feast

i let the mosquito land
on my flesh. i tell him,
"give me pearls." he plants them
beneath skin. i want to follow
his drinking. swallow myself
until i am turned inside out. until
the sky is redder than red.
i see him work. his device,
his body & my body. the pearls
that will grow for days. turn hot
with fury of what was taken
& what was given. i do not know
why i permit this. i am disturbed
by my own inaction.
it is winter & i do not know
how a mosquito spawned 
& found his way into the bathroom.
he leaves me to talk to the light in the ceiling
like it is a god. the room is cold
& i cannot feel my feet.
i wonder if he feels cold too.
if when he landed on me,
he felt warmer.
quickly, i move to kill the creature.
his blood, my blood, a stain
on the white wall. i rub at it
but it won't go away. i think of
lady macbeth washing her hands.
i wash mine. already feel
the spot where the creature drank
throbbing on my arm.
the pearl growing. for me, beauty
is always like this. a buried
bloody thing. i wash my hands again.
look at the curtains of my cuticles.
cut my nails as short as i can.

toads

that summer was the last time
my lungs filled with coins.
i walked early in the morning
with no teeth at all.
lied to my mom uselessly that
i was going to church.
i looked up nearby catholic churches.
saint olivia's. once, i walked there
in the middle of the night.
considered what i would want
for worship. i did not believe in god
but i wanted to. wanted his thumb
pressing down on the roof.
i walked to the crooked neck
of the gushing creek.
rows of homes touched the thin forest.
i tried to find a house to imagine 
a life inside. my favorite 
was the one with the windchime colony.
all those throats. by ripe july,
i went looking for a family.
my dad had just turned into 
a pile of stones. i picked 
the stones up & hurled them one 
by one at the moon.
in the dirt, i found a toad & then
another. two little sets of eyes. i asked them
"would you like to be my organs?"
they said, "no, we prefer it here."
"if you come with me, i will sing
to you every moment of every day,"
i promised, knowing i would not
be able to keep it. 
they agreed & i sung 
all the way back to my dorm.
i tried, i really did. fed them crickets 
& my eyelids. told them everything
about gender & how it was killing me.
they would demand, "sing"
& so i would try
until my voice turned to sand
& despite all the stones,
the moon was still as loud
as a car horn in the window. 
i took them back when i knew
i had nothing left for them.
their eyes rang, golden bells.
my face floated in the creek,
a murky portrait 
of a diminishing girl.

the only one awake in the world

i am confident in my ability
to find a seam in the night
where no one else's eyes are full
of beetles. you tell me,
"you need to sleep" & i hear,
"you need to bury yourself
in the yard." in high school
i used to set my alarm 
to one in the morning. i would wake up
& stick my hands in the inky sky.
purple stain. the smell of iron.
there i would sometimes find
boys & sometimes 
find teeth. my own teeth that 
wandered off while i was both 
trying to die & trying not to die.
in that way, i am an expert trapeze artist.
i can balance myself on the nose
of a father. i can steady my body
on a hitchhiker's thumb.
i hailed a ride to the city.
it was the oily time after midnight.
he fell asleep at the wheel 
& i drove for him. a grubby beard man
with grit under his fingernails.
we have all been so far from
rest that sleep feels supernatural.
i am convinced though that i have
found those sweet spots.
when the dark & the silence 
swallow each other ouroboros style. 
i'm not sure who is the head
& who is the tail but there i was.
the only person awake 
in the entire world. the silence
was soft like moss. i did not 
let myself close my eyes.
i drank in the aloneness. 
wrapped myself in it.
just as fast as it comes,
the moment always leaves 
in a blinking pair
of headlights. a bird sneaking in
through the back door to become
a little girl. the street lamp flickering 
& catching a boy on the roof. 

ant paths 

while you slept i traced 
the paths ants took through your dorm.
like a river of little hungers
from the windowsill
to a mug on your desk. then, a march
along the ceiling to reach
the keurig in the corner. 
they never bothered you the way they
haunted me. i would imagine
waking up entangled. maybe even
being taken away piecemeal
by their parade. we met in winter
when there weren't any ants.
a snowstorm is a perfect place
to love someone without knowing
very much about them.
&, after all, isn't that the easiest 
place to love someone?
sun in a box of tissue paper.
spring brought the ants. at first,
i would try to kill them. my thumb
a little massacre. they knew though
where the trail was already. 
they would return. you would say,
"why do you bother with them?"
my heart like a balloon drifting
on the ceiling. i did not have
a good answer for you. instead,
i just want to the bathroom
to wash my hands with the dorm's
pink sickly soap. washed my face
with water. what would the ants 
come to take first? my fingers?
my eyelashes? one by one.
i think we both knew that
there wasn't enough snow
to keep us together. there is always
a little silent ending before
the official breaking up. i think it came
in the dark of morning
when i watched the ants. 
a little shadow part of myself, thinking,
but if i followed them,
then they couldn't get me. 

every window

my mom tells me
that when she was first broken up with
she cleaned every window 
in her house for days.
i don't know if she's telling me
to do the same. i have been thinking a lot
about my relationship to light.
once i lived in a room with not windows.
when i felt particularly unfettered
i would take a pencil & draw on where
i would like to place them. 
one in the ceiling & one right next
to my bed.
growing up we were not dusting people
but every once in a while we would
get on our knees & try to be.
paper towels & velvet lungs.
i think about the yellow light
in my mom's windows of the apartment
i never saw. i wish i could sit with her there
to have coffee. stare out the clean windows
& watch a pair of robins harvest twigs
for a new skeleton.
in my apartment in the mountains
i swept every day. that was my form
of window-cleaning. there were
only three windows 
in that apartment.
all but one i kept the blinds shut.
the one was tucked in a weird notch
in the bedroom. i went there
to worship. it was too high
for cleaning but still held the sun.
watercolor painting. every gold
& every yellow. my mom has not visited
my houses often but i still come home
to ours. the windows
are full of spider webs, grit,
& grease. i do not know if she wants
them cleaned. we cannot talk about light
without witness. what would
we see if we cleaned our windows.
shadows with crisper edges. 
our skin, like bedsheets 
on a clothesline. i want to ask her
when she stopped her ritual
with the windows. 
does she miss it? should i try it myself
even though my grief has grown legs? 

dear stink bugs

i have always wanted to be you.
i never know where 
you come from & that is
part of your mystery. 
whenever there is a warm winter day
you seem to be born like living gems 
from the walls of the house. 
almost every spider web 
holds one of your silent machines.
inedible. your shield skin 
& leaf litter hearts. this morning
i find two of you crawling
on the paper lamp by my desk.
your silhouettes like ancient searchers.
scouts for the melon knife.
grinding the coriander 
between our bones. i am lying 
right now. there is only one of you
on the lamp. the other
is me if you would let me
set my skin aside 
for an exoskeleton. i apologize.
i know that it is not your doing
who is & isn't your species.
just like i do not decide
which trees get to be children
& which ones are ghosts.
let us go swallowing all night.
i know an apple tree
in the middle of the corn fields 
where no one will find us.
there we can drink sugar.
walk slowly as we please.
i envy your pace. the patience
of your legs. my partner tells me
i am always running. i know
this is true & yet in the moment
i just feel like i'm trying
to breathe. there is a crow 
in the branches for
all of us. i have to admit i have
smashed you before. smelled
your final reeking question 
lingering for hours after
i made you into an asterisk. 
i have my questions too. 
where would you return to
if you could? do you want to follow me
to the apple tree? i will bring
my spare legs & the antennae i grew
while i was waiting for the sun
to ripen. 

baseball game

you can play gender all by yourself
if you have saved up enough baseball
to get you through the dark.
i run my fingers along the stitches.
the sweet grin of a hip bone. 
when i took myself apart the doctor asked,
"would you like to play baseball?"
it was an operating room. we were
in america which is to say we were
no where & everywhere. if i can help it
i try to be in america as little as possible.
i am not talking about the soil
i am talking about the idea. we would go
to the minor league games. watch men
strike out. watch fathers eating their sons' heads
like candied apples. someone is paying
for the dollar hot dog. someone 
is paying for the special seats
close to the plate. watch the gender come
right through the strike zone.
i used to play by which i mean i used to
try to be part of this country.
used to be a pretending creature.
to be seen is not always to be loved.
the first time someone gendered me right
it was at a baseball game. i was in a skirt
& still an usher in the bleachers said,
"young man." thank you thank you
for reminding me that baseball has little to do
with us & everything to do with 
an ache. my father corrected him & 
i focused on trying to catch a foul ball.
i knew each one was a heart i could use.
the escaping skin monster. 
i never did. instead, i watched & waited.
the field got farther & farther away.
the stadium light came up. summer night.
no players left. just me & whatever
body i have left. i carry it
like a bat. swing at moths. four of
my shadow, each for the home team.
tell me we can be something else. 
the doctor where the umpire should be.
i know i am up to bat. i know the game
is already over. there is no home run.
there is no pitcher. there is no gender
but the houses we fall asleep in. 
i wake my father up. i was just his nightmares.
everything is gone. we sleep in a field
of berries where 
the pitcher's mound used to be.

porch toad

thank you for always coming back.
i am here to tell you the house
i used to live in is now a half-dead lawn
with a rusted pipe jutting from
the earth. yesterday i passed by
& remembered the concrete porch
where you would come
& eat flies with me. sometimes
my father would sit with us too
but my favorite nights
were the ones where it was just
you & my bare feet.
we are all no longer as soft
as we used to be. i am glad
that the backyard ghost trees
are still there & that hopefully maybe
you might go to the parking lot next door
to swallow enough bugs to keep you fed.
i remember the first night 
you returned. i saw the orange-brown
patterns behind your eyes
& i knew you were the same creature
from the night before. i named you
but i do not remember what.
it doesn't matter. i have a different name
now too. i read somewhere that toads
only travel about a mile
in their lifetime. i know that means
you will not come to the porch
of my new home. sometimes
i find other others in the yard.
they are nothing like you were.
more skittish & prone to hiding
in the rotting pile of stumps
beneath the cedar. i hope that when we left
you did not miss me too much.
i hope the soil is damp & rich. i hope
your children all have places
to feast. o my dear porch toad
if you do come back, let us not talk
about the time that has passed.
i will pretend i am a little girl
if you pretend it is still a humid night
in august where both of us are full. 

carrot limb

i braid my legs beneath the dirt.
you ask me, "why do you always 
run away?" i have learned 
to grow deep. to go where
bones still drum. 
remember, a root is not a dead thing.
thick like a low-hummed song.
this is how we are fed.
sometimes i will hear someone say,
"back to my roots" & i will think,
"how have we survived 
so unnourished?" you come with
the spade. you dig & i watch.
there, my legs. they go deeper
& deeper. you ask me, "when
do they stop?" i am weeping.
it begins to rain frogs. the frogs 
all have the faces of my grandfathers.
i say, "i don't know." the question
is one of origins. where & why
did you start drinking downpour?
we do not reach an ankle. we do not pull
me up. you say, "i just want
to hold you." i do not want
to be held but i also do. 
i also want it desperately.
i want to be swallowed 
& tucked behind the ear
of an ancient being. for them
to keep walking & to forget 
the taste of my breath. my green face.
sun mitosis. two eyes beating down
on our little blood. you lay down
with me. shave my head 
just how i like. i speak in 
the broken plate morning.
"i remember my knees." 
you say, "i remember mine too."

chicken nugget

get all the bird in your mouth.
feathers & weekends & fathers. 
i am a blender disciple. put the house
in the blade place. it is better
to not know the way the feet looked.
i am getting to the age now
where i don't remember 
who did what to me. i have a blender
i just use for hands & another
for fruit. sometimes instagram 
tells me i want to watch juice cleanse videos.
i watch them even though
this is not something i could ever complete.
i had a boyfriend once
who liked to play with his food.
sometimes he chased me around the house
with a gun. the gun was a water gun
or it was not. we went on a date to
mcdonalds & he was wearing a tuxedo. 
he put a ham sandwich 
in the blender & told me,
"if you're really hungry, you will
drink it." i did. sometimes in my memory
he is not my boyfriend he is my priest
or my father. at a certain point,
what does it matter? throw the whole
skeleton in. throw in the eyes
& the nerves & the veins. it is all going
to the same place, a mash of 
unmappable body. sometimes i look
in the mirror & i see a chicken nugget.
jurassic & dormant. foot prints
left on the ceiling, a face in the dark
peering above the fence. i turn on
all the blenders at once. hope that one
catches enough sweetness
to make a meal. a grape or a gourd.
almond milk. a flock of beakless chickens
roaming a body room. their hearts,
little white meat nuggets.