monastery 

we could take our butter knives 
to the hills. cut a face for living.
i watch dozens of videos
about monks of all religions.
buddhists & catholics & jains.
i am trying to answer if a monk's life
is an escape or a journey 
further into blood. 
i wonder what i would be most equipped
to be a disciple of. maybe we already are 
the order of yearners. 
keepers of all kinds of longing. 
in the forest we measure a path
that is the length between
the sun & the moon. we practice their
sapphic dance. to be queer is not just
to hold a sliver of the unknown
but to be ravenous for it. i want to know
if we will always be hungry
or if one day the earth
will crack open & we will find
manna. chew sugar until
we are mountains. breaking teeth.
breaking vows. i think there is joy
in certain tensions & pain from others.
when we are done walking
our legs ache with achievement. 
we lay in our beds of moss. 
observe the silent hours. 
fold our words into private poems
& swallow them each until
night comes to pull all language 
from our bones. 

cornfield

we never went in far.
my brother & in the late summer
walking on the winding cornfield roads 
took turns slipping between 
the stalks. these days
we don't talk as much as we should. 
i leave his message on read.
drive my car to a place 
where the sun doesn't have his teeth.
we go into the corn
even when the fields 
are wintering. growing nothing
but the fox foot prints & deer tracks.
fill our ears with husks & listen
for the sound of each other breathing.
i sometimes wish we would
have gone deeper. ran into 
the shaking belly of the field.
for whatever it is that they hide
all swollen august. there must be
some kind of organ. a spleen
or a lung. a place where all the rain
is going. i like to think that 
if we needed each other,
we would meet
in between the rows. light
making shadow boxes 
of our hands. once, when we 
were very small, he called for me
& i did not answer. i crouched
there in the mud & the earth.
i thought, "i could stay here
& become a creature." i finally
emerged. he wept & i held him,
saying, "i was just kidding."
i was not. i was so close to being gone.
then again, do we ever know
how close we are to any given edge?
i want to devour the animal corn
with him. i want to call him now
in the middle of the january night
& tell him, "let's go & pluck
the fields. there are always some
kernels in waiting." 

cicada killers & your holy porch

we screamed like metal bugs
into the thickening dark.
both of us ghosts. both of us 
unzipping from all our exoskeletons. 
i do not know which version of you
i was talking to. 
your apartment was hot & luminous. 
i loved the nights i got to stay over.
there were only a few before
you moved in with me & we died. 
it is wonderful to get to be
a freshly guillotined flock
of wildflowers for a person
you want to keep you. you breathed me in.
my arms turning into windows.
sometimes, in the morning, i would
get up before you. i would 
sit in the kitchen, barefoot,
looking out at the porch. there
the cicada killers would congregate.
anger looking creatures. like giant wasps. 
what is it like to be named
after what you destroy?
i guess in a sense, that is how we
are all known. cicadas, from a latin word
meaning "tree cricket." 
only it is a loan word.
sounds from a long-buried language.
i think, in that language, it used to mean,
"song eater." i never wanted
to leave. always wanted a longer weekend.
a mouth to sleep inside. we drank coffee
on that porch too. 
the sun shaved our heads.
we hummed with the cicadas. 
hoped the killers didn't come. 

fishing

he held the fish by their lip.
scales shining in the mid-day heat.
i knew very little about
the two brothers who lived above me 
in the scarred old house.
i would watch one walk up the street
always with the day's catch 
as soon as the frost faded in late march.
he swayed as he went. we both
had similar limps. 
his walking stick was glossy.
almost amber-colored wood. 
none of us had jobs. i would 
sometimes get paid to die gloriously 
for men on the internet. the brothers would
sweep the lawyer's steps 
& from time to time, clean the gutters
of the houses on high street.
once, a neighbor asked me to help her
put plastic over all of her windows
to get them ready for winter.
i pretended to be able-bodied.
when she was out of the room,
i sat on the ladder, rubbing my leg
to relieve some of the pain. 
in the stream, all the fish 
were limping too. none of them
had jobs. instead, they feasted
on the waterlogged sun. 
i loved cash. would hide it 
all over the house. a dollar here
a dollar there. once in a parking lot
i got paid to be beautiful. he bit
a hole through my lip.
a world of hooks. i thought
of the fish in the light. their sway
& the sway of the neighbor man. 
i always liked one brother 
more than the other. i liked the one
who went fishing. the other,
had sharp eyes. he yelled once in awhile.
i never knew about what. open window.
fish in the clouds & fish getting gutted
in the sink. sometimes when i hear
footsteps above me i think they're
still there. that we're still
orbiting each other in
in a lungless mountain town. 

hops

i ask my father 
what beer tastes like.
he is sitting in the rocking chair
in the shadow room. 
window open. we watch dragons
come in & out. i prefer 
to stay awake. there is always
something to hide from.
he tells me, "it tastes 
like hops." points to the green
little plants depicted on the bottle.
i can see them growing up the side
of the house. ringing bells.
he takes me by the arm
& tells me to come with him.
we slip somehow 
into the mouth of the bottle.
everything smells amber. he is laughing
& then he is weeping. it rains hard.
so hard i cannot hear him.
i want to take it back. i wish i'd never
asked him. there are no windows
in the bottle. it just gets deeper
& deeper. smells like basement.
the hops fall. i chew one 
& swallow. a little bird grows 
in between my ribs. it sings.
it has a voice just like my father's.
i never find him there. i look 
for hours. the mouth closes up.
i decide i am going to pretend
to be a caterpillar. this, my cocoon. 
imagination can only save you
so much grief. eventually, it gives out
& you are standing on your porch
as an adult. there are hops
growing on a vine & you 
are picking them all to feed
to a ghost. you are wondering
if you remembered to climb out 
or if your whole life happened them
beneath a layer of thick glass.
you look up & there he is still.
your father with minnow-full eyes.
he blows a hot breath across
the lip. everything hums. 

blindfold 

they took us to the parking lot
in blade-ridden winter.
we were fifth graders. parched knuckles. 
my dinner plate face. we were preparing for 
confirmation. to offer our pomegranates 
up to an empty ceiling. the church
sat in between two cornfields.
the priest had carved a statue of mary
to perch within an old limestone kiln.
she watched us with her eyes
made of pennies. no one really 
knew what confirmation meant.
terrified to ask too many questions
i tried to find my holiness
but it was like sticking your hand
into a sandbox. lost rings 
& plastic dinosaurs & a stray shoe 
no holiness. i always thought holiness
would probably be something like 
soft serve ice cream. 
we'd spent all day reciting 
answers to questions like,
"what are the seven sacraments?"
i don't remember what the activity
was for but they put us
into pairs & blind-folded one, 
telling the other to lead those
who cannot see. maybe it was 
a metaphor for what we were
called to do, to lead others home.
the irony of the forced blind fold.
it had snowed on a few days prior.
wind bit us red. a bruised flock
of clouds. i was the blind folded one
& i peeked. watched my feet,
one in front of the other
while a girl i barely knew
put her hand on my shoulder,
as if she was saving me. she spoke kindly.
she said, "we are almost there."
i did not trust her. i did not trust
any of them. not the catechists 
or the windows or even the open-mouthed
mary who crouched in the kiln. i held on to 
the slit of light. when i made it back
i lied. i lied lusciously. i thanked
the girl. i thanked the ceiling.
is it a lie if a part of you 
wants it to be true? 

ex-boyfriends

we go to the stranger depot
to talk to new sets of hands.
you say, "that one looks
like my ex." you pull out
a picture & it's true, he does.
only, the stranger has a sign 
taped to his chest
that says, "for sale"
but not in a sex work way
more like in a "i will do anything
for someone to write
a poem about me"
kind of way. i guess you could
consider that romance work.
we avoid him but soon
everyone has his face. that is
the trouble with going places
like this where everyone is no one
& no one is everyone. 
you say, "we should have
drowned." i tell you i much prefer
the idea of being consumed
by the sun. we argue about death
a lot. you like the drama & 
i guess i do too. the trouble
with loving anyone is that 
you are also always in mourning. 
the you before they set up
shop inside your lung. the eventual
parting. one of you buried 
in a tomb of green & the other
walking around with a metal detector
trying to locate a god. 
we leave empty handed.
you tell me, "i want to go back.
maybe it was him."
i keep driving for your own good.
i try to remind you,
"there was that night he ate your face
& we had to tape it all back 
together." you shake your head.
"that wasn't him," you say
even though it was. 

unalive in the midnight 

i want to survive the shift
in language. the tongue beneath
the pillow. i speak
the ugly kitchen words
into your ear. you tell me,
"smart yourself
or we'll never get to see
the kids." my favorite words
are outdated or forbidden ones like transexual 
or homophile or dyke because there
always feels like there is
something truer about them.
maybe we have
admitted too much. maybe
death is not a place we get to go
but an undoing that envelopes us here.
if that is the case then
i am already unalive. when the radio 
tower turns into a pizza hut
i'll still be talking. in the dead internet 
theory, i am the last one standing.
a handful of teeth 
in the zoo of gone words.
no one says that anymore.
i remember the extinction 
of the great cats. the end of elephants.
i keep it short when i say 
what became of us. we were graped
& not in the vineyard
but here i am transexual 
& impossible to eat.

green sheets 

the popcorn turned
into stars in their microwave bags.
a girl with too much beautiful
was now my roommate
& the windows filled with deer. 
i had wanted college
so badly but i arrived terrified
& empty. i had not thought
to pack a blanket & the green sheets
i'd bought at the thrift shop
were thin. i searched for warmth in them
like a hand beneath the ocean.
in the halls footfalls & laughter
peppered the night. 
my heart, a little parking lot seagull.
i wrapped myself up as snug
as i could. a piece of meat
in butcher paper. the room was frigid.
my air conditioner singing,
"halleluiah," in a voice
made of gravel & gods.
i got up in the middle of the night.
went down to the common room.
sat there. my little vigil.  
no one else was there
& it smelled like wood & water.
out the building's front door
i saw the fresh orange sun.
it tasted metal like blood 
& sweet like citrus. a yolk
waiting to be punctured. i looked 
at my phone. called every
dead end i had until 
one answered. it was a stray cat
that used to live in the garage.
he said, "do not 
come home." 

mailbox

sometimes i go to the mailbox
to have someone to talk to.
the junk mail might as well
be pigeons. i say, "i am looking
for a letter." the mailbox purses
his lips & says, "i have nothing
for you." he is always lying.
there is always something.
even if you know no one
& own nothing there will
be mail for you. a local plumber.
a politician's wax face. the mailbox
really likes to talk about black holes.
he says, "one could come at 
any moment." i don't want to know
more about physics so i don't
google whether or not this is true.
instead, i accept it. maybe a black hole
could keep me company too. could even
transport me a heart
from a creature in another dimension.
something for me to chew on
in the dark. i admit to the mailbox
on day, "i do not think 
anyone knows me." the mailbox
spits out a letter that i sent
to a friend years ago. it never
reached her. thank god. i have
this problem with thinking
i'm in love when really i'm just 
trying to catch my own ghost. 
i invite the mailbox inside for dinner
& he declines. he says, "it is busy
around here." no cars have passed 
since i've come out. the street is bare
& freckled with salt from the last
snowstorm. a therapist once told me,
"you should never assume what
someone thinks. ask them
or move on." but she didn't understand.
it is always safer not to know.
i do not ask the mailbox if 
he thinks we are friends or
if he doesn't like me enough
to have dinner with me. i just imagine
a circus behind the door. 
something that only he can keep running.
maybe a bird or a rat is coming
to lay inside his mouth tonight.
sometimes, i sleep with my mouth open
in the hopes that i will steal his job.
wake up with a mouth filled
with words. letters. paper cuts.
a package of shiny little beads.