house of spiders

you told me to kill her
& for a few moments we stared
at the palm-sized spider 
in the bottom of the bath.
it is a burnt sugar september.
i think maybe this is the month of spiders.
with a shampoo bottle
i did what you asked. in her death
she became a folding chair. i use
a potato peeler on the sun.
save some shavings for the coming dark.
i do not mind getting older. what i mind
is the world getting older too. 
the spiders do not go away. 
she is only the beginning. 
a spider on my foot in the morning
& a spider walking the shower curtain 
the next afternoon. a spider carrying
a story about gold & another spider
with the truth about how we will 
become ghosts. i find the infants too.
spiders the size of blinks. 
i do not want to kill anymore.
whenever i can, i let them go.
they knit halos in the corners of every room. 
sometimes i get nostalgia videos
on my tiktok. i cannot look at them
for too long or else i'll start panicking.
running as if time is a stop motion
little machine that i can trick into
letting me return. the spiders 
are not like us. they talk all the time.
they talk past & present & 
elsewhere. in their webs, time becomes
a string of christmas lights. 
i tell the spiders i am sorry for killing
one of their own. they do not accept
the apology. they say,
"she is not dead." a thousand of her
live in the walls. her face,
an anagram. back & forward.
they also tell me, "summer is not over."
"but it is almost," i say, desperate
for them to understand why i feel
like i'm dying. "summer is always over,"
they tell me as if it were a comfort. 
i dig a hole beneath the cedar
to bury the first spider i killed. 
i do not have her body so instead
i bury my left thumb. maybe it is
a comfort. maybe it is. 

mocktails 

i'm fully aware there is
a substantial hole in the sun.
or, at least, i am as aware as you can be
about the unraveling. 
we'll all be little donut children
if we're not careful. nothing in the middle.
walking through each other in search
of a mouthful of fat & sigh. 
 i put sunscreen on
in little circles to keep from
becoming tinder. it is an old
wise people trick. once i saw
a man selling candles turn into a thumb.
flames. spontaneous combustion.
we go to the pickled world to pretend
everything is fine. watch the battle.
a woman leans over to ask 
"who is fighting this one?" i squint
to try to see. there is a man selling cocktails 
without any eels in them.
i take one. it's enough to make me swim
to the bermuda triangle to try to escape.
someone is always waving goodbye. someone else
is always showing up & pretending
like salvation is a fried egg.
fast & easy. grease dotting the stove.
the battle is over & the between is empty.
we met once at the arch in washington square park.
you were whole & so was i. terrifying.
the x-acto knife. the blood. i visited the ocean 
with a scream in a pocket. we kissed
& pretended this was all over.
sucking all the flowers dry. hungry bees.
pollen on my eyelashes. i don't make it home. 

disposable camera

i let the little ice boxes eat my face.
keep the door shut so the cat doesn't get out.
(there is no cat, i am just dead). 
blink twice if you are alive. don't blink
if you're okay with turning
into a bird feeder. 
i feel like a bologna waiting to be made
into medallions. we take nothing
but our hands when we go out
into the teeth zoo. i set up my army men
all down your legs. i tell you
"do not move until the mission is complete."
there are people who only live
on rolls of films.
we hold their amber terrariums up to
the attic lights. i tell you to twirl the film
like dancing ribbons so we can see ourselves
in a stop motion show.
the cameras are just mice. the cameras
are just bugs. i tell you "i wish i would
have saved your face" i do not mean
a picture. i mean a death mask.
something three dimensional so that
if the house is on fire i can say
"wait i need their face" before
running back into the flames. 
if we are able to sell just enough of our tongues
i think we should make a movie
about our grandfather. one in which
he is a great bird of prey & for the whole show
we just follow him & try to get a clear picture
of him. the ghosts are always moving.
i would also want to evade understanding.
once i heard another trans person say
"i just want to be understood." for me
the freedom is the inverse. i want to be
free to be confusing & contradicting.
i want to take hundreds of pictures,
hold them up to the light,
& see nothing but guts & leaves.

trout

he holds them by the mouth
when he carries them home.
they drip water on the sidewalk.
i watch him from my window 
& he doesn't notice me. he's focused 
on putting one foot in front of the other.
his walking stick is glossy 
in the guts of late summer.
it shines just like the scales of the trout.
his fingers turned to hooks. 
rust & all. the word water of the creeks.
once i saw a bear passing through
with her cubs he same stream where he fishes
or maybe that was my forest eyes. 
a mirage of the other self. i am walking
through the water. i am carrying
a trout by the gaping mouth.
we talk every once in awhile. 
the longest was when he needed help
getting his pension. we sat on my porch 
& filled out forms online together.
he asked me, "what happens
if i live longer than the money lasts?"
i did not know what to say. 
i told him, "i'm sorry, i don't know."
then, he laughed to himself.
he said, "i can always keep fishing."
i've seen him sitting on a rock
by the edge of the water. he lives alone
just like me. i only glimpsed in his apartment once.
it is the one above mine. he hangs his clothes
on lines that crisscross his living room. 
his eyes swim like the fish he catches. 
what i want to witness is him pulling
a trout from the water. i wonder if somehow
this is a birth. the mouth turned inside out.
instead i only see him come & go,
trout in his one hand & walking stick
in the other. maybe he thinks of me the same.
the boy with two dogs who carries flowers
in his pockets back to his house.
does he wonder what i do with them?

sometimes ghosts comment on my instagram photos

they'll say things like "i wish i could
still feel the sun on my hair." i always "like"
their contributions. i dm them too.
i'll say, "thank you" & then i won't know
what else to tell them. i hope when i die
i am a typical forest or corn field kind of ghost.
i don't want to be trapped inside 
the computer's hungry guts. i'm not sure
if it's a choice though, how or where you haunt.
my grandfather will often show up
in windows when it's nighttime. he bangs
his cane on the glass. i shoo him away & say,
"i'm not dead yet." though, truthfully,
i have some concerns. if i am already a ghost
there are many things that would make sense.
first of all, my ability to pass through walls.
that seems like something a body shouldn't 
be able to do. second, is that i kiss boys
which is, to many people, a way
of being dead. third i guess is the comments.
i wonder then if i am a little bridge between
the dead people internet & the living people internet.
most of all though i think being trans is 
an exercise in death. really, i wish everyone
could try it (cue a right wing politician quoting this
out of context). i put that there because
i'm scared of what my truths might yield. 
if i start embracing being a ghost
they're going to think we all are. they're going
to start turning the earth & chucking in
more of our bones. when i say
i am dead i do not mean i have "passed away"
or that i am "gone." dear god don't ever say
i have "passed away." instead i mean i am sitting
on the tongues of the dead. i am sending them
pictures of us where the sun gives us halos.
call me the patron saint of bad lighting. call me
a tiny god of the moss. yes i am alive.
yes i am a ghost. another comment reads,
"the wind used to carry my teeth." 

we could be cake

with a fork in my mouth,
you plant buttercream roses
behind my ears. i have never been
as hungry as i am now.
wake up in the middle of the chocolate dark
with anxiety. 
we go around the house trying
to determine what is real
& what is cake. the television
or the crickets. the sofa, a great
sponge cake we have been missing out on.
the fridge could be cake too.
angel food bathtub. i do not want
to try my luck. lately i have been
unsure if it is better to take a bite
or better to move around the world
pretending like there aren't cakes
just lurking in plain sight. 
it might be best to meet them
as they arrive. once i guessed wrong
& i chomped down into a wine glass.
for a long time i thought i could
tell the difference. i thought there were
always signs. then, i met a few cakes
i still cannot believe. you tell me,
"there is no such thing as cake"
even as you make me a mouse
out of marzipan. i take all the mirrors
off the walls & eat them. you are not happy
but i have to keep us safe. the cake
has to come from somewhere.
a baker on the other side
of a phone call. you hold my hands
in yours. you say, "i am hungry too."
i weep because i don't believe 
you feel the same as i do but maybe
that is a failure of my imagination.
maybe i have found too many cakes.
i wonder if we are both 
full of cream cheese frosting. 
red velvet in our throats. 
here is my serving spoon.
i do not want to be shared. 

for sale

the house up the street is for sale
& i want my own little meat pie.
a place for the birds to come
if i want to feed them coins.
the house is always glowing orange.
i take a virtual tour & it's full 
of deer. deer heads & deer legs 
& living deer who are just there
to pay their respects. i gather all my quarters
& i know it will not be enough.
i don't want to own the earth
but i crave the quiet i feel from the photographs.
they say, "claim your bones."
it's as if the house is a time capsule.
a place to keep your nights safe.
i walk there. it's all the way at the top
of the hill where it seems like
the mountain parts into two green wings.
soon i will be too old to dream like this.
i wish i could put time into 
little coca cola bottles. blow on the rims.
i peer in the window.
the deer are watching television.
they notice me & scatter, frightened.
i try to tell them through the glass,
"i am just ravenous." i would eat
the walls if i could. i would devour
shingle after shingle. the house sells
before i can actually step inside.
a family without heads moves in.
i want to beg for it from them. tell them,
"you can't even look out the windows."
i will never make real peace with
the fact that we live in a world where
the soil is cut up like a tray of brownies.
here is your citadel. here is my porch
& the dead spearmint bush in a row.
once a week or so i see them. the deer.
they peer into my apartment
the way i gazed into their house. 
always startle me with those reflective eyes.
the mirror keepers. i open the front door
to try to tell them they can come
live with me. i am desperate for anyone else
to talk to about the house i did not get.
they are not there. just ribbons
of early autumn wind. 

peephole

i have covered one eye to watch for cicada killers.
protect your hum at all costs. 
i slept for sixteen years
& awoke to find everyone without windows. 
made mine from ant wings.
i keep a walking stick by the door 
with my grandfather's tongue inside it.
he always said, "learn eat the doorknobs"
by which he meant he could swallow the sun.
i do not have a jaw like that.
instead, keep a hopeless vigil.
burry the rings. burry the pennies.
everything that shines. burry them like acorns. 
it is good to know what your next offering will be.
live like a necklace. count your glorious parts.
i watch from the hole in the door
to see if they take my leg from the stoop. 
what they do with the pieces
we will never know. i own a phillip's head 
just for these occasions. loosen the bolts.
take apart the machines to look
for their death metal. their hungry guts.
i swear i have made myself so small
that i could crawl through the iris-sized opening
to greet whatever kind of mouth is open
on the other side. call me a drop
of blood or else call me an earring 
made of wood. the silent feast we have
involves no food, only bones. candle lit.
a knocking at the door. i do not want 
to check again who is there. they have
a chainsaw for a heart. gills. water. 
the wound without the knife that made it.
they will stand there & tell you they are
selling bibles. inside each bible 
is a plague of locusts. they'll eat the walls
from around you if you let them.
if they don't though 
i know from my own teeth
you will eat the walls yourself. 

daisy bowl

i loved to have breakfast with her ghost.
aunt joan with her mouth full of sugar.
she didn't know how to do anything
but laugh. in the morning at my great aunt's
the portraits would come alive too. 
a child version of my father played
with metal cars on the thick carpet.
all the family's cats and dogs chasing each other.
that summer i wanted to join them.
become an ancestor & worry in new ways
about the color of sun. i used one bowl
from the kitchen over & over. it was chipped
& white with a brown daisy pattern 
on the belly. i relished that dawn glow.
light shining off the bowl's rim. i filled it
with oatmeal and then water. stood in front 
of the microwave as it cooked my breakfast.
aunt joan hummed to herself. always asked
for her own bowl which i'd pour her,
just to pour it out again. 
she told me, "aren't you beautiful."
the television turned on by itself.
all the ghosts argued over what to watch.
i let them. channeled blooming from
one another. we almost always settled
on the news. a new kind of gun. a fire.
a car crash without any birds.
the ghosts always turned to me to ask,
"is it going to be okay?" i think the job
of the living is maybe to lie to the dead
& vice versa. i told them, "yes, yes it is."
they always relaxed then. a weight lifted. 
television snow. aunt mary was always
the next to wake up. she'd make 
her instant coffee & come to sit 
with all of us in the living room.
i'd wash my bowl out & the ghosts
would pack up their eyes. climb back
into portraits. i know she saw them too. 

nestlings

as kids, our father told us if we could catch a bird
we could keep it as a pet. 
this is exactly how i feel about gender.
like running in the meadow by the corn fields
chasing after crows & doves. my brother calls me
to tell me he is stitching back on his face.
lately we talk about girls on the phone just about
every single day. i want to tell him,
"have you considered that you might be
chasing birds?" instead, i listen. he talks about
letting his lungs turn into moth nests.
all the wings coming from his mouth.
he buys a flower bag. he talks about wanting
to paint his nails. he tells a girl he likes her & she does not
return the feeling. i am driving on the highway
with the phone on speaker. at a stoplight,
i notice the telephone wires are covered with birds.
all kinds of birds. herons & ostriches &
cardinals & plovers. some of those birds i know
don't belong up there. feathers fall.
he says he does not know what to do with
his hands anymore. i get home. i do not want
to let him go. i consider reminding him
what it was like to try & catch a bird.
there was once when we found one robin too young
to really get off the ground. we could 
have grabbed him. bald patches. tufts of down.
instead, we stopped & witnessed. he finally managed
to get into the air & back up into the tree.
i don't know what kind of birds we are anymore.
i want to tell him there are never 
enough hands to answer this. still, we are all
running. we always think we're closer than we are.