goodbye yellow 

each night another neighbor
puts a couch out on the curb
with a little sign that says, "free."
we salvage them & turn them
into horses. the horses have nowhere
to stand in our little attic lives
& so we give them driver's licenses 
& tell them to go & gather
as many ears of corn as they can. 
the yard fills with husks. 
it's harvest time or else it is 
time to celebrate the great death
of all the bees. goodbye yellow.
goodbye gold. goodbye red.
insect wings fall like snow. the horses 
miss being places where people
took their spines & laid them down
like shovels. they kick in 
the neighbors' windows
and they find the horses 
lying in living rooms with the television
set to a static channel. snow on top
of snow. what do you do when 
what you were is so thoroughly gone
that no one can recognize you 
anymore? i ring doorbells.
i gather the horses. ride them
to the forest & i tell them,
"if you want, you can be deer."
they take me up on the offer.
learn a new kind of running.
still, sometimes, one or two are successful.
i'll discover a couch in the woods.
animals perching on the cushions 
& worms in the foam. home is 
breath. the exhale. the perfect place
to decompose. whenever i find one,
i sit with the creatures. i feel
the couch still running away
from all the glass & the rain. 

radio surfing for a single bone 

you taught me a new restlessness.
driving, you would click the "seek" button
over & over, culling the air for a throat you wanted.
always in the passenger seat, i waited,
let the skipping world arrive
in brief calls for help.
i remember parking at the shore in maine.
i ate fruit loops from a little plastic bag
& you talked about what you wanted
to do with me after we were married. 
you rubbed my knee in circles
like golden rings. my left knee you caressed 
is the worst in all my body to this day.
can your bones respond with their own curses? 
they say, "he wants to toss you like
a smooth stone across the water."
we talked & all the while he pushed the button.
dispatches came through from the tin foil world.
finally he landed on a gritty tongue.
a man singing about angels. he believed in god
more than he believed in my lungs.
once, he grabbed me by the hair 
& said, "i love you." i felt a knob on a radio.
it is impossible to live while another person
waits for you to be what they need.
me, every voice through the radio.
his thumb in my mouth. bowling ball headed.
i rolled through the darkness. fog on the water.
he said, "we don't have to go back
to pennsylvania." i did not say anything.
instead, i reached over & helped him
keep surfing the radio stations.
i never felt so desperate for a place to land.
give me a song. a curse. anything. 
finally, a beat i knew. 
i said, "i love this song." i don't remember
what i chose but it didn't suite the moment.
some 2010s pop song. he listened for a beat
or so before he put the car into gear.

blood river

i follow the big tongue into the ocean.
they say languages came from 
a shattered tower but i think they arrived
in the water. heads thrust beneath the current.
there, spirits possessed our mouths
& taught us exactly how to say,
"i am lost." in the blood river the fish 
are already dead. easy to scoop from the water
& eat like apples. i call you over & over 
& you do not pick up because you are air now.
no one floats in the blood river. 
if you go in the deep you will just become
a stone, smoothed by the passing
of all your ghosts. the tree goes backwards.
i am holding my grandfather by the collar
of his shirt. he is running without any hands.
i tell him, "put those back." the language he speaks
is not my own. instead. our words pass each other
like chickens & goats. the longer i'm in the river
the more accustomed i become to red.
red sky. red rupture. red teeth. a bonfire 
somehow floating on the surface of the blood.
did you know that there is no such thing 
as an ocean? we are running out of time
to reach a nowhere open. where we become
part of the birds learning. where no one
can tell us, "you are not delivered." 
i cup my hands. look into the pond. 
there the tadpoles all have our noses
& our fear of silence. i hold them as i walk.
they do not scream though they are terrified.

square knot

the question becomes
with what do you hold yourself together?
the ice cream melts on my way to you
& each stop feels like a rosary bead.
smooth. forefinger & thumb.
i am concerned about the eggs
in the chicken coop & whether or not
this year will have any ribs left.
when i was a girl scout 
we once took turns practicing knots we had
no use for. i held out my finger
as a loom. let the other girls practice
on my skin. this is what it means 
to live in this country. like racing an onion.
test subject. teleprompter. 
they take bids on how & for what they
kill us. for democracy or for profit 
or for unity or for freedom.
i pick at knots in my thread.
sometimes when we bead, the seeds
blink like eyes. when i get back
to the air bnb i am glad i did not
eat my ice cream without you.
the rooms are small. plastic red spoon.
you open packets of ketchup. 
i hear blood. on our way here, 
we passed a sunken house
glazed with dusk light in the middle
of the old woods. you said,
"i wouldn't mind living 
in a place like that if we 
could be safe." we drive there,
ice cream still melting, burrow inside.
tell each other our favorite unhistory.
"there is no such thing as the united states." 
grow our hair out. braid it.
finally, then, make use of that knot,
by tying our heads together. 
the ice cream goes fast. i lick the cup.

baby deer

we find them grazing on the side
of the highway & pull over.
the deer still have 
their velvet. i know what it was like
to be hungry in front of 
an audience. we pluck leaves.
tell them, "come home with us
& be our children." 
earlier today
in the infusion center
the person on the other side
of the separator from us
talks the whole time about her babies.
you put in ear plugs
but i listen. she says,
"my toddler talks & worms come out."
she says, "i always wanted to graze
on the side of the highway."
i wanted to interject & say,
"i have too." though i know i would not be
a cautious enough deer. i would be
the little road kill angel. 
lay flowers in my ribs. the deer sit
& watch television. we show them
the cartoons we liked as children.
the deer want to go to space camp.
then they want to stay up
watching horror movies. 
their friends come over.
hoof print on the ceiling.
i told you before we picked them up,
"i don't know how to be a body."
i was trying to say,
"i love our children" by which i mean
the ones we don't have. 
do you know what it's like
to want what you don't want?
the deer eat dandelions. the deer learn
how to get the mail. how to make
boxed mac & cheese. they sing
to themselves & then to us.
i go alone to eat leaves by the side
of the highway. i want to know 
who i was before them.
you drive by & find me. we have
no deer. you are worried. you don't know
where i went. i apologize until 
i have antlers. you climb them
& build yourself a tree house there. 

twin spearmint bushes 

on the porch, we ate our hands.
the storm had a shiny baseball bat
& he smacked the rooves of every house
on the mountain. deer ran, carrying
photo albums in their teeth. 
raccoons trying to catch their own hair.
birds with gps pulled up in the hearts.
take me to the next heaven. 
a good july storm will shuck you.
i remember running inside
& closing the blinds
as if to say, "no one is home."
my two spearmint bushes still outside
pounded on the door. they said,
"we remember when the television 
was white as gold." i did not know
what they were talking about.
they were trying to say anything to get inside.
i dreamed of them as house guests.
all of us, myself & my two spearmint bushes
sitting on the couch. their roots 
entangled with mine. one telling me,
"it is not so bad to have to drink the sun."
storm snarl. the lighting knitting a fracture
in the sky's porcelain laugh. 
wind came & undid those two plants.
i tasted their ringing on my tongue.
their eyelids still on the windowsill 
readying for tea. i said i was sorry.
the storm did not. i went to sleep & dreamed
of the roof torn from the throat.
a cloud peering down at me 
& admonishing, "you left them alone."
spearmint growing in the walls. spearmint
busting in door. when i woke
the sky was vanilla again. i went out 
& i found the twin spearmint scattered
across the sidewalk. i picked them up.
i wept. they were speaking in a language
of colors. "blue, black, white."
they survived but they never forgave me.
when i drank their tea it tasted 
like walking backwards. 

for the garter snake

i would bring him pennies in case he'd like
to buy a bicycle. i don't know
what snakes crave. maybe a perfect
halo of sun. enough to take the blood
into thunder. i used to meet him at the edge
of the yard where the neighbor's trees
talked to themselves. the snake would 
knit words into the ground.
"please" over & over. i always wondered
if someone had taught him the word
or if it had come to him naturally. 
sometimes our mouths are cellar doors.
take me into the mess. i brought him
a can of soda to share with me.
then, i brought him a picture of 
my grandfather & asked the snake
if he thought we looked related.
the snake said, "more." the gaps 
in our language were like water over rocks.
sometimes i would ask him,
"do you think i could cut it as a snake?"
that would always make him 
run away. i like to think he was shy
but truly i think he knew i was just searching
for any kind of escape. into a new species.
into a new horror. this is my life pattern.
running through rings of fire.
one day the snake did not return.
i had brought him a flute in case
he liked music. i ran my fingers
through the grass. found nothing but
a soda tab from the drink i'd tried to share.
do you know what it's like
to crave a collapsed distance? 
i want to hear him confess everything
he's ever wanted to confess. 
then, i want him to listen to me.
i don't know if we'd have to go
one word at a time. i can bend my body
into a "please" too. i already have so many times. 

brutalist love poem

if you hold me at an angle 
i am perfect i promise.
i walk around the house
with a knife in my mouth.
it goes right through my tongue.
what if you held me like? what if
the peaches came this year in squares?
we could stack them & make a real house
instead of the tunnel. i paste a picture
of us as shadows in the hallway
you never notice it but i do
each time i pass by it grows
another pair of arms. soon there will
be enough to pick me up out of myself.
once, i ground up a rib 
& snuck it into our dinner without telling you.
you thought it was the most delicious 
i've ever been. sometimes you will 
blind fold me & walk me out 
onto the roof. wind shaves me down
to just a thumb. you take the blindfold off
& all i can see are search lights.
in this kind of place there are 
no memories. i tie them into knots
to try to keep one or two. that time
you held me & treated me like silk.
the other time when you drove me
into the lake & told me to get out.
"if you listened to me you would know how."
i couldn't remember what you said.
the car alarm going off. i stand in the front yard
& i cannot believe the house is standing. 
it is built of haphazard yearning 
& a lot of folds. corridors that snake.
god's forked tongue. do you remember 
the egg? how smooth it was? my fingers
across the surface. i don't know anymore
if it was real or if it was just what i invented
to keep myself alive. the earth gets rounder.
another door grows like a scab 
from the ceiling. 

lessons in herbalism 

don't eat the plant if it says, 
"i am urgent today." it is always best
to ask permission before devouring
a halo. sometimes we think we can
cure the butter melting through our ribs.
other times we are bold & we let it happen.
come birds. come wild hogs.
i take a handful of plantain leaves
to make a poultice. i am stung by bees
every single time i open the door.
mostly because i ask if they would
be willing to make me a drone.
i don't mind turning my brain off
if the task is honey. once, i took from
a wine berry bush without asking
& it bit off my fingers. i felt like
that was a fair trade. after all, they were
the best berries i'd ever had. 
i couldn't get the taste out of my mouth 
for days. later, when i passed the bush 
it said, "i miss you." i love how 
plants can play hard-to-get. i love how
one day they are twisted & teeth-ridden 
& the next they are begging to be harvested.
i guess i can relate to that. sometimes
i want a reaper to come & help me
grow out my hair. a corn field on my head
& then harvest it to make dolls.
i am convinced that one day i will find
a little fist growing in the woods.
it will belong to me. cut it from the earth.
every mushroom is an ear to the shadows.
of course they talk about us.
i take out my tongue. roll it up.
press it into the dirt in exchange for
the last pawpaw in the forest. 
i eat it without knowing
whether or not it is as sweet
as i dreamed it would be. 

brother 

he calls me to tell me there is
a hole in his wall.
i ask him
if he made it
& he says "yes."
i tell him to look through it
& explain to me what he sees.
"there are stag beetles 
& handcuffs," he says.
i know this is not a good sign.
i try to remain calm.
to be an older sibling
is to always be a hatchet.
you are what is reached for
when there is a bear 
at the back door.
i ask him if he can
get in his car & drive to
the nearest wawa so we can
eat bananas & talk about
how to get out. 
he says, "how would i do that
without any legs."
the line turn to pineapple
& stings my mouth.
i go to the upstairs
where no one will notice
& i make my own hole
in the wall. i see the same.
stag beetles & handcuffs. 
now, also, a little man 
without a face. 
i patch the wall. his stare
haunts me. i am not sure
if he is my brother or me.
i call my brother 
over & over but he doesn't
pick up again.
get in my car with 
what's left of my legs.
drive until there is 
no more sunset to spend.
weep in a wawa parking lot
just to find him there
drinking lemonade
& praying to a new idol 
he's found. i hold him
& ask him if he would consider
joining me in spending
a whole weekend 
both of us just the size
of beans. he refuses.
he had a garden in his head. he has
a thunderbird to catch & release. 
before i know it 
he's gone again & i am there
with no one to call. 
the telephone goes
right to the sky's belly button.
i let it ring & ring.
leave a voice mail 
for god or my brother.
"please let him be okay," i say.