tablespoon poem

i have lived my life one tablespoon at a time.
this is about how much you're allowed
to swallow. the birds that come & make nests
in the smallest of places. voles who carve songs 
through dark. i would put the sky
on my tongue just to feel a star flicker.
i buy more tablespoons. i am always afraid
of running out. what would i do if i could
no longer measure how much i'm allowed
to want? sometimes we pass barns & i dream
of owning one. of filling it with hay & laying there.
looking up at a tablespoon-sized hole
in the roof. there, the angels crawl in with their
many eyes & many legs. i can feel things shrinking.
the size of our hands. the size of our gods. 
i pray inside tablespoons. i fight inside tablespoons.
i know that i will die inside a tablespoon. 
when i was a girl i used to eat from the peanut butter jar
just one tablespoon at a time. my tongue.
little prophet. i do not feel like i want very much.
the door with a snake inside. the mailbox
full of wings. i once dug my tablespoon
into cream cheese container & the neck snapped off.
i imagined going in with my hands. 
no spoon. no borders. just the hunger & how
far it would drive me. knees & wood. 
i am most sorry that i often put my love
into a tablespoon. feed it to my darlings 
as if it is enough. i want to believe in abundance
but i have seen a row of houses burn to 
the ground. i have felt my ribs turn 
to feathers. coughed them out. i have dreamed recklessly 
& without release. give me the keys to the moon.
i want to drive it until it fits in the bath 
& then i want to lay there, skin glowing bright.   

bryant park

when it rained, i would sit 
beneath the big park tent 
with all the waiting people.
it was a soup-ladle summer. i loved
being a fleck of dust beneath
the city's shoe. i walked the avenue 
of the americas, trying to save
the few subway dollars it would take
to get me to work. 
my mom used to tell me 
that purgatory was like
waiting outside in the rain. 
on some mornings, this felt true.
i was always looking for a seat
on the parks metal folding chairs.
children with their fists in their mouths.
a man with all his life in two bags
he was sleeping on. then, me, 
trying to connect to the clunky 
park wifi to write a few tired poems. 
on other days though 
the rain made the place feel enchanted.
we were not waiting for anything.
instead, we were thick & full. water washing
the sidewalk & the storefronts. 
i loved when it fell soft. almost 
just a mist. i imagined not 
showing up at the big monster building. 
not stepping across the shining floors. 
getting drenched in the hot rain
with some children who,
free of school, made the park bigger. 
i never let myself do that. instead,
i watched as others did. i wore 
button-up shirts back then &
belts & pants. i was buckled into myself. 
i want to go back on 
a thunderous morning. pretend i am
on my way to feed a dragon again. 
stand on the sleepy grass. get soaked
to the bone, waiting for nothing. 

naming the birds

it is the ugly day. i borrow my mom's shoes
to go out in the yard & plant a tooth 
behind the garage. the old christmas tree
has grow up hold squirrels. its shadow
is that of a broad-shouldered man. the squirrels
are covering their ears. there is only so much
you can write to your government about
before you are talking to no one. before
your words turn into french fries.
quick & needy. i don't try to tell the truth often.
when i do write i say things like, "i believe
in ghosts." the government puts a metronome 
at the end of our driveway. i tried to tell
my lover that we could hide in my parent's house.
here now though i know there is no where
to go. no secret door. no bookshelf that opens
into a golden field. my mom joins me.
we take a walk & i do not tell her about the tooth.
i am no obsessed with legacy but i do want
a part of my body to feel free. the tooth
one day turning into a grinning tree. one that
no one will ever be able to cut down. they will
come for miles to see it. they will not know
it is me. it is the un-killable parts of me.
we see birds & try to guess what they 
are called. we are both story tellers of sorts.
she tells me about birders she's written about
before for the paper. we decide the birds
are barn swallows though neither of us can
confirm if that is true. the birds tell us,
"you can call us anything. just don't call 
us dead." we try other names. "house wren"
& "white-throated sparrow." the birds laugh.
they know that none of the names are correct.
we ask them to guess our names & they say,
"afraid." we stop laughing. go home. i check
on my tree as if it might have grown in the short 
time since we walked. just the grass. 
i am told that change is gradual. that slowly
the world becomes kinder. i guess i believe it can.
but i do not believe anything is gradual. 
i have never witnessed 
a gradual change. i have seen glaciers melt.
i have seen families of trees turned to ash.
my body shape-shift around my hunger. 
it always feels too fast to catch up to. 

cornfield

the corn knows something is wrong
before anyone else. i was ten when the field 
behind our house grew doctors. it was 
just before the world fell apart again.
again again again again. back then,
i was still talking to a hole in the sky. i was
still drowning my hands in the creek 
each afternoon in the hopes that 
they would stop talking. prophecy fatigue. 
stop telling me this is bad, i always thought. 
i can already feel it's gonna be bad. 
nothing stops them though. they pound
on the walls. knock on the windows.
they always wanted to converse with the corn.
i guess that is what they still want. 
i have woken up to find a whole hand 
out their between the stalks. i leave out
a bowl of cream. hope it keep coaxing them home. 
the doctors just stood there. they had
no families & no purpose. they just waited
in white coats. we stopped walking down
the backroad where they would keep
their vigil. my mom would say, "soon"
as if that would smooth over
all the ugly edges. the corn grew eyes.
the corn grew fists. the doctors chattered
& wrote papers about all the sickness. 
they won medals & awards. they had photographers
take their pictures. the corn didn't grow tall
that year. most of it fell over. 
it is always a root-up kind of dying. 
there is something down there. 
a worm with no hands. a mass grave. 
some kind of brilliant wound. when the doctors 
departed it was august. the trees ached.
my house caught fire & we put it out 
with our thumbs. a smoldering little grain.
the doctors left behind their coats.
i remember my brother & i trying them on.
my hands said, "be careful what ghosts
you step inside." i shed the gloves 
& never returned to the field. every once
in a while i will see a piece of clothing left over.
a surgical mask. a boot. 
nothing much has changed. the corn is
still trying to warn us. my hands still talk.
they say, "close your eyes." they are out
of ideas. i do sometimes wonder 
what would have happened if i joined them.
the doctors. if maybe i could have been
taken with them to their holy nowhere.
instead, i am here. the corn is blinking.
my hands say, "do not stop. do not stop." 

february

the onions foretold it's going to be
kind of rough. we didn't know
it was going to snow last night
& now the house is a cold femur.
snow light making the whole house glow.
i consider burning
the wooden spoon. i wonder if
you would notice. in the kitchen
in the morning dark i cut off
my hands. they lay like chayote
on the cutting board. 
they didn't turn into spiders like
i wanted. you asked last night, "what are
we going to do when the firewood
runs out?" i held your face. my fingers,
little cucumbers. i thought of 
the knive chopping them.
summer salad. i told you i am going
to steal the sun. i'm going to yank
it from its perch & then it'll be all ours.
then i was sad that so many of my dreams
involve new thievery. i want 
an unstolen feast. i want to feel 
heat from my ribs to my fingertips.
i thought maybe the spiders
could knit us a thick blanket 
or a ladder to sky. i get a ladle. 
go outside in my morning robe,
blood still dripping from my arms,
& reach to skim the cream off 
the sun. i only manage clouds. spoon in my mouth.
a vole offers to be one of my hands.
i let him. at this point,
i am open to most transformations.
you are still asleep. you are in the process
of becoming a mountain. i bring you 
a cup of coffee. i save you a morsel
of the cream. pluck a tree growing
from your back & brush the white pine needles
onto the floor. let you sleep in a little longer.
set up camp in the lowlands. 
plant my fingers & hope they grow 
a lovely bramble of knuckles
that i can use to knock on all our walls. 

lana del rey 

somethings can actually turn you gay.
it happened to me when i was listening 
to summertime sadness
with my best friend walking 
on the crooked road
to my house, each of us 
with one earbud in. i think it was
the last month of the last month
of high school. we were making all kinds of 
deadly promises. like "i'll be back"
& "i won't forget this." you always 
forget. the world has a way
of pulling curtains. i was never a girl 
but back then i was. 
i found a shadow in her music  
that opened a dormant self. a self
with so much red that i had
to bury it wherever i could. 
we played her songs
over & over. video games &
all his favorite remixes of it. 
back then youtube
wasn't as loud. it was just a little postage stamp
on a letter from an ugly world.
we always parted at the top 
of the hill. sometimes, we'd linger.
green field behind us but this day 
he took the ear bud, his ear bud & parted.
he had something to do & maybe so did i.
the trees grew legs. it rained hard that night
& i kept the album on. opened my window
& allowed the rain to soak the carpet.
i pictured myself with a smooth car
& a sun big enough to hold me.
outside, someone was riding a dirt bike
in a cornfield. summer's elbows.
humid breath. the widening ache. 
you can tell it is going to break
you open. this kind of turning. 
i played the songs again. 

what is left

it takes a body much longer
to decay than you might think.
it has been more than a year
& there are still fragments of muscle & flesh
on the deer in our yard.
in the summer, the grass grew tall
& swallowed the bones. i would sometimes
forget where he was. then, picking
through the brush, i would see the antlers. 
his ghost comes on the fog
to keep vigil. i go & join him. i ask him 
questions about what he is waiting for.
i love when people call death,
"transition." i started hearing it 
sometime last year. i thought of my own
bodies. the ones in the yard & the ones
on the lawn. the ones i use as scarecrows
to try to keep people from eating the corn.
the dear's skeleton lays as if he is sleeping.
knees curled into chest. his resting skull.
i fill my old skulls with water.
tell the birds to drink. i am trying to understand
what is left behind when we transition.
it is not just the blood. footprints.
all the paths the deer walked. headlights.
i want to shake the dirt. i want to 
be the zombie tonight. wake up
as a girl & run screaming. barefoot moon.
ugly ragged dawn. let's not get
too carried away. i guess what i mean is
who tends to what is left behind? 
is there another world where my old face
lives with the deer lives with the wrinkled apple lives
with the first of coins. the old ones 
no one can use any more. money of dead king.
i am alive in the transition of 
an empire. the fogs comes & with it, the deer. 

 

famine portrait 

i get the elbow face together
of all the last genders i have.
culled for them in the dusty corners
of the living room. we all smile
the way that power drills smile.
smell of scuffed shoes
in the hallway of the church. 
it is canned family day. brine 
of our chins. my youngest brother
is cream cheese on a knife. he cries
& so all of us cry only for me
i do that with my lungs.
two aspergillums, dispensing holy 
summer rain on a vision of
my paper towel self. the background
is grey. the photographer chews
ugly bruise gum. i don't know
what we're trying to have. 
just like i'm not sure what
i'm trying to be. i wonder if i might
still breathe if i am the size
of an eyelash. if, when people blink
they only have a fifty-fifty shot
of whether or not they see me.
years later my mother will 
look at the portrait in the sunroom
& ask if i want another. if now
i don't see myself in those pictures
anymore. she will be talking about gender
but i will hear it as more. more like,
"were any of us there?"
we don't go to church anymore. we don't
sit for portraits. 
there is something terrifying
about any staged photo. the way
the truth cannot escape. 
no where to hide your teeth. 
shovels we each harbored under our tongues.
i always tell her i don't need
another picture. that that one held 
a fragment of our lives. my brother
weeping in the light. my collar bones
like a pair of sea gull wings. 

drought

i microwave my halo to get it ready.
mom says, "suck on your tongue."
spit is a kind of holy river. the grass
turns all potato chip by the pool & everyone
is jumping despite there being
no water. i remember the weeks
after i grew wings. no one wanted
to talk about it. so, i flew over
the small suburbs & dropped love letters
on strangers heads. you can get 
so thirsty that you start speaking
a new language. that your put your ear
to the ground to listen for springs.
i only hear static. 
i have never been good at finding 
new wells. instead i take my teeth out
one at a time to use like hard candies.
to my surprise, some of my teeth had 
initials engraved on the bottom.
most mysteries are just red herrings.
call my parents' house to weep.
no one usually picks up. i leave
voicemail after voicemail. once i spoke
& pleaded, "come back." the rain cloud farm.
plucking one drop at a time. 
each so fucking sweet. 
once, my father took us to the aquarium
after he died. we are a family
of resurrections. none of the tanks
had water. the sharks wore halos just
like mine. we pressed our faces
to the glass. string rays like paper plates.
when it was over we all went to stare 
at the river. shoes & skeletons 
& even an old ship waited there. 
i wondered how hard it would be
to be a ghost. would i miss them?
all around us, water. water in our lungs
& water in our fishbowl eyes. 
before i knew it i was alone again. 
a disciple of a faucet. washing 
my face with air like i am now. i haven't seen
real fresh water in years. if i had some
i have to admit i would not share it.
i would cup my hands. swallow it
like a stolen crown jewel. 

ai shark woman

it's the car crash syndrome.
a fear of looking away & a fear of looking.
i don't know what
i'm watching for but i spend thirty minutes
scrolling through a tiktok page
that is all ai generated. it is of a researcher woman
with a great white shark. the shark looks
terrified as if he is trapped inside a dream.
those deep blackberry eyes. 
his jagged teeth. her misshapen nose. 
her freckles stolen from a deep wound.
they both look like they're calling for help. 
the comments are scattered. some people
who say, "this is clearly ai" & others
that say, "i am worried for this woman"
& "do we know her name?"
her face shifts slightly from video to video.
skin putty. the bone beneath the bedsheet. 
sometimes she is ugly. other times,
gorgeous. in some videos she is ocean swimming 
& scraping barnacles from the bodies of whales. 
i make myself turn it off. worry that 
i have watched for too long & some of it
has rubbed off on me. in our internet now
everything is contagious. if you watch
one shark ai video for too long &
soon it is all you will see. i am swimming.
i have a butter knife & i am cleaning 
the not-real whales with her. we are far
from any piece of land. gutless waves.
her eyes eat each other. the sharks. 
all the sharks. they do not circle. they do not
ask to devour us. instead, they wait
& watch. i see them everywhere now.
in the mirror. in the bathtub. on the sidewalk.
the video i dislike most from the account
is of a beached megalodon, an ancient giant shark.
the researchers stand inside his colossal mouth. 
sky tinted like a bruise. they snap pictures. he waits.