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. 

phone burial 

i'm going off grid. i'm going
viking burial. my father used to tell 
a story of driving to arizona 
with his father in their jeep.
was it a jeep? i don't know. sometimes
when we retell stories, we just
turn them into what we need.
they would go into the desert to visit
a friend who lived outside of the world.
he built his own radio tower 
& he talked all night to ghosts. 
the ghosts would circle the house & enter
through all the cracks, filling the place
with smoke. i think i was there too
with my dad & my grandfather
& the smell of burning. i want less light bulbs.
i want less screens to tempt me with 
bites of ugly sugar. i take the phone outside.
i hate how much it has become
a limb. little flipper. little fist. cut it off.
i bury it in the worst place
in the yard. i don't want it near 
the quail bones or the cat. instead,
i want it to slip deeper & deeper until
the land has lungs. until it is spring
& onion grow like thick hair from 
beneath the sycamores. i cover the phone
with earth & wonder how i will
tell my friends i am on fire now & how i will
make the tiny thumbs of money that
keep our fridge stocked with green grapes. 
the phone is gone though & i am wild.
i am in the desert. the house is a waterfall.
all the ghosts are coming fresh & smelling
like dried rose petals. they leave foot prints
on the ceiling. a bird offers to be
my carrier. i whisper a secret in her ear
& tell her to go & spread rumors.
my grandfather's cane thumps against
the wall. a conversation plays as if 
there is a radio. there is no radio 
that i can find. in the morning the phone,
undead, has crawled from the soil. 
she rings & announces there is 
a software update. i contemplate
burying her again but i don't have
the arm strength & the ghost endurance.
i pick her up. use my body noise
to open her face. dream wildly of what happens
when we escape. my father told me,
"the stars were like fireflies there, glowing
loud enough to light the red earth." 

how to make a bow & arrow

i have been trying to grow out
my hair in the hopes i can use it
as a violin bow. there are objects
all around the house waiting 
to become weapons. water bottle 
& window & wooden spoon.
my partner is making a bow & arrow
from our bones. he says, "this is
how the ancestors did it." i let him
take what he needs. a tooth. a rib. 
i am trusting & untrusting. my instincts 
are bad. we chopped the land up
& now all i know how to do is
make mac & cheese from a box 
when someone is sad. the bow & arrow
is as big as us & then it is as big as the living room
& then it is bigger than the house.
the tip of the arrow, sharp. our canines.
i learn it is best not to ask questions
of myself or anyone else. he asks me,
"what do you think you want in life?"
i have no answer. all i know is i want 
to eat lychee berries some nights
& the i enjoy the thrum my brain gets
when i watch a bee's nest. 
i have less & less ambitions &
the ones i do have sound exhausting. 
why isn't the arrow softer? why do we have
to hunt? the deer come & i always
shoo them away. i say, "don't you know
that is a bow & arrow?" they are though
just like me. they explain, "we are we are
we are." i do not know what that means.
whatever. i am a poet so meaning can be
like grease. it gets all over you 
& then you are weeping. the bow is 
bigger still. my mouth, a flower pout.
supple & toothless. there is not enough
to make the bow we need. the net to catch
the stars as they try to escape. 
once we caught a fight with our bare hands.
my partner said, "i'm sorry" to the fish.
the fish said, "please." 

rotten eggs

we could not keep up
with all the planets the chickens
insisted on making. you have 
to eat the sun as soon as it arrives. 
this is what the cinnamon hens told me. 
i need summer like a glass
of holy water. cartons full.
blooms haloing each shell. 
it is winter now & the chickens
are slow to prophecy. i search the wood chips
& sometimes i find a frozen egg.
in summer though i would often
find one buried & rotten.
the putrid apocalypse. i could see
through the shell. myself in a tiny room
working on a spreadsheet of terrors. 
my eyes gone sick in the soup. 
what if each failure was a site of worship?
sentences punctuated by 
divine rotten eggs. unchickened & 
reeking of the future gone sick
from waiting. if they are really bad 
the eggs will just about pop. 
tension from a life still unsaid.
i crack open doors. i ooze onto greased pans.
the chickens do not stop though.
there is always another room. another 
mother. another sun coming 
into the sky like a body into a claw-foot tub. 
outside the city is eggs. the sky is eggs. 
rotting pockets of old wanting. 
i go out when the sky is still orange.
in the coop i find a chick still damp
from her egg. she is soft & terrified.
i take her inside to warm her. 
we talk for hours about the taste 
of our respective yolks. in the end 
the rot is not talking to us. it is asking 
for soil. it is running headless toward
the spirit world with our thumbs 
still twitching in its belly. 

neighbor poem

i do not know the names
of any of our neighbors. 
they have little terrarium lives.
i collect brief intimacies:
the woman picking up dog poop
on fridays & the teenage son
blasting music late at night. his match box car
up & out of the driveway. 
the argument between him &
his step father. 
i don't always practice what i preach.
i tell others, "get to know you neighbors."
when i lived in the city, i did know
my neighbors. we talked 
in the apartment hallway
& sometimes on the front steps.
we bitched about the landlord. 
once, i baked lackluster bread
& shared it with the old man
who listened to the radio too loud. 
i try to understand our neighbors.
no american flags which is a relief. no
political signs. which is
a relief. the corn field behind us
like the ruffles of a wild skirt. 
there is so much room to run. another neighbor
has two dogs that sometimes walk out 
in the middle of a winter night.
their shadows run without them.
i have a vision of us all in the field,
walking to the patch of trees. 
what would we talk about? 
i want to know more. about what it means
for us to draw & undraw our borders.
to un-own the land & cradle it. 
we know more of each other 
& less of each other than it seems. 
sometimes their packages are delivered
at my door. i always walk them over. 
consider ringing the doorbell or knocking
on the door. i don't. why don't i?
we become the patron saints 
of the distances. my favorite nights 
are the ones when all our lights are out.
it is like we are sharing a fistful
of dark. the dogs chase each other. 
the stars chew us down to the bone. 

ice maker 

a cold mouth is a growing one.
i cannot name water without 
thinking of terror. an empire
begins with gender-horror.
the land as a woman. a woman
as a vessel & an apple tree. chopping down
the mother & dragging her to watch
mountain-scarred with faces. as a child,
i loved to eat ice. we bought a cheap
plastic tray &, as the day grew long,
& i waited for my parents to come home,
i would suck & bite until my teeth
rung like bells. i was born 
in a furious heat. july with her hair down.
i always realized what was different
in other people's houses. the ice makers 
built into the doors of fridges. 
a light on in the middle of the purple dark.
skirt slit glow on the kitchen floor. 
sleepovers where, when others were in bed,
i would go to chew ice in the kitchen. 
groaning mechanism. bowls & bowls.
all kinds of feast. no one ever caught me. 
i learned to take only what will
no be missed. the ice maker, refilling
before anyone else was awake. water coming
& going. the rain on the roof. barefoot july
eating a hole through the wall. now, i still
keep a mouthful of the cold. bite down 
harder. years of practice. they think
i am scared of creatures that eat our flesh
but i eat bone. i devour the cold. 
make oceans from the ice. the empire
did not consider that we would still be here.
they say this weekend it will
snow again. i will be here, mouth open. 
i was made to melt ice. 

mirror store

there must be an easier version
of my teeth. less jagged & crammed
in the mouth of a whisperer. a less frantic scalp.
the mirror store is empty of anyone else
but me. all the vessels gulping down
legs & light. when i text you what i usually
mean to say is, "do you still want 
to know me?" i always think of distance
in paper. the paper ceiling & the paper mirror.
we used to live in a paper apartment.
how did we not catch fire? at the mirror store
i try on so many shapes. the clerk is invisible
& he suggests i try not taking up
so much space. i expand & contract 
like a fist underwater. there are mirrors made
for fish & mirrors made for lovers & mirrors made
to make you love yourself. my favorites
& the hazy ones. the ones that make me question,
"is that really me?" is that really you? time moves
in a way so that, if we saw each other
in a crowded room, we might not notice 
each other. my aunt is dying & i haven't visited.
she doesn't know who anyone is & i know
for certain i will confuse her. a gender 
in a coin toss. i have a dream that she will
mistake me for my father. i look like him
when he was young. i am only slightly shorter
than him. i do not go & inside take 
a really cheap mirror home. i don't know
what i want to do with it. a part of me believes
it is not a vessel but a portal. there are 
all kinds of folk magic traditions where
mirrors act like this. i do not know yet
what or who i would want to come through.
the calendar lays itself out like a pill organizer.
i call my aunt & no one picks up. 
i wrap the mirror in towels, afraid of
this fresh threshold. i delete a text to you. 
somewhere, the old bathroom we used to kiss in
is burning loud & fast. 

corn singing

sometimes i see the corn in the winter.
she is walking the fields, snow up
to her throat. around here, it is all
feed corn. as a girl i stole an ear 
on a walk through the snaking country roads.
it tasted like knuckles. warbling sun kernel.
the corn sings to me & i sing back.
roots like eyelashes. i am getting older 
which is to say i have less summers.
we used to have a family friend 
who would report, "i have maybe
ten summers left." i imagine my life
measured in corn. it sounds more plentiful.
hundreds & hundreds of ears.
myself, swaddled in a husk with
all my teeth kept safe from another mouth.
at my first job, i was a harvester. 
i picked apples & i pickled corn from stalks
& i plucked berries. they always asked me,
"where are we going?" i lied to them
or maybe i didn't. i said, "home."
winter makes me want to go home.
cold feet on the hard wood floor.
there is never enough money. never enough heat.
never enough corn. the spirits beg me
to take my face off & leave it in the field.
i explain that i am an unfortunate kind 
of crop. the sewing does not end. 
at least, not anymore. i find soil 
in my bed. i find soil in the sink. 
the corn walks away without me. 
in the cold night i hear her song though.
it is like beads in a tunnel of light. 

night mass

i have a recurring nightmare that i am a priest
& it is the big moment in mass
when the bread turns into body.
everyone can tell i'm faking it. 
my words turn into birds & i choke 
on the feathers. eggs smash on the floor.
the pews are empty until they're not.
until they're all my father. until they're all
smelling of roses. i still talk about my aunts
as if they're all alive. there is only
one left on this plane but the other two
are in the pews. the third, up in the rafters
or maybe in the stained glass itself.
she has said all her life, "i'm never going
to die" & there she is. prophecies are meant
to be left unfulfilled. there's the point. 
if they all opened then what would we 
be waiting for? he's not coming back. i'm as much
of a priest as anyone. i know how to listen
to the water. i know how to scoop the baptized bugs
from the foundation. holy little beetles. holy
little fat flies. in the nightmare i do not 
finish mass. i can't. i want to. the words
to the prayers have left me for dead. that is
the thing about repetition. it can unravel.
i used to say the our father in bed
at night to ward off the ghosts. of course
it didn't work. they played with the words
like rocking horses. i run from the altar
& i hide in the church bathroom
still wearing the priest robes. the heat 
never reached there & so the whole room 
would be cold. cold butt on cold toilet seat.
cold hands. cold water from the sink. 
i don't know why i keep the robe on.
it is the pink one for that one day in advent. 
a candle rolled sideways, still lit, underneath
the stall door. they want their body.
their bread. i don't know how to deliver it. 
that is when i wake up. there is always
a communion wafer dissolving 
on my tongue. i swallow it, guilty
though of what i am not sure. 

pill organizer 

i keep my days in their terrariums.
a frog on the ceiling. my gills come
& go. the zoom call has a brother
& we are being watched in new &
increasingly horrible ways. 
would you like to share your location
with this god? would you like to 
let the overlords know how often
you hold your breath? the medications
i take sound like drag names.
i open their room & they say,
"are you still deficient?" i do not get
into an argument with them about mad liberation.
instead, i take what i should. 
when i'm feeling really down i  believe
that life is just a series of entered 
& exited rooms. my script did not
come with stage directions. in my parent's house
they removed so many doors that
the ghosts did not know where to hide. 
i could feel the places on the wall
where hinges used to be. i have a pill organizer
that is a replica of that house.
the days mix together. sunday stretches
like a bouquet of legs. my brother tells me
he's off his meds. i suggest to him,
as a joke, that he gets a terrarium.
he doesn't understand the joke. 
we are frogs. glorious frogs. poisonous frogs. 
there is a new pill i saw a commercial for
that prevents the grief from collapsing time.
i make a note to avoid that. i need my grief.
what am i without my grief? 
i used to have two pet toads. i fed them
crickets from my hands. i pretended
i was feeding them time itself.
delicious. all my pills become crickets.
they sing. i take them because i am 
trying to stay alive. sometimes though i imagine
what it might be like to get midnight 
all of a sudden. tell the bugs to scurry away.
hide where no mouth can find them.
when i am my most untethered, i see bugs.
mostly centipedes & ants. they tell jokes
i do not understand. they say, "you should
get a brother." i remind them, "i have one."
he comes over & both of us want to cry but don't. 
i take the bedroom. turn it upside down.
empty it & all the dirt into my mouth.