spearmint 

can you learn to live on a sound?
i fill my ears with mint until 
i can taste it. i don't know how anyone
has been getting up & cutting a mouth
in the leather. all my methods for survival
have rotted from the throat. as a little girl,
i would go & ring a bell in the yard
for the plants. my favorite was always
the spearmint bush. i appreciate how 
they grew without punctuation.
legs stretched out along the side 
of the house. head thrown back. i feel
like the mint follows me wherever i go.
even at the roach apartment on union street
there was a spearmint bush who grew,
reaching an arm out of the chain link fence
of the dead house next door. i loved to place
just one hand in my mouth. chew until
i was sweet & bright. the world feels 
as loud as it's ever been. i burry my nose
then my teeth. i kiss the earth
where i leave them. it is best not to spend
too long mourning all the pieces of you
that decide to never return. i feel like my girlhood
is a fantom limb. a dangling urgency.
the spearmint does not hum. it does not
beat a bruise. it does not whisper.
instead, it has a call like a neon angel.
it says, "there is sugar in every star
& stars in every breath." that is kind of 
too woo woo for me but i find some comfort.
i don't take the mint out. instead i add more 
& more. i ask myself, "how much 
spearmint does it take until i am just
as wild & ardent?" the tiny white flowers
bloom behind my ears. i eat them. 
have a wedding. make a shrine to my smallness.
to the world's smallness. the shrine is the bush. 
i want to know, "will this be enough?" 

butter butter

give me the velvet. i want the butter language 
& the ladle of fins. a ball pit full of salmon scales.
i dye the moon red with strangled beets. 
all day everyone is saying, "how are you?"
as if the forest isn't burning & the birds
aren't trying to get retail jobs. it's too expensive
to be an angel. instead, we cut off the tips
of our fingers & join the fountains in weeping.
i learn alchemy from a library book
with the only goal of turning my blood to milk.
i want to be able to feed a little goat
even if i am absolutely gone. there is the question
of where to keep the butter so that no one
will come & put their thumbs in it.
my first husband insisted on keeping it
in a shoe in the middle of the table. he cut off my head
just to watch it grow back. we are much more 
& much less resilient than it seems.
if i had endless butter, or so i tell myself,
maybe i wouldn't have tried to live in his teeth.
a bunk bed that always turns into a horse.
i could never figure out how to ride it.
instead, we ate apples & watched the moon rot. 
i don't want the almost butter or the spray butter
or even the butter from that haphazard love.
give me the butter butter. the good stuff 
that none of us has had before. i want to spread
a blanket. i want the sun to come & melt us
into sweetness. invite the last deer.
invite the final hawk. we will come & decide
what butter will be now. i am terrified.
here is my throat. tell me what it tastes like to you. 

secret renaissance fair in my basement

i get the turkey leg. i eat with my fingers.
fat & sinew. wipe grease from my mouth.
no one has to know how happy i am.
the past is an ice cream desert. cactus grow
like gods. i never wanted to share.
my own private actors. my own private history.
someone once asked me "what time period
do you wish you lived in?" i didn't have 
an answer other than, "the impossible one."
someday will people escape into our terror?
a man kneels & makes roses our of gold. 
they smell faintly of dead grandmothers.
i am told there will be a joust before sunset.
we will gather & pretend no one is turned
into a shish kabob. the crowds & the horses.
i am running. i am running inside my house.
the lock on the door turns into a mouth.
smile big for the photograph. you tell me,
"i don't now why you do this" & it is so late
that i don't even remember what i have
done wrong. i knew i shouldn't have
lived this long. i knew i shouldn't
have called for help. the actors take off
their faces & turn back into mice. 
i plead with them, "just a few more years."
we could build a life here.
we could board up the basement
& let the house turn into birds above us.
all we need is this new history.
a man recites shakespeare to a hole
in the stone wall. i want so badly to fit inside.
the dragon, i am told, has been slayed. 
still though, i am afraid. i am so afraid. 

 

ants on a french fry in the park 

i too have carried my weight in sugar.
lifted teeth back to a wreckage. it is the hottest day
of the year & my brain is a bowl of wood. 
crouching down i watch as the ants work
as one organism. the little leash
marching away. the french fry,
undulating with their mouths. i do not know
if i crave to be the colony or their feast.
i imagine being taken apart so methodically.
my fried golden potato flesh in the arms
of the flock. o to be fodder for the queen 
deep within the soil. would it feel like
an exhale? lately, i have found it harder
& harder to breathe. i remember reading somewhere
that ants are attracted to breath, or was that
bed bugs? a kingdom is always a place of sacrifice. 
when i lived in the city i thought of myself
first & foremost as an ant. at five o'clock,
when everyone scurried away from their horses,
we were there with armfuls of who-knows-what. 
the sweet & the horrible. a collar hovering above
or was that a halo? it is hard to tell the difference.
i wait until the ants are done. until
there is nothing left. the final few twitch 
their antennae. i hold out my finger.
i explain, "you could do the same to me."
this is a way of having control over
one of my greatest fears. i have had nightmares
for the longest time of waking up
covered in ants. i am not so sure what i'm afraid
to let go of. the ants laugh at me. they say,
"this is your sugar, not ours." i want to follow them
so i do back to a mound near the knees
of a broken neck tree. there i kneel. 
i cannot trail them any further. 
i try breathing. clouds come out of my mouth. 
the ants go off to find new wounds.

a car drives through the window

so all of a sudden we are in
a theater. come & sit & eat hair with us.
break bones with us. set the television
on fire & weep with us.
it is winter so we will have to get blankets
if we are going to attend
to the hole. the hole is not just
the fracture where siding & drywall 
gave way to headlights. it is also
the hole that widens beneath our tongues.
i feed the hole flowers & all of the pictures
of myself before i got a lip piercing.
it is like seeing a sea monster. the truth is
i hope it happens again. i home 
the cars come like elephants 
& open the house as wide as it will go.
that the roof will turn into beetles
& the moose arrive with all their ancient hunger.
i have a need for horizons with zippers.
a place to hide the wanting
that always comes back louder
& with my fingers. i tuck provisions there too:
morsels of turkish delight & candied walnuts. 
my father is always driving the car.
shattered glass. his black hair turned 
grey. i want to keep a lock of it.
he is alright not nothing else is.
i want to wake you up but you sleep through
the whole thing. the crash & the reckoning 
& even the sweets on my tongue
while i wait for another car to smash 
through the window too. i try to prepare.
to lessen the impact. ghouls in the kitchen
taking advantage of the opening. i gather what i can.
a pillow? a mouth guard? a spaghetti strainer?
i know, as always, it will be my father driving.
the headlights, like fish tin lids. his eyes, two holes. 

massage chair

i bought a membership 
at planet fitness just so i could use
the massage chairs. the room was dark
& smelled like fingers.
i would only go for a massage 
when i could be alone in the room.
a row of four massage chairs. 
safe with my urgent elephants. 
a television glowed selling angels. 
one angel of tin cans
& one angel of the ugly moon.
i let the mechanical hands
dig into my flesh. it was autumn 
in my terrifying new life. 
i wanted to be touched. 
new york's pigeons knocked on my
car windows, bringing their dead.
how did they know
i was a gravedigger? i cut holes 
in asphalt & sunsets. always 
tucking the ghosts where they belong. 
when asked, "where are you from?"
i often responded, "i don't know"
& sometimes i told the truth &
admitted, "a great widening throat."
the shovel in my trunk. 
my favorite spot has always been 
the shoulders. undoing me.
i would become the secrets of eels.
the brief exhale of a storm. 
when the machine ran out of time
i would sit there a few minutes longer
in the silent chair. i didn't want
to go home yet. my body swam.
my teeth hummed like ladders. 

rock tumbling 

when my father was a boy
he used to take his teeth
& tumble them until they shined.
sell them for quarters
that he would spend
on junk ammo. stay up all night
shooting at the moon. he never
landed a single shot
but once he shot a whale
& the whale loomed 
blimp-like over his aunt's house.
i got his ability 
to grow teeth back
like a shark. he promised all of us
he no longer sold but sometimes
i would hear the whirl of the machine.
the grit in its guts 
& the rocks bruise-kissing
in their little dark world. 
i would go to watch him. he collected
all kinds of rocks from beside creeks
& from holes in the walls. then, of course,
plucking out his own teeth 
like ripe raspberries. 
when he was really alone
he would become a little boy again.
i pictured him & me 
inside the tumbler
falling over each other 
until we shine. the grit beneath
our fingernails. his tongue of marble.
"we don't have to tell anyone,"
he said the one time i caught him.
he placed a tooth in my hand
& said, "this is for you."

sacrifice of a bull

i hold on to the last patch of corn
in the field behind our house.
the cold is not cold enough.
the sun has worms
& is ready for composting.
all along the sides 
of our winding roads 
there are cobs chipped
& scattered like broken dishes.
i could be thinner. i could be 
the sacrificial bull who is made beautiful 
just before the harvest. we picked 
the persimmons. we gathered
chestnuts. it is too late for most kinds
of holiness. instead, we have the meat room
& the knife that is not sharp enough.
all day i worry about fingers. 
i eat the spare bugs. try to fit
my horns through doorways.
ask other ghosts, "would you like
to be an offering?" 
they pretend not to hear me.
this is the worst kind
of hot potato. passing the slaughter.
when the machine finally comes 
i am ready. i stand on the roof.
the sun is a trampled clementine.
gnats the size of airplanes hover
overhead. i don't need a father
or even a god. i need the july corn. 
the hunters who found me.
fed me cream & said,
"wouldn't you like to save us?"

glass bottle tree

i once grew a world
inside a breath.
we wondered in fields
of marshmallow &
no one even had a face.
the bottle swelled.
full of ships & teeth. 
you never forgot
how much you loved me.
the tree i grew there 
was an apple tree
& a pear tree 
when we needed it to be.
always in fruit. always
in bloom. i do not believe in
an afterlife
but i do believe in moths.
i can tell you about the world
as i used to know it 
& we can crawl 
one by one
into the green glass bottle. 
i will point
to all my still lives 
& say, "i know we are hungry
but we cannot eat here 
anymore." 

video game

we are sitting in the attic
without clothes on. 
the television screen burns.
you are bare as a stripped moon.
all tangerine in the evergreen light.
there is another level & another.
kill the monster 
with the plastic spoon. 
my mother does not know
your mother. instead, we put
red pepper flakes on our pizza.
get them lodged beneath
our nails. i feel them every time 
you touch me. 
kick the trees until they bleed.
do video games make us velvet 
or have we been that way all along?
these are not questions we need
but questions that swarm.
gnats in our eyes. 
instead we ask 
"how much longer can we play
until i am just a sock puppet & you are
driving home with my brain in 
your stomach?"
you lose & i keep playing.
as long as i'm playing i am not
really naked & you are not really
a hungry boy. the buttons fall
off the controller. 
my gooseflesh spreads. i am 
a butter turkey. later you will
have this on a home movie 
& i will be cutting my tongue out
for the final time. 
you only get nine tries 
at speaking. i wasted them all
telling you, "please, no." 
i win again. pixel. scabbed elbow.
the smell of your rotten hair.