hope insurance

in the bad timeline (which we are in)
soon we will all be traveling salespeople. 
little briefcases full of bibles & wings
& sometimes insurance booklets.
no one is home anymore because we are
all traveling salespeople so we knock on 
empty houses that the rich people make us
pay just to look at. 
sign here. pray here. sleep here. sometimes
we pass each other. we are not allowed to trade
but we do anyway. a chocolate bar
for a photograph. a bed for a kiss. a gun
just to hear someone sing. weeks ago
the hope insurance salesman came through town 
& was preaching at the fountains.
he said, "who will take care of you
when don't you believe things can get better?"
he is always claiming he can insure hope. 
it doesn't do anything but he's not a con artist.
just a man with too many teeth. 
i know a few people who pay him. i think
they need to believe someone will catch them
when they inevitably cannot keep this shit up
anymore. they flock to him to worship.
i avoid hope these days. not because i do not think
it is useful but because i do not know how
to keep it up. maybe i am jealous of them.
envious that they still have something to insure.
i come upon a house without any windows.
there are salespeople swarming it. someone of them
have gone wild & decided to step inside. they lay
on day beds & let the wind blow through like a flute. 
soon the police will come. they are
traveling salespeople too. they peddle silence 
in exchange for guts. i get away. i plug my ears. 
open my suitcase recklessly 
& watch the birds fly into the tangerine dusk sky. 
i can always catch more but for tonight i don't
have to have anything. across the street another
salesperson hums, thinking she's alone or else 
she knows i am here & she wants to share her sound. 

trending

i feed the snake my feet. 
a riptide once took me to 
a mall without windows.
i bought a dog & had no where
to put her. 
there is a planet where nothing 
is urgent. everyone moves
like snails. dear god one day
i am going to be cancelled
& it'll be loud & glorious. 
i'll make a twitter account again
& log on to the evil receipt land.
an ad for fingers. an ad for teeth.
an ad for escape. two disasters
are kissing. now they've had a baby.
now we need to learn how to 
grow enough food to survive.
i just want to eat cereal
with my hands. get sugar beneath
my fingernails. in a dream i am
touring colleges again. i am seventeen
& still trying to figure out
how to be a girl. there is a celebrity 
who spontaneously combusted 
in the middle of a public park.
a maintenance worker is quoted saying,
"the ashes smelled sweet." if i pop up
in a conversation about witches 
try to defend me. lie for me
& tell them i am a good little goat farmer.
we name hurricanes because we know
they are someone's daughter.
the most trending audio right now
is the sound of a siren overlaid
with drumbeats. mostly, we have
stopped knowing what we're saying.
it is thursday so we talk about
the water spirits. i feed them chicken bones.
men demolish the old dixie cup factory. 
in the rubble there is a flip phone
with a picture of a ghost crouched inside. 

lime juice

i get a new terror early in the morning.
go into the kitchen & gather up all the knives
to bury them in the yard. we are getting 
new neighbors & i do not want them.
i threw a witch bottle into their yard 
when the realtor was walking around
with his office building face. i might regret it
i might not. i am so tired of being a body. 
do ghosts think "i am so tired of being a ghost?"
maybe the trees are content. i put my ear
to the trunk & i hear them complaining
about the bugs & the heat & the worms.
knife trees grow & we have an even bigger problem.
you ask me, "why don't you 
try to fight your compulsions?" i take you to stand
(at a safe distance) beside the knife trees. 
i explain, "they swell." once i started drinking
lime juice & i began with just a splash inside
my tea & then i was filling the whole glass
with lime juice. my mouth bloomed with ulcers
until i had to stop. a lime tree grew in 
my bathtub & labored to hide it
from everyone else in the apartment.
my mom keeps saying, "maybe the neighbors 
will be nice." she doesn't understand 
that i don't care if they're nice. i want 
everything to never move & stay the same.
i want the knives not to ripen & fall. i hoped
to get rid of them. use my teeth like god intended.
instead, they are always seeds. 
when the wind blows they sing like
windchimes. i go to take a shower & find
a fresh tree there. the limes, swollen & sour as ever. 

herpetology

the farther i get away from mammals the better.
i lay eggs with fists inside them. 
wet my skin in the moon's hairy light.
slip into the still water of a family picture.
in our cold-blooded world, there are no gods. there is no
paperwork. instead, we spend our time
crawling inside each other's mouths.
our nesting doll species. i count the scales 
on a lover's back. i am visited my mice who
tell me, "they want you to return." i pretend
i do not understand their language.
wriggle deeper into the damp dark of a rotten stump.
pluck strands of sunlight to keep myself alive.
we look forward to the winter. some of us die.
some of us freeze in the mud. dream in the thickest way
possible. i have seen colors there are no words
to hold. i meet an alligator version of ancestors. 
eat until i am a planet. when i wake up i do not feel
that mammalian dread that i used to. i would wake
& beg the dark for a few more hours. 
a cracked window. crust around my eyes.
the extra chamber of the heart, a little guest room
for all the grief. now, i am hairless. i am electric. i move 
with the water. it rains & all of us go to celebrate.
the snakes & the salamanders & the toads & the frogs. 
breathe deep the sound of rot & moss. 
i am never going back. i am never going back. 

pilot episode 

in the pilot episode of my life
all our voices sounded different.
there was a softer blue texture to the air
& no one refused to eat. 
i was a boy in the pilot. the test audiences 
didn't think i looked believable. gender,
whether we like it or not, is always about
the crowd. what they decide we can
& cannot do with our desires. in the pilot episode 
of my life i did not have parents. instead,
i was raised by my grandfather. 
the executives thought that was too confusing.
they dug a hole in the ground & buried him.
i still hear him talking. i go to the yard
on a full moon. unearth him & feed him
tangelos & ice cream. we lived in a house
at the edge of woods. it made the watchers 
bored & they wanted something to catch
on fire. whenever i see a plot cropping up,
i try to kill it like i would a snake. chopped into
writhing pieces. do not make me a story.
instead, i want to be a stained-glass window. 
the audience says, "there is no such thing
as choice." they buy me a straw hat & tell me
to pick apples until my hands turn blue. 
winter comes. my hands around the fruit. i decide
i am going to stop being a spectacle which is like
a bear at the zoo deciding the same. escape is best done
non-materially. a hole you carve
in your own lung to plunge into. 
in the pilot episode of my life, i was happy. 
or maybe i just believe that now that so much is gone. 
i laughed & i got reborn whenever i wanted.
the credits rolled & we ate them with a fork. 
my gender, glossy & gleaming. my grandfather
like a great kapok tree. the separate lives of 
our shadows as night fell. 

mothership

i get the galactic gender & burn a hole
through all the grief. once, in high school,
my boyfriend & me opened the fire pit 
in his yard & lit all of the calendars we could find.
each day turned into a tiny halo. he burned 
axe spray cans which popped like gun shots
& i burned a stuffed animal my ex had given me.
its fur smelled like fry oil & muddy dark.
up in the clouds the mothership saw us.
it scanned our bodies for usefulness & ultimately
decided to keep hula-hooping the earth. i saw it
just for a moment. a great eye blinking behind
the stars. iris as dark as eggplant skin. 
when everyone else was asleep i tried to catch up.
i walked out of town & to the parking lot
of the walmart where we would sometimes 
go to kiss. a man stood there in the street lamp glow
doing the same as me, looking up with hunger.
there are so many ways to be stolen 
in this country. maybe i dream of this one
because at least i would have some control. 
swallowed into the belly of the first gender. her hum
& her luminous face. i dream of a gender
that feeds me instead of one that takes. i do not
want to be sturdy or perennial. i want to get 
orchid in the moon breath night. i want to see
him again & ask him if what is burned is really gone.
the last time i saw him there was a bone fire 
at the back of his throat. i reached for it
but he pushed me away. i kept growing more eyes
than i could manage. the ship passes over sometimes,
still looking for someone i am not. 
once though i saw it pluck a cow from the dairy farm
behind my parents house. i was visiting for 
the  winter holidays. veiled in blue & emerald
she left the earth. i think she must be 
so happy up there. weightless in a room of singing.

garter snake

i clean out the hay after days of rain
& find a flash of ribbon beneath. 
black & dull yellow flicker. i do not see
his face. just a movement. an escape. 
he buries himself deeper in the stray straw.
all his nights of peace, interrupted. 
i want to put the hay back. tell him,
"this is yours now." how rare it is to 
find a place to curl & hum. inside, 
the upstairs is too hot to haunt anymore.
when i walk up there to my tiny desk
i turn into a cloud. i lean down to talk
to the snake even though i am not even sure
if he is still there. i ask, as politely as i can,
"do you have room for one more? 
i am skilled at making myself small." 
he does not answer. i look in the yard for scales.
consider what else it would take to become
reptilian. i do like to lay out in the sun afterall.
my eyes do sometimes grow wide 
& poisonous. i resist my urge
to search for him. i want to turn the shed over.
i want to run my hands through the tall grass
& find his smooth body there. learn to move
like him on my belly. close to the ground.
away from all the terrors. where no one
can find me. that is until they go out
after the rain, removing the old hay. 
what was i to the garter snake? hands? a voice?
a lemon-flavored bowl of sunlight? 
a great shifting? there are biblically accurate angels 
in the sky at night. i leave the front door
open a crack. i am hoping he'll come meet me
so i can apologize properly. maybe we can
lay down in the hay together. my scales shiny 
in the tired moon's glow. please come back.
please come back. 

hormone deficiency

i tell my doctor that i don't want him
recording any more information about me
being trans. i think of a running bible of 
my body. what kinds of notes has he taken
over the years? did he note
when i first grew a full beard? did he record
the times i came in a dress & the times 
i did not. i look up diy hormones.
one website has a list of rituals.
go out to the forest & perform one & feel
nothing has changed. what level of belief
do you need for a gender ritual to take?
my doctor says he will write that i have a
"hormone deficiency" which i hate because
i am so sick of being described in deficits.
a lack of sturdy joints. a lack of gender.
a lack of neurotypicality. a lack of lungs. a lack
of girlhood. do not describe me in terms of 
that which i have never had. instead,
let's talk about gifts. the fast growth 
of my fingernails. the hairs on the tops of my feet.
my hormones, wild & amber. i picture them
like dinner plates moving in the dark.
i fill them with bones. i walk. pick up 
my one vial of t. draw it up 
in its little rocket ship & live. 

warts

i reached for the amphibial too long. i blame
myself for all the ways i am not a smooth
beautiful animal. instead, i grow warts
on my hands & feet. belly white & toad-like.
i remember a doctor looking at me & saying,
"she still has time." the paper crinkled beneath me.
i wanted to jump out the window & be happily sick
in the star-soaked night. 
he froze away the warts. later, when i stood 
barefoot in the slime creek i decided 
i would do anything i could to grow them back.
i hunger for imperfection. to miss more buses 
& planes. to forget to text back & not apologize.
my reckless body. my reckless tongue.
we eat a pretzel in the rain. salt water on our fingers.
i pray to the patron saint of unruliness. 
they come to be in a vision holding a possum 
in one hand & a snake in the other. they wear
thrift store clothes that smell like basements.
i start bringing them offerings. a parking ticket.
a receipt to a secret shopping trip. 
they love them & tell me, "all you crave is waiting."
temptation is even better than giving in.
i bury the mailbox in the yard. start a fire &
throw in all my fingers like twigs. one at a time.
the truth is though that i haven't had warts
in over a decade. fallow flesh. cracked earth.
i beg them to come back. that home i had 
in my wilderness. give me the creek. the well. 
i go to the toads in the yard & they shun me.
i know i am one of them. or, at least, i am close enough. 
"help me break" i beg. they hide in the rotten
tree stumps. they do not even say hello. 
i go to the bus & do not miss it. rest my forehead
against the cool glass. outside, the toads sing. 

how to fold an envelope 

bite your tongue. eat every penny 
you can find. savor the metal taste of
blood & knees. if you have an address
take all the mail you can. pretend
every junk letter was written just for you. 
most instructions are meant to be left
unfollowed. try to do a secret handshake 
with someone you just met. 
use a sturdy surface to crease the edges.
i memorize addresses better than names.
streets like packer & walnut & raspberry.
once i laid down & became a street. 
a monopoly game ensued. trees & plastic
fences with dog sounds behind them.
before we broke up i wrote you five letters.
i put them in a dead mailbox. i did not know
the post office didn't check that one anymore.
i should have figured it out. it was green & rusty.
not blue like the rest of them. 
in its belly, the envelopes unfolded & turned
into moths. the letters swarmed. each word
an ant. nothing we say is held together
by much. just a few breaths & a hunger
to know each other. i wonder often
in what way you miss me. like comets miss
their mother rock or like a movie night
from a laptop screen? everyone's feet make
a unique sound when they thunk across
hardwood floor. i write so many letters
just to watch them bang their heads against
my porch lamp. i lick a promise shut. 
buy stamps in the hundreds. 
i do not use a single one.