candelabra 

what i have done to balance the ghosts.
a candle in every hand. the hallway 
as long as a swallowed word. 
i forgot how to eat & became 
a wick. begged on corners
for a light to shrink me. 
we sit in the living room
in front of a television with nothing
but stock markets on it. once i thought
about buying a piece of the death machine.
we walked in orbits around the city.
you talked like you knew where all
the spaceships were going.
i believed you. neither of us like to be wrong.
i guess no one does but we are
especially bad at it. one place
where we differ is that sometimes i think
it is a kindness to not tell the truth. you once 
promised me that we were not going
to have to hold another flame.
then it came & then we were running
& you were saying, "you are never
careful enough." it is hard because
it is true. i break at least one bowl
every month. always like holding
a dead bird. i should learn kintsugi,
the gold repair, but i don't have 
enough hope for it. instead i take the shard
out to the foot of the honey locust
where we have our graveyard. 
i know if i get one more flame
i will have to change. i will not be able
to hold my fists up in the night.
when i am worried about money
i think of you lit by only candles,
orange glow flickering 
across your face & your shadows escaping.
you have a whistle in your pocket
which you use to call our front door.
it too is coming apart. the knob,
like a choked coin face. i have a lighter
on the windowsill. tell me, even if
it is not the truth, how do you know
we can keep it bright enough? 

i explain ocd to the dandelions

it is like trying
to hold a terrible cloud.
i remember though
the first thrills of feeling
like the sky was pinned down
& not going 
to topple down on me again.
a ritual of fingers & teeth. 
i started with food.
pretended sandwiches were moons
waning towards new.
the blank sky. haven't you ever
tried to count the faces 
of the divine? haven't you ever
woken up before the sun
to try to grow a pair of wings?
when i am at my worst 
i am speaking into a velvet mirror.
the self i want
is not there. she is on the roof
casting out a fishing line
& hoping to snag her father.
i promise you that 
you can find ways to take inventory 
of anything. footsteps. dead birds.
droplets of water.
the world of numbers is one
of spiral & sweetness. is one that has,
somehow, kept me alive. 
this is an exercise in devotion. in loss.
i could bend down now.
give you all names like "one"
& "five thousand." when i am farthest 
away from the ribbon self,
i think i could teach others.
a religion of urgent collections. 
tell me, who do you think
decides how we sleep? is there
a little jupiter beetle in all of
our heads or do we just have
to find the yellow & spit it out?

infinite content ocean & our thumbs

there is an instagram account
that posts stills from every spongebob episode ever. 
it's been going frame by frame for years.
i think of the crouching person
& their fingers. the glow of their phone screen
in the dark of an apartment that smells
like wood & cats. how, in many ways,
the work of humans is the work
of librarians. of fishermen. of what is
taken to bed with the moon. in the car
on the way home, we talk about limiting our screen times
& i get frustrated. you say, "there is a program
that can lock yourself out of the apps."
i know i am an addict to color & light & desire 
but also at the same time to the idea that i am small
& that everyone else is just as hungry.
i want a portal without advertisers. i want
our rampant kelp forests & midnight songs.
to run out into the street & find piles of photographs.
i have a vision of an ocean of all the posts that
no one else has seen but their creators.
the unwatched youtube videos. a man holds up
a snake found in his bathtub. he tells her,
"i am sorry." a girl eats a flower. someone is
convening with ghosts. a stop motion where every still
is from a separate fractured story. 
gushing spilling ocean. every day the world becomes
more & more unknowable. i find relief in this. 
in the vision, i hold my breath. witness
what fires i can. fill my skull with their warmth 
& their burns. my fishbowl without any fish.
we used to have anchoresses who lived apart 
from the world. locked in rooms. prayed 
& talked to god. we are becoming the opposites.
tethered to the fullness & the flames. 
but yet still maybe, talking to fragments of 
some kind of divine we hold between us.
past the feed machine & into the blood.
the place where our strangenesses dwell like eels. 

6-pack 

in terms of masculinity my father 
measures himself by the holes in his belt.
he only has one & he brags when he
has to cut a new hole
for them to fit. the deck outside
where him & my uncle used to drink together
is falling apart. the steps collapse one by one
& turn into hawks. he buys beers
by the six-pack. counts them. hides them.
treats them like his sons. he has 
nine of us or maybe only three
or maybe only two depending on 
when you ask him. if it is late & no one else
is awake he might say, "i love you."
if everyone is around he might
break a bottle & chase his gender
around the yard until it makes him sick.
when i first came out i was ridiculous
& had mirages of my father teaching me
something about being a man. 
he is probably the last person i want
to learn about a gender from. 
i sometimes look at both him
& my mom & wonder if they would
be happier trans. honestly i think 
most people would be happier trans
but i'm biased. there used to be this razor commercial
where a dad teaches his trans son to shave. 
i watched it & cried even though that's not
what i want. the script is sometimes
so heavy with longing you can't help
but notice your lacks. i want to see my father 
without his gender. i want to see him 
at the end of a six-pack, whirling with
a storm-laden night sky. this is where
i used to be so afraid as a child. when he 
no longer had his daylight eyes
& he looked so lost. i want to be 
lost with him. i want to teach him
about masculinity. about how & where
we can bend. i want to paint his nails.
i want to break beer bottles. shards
of amber glass. i worry that someday
the whole deck will up & leave like a flock
of elephants. then the house would
be bare & it would just be us
& the windows & nine empty bottles.
one, my own, with a little boy inside. 

several kinds of downpour

the first kind is obvious. the rain comes
like spilled teeth. we go outside 
& soak ourselves until our water is blood
& blood is water. the next is less common
but has still followed me. the ceiling
like a mouth of moths. all the wings
beating against our faces. i am not someone
who can do anything halfway. it is always
a deluge. the flooding alleyway 
we swam through to be lovers again.
i call you & it is midnight. we are both
underwater. we are in the city again 
& no one else is alive. we walk the phantom streets.
sirens spill across the clouds, another form
of downpour. there are not enough 
wheels to carry the kind of grief 
of leaving too soon. i never reach precipices,
instead the downpour is the place where
the bodies can no longer carry all the peaches.
i learned everything i know from the first kind.
from clouds telling everyone, "soon"
& everyone rushing as if they might
outrun the arrival. i once walked around
with a shower cap on during the day.
i was preparing for the finger snow.
the great eyelashes of angels. you sometimes  
come to my backdoor & tap on the screen.
i do not want to turn you away
but i have a secret room full of buckets.
they fill with water & i empty them.
i am always just a breath away. i wonder 
what it is like to live as an easier person.
head filled with turtles instead of cicadas. 
i take my exoskeleton to the car wash.
put the quarters in the machine 
& watch it pour. when i see you next
should i pretend not to know you 
or should i tell everyone stories of what
we used to tell each other when the moon
was ready to gush? when the streets filled 
with ivory & birds? 

how to breathe

there were years where
i hid having only gills.
i didn't want anyone
to see me gasping
in a jar of water.
i think it started in middle school.
the water there tasted
like aluminum foil
& the color green. i never have been
a great swimmer. my gills though,
i loved them so much.
frills pleated into 
my face. i took pictures
of them that only i would
ever see. sometimes our bodies
know exactly what we need.
a dress without the world
attached. wind & leaves tripping
like eyelashes. i do not think
anyone every caught me.
though once, i was in the bathroom
& someone came in
to do the same. she plunged her head
beneath the faucet. gasped loud
& urgently. the kind of hunger
of someone who has not breathed
all day. i wanted to tell her,
"i feel that too." instead. i pulled away.
held my breath a little longer
& waited for her to be done.
she was so hungry
she didn't notice me.
eventually, i became an amphibian
like all people 
with a semi-functioning gender.
still, my lungs have always felt
like mismatched socks. 
i walk around & see a world
underwater. i wonder who
i would be there. clouds of fish.
eel ribbons. my mouth, a tear between
the sun & the deep. 

hypochondria 

come & let's catalog all our soft parts.
i put a needle 
through my ear drum & hear
gulls. 
the word "hypochondria"
comes from an ancient greek word
meaning "between the ribs 
& navel." here is where all my worms go.
they believed this was where
sadness lived. there is so much wisdom
in all the old science. 
i have felt my sorrow there
like a water wheel.
this is all to say
sometimes i make lists
of all the ways i am dying.
it doesn't help that
i am sick it so many 
bright & gleaming ways.
pills, like little eyes in their bottles.
the doctor measuring my skull
& saying, "there is a spider
big enough to crawl
in your mouth when you sleep."
i go to webmd when i want
to feel the full panic. 
cancer & lung collapse 
& sepsis. i imagine somewhere
there is a little angel man who
has to write all these entries.
sometimes he pauses
at the completion 
of an article.
he considers adding
a short poem before 
reminding himself
that science is not supposed
to sing. i trace my melancholy. 
count my ribs. i am missing one
& it is off being something else.
maybe a spoon or maybe
a bookmark. i look
in every encylopedia for an ailment
to explain this
but there is none.

garage 

my father jokes about running a power line
out to the garage so he can live there.
i remember once
during a thunderstorm
we sat on overturned paint buckets
& watched it pour
from an open bay.
washing the driveway clean.
i have walked inside there
& found shrines to invented gods. 
the walls are covered with
old paintings & wooden idols.
my father is a maker. a maker of 
holes & a maker of hinges &
a maker of sawdust. 
i used to want to be just like him.
he fills bags of wood shavings 
to give to us to line the chicken coop. 
maybe i still do want
to be like him. in the yard i build
a garage from leaves 
& feathers. every time
the wind comes strong it
blows the doors away. 
i find i have less & less places
to hide. i envy my father
& all his garages. pulling the door shut.
the callouses on his fingers. 
what is it like to live
inside your own fist?
my father is rarely delighted.
i guess so am i. sometimes when it rains
i wonder if he is there
still sitting & watching it. i don't
watch the rain. not anymore.
my garages fill with bones.
burst. rebel. i throw a tarp over
the firewood in the yard. 
use a shovel to turn the chicken's bedding.
look out in the yard at all
the places my garages 
could bloom. run a power line
out to each of them. watch them glow.

gift shop

when it rained in chincoteague 
we would always walk in town
& decide how we wanted to remember
escaping our pennsylvania ourselves. 
on vacation, we were opalescent. 
rainbows of our flesh glinting
from the light of the peach ring sun
even as it shone behind grey clouds.
when i was younger,
i lied & told everyone in school
that we had a house in chincoteague.
i think a part of that was true.
i had built a little house
by the water 
between my ribs. lowered
a crab box into the channel. 
i was a girl or i was almost a girl
or i was not a girl at all.
saltwater taffy. toy horses.
a wrack of polka dot headbands.
my favorite shops
were the dust-veiled ones
where a man behind the counter
talked to birds that were not there.
in one we found a sting ray necklace. in
another we played mancala
& held up kites
as if we knew how to fly them.
we only ever got one or two trinkets.
they never felt like enough.
how do you take a whole 
imagined life back with you to the house
of grapes & dirt?
there is nothing hungrier than a gift shop. 
desperate. a forced smile
inside a disposable camera. 
we roamed the aisles. shook snow globes.
saw our reflections in the wide windows.
all the ways you can say,
"do not take me home." 
we waited for the sun to emerge
dazzling & wearing everything i wanted
but could not keep. 


 

b theory of time

get me out of the dirt
i want to shake 
a tree for chestnuts. 
all my boyfriends 
are beautiful & on fire. 
we run without bones
back into the soup.
come & feast my wings.
boil the first frog with me
& walk our fathers
back into the frost
so they can eat.
sometimes i go present-ing myself
too much & i forget
that we are sitting
in a preschool without windows.
that you are not my god
but my tongue. my river
into the ancient crack in the earth.
i always thought i would
one day arrive without
any texture, instead
here i am as smooth
as velvet & kicking the knees
of a chronological wedding.
instead, the future of
our sighs is thick & earnest.
a shawl around us. 
we are resting. we sleeping.
we are wrestling an angel
until it sings. dear god
we are worms &
kidney beans & pleasure.
a pile of shoes. a shoe of hair.
you watch me buy
a boat & we sail it into
the orange after before life.
not a room of quilts 
but the threads, shoulder
to shoulder & sometimes 
whispering into
each other's ears. in the darkness,
we get to speak without unison.
i choose to say, "keep me."