charm bracelet 

i have a habit of turning grief 
into tiny horses & frogs &
sometimes even a ferris wheel. 
my first ex bought me a charm bracelet
& filled it as quickly as he could.
he bought me teeth & shovels. he bought
me wedding rings that we walked through
to reach his backyard.
you can take a thumb & smooth
over any pain you like. i have written
my life in pastels. sunset sunset sunset. 
a river started in the bathroom
& i cried because i did not know
who i could tell & who would even
believe me. my favorite charm
was a crown. i could pretend i was 
waiting for my coronation. queen of the attic.
queer of miniature halos. 
he cut off my feet to make charms.
then moved on to take
each of my windows.
he was obsessed with making memories
which is to say he was a historian
of the present. once, in an emptying mall,
he caught a pigeon to eat whole.
the chinese restaurant glowing red
was the only other store open.
i considered running inside & begging
to be a worker there. let me chop cabbage 
& answer phone calls from the sea of lips. 
he held me, same as the pigeon,
& asked how many more charms 
i could fit around my neck. 
he counted before i could answer.
"one the size of a house," he said,
thumb across the chain. 
i would take years for me to remove
the bracelet. even now sometimes
i will find a window. pull it out
& watch as it swells again to normal size.
outside there is a tree of feet. 
autumn comes & they fall it pairs 
eager to run away. 

medicine cabinet 

i don't have enough money 
for the good remedy. instead i look in the mirror
& wait for geese to fly out. 
i have had to put my eyes
back into my head with nothing
but a pair of tweezers. to be sick
is to be an oracle whether
you like it or not. i have been told,
"you are very brave" as if i am the neck
of a rosary. as a kid, i was just as much of
a medicine cabinet connoisseur. 
my favorite was at my great aunt's house.
it was a huge & chrome framed with a mirror.
inside there were nothing but little ghosts.
men in a long line. dirt on their hands.
sometimes though i would open it
& find a shredded wedding dress.
once & only once i found a tiny jar
of eyelashes. a secret is a place you go
to be real. a sickness is the opposite.
today is a good day. today is a day
i would not take the cure if
i opened my cabinet & found it 
perched there waiting for me. there are
other kinds of days where i would 
gladly take the life of one of those ghosts.
drink the blood of an angel. put the eyelashes 
on my tongue & wait for them to fix me.
another time i was at a lover's house.
i knew i would not see him again.
i wanted to know something else
about him. something true. i opened
his cabinet to find a little trumpet,
sitting bell to the ground. i imagined 
him playing there, tiny instrument 
to his lips. i shut the door. left feeling guilty
that i knew more than he meant me to.

my brother's wife

he calls to tell me
"i'm married now."
we are urgent people.
runaway wedding kind
of people. i get in the car.
drive over a heavy orange moon.
i know something is wrong.
when i get to his house
the door is a ring of fire.
i duck to pass through.
standing on the neck
of the kitchen sink faucet
is a bird. 
he says, "this is my wife."
she is a wren i think 
or else some other kind 
of escaped star.
i am worried for him.
the little bird makes us
pancakes. the door flames swell
& i dab sweat from my face.
he says, "we are so happy."
the fridge door makes
a kissing sound as it opens.
she eats worms from
the palm of his hand while 
our forks scrap across
the syrup-drenched plates.
i want to ask him what he means
by all of this. she is 
a bird. how did they meet?
does he plan to become
a bird too? i do not ask
any of these questions.
we are also people of 
the most laden silences. 
skipped stones. she whistles 
from her perch. i feel panicked.
i open all the windows 
in the house. he says,
"what are you doing?"
i shout to her. i say,
"go! get out!" she takes
the first opening. lingers
on the sill for a moment 
& then break into flight.
my brother is furious. 
the fire enters the kitchen.
smoke stampedes. i get out
the window too. i tell him
over & over that i am sorry
even though i'm not sure
if i am. i am worried that
i do not know him anymore.
his little captured wife.
he laments, "it's going to take forever
for me to get her back."
how do you to tell someone,
"i want you to be happy."
i should not have opened
the windows. fed the fire
the world's air. i see her singing everywhere.
my brother's wife, with her brown feathers
& her penny-colored mouth. 
he looks for her. i see him too.
standing in a tree. perched 
on the orange moon. hand full
of writhing worms. 

beef jerky

we are not tender. we come
from the toughest parts of the animal.
the sundried tongues & the windshield wiper tails. 
summer does not have enough fireflies for us.
their holy lights dot the july blue dark.
i sit shotgun while dad drives. his hands
are beef jerky. his teeth are beef jerky.
his eyes are beef jerky. we are going
to the beer store where the boy at the counter
will be a zoo keeper. his eyes like bees.
i climb the mountains of beer cases.
wonder briefly why they mean so much
to my father. he drinks like each bottle
is a lung. smashed on the driveway.
he told me once that beer is bread.
i thought of mass. the bread becoming body. 
our bodies in bottles. i would choose 
to live inside a green bottle if i had to. 
i love their emerald glow. 
by the cash register there is always a jar
of beef jerky. dad buys me the biggest piece.
i start eating it while he lugs 
just new skeleton into the jeep.
we have roof off even though 
it's going to rain. i chew flesh. my own
or my father's. our tongues, like jump rope.
he carries the cases of beer inside.
i linger on the porch. the fireflies float
like holy bottles in a great river of sweat. 
my father does not say anything else to me
all night. uses his lungs. the fabric walls of the house. 
smells like a drowned moon. all the while, i eat. 
sweet salt. the last bites of the jerky.
an animal running all through the night. 

one-way roads in allentown

i don't need to go home.
each pothole is full of gold.
i consider pulling over. becoming
a prophet & filling my hands
with ice cream. 
we become the needle's eye.
all the birds fly through. i am jealous 
of the paths of bikes. they scale
the skyscraper's legs. let's not pretend
we had a door. let's not try
to say we had anything to do
other than clean the windows again.
it is autumn which means one day soon
the heater will resurrect
& the building will become so hot
we all boil. chicken flesh
in the oiled sun. i take another 
wrong angel. the alley is blocked
by trash bins. every day is 
trash day in the holiest corners
of the knot. have you ever 
tied your fingers together?
stoplights like wedding rings. 
you call & ask if i am dead. i do not know
how to answer. talk to text,
"i am a hive." the city's wooden leg.
gutters full of muck leaves 
& eye blinking up. i find my way out.
the trunk is full of swan. 
i park on a different block. walk 
through a field of balloons
to reach the strangled lawn. 
we still don't have curtains.
i can see right inside
our first-floor apartment. ribs & all. 

(de)forest

return is a practice of loss.
i take you to quietest part of the forest 
where i used go to worship the moss
& plant my tongue.
i still feel my unsaid prophecies here. 
now though, it is no longer quiet. 
we walk past a tall chain-link fence 
where on the other side,
bodies are building a mausoleum. 
machines scream & beep. an alarm 
sounds like a box cutter through the air.
all around, the earth is torn.
deep scars in the soil. roots grab handfuls
of all the before. 
we walk farther than i ever walked
to try to escape the destruction zone. 
finally we come to a place where
all we can hear are the crows.
you ask me what i think they're saying.
i do not tell you i think they are 
talking about us. they do not remember me.
i want to tell them, "i have tried
to be gentle." they worry we are more people
charting hunger into the old growth.
we find oyster mushrooms blooming
like ancient ears on the shoulders
of an old tree. i like to point out to you
the smallest mushrooms. orange ones
& even blue ones. what i really want
is to walk until i become one.
until my gills stretch & my veil pulls back. 
this is a fantasy of escape. instead,
i apologize to the forest for leaving.
a romantic notion that i could
have somehow stopped the construction.
not alone, i remind myself, 
maybe a flock of us so lush they would
not be able to tell if we were skeletons or branches. 
out here the false divide between us 
& nature collapses gloriously. 
i am not a mushroom but i did come,
as my ancestors did, from a wild root
in the deep belly of the earth. 
drank the sun. worshipped the moss. 

birthday cards

i cannot buy enough chandeliers.
i tell you, "i know i don't need another"
but then i'm clicking "order"
& committing several atrocities 
to get one. hang them in the closet.
in the bathroom. inches
from the ground & tight up to the ceiling.
once i saw a transphobe on a forum say,
"if we can identify as anything,
i identify as a twenty-year-old."
i thought, "kind of valid." i have
thankfully never studied metaphysics.
the birthday cards have been coming
every day since i was thirteen
& tried to become a jump rope.
they are never from the same people
though most of them have no signatures at all. 
empty little congratulations. 
the ones with senders are always family
who are dead. they switch up whether 
or not they misgender me. i wish
i was still angry about stuff like that
but i am just glad they remember
i am alive & trying not to die.
they sent me a chandelier once
& it was made from my father's beer bottles.
i put that one in the crawl space 
for the rats to dance with. 
i do worry what would happen to me
if the cards ever stop. i've gotten them
from exes too & wanted to tear 
their wings off & compost them.
then i remember their birthdays
& something in me fills with geese. 
it's the tether. the little foothold we keep
in each other's lives. i am not sure if
i am sending cards too. maybe it is
like breathing. everyone walking around
with thousands upon thousands
of birthday cards. i wonder who burns them
& who keeps them? who buries them
& if anyone shares them, saying,
"i am somehow alive." the light from
chandeliers is always mosaic. 
still life of a river. all the cards take flight. 

house in the woods

my hair is growing wild.
i ask you, "have you seen the little black house
in the middle of the woods?"
it is nighttime & all the deer are 
standing on their hind legs & walking
like people through the forest.
you tell me never to talk about that,
especially in the dark. what i do not tell you
is that i have woken up there. 
a bed the size of a welcome mat. fire going
in the hearth. i had to crawl through the brush
& follow the two-throated trees until
i reached our front door. i do not have a razor.
i'm afraid of my hair growing.
terrified of what it might mean 
to become a hollow where voles come
to say their prayers. i take myself as close to 
the skin as possible. i think someone lives there
or else it is my little black house in the woods.
always meant for me to return. i do not want
to know what i'll find if i stay. 
maybe you have one where you also wake up.
we talk too much about secrets
as if they are a bad thing. without secrets
i do not think i would be a self. 
each like an acorn. the future unborn trees
rocking, tongues curled. 
maybe though we also talk to much about a self
as if it is a good thing. 
there was a moment this last time
that i wondered what would happen
if i never left. if, instead, i went out to get firewood.
fed the flames. watched the chimney 
pour ghosts into the mountain's stubble. 
invited the deer over to talk about death.
birds, delivering me seeds to my windows. 

gasoline girl

fire tastes like birthday cake 
when it starts between your teeth.
an open window. the sticker on the outside reads,
"save us too." it is a message to the firemen 
to harvest our eyes if nothing else survives.
i would like to see what they do
with the bones. 
i have been a diamond. i have been
a gutter pilot. you have been driving & i have thought,
"we are going to crash & turn into wooden crosses
on the shriveled moon." a purple bruise.
your book of matches. there is nothing 
as rainbow as petroleum in the water supply.
we drink the fire or the fire drinks us.
the dinosaurs warned us of all of this.
they said, "go extinct in a way that makes
the next species excited." when the meteor comes
i will be juggling skulls. one for every year
we have eaten. i do not have 
enough arms. i do not have enough tongues.
there is a letter in the mail with all the secrets
to a beautiful life. i will read it 
& then consume the stamp. ship myself
to a facility where no one needs
my blood. i want to be useless. i want to be
the sleeping mountain. nothing to do with
all the ribbons. a cassette tape 
with the sounds of girls making
& breaking promises
to one another. it begins,
"i will never turn into a jeep." here i am.
headlights like melon ballers. nectar 
on the bed. you take me by the chin 
to the old canal locks. a tree falls. the fossils
have a circus & do not invite us. 

in the backyard of our lives i bought a shiny grille 

i knew we didn't need the grille but i wanted
to show everyone that we would survive the next meteor. 
that we weren't dead yet. 
i painted pictures of dinosaurs
on the side of the house. 
the grille was the size of the coffin we used
to bury our father's hands when the machines
cut them off the last time.
usually, we are regenerating people
but something went wrong. 
chain & conveyor belt. he came home  
with his hands inside a takeout bag. 
we helped him. he said, "if only we had a grille."
we did not know what he meant 
& worried that he meant he wanted us
to consume them. for most of us, our
limbs grow back though we always feel
like something has been lost. i thought maybe
i would invite neighbors over to feast 
around the grille. we could make hamburgers
& not talk about loss. 
we knocked on the neighbors' doors
& found the houses empty. they left a lot.
photographs & canned corn. we gathered them up.
our father asked us to feed him. we started
with the photographs. rolled them. chewed them
like sinew. we ate with our father. 
he told us how to start the grille up.
handfuls of coal. the dinosaurs twitched,
sensing their ancient fires. i just wanted
to make a hearth in the middle 
of our little immortality. i asked our father
why it is that we want to live for forever.
he did not know. he told us to get more coal.
to cook as much as we could find. 
i cooked his hands. i cooked the oak tree. 
the grille shined & shined. 
almost a gleaming new car. not a getaway 
but a return device. the portal back
to the throat. a tail of smoke 
thrown into the clouds like an escape.