100% chance

i did not tell you when i found the ocean
where the field should be.
i walked to the edge.
saw the sharks. did you know sharks
are older than trees?
they peered from the water 
with juniper eyes. i thought maybe if 
i was the only one who knew
that it would all go away.
you were sleeping in. the day before
they had called for rain. 100% chance
& still somehow it had not come.
we stood on the roof with our mouths open.
heavy grey clouds & then nothing.
the older i get the more i feel like
i'm waiting for some kind of glorious event. 
i understand a desire for the rapture
or even armageddon. instead we have
the uninvited ocean & the clouds
that don't remember how
to pour. i hold my breath often. 
i am trying to think of how i will tell you
about the water.
"do you remember the corn?" i might ask
or else i could just peel the band aide off
& say, "the ocean is waiting for us
where the field used to be." i look for signs 
of deer. i hope they have grown gills
& maybe learned how to swim
overnight. we are all forced to change
so quickly. the wind blows & sends ripples
across the deep blue water. 
a husk washes up on the new shore. 

bury the ring

i made an "o" with my mouth
& cut off my lips.
there are rings everywhere. there are
rings around the apartment
& rings i sleep inside of.
the last time you called 
all my hair fell out 
on the kitchen floor. i wept
as i harvested it. we wore the matching rings
all year. a little portal between hands.
sometimes i would wake up 
with yours. your hands like 
wild birds, leading me throughout
the town in search 
of a wedding. no one was getting married.
everyone was having funerals
for their hungers. burying teeth 
inside tiny caskets. calling exes 
& meeting on the bridge 
over the lehigh river. tossing their tongues
into the water. i wanted to join them somehow.
your hands wanted white.
white dresses & white suns. it was a tuesday afternoon
when my lungs told me,
"we have to go." my hands were not yours
anymore. they were mine. two twin nests. 
i wish you could have seen 
the tree i found to bury the ring. 
it was a grove really. three young cedars.
they held hands & i told them
"i can't go through this threshold anymore."
they took the door & undid it. 
i wanted to call you but there was 
no air & my mouth was fully of feathers.
the trees told me before i left,
"you will never see us again."
frantic i almost tried to dig the ring up.
when i say you have to burry 
the ring i mean this. i mean living through 
the goneness. tell me though,
just this once. where did my hands 
take you when they arrived? 
i hope they were kind to you. i hope
they showed you dandelions & gold. 

tile

the crack was small when we first moved in.
nothing but a fracture in the blue tile
of the bathroom. 
white paint was still drying
on the walls of our apartment. we had to live
in the centers 
of rooms. we saw our first cockroach
& i smashed it until it was just a pair of wings.
the building pulsed like an animal around us.
footsteps late into the night
& children knocking on the door 
at sunrise. winter came & i watched 
the crack widen every day in the shower.
somedays the hot water would not kick on
& i bathed with a washcloth
staring down the crack. deep in the coldest months
i first started to hear it laugh. 
you told me you didn't hear anything.
just a giggle & then a full belly cascade.
by spring pieces started to fall out.
i no longer knew why we lived there
or why i woke up so early or who i should
ask for help when the ceiling started
leaking again. frantic one day
i got on my knees & tried to put the tiles
back into the wall. it was not just one piece then
it was a pile in the tub. shards. like ancient teeth.
i wept, wondering if there was a time
i could have stopped this. you came 
& sat with me. above, children ran 
back in forth in their own private heavens.
you asked me, "do you want 
to try & leave?" at first i didn't know
we were talking about the apartment.
i heard "leave" & i thought of steering wheels 
& kicking a hole in the sun
to drink all the tangerine we could. 

leprechaun 

we search for you all day in the forest of shoes.
my brother holds the lantern & i hold 
the trash bag we plan to catch you with. 
i still remember the first stories we heard
of you. our uncle would sometimes
sit in the rocking chair & explain,
"if you blink he is gone." i know so much
in this world is the same. i have lost gods 
& rivers & lovers like leprechauns. we walk.
i do not ask my brother what
he wants to wish for when we catch you.
we find shoes the size of trees
& shoes so small they must be worn
by voles. we try some on. none of them fit
but we find ones close enough. we eat ground cherries.
it is autumn & soon it will be too late
to fix everything. sometimes it already feels
too late. i am going to wish for 
an extra year. one pressed between
the precipice. maybe one more year
in the city without a death cloud.
one more year to look at my warbling face
in the bay. o brother there is so much
i haven't ever said aloud. i think
if i did the roof would rip open
& vultures would come to live among us. 
tell me your secrets & i will keep mine
in a plastic bag in the back of my sock drawer.
we do not find you. the sun spins 
a full cycle around us. my brother weeps.
he says, "you promised he was here."
"i've seen him," i lie. i have never seen you,
my leprechaun. i've seen footprints
& once i heard a laugh. i guess it could
have been anything but then there are the shoes.
who else would make shoes like this?
i tell my brother we cannot give up.
finally we rest in separate shoes. they smell
like a held breath. i dream of you coming to me.
of saying, "i saw how hard you searched
so here i am." of course that does not happen.
in the morning we walk home. empty our pockets
of any shoes. we do not catch you.
i ask my brother, "do you want to tell me
what you would have wished for?"
he says, "no. i still feel like there might be 
a chance" & so i don't tell him mine either. 

staring contest

i do not think it will be fair.
i have not blinked in years.
in fact i remember that last time
that i did. i was kissing a boy
& his hands turned into doves.
we tried to catch them but they got away.
he wept & i promised i loved him anyway.
my life has taught me that
if you shut your eyes
something will leave. my lungs 
decided to become a hawk. i feed them
field mice & apologize the whole time.
if you really want to though
we can sit here & turn each other
to stone. i will be whatever kind 
of statue you need. hell, i could even
be a fountain. spill milk from my mouth.
let's decide on a prize though. 
if i blink first you can have all my eyelashes
& maybe my candles too. 
if you blink first i get your tongue.
you do not think that is equal? alright instead
i will take your hunger. i have
lost my own & i need something 
to burn inside me when i am 
staring down the full-belly moon. 
you will learn to live without it. you will
fill your mouth with birds & eventually,
it will be something like hunger. 
after you lose, we can go walking.
i will show you the places where
i used to like to shut my eyes.
you can try them out & i will watch you.
do not feel sad for me. there is still joy
on the other side. sometimes we eat persimmons
& walk barefoot until the sky is orange again.
sometimes my eyes briefly turn
into beetles. journey in two completely different
directions. i do not ever try to follow them.
i know by the time i go to sleep
they will come home & we will be together
staring at the ceiling all night. 

battery-powered halo machine

my father is always splitting his soul
into smaller & smaller pieces.
he used to feed the shards to me
in the dark of my bedroom.
he sat in the rocking chair
while i tried to fall asleep. my mouth
a zoo of midnight. 
each piece of him tasted like vinegar & honey. 
he is where i learned to grow back thumbs
after cutting them off.
i've seen him lose whole hands to the machines.
he makes monster batteries in the grey morning
when no one else is even awake. 
i've seen him come home with a severed limb
wrapped in newspaper like
a fresh fish. he gave me a pocket knife
& explained, "you should always watch 
it happen." he didn't believe
in closing your eyes. make the loss real.
once, in the middle of the summer,
he said, "i am going to do it."
he started building. his eyes fell out
& then his teeth. my mother called for him
in the yard like a lost cat. i did not
blow his cover. he hid in the crawl space working. 
i told her, "i don't know where he is." he was trying
to finish a halo machine. he said,
"then we can all glow." i wanted
a halo so badly. to walk around 
& have people see how holy i was.
no one ever saw how holy we were.
instead they saw broken window people. 
people held together by a single fraying stitch.
he never did finish. when he returned 
we had to carry him home
in a trash can. he didn't know 
how to talk. his first words were not
"halo" like we thought they would be.
instead, he said, "battery, battery, battery." 

spearmint 

can you learn to live on a sound?
i fill my ears with mint until 
i can taste it. i don't know how anyone
has been getting up & cutting a mouth
in the leather. all my methods for survival
have rotted from the throat. as a little girl,
i would go & ring a bell in the yard
for the plants. my favorite was always
the spearmint bush. i appreciate how 
they grew without punctuation.
legs stretched out along the side 
of the house. head thrown back. i feel
like the mint follows me wherever i go.
even at the roach apartment on union street
there was a spearmint bush who grew,
reaching an arm out of the chain link fence
of the dead house next door. i loved to place
just one hand in my mouth. chew until
i was sweet & bright. the world feels 
as loud as it's ever been. i burry my nose
then my teeth. i kiss the earth
where i leave them. it is best not to spend
too long mourning all the pieces of you
that decide to never return. i feel like my girlhood
is a fantom limb. a dangling urgency.
the spearmint does not hum. it does not
beat a bruise. it does not whisper.
instead, it has a call like a neon angel.
it says, "there is sugar in every star
& stars in every breath." that is kind of 
too woo woo for me but i find some comfort.
i don't take the mint out. instead i add more 
& more. i ask myself, "how much 
spearmint does it take until i am just
as wild & ardent?" the tiny white flowers
bloom behind my ears. i eat them. 
have a wedding. make a shrine to my smallness.
to the world's smallness. the shrine is the bush. 
i want to know, "will this be enough?" 

butter butter

give me the velvet. i want the butter language 
& the ladle of fins. a ball pit full of salmon scales.
i dye the moon red with strangled beets. 
all day everyone is saying, "how are you?"
as if the forest isn't burning & the birds
aren't trying to get retail jobs. it's too expensive
to be an angel. instead, we cut off the tips
of our fingers & join the fountains in weeping.
i learn alchemy from a library book
with the only goal of turning my blood to milk.
i want to be able to feed a little goat
even if i am absolutely gone. there is the question
of where to keep the butter so that no one
will come & put their thumbs in it.
my first husband insisted on keeping it
in a shoe in the middle of the table. he cut off my head
just to watch it grow back. we are much more 
& much less resilient than it seems.
if i had endless butter, or so i tell myself,
maybe i wouldn't have tried to live in his teeth.
a bunk bed that always turns into a horse.
i could never figure out how to ride it.
instead, we ate apples & watched the moon rot. 
i don't want the almost butter or the spray butter
or even the butter from that haphazard love.
give me the butter butter. the good stuff 
that none of us has had before. i want to spread
a blanket. i want the sun to come & melt us
into sweetness. invite the last deer.
invite the final hawk. we will come & decide
what butter will be now. i am terrified.
here is my throat. tell me what it tastes like to you. 

secret renaissance fair in my basement

i get the turkey leg. i eat with my fingers.
fat & sinew. wipe grease from my mouth.
no one has to know how happy i am.
the past is an ice cream desert. cactus grow
like gods. i never wanted to share.
my own private actors. my own private history.
someone once asked me "what time period
do you wish you lived in?" i didn't have 
an answer other than, "the impossible one."
someday will people escape into our terror?
a man kneels & makes roses our of gold. 
they smell faintly of dead grandmothers.
i am told there will be a joust before sunset.
we will gather & pretend no one is turned
into a shish kabob. the crowds & the horses.
i am running. i am running inside my house.
the lock on the door turns into a mouth.
smile big for the photograph. you tell me,
"i don't now why you do this" & it is so late
that i don't even remember what i have
done wrong. i knew i shouldn't have
lived this long. i knew i shouldn't
have called for help. the actors take off
their faces & turn back into mice. 
i plead with them, "just a few more years."
we could build a life here.
we could board up the basement
& let the house turn into birds above us.
all we need is this new history.
a man recites shakespeare to a hole
in the stone wall. i want so badly to fit inside.
the dragon, i am told, has been slayed. 
still though, i am afraid. i am so afraid. 

 

ants on a french fry in the park 

i too have carried my weight in sugar.
lifted teeth back to a wreckage. it is the hottest day
of the year & my brain is a bowl of wood. 
crouching down i watch as the ants work
as one organism. the little leash
marching away. the french fry,
undulating with their mouths. i do not know
if i crave to be the colony or their feast.
i imagine being taken apart so methodically.
my fried golden potato flesh in the arms
of the flock. o to be fodder for the queen 
deep within the soil. would it feel like
an exhale? lately, i have found it harder
& harder to breathe. i remember reading somewhere
that ants are attracted to breath, or was that
bed bugs? a kingdom is always a place of sacrifice. 
when i lived in the city i thought of myself
first & foremost as an ant. at five o'clock,
when everyone scurried away from their horses,
we were there with armfuls of who-knows-what. 
the sweet & the horrible. a collar hovering above
or was that a halo? it is hard to tell the difference.
i wait until the ants are done. until
there is nothing left. the final few twitch 
their antennae. i hold out my finger.
i explain, "you could do the same to me."
this is a way of having control over
one of my greatest fears. i have had nightmares
for the longest time of waking up
covered in ants. i am not so sure what i'm afraid
to let go of. the ants laugh at me. they say,
"this is your sugar, not ours." i want to follow them
so i do back to a mound near the knees
of a broken neck tree. there i kneel. 
i cannot trail them any further. 
i try breathing. clouds come out of my mouth. 
the ants go off to find new wounds.