human bones

i have gone on too many dates
in which all we talk about are bones.
once, a boy drove me inside his dream wagon
until we reached the edge of town.
he lived there in a feather house. 
a shovel leaned on the wall by the door 
& he picked it up. 
invited me to see where he went to dig. 
i sat on a folding chair while he told me
about how he broke his first bone by
punching a hole in the wall because
his brother had turned into a moth.
i felt scared of him. worried he was going to try
to bury me. i made up an excuse. scrambled
out of the house. he chased me
not like a horror movie but like 
a runaway dog. he wasn't the first
or the last boy. all the bones. the next with 
gravel lot for a tongue. the one after that,
all his ribs laid out on the counter.
he asked me to pick one to take with me.
i don't really believe in gender
but something i think a lot of men have in common
is they think to give means
to dismantle the self. no one wants 
your bones. at least, i do not. i want to see
what kind of dragon you build with them.
my favorite lover though he had used his bones
to make a windmill. femurs & fibulas.
we stood beneath it while the shadows kicked. 
"i want to love you," he said. i basked 
in his honesty. wondered then
about the difference between wanting 
& being. gender of course, the strange
city between nest & nightmare. 
of course i still have one of his ribs. 
i use it as a soup spoon though on most nights
i do not think of him. 

herd of air conditioners 

i promise you we're going to catch
enough summer spit. i put on my dead boy gloves 
& we try to find the air conditioners 
where they're roaming around the town's
glowing red border. some people set traps
but we are honorable. we do the work
with our own bodies. which is to say
we die a little bit with the beast. we used to have
such a great one. fed him chicken bones 
& pocket watches. then he died & his soul
turned into a video game. we can feel the end times 
on the tips of our tongues. the hotter august.
the bleached trees growing like cauliflower. 
parrots roosting beside bats in the attic.
i just want a quiet cold night. to breathe in
the crimped air. to my luxury is cranking
the air conditioner as high as it will go 
& falling asleep. i did this only once 
in awhile as a child. my parents always found out
& scolded me for wasting my teeth on the dark.
chewing holes through the wall to stick
my urgent fingers through. you could of course
hire someone to grab an air conditioner for you.
they get down on all fours & run alongside them.
i tell you not to give up. night comes
& the air conditioners are more vulnerable.
less vision more feast. i carry a blue raspberry ring pop
on my finger. hold it out & hope for the best.
when one comes, leaving his herd behind,
i let him eat. i know i need
to grab the cord or his horns but i don't.
sweat down my face. he runs off, trotting back
into the fields of broken cds. i hear 
on the other side of town they are setting up
the biggest seance yet. i do not know if we 
will go. there is still a creature to catch. 

brooklyn museum

that summer i brought everyone to the museum. 
the boy with pigeons for eyes 
& my uncle & my father & my brother.
once, just a stray dog who looked 
like he might want to wander with me.
we stood in a secret hallway 
where there were rows & rows of family portraits.
no, i lied. they were just images of waves.
crashing & calling. the windows
like submarines. i don't know what i hoped
they would see. i guess i thought maybe
we would all stay. i think i would make
a good exhibit. i could pose & everyone could
take out their sketchbooks. each drawing,
a different species of mushroom. i remember
what my friend told me.
"do not try to show them something
you love. show them something you are
unsure of." we sat at the place settings 
of the dinner party. forks the size of arms.
dresses fashioned into salad. i thought i would
grow out my hair. i thought i would
become a window of a sky eater. 
we sat one afternoon in the garden out back.
i was a cranefly & everyone else were horses.
i asked my father, "what did you like best?"
he said, "the train leaving the city."
streets knotting. sidewalk trees plucking
their hungry handfuls of tangerine. 
i thought if i returned enough times 
someone would see exactly what i saw.
the station of lucifer in the lobby. 
his ribs like oars. this was my home. 

fabric

i rode my bike between wing beats
of summer corn to the fabric store. 
i did not have to be barefoot 
but sometimes i was. i think i wanted
to be like the mennonite kids 
who played & worked out back.
the pedals on my bike had metal grips 
so i had to push with just the pads of my feet.
bone & sun. gravel between toes. sweat on my eyebrows.
through middle school, i sewed all the time.
there was a machine set up for me 
upstairs by the window. threads of light
across rows of stitches. i was never very good.
i was more of a fabric collector than anything.
wandering in the aisles of colors,
i found thick fake leather & white fur
& tea kettle prints & shimmering scraps.
tucked the bolts of fabric beneath my arms.
i carried as many as i could, convinced that
if i set the fabric down i might not
be able to find it again. 
watched the women at the counter 
as they measured a yard or two yards for me.
they would fold each precious tongue. 
spoke to each other in german
& i did not know what they said.
at home, i kept the cloth in a trunk. 
so many of them i would never use. 
it was like keeping alternate realities. i did not have
many friends. my fingers were like hummingbirds.
my round face. my black hair. 
i used my own the perfect silver scissors to cut 
through each portal. i never bought 
a single pattern. sewed together roads.
knees to comets. returned for more
each week on my bike. somehow there would
always be a fabric i hadn't noticed before. 
 

diet root beer

i keep a list of culprits as my phone screen.
sometimes you have so good a day
you forget, even if only briefly,
that you're living in a capitalist hellscape. 
maybe a mushroom remembers your name
or maybe you are the lover you always wanted to be.
then, i always end up in the dorm room with
brown windows. amber blooded little newt.
the coughing room. a closet where
mice come to eat my homework. every day
i write a parable about shoeless girls 
& a milky pond. wash my face in the ceiling.
i caught an angel once. he screamed & it tore a hole
in my happiness. thank god for that. i don't think
i want to be happy. i want to be full. 
i collect diet root beer bottles & cans & i am
well aware this is not what i need. we become 
ant colonies in our grief. what can be built.
who is the queen. i wasted too many years
eating salads. never jumped off the right roof.
a coffin of bottle caps. carbonated night.
i stir my face with a wooden spoon. drink
the prehistoric broth. what kind of soup are you?
i am the folding chair tongue & the headlight prophet.
online i order something wonderful 
that i do not need at all. it will be here 
between blinks. catastrophic light. the dead cell phone 
& her tower where all our questions live.
i brought lovers over. we kissed so long
that we forgot the light. burnt caramel glow.
a face in the window. the unfinished god 
watching to see how we will survive. 

inflatable mattress lover

i can leave whenever you want.
i am always one breath away
from a suitcase lung.
an accumulation of shoes.
we laid until the floor met us again.
bags upon bags of party favors. 
a wedding inside a thimble. we loved
each other like raspberries. the urgent flock.
birds without eyes searching for a zipper.
i take off my hands in times like this.
i weep & pretend i cannot drive at night.
route 222 is backed up to our throats 
& so we walk the corn fields.
find ourselves asleep with the doll heads
in the schoolhouse garden. 
if i tell you i want to be kept it is a lie.
instead, i want the vessel to be full
whether it is with water-glassed eggs
or peppers or a two-headed boy. 
we did not have a pump so my soul emptied
into the tires. get me home. please get me
home. you split wood in the dark. 
missing, you slice the moon. now, just
a stump. i have been told you can
teach a tree to return. bring toys 
& family pictures. ask, "who were your ancestors?"
the fire walks on the roof. black walnuts 
come as guillotines. the drop. 
my stomach full of fish. i try to read
your lips by the ghost light of an orphaned star.
i am packing myself up. i am leaving 
& i do not know where i am. 
then, all the air is gone. replaced 
with aquarium pebbles. i did not want
to sleep in this room again. i wanted 
my childhood but everyone green.
an open window so the bats can return. 
the moon limps. you stroke my head. 
sacrifice an owl to feed to bed. it's enough
for us to float. you ask me,
"do you ever rest?" 

self-portrait as a poppet

get the wax. get the rope.
i'll be your effigy
& tell the fire all your secrets. 
you doll-walk with me
into the secret basement.
who do you need?
i can stand in for a wound
as large as a crater. divers 
in the belly water. i can be
the knife that walks on four legs.
i can be the dancer without air.
i know what you need 
is a place to cut the guitar open
& find the foot. i know you are
just hoping that maybe 
one body can be another.
sometimes i will find a spider dead
in her own web. you hold me 
& tremble. the night without 
any swing sets. just the mirrors
marching all through the house.
i used to think i could save both
of us. be empty enough 
to let the fury gallop through me
& onward into some other crockpot house.
instead, you have me now.  you talk to me
like i am a bowl of mother-eyes.
my wax flesh. the heat. 
a tongue on a trapeze wire. 
i am not unsympathetic & maybe
that is a fault. i just know what it feels like
to have a rupture that demands to be fed. 
i can be that for you today
but in the night when i am gone
& the mirrors have grown wings,
you will have to see your mouth. 

lipstick

when i paint my lips they always
get ideas & become moths.
blue & wing-beating. 
i have to spend the night chasing them
through the streets of a mother city.
when i tell you "i miss the mountain"
i mean i miss the threat of bears
& watching the raccoons try on lipstick
in the trash can sanctuary.
i held a seance for trees once
& all they could talk about was
their desire to grow leaves of
impossible colors like indigo 
& teal. i think unnatural gets 
a bad rap. there's no fun in blooming
only when you are full. i come from
a long line of people who have tattooed 
skipped stones into our hands.
the planet left footprints once
& now we don't even look for them.
the only trouble is that i always 
draw on my lips too large. it isn't because
i'm looking for volume it's because
my hands are shakey. broken trails.
the deer path into the lemon village.
stone thrown into water. my ripple talking.
circling the walnut. a stained pair
of giant searchlights.
someone will find me in between
the sidewalk cracks. i will be dazzling
& they will ask me where
i got a mouth like this. i won't even
be able to speak. gesturing around me
to all the winged insects, maybe they will
understand that my lips are all around us. 

cat flowers

i love spelling mistakes.
i don't feel like english is a language
worth trying to speak properly.
instead, let's take the cat flowers
& have a party on our porch for dissidents
& tongue rejects. for those of us
with teeth carved from limestone. 
i'll invite the deer. i'll invite dear.
you once tried to say "i love you"
& you said, "i loathe you."
i felt relief to have the distances here
collapsed for all to see. if you have not
opened a window & waited for rain
then you are not really as winnowed
as you think. i put the car radio on 
& everyone was speaking pig latin.
i hope you do not say what you mean.
instead, i want to hear the night mash.
the half-gutted trout on the cutting board.
promise me we do not have a house in common. 
a toy room. a roaming dart board.
an unsteady hand. i shake the camera.
write a pastel history of the word, "go."
we all are just one kicked door
away from gods. in the attic 
we disagree about "invaluable." 
throw the family costume jewelry 
out of the open window. watch them
turn into crows on the way down.
a whole flock now as hungry as ever.
i hope we can agree there are too many consonants. 
i work my pocket knife around
your "quiet" until it is just a soft
"ohhhh," sound. the truth is
i do not know what i mean. i do not know
if the words do either. there have been
so many times you have said,
"say something" & nothing but grease
has come out. i type words into search engines
in the hopes they will know what i mean,
begin, "how do you know if"
& end "hurting you." 

aquarium 

our reflections stood in the shark tank.
we were divers wherever we went. 
you tried to climb into the water
so many times. i held your hand.
i preened your gills in the women's bathroom
where we were both lying. 
there was a someone pretending
to be a mermaid in the tall blue tank.
she waved at the crowd. you wept.
you asked me, "why aren't we gone?"
sometimes we use another person
as an escape. i did not mind being that
you for you. summer did not have
enough teeth to chew us & swallow.
my car died every time we tried to leave campus.
we gave in & took to walking the ugly creek.
ugly only because they had stolen
all the sharks & there was too much litter.
we harvested chip bags & twinkie wrappers
but they always returned. 
i don't remember how we got to
the aquarium but it felt urgent.
like if we didn't go our species would leave
without us. a tube of jelly fish worked
towards a prophecy. you & me relearned
how to swim. my name, like a murmuration
in the deep. here & then so gone.
i sometimes wonder what
would have happened to us if i would
have let you go. released your hand
& watched you lower yourself
into the shipwreck tank. would you
have grown back your gills?
would i have had no choice
but to follow you? scales & fins. breaths
coming as crystal balls. shoes by
the side of the creek. feet in the cool water.
did you want to love me?