sugar daddy 

i was trying really hard
to snag one that last year of college.
i lived alone & out the window
was always another boy.
i was doing all i could to stay
inside someone's mouth. rain & car windows.
the late spring heat, like a wet tongue across
my back. i used a few websites.
i can't remember how i pitched myself.
something like, "i'll be your
terrarium honey." none of them bit.
it is, for most of us, never enough
to just offer yourself. i didn't think
it would be easy. i imagined old men
& their pocketbook eyes. on grindr sometimes
guys in the 60s would hit me up & offer to host.
inside this one's house i told him i was
going to the bathroom when really
i had been starving. i took the last pear
from the fruit bowl & ate it wild,
licking the juice from my wrist. i learned to
always save the best parts for myself. 
that nectar is, for us, something to take.
i got one message months after i had
given up on becoming a baby. the man was
maybe  a spam bot or maybe a guy 
really interested. he said, "let me fly you out
to my teeth." he sent pictures of a house
with a sick green yard & a room he wanted
to keep me in. i actually got in the car to head
towards the airport but i ended up
in the parking lot of a target trying
to call my sibling. they didn't pick up.
i bought as much sugar as i could.
brown sugar & gummy sharks & agave.
i figured if i could get myself sweet enough i 
might stop looking for someone.
my teeth rung in the car like bells. 
i wept. summer was ruthless. hot asphalt 
& a broken ceiling. i can't remember
how i got home but the door was open.
the room was full of birds or was it men?
i wished it was just me. they watched my every move.
but they helped me eat the sugar so i
cannot be too mad about them coming uninvited. 
you can get so lonely you welcome 
an intruder. you can squeeze your gender
until all it wants is caramel. if i am being honest
there aren't any men who 
could have fed me enough.

when i was a boy scout

when i was a boy scout i wasn't 
a boy scout. instead, i was a girl
without a girlness in the middle of the woods.
i am an expert in being unfit
for the job. of not checking any 
of the boxes. my gender, like a badge
i carried in my hand instead of wearing. 
my uniform, whatever the closet 
refused to give me. i could name all the kinds 
of snakes in pennsylvania. water snake
& ribbon snake & the endangered massasauga.
we would take hikes, me & the boys
& their father's holding their leashes. 
i was a free-range kind of animal. ate from
anyone's hand. i couldn't earn badges 
because i was a not-boy. the boys 
moved on without me. i talked to
the snakes. i asked them, "if you had to grow up
what would you do with your heart?"
the snakes always responded by blending in
with the brush. i joined them. tried to shed
any of the gender stuck to me. only scales
& cool breath. the sun spilled through
the tree branches. my father was off elsewhere
standing in the water looking to catch
a bullfrog big enough to ride home.
i got to know one boy who told me,
"i don't understand why you can't just
blend in better." i told him i was trying.
that it wasn't easy. he said he knew. that he 
did not know the names of any snakes 
other than the copperhead which he had
never seen. i asked if he wanted to see one
& he said no so i went alone to visit 
my venomous brother. the snake said,
"do not try to be like them. get on your belly.
love the world." i did as i was told.
all the boy scouts went home from
the camping trip except for me. my father had
to buy a terrarium & catch me before
he took us back home. on the ride 
i felt triumphant. he sighed. opened his mouth
& closed it. what was he going to say?
i did not ask & now it is too late. my boyness
was maybe right that. something gifted?
no something layered. he fed me rats until
i gave in. sat at the table again 
'with a crooked-tooth fork.

trespassing in your boarded-up window haunting

if i don't believe in private property
do i have to let the ghosts in? there are so many lately.
i leave out a bowl of milk for them
on the stoop. when you weren't home for 
a week i wanted to do all the risky things
you won't let me do. climb over the fence.
visit the house in the corn fields with
its eye gouged out. slip past the seven
"no trespassing" signs into all those little portals.
around here, we leave a lot to rot. 
houses & corn corners & deer on the side
of the road. each of them, a haunted house.
ceiling ribs & my ghost-searching camera.
i tried to be good. sit on the sofa
& listen to crumbs. i am called to the bone 
places. find myself inside music boxes.
the ghosts, with their own feasts 
on a milky night. i sometimes open a door
in my own house & find the decapitated place.
worms & birds. i go inside. my house
is your house. your house is my skull.
i stopped telling people about my hallucinations
because it is easy to just say, "i am busy."
i am so busy if you know what i mean
though sometimes the mildew is real. sometimes
the mold is a pedestrian. when you come home
i will be disgraceful i am sorry. i am sitting
in your foyer playing with the not-dog.
i wasn't supposed to be in your house.
they want to build a money place here.
weeds grow. i name them like children. play
in their long hair. come on let's be ghosts
& own everything & nothing. let's shuck
your suitcases like clams. feed the coyotes
& the foxes. open all the doors & windows.
let all the ghosts in.  

amber

through his beer bottles
everyone is amber. i use them 
like binoculars standing beneath
the ghost tree. my father cuts off his limbs
& i watch them grow back like
a harvestman. i know the sound
of the bottles kissing in a plastic tub.
we carry them out to the curb 
so that they can be melted down 
& used to make more dusk & more fathers.
on our street you can tell a lot about the fathers
by their recycling buckets. cans & green bottles
& cans & wine bottles. the man who rides 
a scooter takes his cans somewhere
to make a few extra dollars. when it rains 
i steal a few bottles. undress them 
like dolls. their glass so smooth 
in the grey overcast light. i crouch down.
fit myself inside. wait for a father
to swallow me whole. every father 
is zeus or whoever it was in that myth who ate
his kids. in the heat the bottles smell
like warm bread. in the dark, i find dinosaurs
waiting, caged in the bottles. i let them out
& show them where we buried the chicken &
where the mosquitoes swarm this time
of year. they ask if my father
is home. i lie to them & tell them no one is home.
"it's only me." the dinosaurs tell me,
"then you are your father." i put on my
binoculars & there he is with his little t-rex arms.
& his mouth askew. the sun turns into
a spider. i remember it is unkind to smash them
& so i just watch it scurry slowly away
until it is dark & all the bottles look black
even in the porch light.  

the cows come home

the cows come home 
& we are not ready. you push a chair 
against the front door & nail the windows shut.
i tell you i want it to happen. for everything
to happen. for the cows to come
& fill the house. push the walls apart
like flesh in too-tight pants. 
i am so sick of living without cows.
so tired of the internet talking every day
about fires & dictators. i crave a cow in the bath
& a cow in the living room & a cow
chewing all my old binders of taxes.
records of what the government has 
used to feed it war police face. the cows
hate the government. the cows 
want to eat until they are round & wild.
for there to be no fences & no cars.
i share their hunger but not yet their urgency.
how do you make room for your
cow self when the walls are thin & the grass
is dry & thunderless? you tell me we can
survive. that we can grow tomatoes in the window 
from one of your eyelashes. that there
are flowers that taste like meat. i do not 
hold strong. god i want the comes to come home.
i want them to come home so bad. 
i remove the chair from the door 
to your protestations. i throw the windows
open wide & wait but they do not come.
the cows, are not home yet. they are
somewhere else. standing outside
a war machine. standing on the moon
as a new colony considers fresh forms 
of subjugation. the cows are angry at me
& us. they said, "all of this flesh &
still you cannot sleep." i cannot blame them.
my people too have been ground 
into mouthfuls & corralled into smaller
& smaller worlds. i hang bells from the branches
of every tree i can find so that when they come
i will hear them & be ready. 

stair climber machine

i used to pry the dark wide.
cut headlight holes in the morning.
a handful of grapes
& the mineola neon planet fitness. 
my car had no lungs & neither did 
the sky. parking lot sea gulls cast lots
for our engines. there were all kinds of hunger
in that place. purple purple purple. 
most people train & get stronger.
instead, i witnessed my body falling apart.
started off with the treadmills & moved 
to the elliptical. my knees like jam jar lids.
broken glass in between toes. 
i break easy which is to say i seldom 
have skin & sometimes have bones.
i have always been taught a body
is not something to be trusted & so
the machines hummed. pressed me
beneath their tongues. there were two
stair climbers at the end of the line. 
how strange a device built
to dangle heaven at a distance.
reaching & reaching. then too, the roads
of the treadmills, ghost town beneath
our feet. some of the fancy new machines
even showed a fake little town on the screen
you could pretend to run through.
once i got angry at my ankles. everything hurt.
i wanted a body that would take 
all my anger. instead, i have one
that buckles. turns into a bedsheet. 
tears open. i would not give in though.
i came & went right to the stair climber.
decided i was going to reach the top
of some unknown building. look out
at a glass circus & dance. i did not make it long
before my body told me,
"you are not climbing at all."
spent the next half hour in a massage chair
in the dark room no one ever used at the gym.
the fake leather was slick from 
other people's sweat or maybe cleaning fluid
or maybe both. i closed my eyes.
tried to hide my limp as i left. in the car
i watched the orange sun rise like 
a communion wafer leaving a mouth. 
my body too, not surrounding me
but deep within me, fucked knees & all. 

body count

i used to have a jar for boys.
the opposite of a gender is 
a mouth. what comes in must 
become a beet leaf. we get out
a slice of paper & write out
all the people we've shared
a window with. you tell me i'm
a slut which i do not think
is a title i have earned. i could have
drive farther. in the mountain once
i ghosted a boy who was really desperate.
he was begging not for me but for
a gender which is to say he was lonely
in the way that hollows you out.
i have taken a spoon to my guts 
just so i can have a gourd night.
a man is sadly sometimes
exactly what you need. 
the government has never counted
how many people it eats. maybe
the opposite of a mouth is a government.
i do not want the government's 
body count. i want there to be
no government or at least for it to 
have never killed anyone. i find numbers
where there shouldn't be. in the canal
& in the dirt behind a boarding school & 
sometimes headlights. a police car 
counts down from ten. at one either
we run or we surrender. i am sorry that
my gut impulse is surrender. 
or is it to gender or is there a difference?
i stopped counting a long time ago.
now, i count birds who i know. now,
i count pots i could fill with water
in case of a terrible storm. 
you open my mouth & crawl inside.
i will call you jonah if you agree i can
be the whale. we are hiding from the government.
my gender is still soft despite it all.
they can see us on the radar. genders,
like ghosts. thin, veil-like & then gone. 

tadpoles in the radio

every comma is just a tadpole 
waiting for legs. all the railroads
have turned into snakes. i ignore 
a calendar reminder on my phone
& instead call my aunt who is dead.
she used to sing me happy birthday 
with her sister over the phone.
she still does only i don't show
anyone else or i think they would 
get too worried. the tadpoles would 
keep me company in the bath
when i didn't have a spoon. they pestered
me for my legs. i said, "they are not
as great as they seem." i met a boy inside
a crystal ball. we talked about
running away to the other side
of the moon where darkness makes
anyone soft. i loved his dog.
i loved his parking lot in winter.
i even loved his bathroom. there were
not enough tadpoles. i once had a frog 
who escaped. he got a job as a mailman
& brings me real estate people's goofy flyers now.
we all could use a hole in the sky. we all
could use another pair of legs i guess.
instead, i consider what it would
have been like if i handed them over.
get me round & in the pipes. all my 
eyelashes like tadpoles. we finally get
to the creek & it's dried up. 
we are in desperate need of rain.
i bend over the rocks & try weeping
as much as i can. i don't even get enough
to wet all the mud. flies come. 
i chase them away. i hate punctuation. 
i would prefer to just keep talking
& let the reader pluck out what
they want to hear. call me a word search
or worse, a crossword. i hand out
guppy nets. open my mouth wide.
call my father until he remembers he's 
a father. until the transformation begins.
legs & lungs. the gills, gone like pleats
in a skirt. the trains run all night even though
the tracks are made of snakes. 

pipe tree

there are flowers in cages at the zoo.
i ask "why?" too often. because they bite.
i bite. am i in a zoo still? i hear a bell.
there are pipe trees growing where
i wanted a tomato bush. my father is
singing in his sleep. he is sleeping
in a battery. a professor told me once
my poems sound good but are not about anything.
i wanted to tell him, "does this country
not do to you what it does to me?"
i walk outside & accept the blender. 
the beautiful beautiful & the neighbor 
who kisses his shotgun. who breaks flag code.
i was a terrible girl scout. nothing to do 
with the gender & more to do with
my inability to complete an instruction.
i call for help. the help kills my dog. the help
burns down my mailbox & says,
"you no longer quality." i stop myself
before i ask, "for what?" there must have been
some program that could have saved me once.
i break the flower out of the zoo. they eat
all the houses on my street. violence starts
to feel like "well it was a matter of time."
i am driving worse with age. the road like
a jump rope. i want friends to make me
some popcorn & feed it to me once piece 
at a time. i miss my hometown. not what it is now
but what it was when i grew up there.
my partner says, "everything changes"
which is both very true & very not true.
the cemetery spreads. a deer stands on the roof
& will not explain to me how or why she is there.
it is best not to ask questions of the divine.
instead, write them poems. i throw 
as many paper airplanes as i came, hoping
my sibling will hear me & drive to where i am.
fold them for me. point them directly
so that they land in the open mouth of the sun. 

strangling house

there was a house in the mountain
with long hairy legs. i slept in there
when i didn't want to breathe.
sometimes you were on the ceiling
& sometimes my gender was a wormy apple.
i tried cheap witchcraft. crystals &
a lady in the attic. summoned demons
who looked at their watch like,
"when can i go home?" the house would
tighten. once huge, then smaller & smaller.
i brought you there & as the place shrunk
you asked me, "why do you want me?"
i used to want dolls so bad. a place to grieve 
a poppet. this is not just a once house problem
i seem to make structures collapse in.
in my parent's house sometimes i lay
like a matchstick, everyone a second
from lighting each other. i do not know
what a lung is for if not for holding breath.
on the television a man is trying to set
a new world record for not breathing.
the live stream is coming from my house.
i open the spare room & there he is, lips shut
& eyes in an ash tray. driving with my grandmother,
she lit her cigarettes with the lighter
in the car. a little red halo pressed into 
the tip. smoke curling its cat tail 
on the car ceiling. she drove me to 
the house with long legs. she said,
"don't tell your mother anything." i think it was her
to taught me to fit in small places. i do not 
want to crush my bones anymore.
i do not want to feel the house running 
away from wolves. instead i want to lay
on the floor in the bedroom & have to float above me
until your hair grows long enough 
to touch me. then, i will pull you down, my beautiful
little balloon. i'll hold you tight. all the witches
will swallow their crystals. feel the guts shine
in the moon's wonky flashlight. 
i knock on all the neighbors doors tonight.
run away before they can answer. someone 
must have a house that gets bigger instead
of closing in on them.