff to clean inside too. in the sacristy 
at the old church i am told all the water
goes into the earth. witchcraft is 
the only truth at the end of the day.
the crows adopt a few of us & the rest of us
well we don't get to go home. home changes
until it is no longer a place you can arrive.
when people ask "where are you from?"
i could give you lists. i lived here & there.
my people rooted & fled & followed 
blood & fell & managed to forget almost
everything except for the names of streets. 
when we get a ride i think i want to 
reach a gas station. buy some ice cream
& let the sun turn me into syrup. 
i'm going to escape being holy & go
right onward to being a disco ball.
beneath all this meat is light. i am sure 
of it. the ghost between the ghosts. 
crows bring doorbells. 
we spend all night ringing.

wild zillow 

i hope to one day have a stranger house. 
i don't have enough secrets. in this world, i should
really be stocking up. 
i love those videos of zillow listings where
you can't tell if the house was a cult
or a sex thing or both. i see one with stop lights
& one with sea creatures mounted on 
the ceiling. we all have desires 
to make the world what we want.
i sometimes do zillow exploring 
all by myself. i open doors & closets. i say,
"that's not bad for three bedrooms"
as if we could afford any of it.
once, i was opening doors & i saw
my childhood bedroom just as it used to be.
the rainforest. a working water fountain &
siren sounds of tree frogs laughing
beneath my bed. you think i'm poetry-ing
but i'm not. my father, if left to his own devices,
would be a zillow gone wild home-owner.
i think we should install more doors to nowhere.
more windows full of bricks.
i am sick of functionality. i want 
the nest to be as absurd as it is to be
alive right now while people are being stolen
from their ice cream places. from their schools.
without hands & with them. i have 
started to encourage people to
stop staying "they can't" & start imagining
what would happen if they did. 
this exercise goes both ways. we could make
a bunk full of windows to heaven. we could
buy a house in the middle of nowhere
& cover ever surface with mirrors or 
shag carpet or photographs of a dead lover.
when mary oliver beauitfully said,
that "one wild precious life" thing i don't think 
she meant what i mean. i mean i need 
a stuffed animal attic. i need a zebra print 
dining room where no one can eat but us. 
i mean a tv room where the only door 
is a hole you cut with a box knife 
every time you have to come or go. 

new neighbors 

i was a binocular child.
i wanted to see the seam where
the sky met the earth. i take things
apart to love them. stich by stich.
once, i gutted my favorite stuffed animal. 
i filled her with hair & she came alive.
the new neighbors have so many cars
i am convinced they are rich.
either that or they are in trouble.
i don't know how much looking
is too much. my partner tells me
that i have a problem with staring
but i think i am just trying to take
an apple-flesh bite out of the world.
i don't understand the neighbors. 
they come & go like pigeons. 
i have never heard them playing music
or laughing. this is where i miss the city
where someone always had a folding table
out on a porch or a cigar full 
of cicada wings. we all crawl into the sky.
we all crawl down from the sky.
i get their mail by accident sometimes.
it's only bills or junk mail. i know that
one of their windows has string lights 
in it & i wonder what a portrait
that makes of our yard. we live on a weird street
where no one tries to know each other.
if the neighbors are watching me
like i watch them they might witness
me shapeshift one night when 
the air is right. i wonder how they would
make sense of my deer body & my antlers.
i hope that maybe they might join me.
if we cannot be human together than maybe
we could be animals. it is so strange 
how distance means something different 
to each person you meet. these bodies come
& go & come & go. smoke outside the front door
by the porch light even when the nights
are this cold. 

seed eating 

in the garden i hover palace-like
without any arms. you tell me i am
the snake but there are no apples
& no gods to be seen. i love snakes.
i think they know what's going on
& so they tie themselves into knots
all winter. i do not know what i want
& so i swallow someone who does. 
when i lived in the city i saw winters
as tabs to dissolve on the tongue.
feel better feel magical. the goats have
built a ladder to heaven. there is 
a party tonight that i am not invited to
& that's okay (i tell myself). i am hoping
that someone looks around & notices
i am missing. the cold warning does not
warn me. i buy firewood from 
a gap in the universe. the coyote brought us
fire or was it the raven or was it the spider.
i love the part of the story where
the animal look at us & think,
"they are so sad & cold." i wish we didn't
think of ourselves as superior. i mean 
if you really think about it, the birds
have it made. they fly & they love
& then they become pillars of salt. 
the bible is not that well written. if i redid it
i would probably choose to start with 
the cross & tell it backwards. then it becomes
the story of a god receding into darkness.
in my dream last night i never passed
fifth grade. i am a child & an adult 
at the same time. everyone things i am in
the wrong place. i don't have my schedule.
i go to everyone & they drop seeds 
into my hands. they say, "eat." i realize
then that i am dirt. a lovely plot.
soon to be sunflower or gourd. i open
my mouth for the bloom. pick it for you.
put it in your hair & lay down. 
water me. water me & wait. 

sweet mirror

i have been feeding my mirror
turkish delight. i have been
feeding my mirror honey.
i have been plucking my eyebrows
& day-dreaming about a park i used 
to walk to in the old times when 
the mirror was just a way to feast.
i haven't worn makeup earnestly 
in years but sometimes before a shower
my partner will put lipstick on me.
i prefer the strange colors. the mirror
eats us & leaves nothing but bones.
when i was younger i used to cut mirrors
into cootie catchers. who loves me?
who wants to feed me? i could eat
a whole bag of grocery store bagels
in one sitting. the raisin & cinnamon kind.
i like my sad music loud & my horrors
in mason jars. just a sniff. one big huge
icicle is dangling from the roof.
i joke with my brother "what if it fell
& cut us in half?" i cannot drive so he takes me
to a little fun house where 
all the mirrors are sour or bitter. 
i turn into a worm. no one loves me.
he turns into a girl & i tell him,
"isn't that easier?" it is true what 
the conservatives say. transness is contagious.
who wouldn't want to braid their own body
in this dark & horrible place? i buy juju bees
& think of my dad's blue jeep (long dead).
i miss riding with the roof down. i miss
the rear-view mirror & how toothless,
it still saw me. my round face.
my crooked heart. freckles like hoof-prints 
of deer who wandered across my face
while i was hairless in the meadows. 
i burry the one mirror & it always
crawls back out. full of me. full of us.
candy spearmint leaves. a chocolate arch. 

fossilized 

when two dinosaurs are fossilized together
i am convinced they were gay for each other.
what other kind of love endures the absence 
of bones? i used to think that fossils were bones.
i didn't understand why they couldn't 
just clone them already. yes, i watched
jurassic park. no, i did not learn anything.
i am an unnatural natural person. edit my genes.
make me an iguanodon. we could guard
our eggs from the apocalypse. i hope if
we become fossils that when they find us 
there is some future scientist who discovers
that we were lovers. maybe he'll see my broken
& healed rib. maybe he'll see your crooked 
toe bones. being a poet is not about creating
it is about surfacing. i am a language paleontologist. 
i take my brush to the word, "tomorrow"
& i remove dust until it becomes, "morrow" &
then "furrow" & then ends up as "yesterday." 
we walk backwards towards an answer that 
is not there. at least i love you though. at least
we are the best kind of lizards for this lifetime. 
at least sometimes we get to eat red bean cakes 
while watching tv. when the future bone diggers
stumble upon us we might be monsters to them.
they might re-invent the dragon. they might 
see us, for the first time, as we truly were.
magnificent specimens. our bones that made broth
of the earth, grew the pines & the apple trees. 
i want to be found facing each other. there are
dinosaurs we have like that. mouths open.
mid-shout. time peddling its little bicycle 
towards honey dark. tails full of vertebrae.
their memories like skipped stones in the dirt. 

dog toy

i am the idea of a limb.
you can chew on me 
until you're bored. you can 
give me a little hat. tear the clouds
out of my chest. make a sky.
see an animal in it. i am going 
full insanity. there are symbols everywhere.
i say "crazy" too much. i don't know
if it is okay because i've been in 
a mental hospital (i kind of feel 
like it is). when i say "crazy" i mean
"wow even that is flammable."
i called my friend in the middle 
of the night & ask him to drive me
to the ocean. he told me i needed
"professional" help. please don't help me.
i want to run headless. i want to
go to the ocean & wash myself. 
yesterday someone pointed at my hands
& asked, "are you a witch?" i said,
"well, yes." i didn't mean to be. 
i just woke up one day with a desire 
to bathe in milk. as a girl scout
i never did any of the hard badges.
instead, i took a health food class
& spent most of my time running
in the graveyard & looking for fun
headstones. i started to dream of 
my own badges. ones for necromancy
& one for picking wild onions.
i will tell you a secret. if you by a dog toy 
& leave it out on a full moon
you will turn into a werewolf. that is
how it starts. i'm too chicken to do it.
instead, i sulk & wait for a vampire 
to decide to make me one of their hoard.
i would be good at that. becoming 
the hunger. for now i pretend to be a dog
only when i am alone. my owner
is an old man. gentle who keeps
a jar of treats on the top
of the fridge.