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.

chocolate gramophone 

i sold my last noise
to a passing wolf.
he had a use for it. he wanted
to call his lover from past the veil.
i wanted to speak chocolate
all my life. open my mouth
& have the truth come out
bitter & smooth. i used to dance
to my father's records. he put his hands
in the attic & everyone was safe.
i no longer want to be myself.
i want to be someone 
no one dislikes which is to say
i do not want to be alive or dead.
let's call this a waltz then. i mean truly
i have no idea what a waltz even is.
probably it involves swaying 
& someone you want to elope with.
i carry you into the tangerine winter.
snow falls. the snow is not snow. 
it is chocolate as are my eyelashes.
as are our melting birds. 
put that song on that neither of us
can name anymore. it goes something
like the collapse of a face. 
conch shells in the yard. do you think
the first person to listen to the ocean
just fell inside the sound's mouth?
god i hope they are still there, floating.
i don't get sick of eating fury.
snakes sun themselves 
on our house's steps. i bring them
shards of mirror to feast.
in doing so i'm asking them
if they have tried 
the most bitter dark chocolate.
they shake their heads. i say,
"you haven't lived until you do." 

NO FREEDOM written on a curbside mini fridge

in the city, we shed apartments like exoskeletons.
our dumpsters day after a move from the building
are always full of shreds of couches & piled broken lamps.
life spits out our shoes. we run away inside 
a conch shell. a birdhouse. it rains & we go
to try to salvage & reuse what we can. wires 
like forgotten snakes. upholstery soaked to the bone.
mini fridges are common. this one looks as if it were
smacked with a baseball bat. was it anger or hunger?
is there a difference? i open the little mouth to check
the teeth. if i crawled inside the mini fridge & waited for
garbage people to take me, do you think they would
deliver me to a secret holy land? the opposite
of a landfill. instead, a place of removal. 
the "no freedom" spray painted on the machine's side
tells me someone has tried already & failed. 
i can see them pressing their form into the fridge's
cramped mold. every time i move, i spend a week
or so basking in a fantasy that this place
will be better. less bugs. more ceiling. less neighbors'
late-night homilies. more sugar for walls. rain
melting them away. i will regret not taking
the mini fridge. regret not filling it with my own eyes.
they grow back each time i pluck them. grape vine.
ghost. grain. instead, the next morning
garbage truck comes to ask, "what do you want
to forget?" the building answers with the debris 
no one else has taken. the building is a lesson
in how close we come to living one another's lives.
i could have filled it with pigeon wings. i could have
stayed inside forever. felt the cool breath.
the shutter. the wave. the fists we use for doorknobs. 
let go & all the keys fall. they sound like bells. 

dead zone

the mountain doesn't like it when
i try to call you.
rounding
the rock tongue bend
i always lose your call. watch your voice
turn into a hawk. it goes off
to kill what it must. i know that soon
we will both be living in pockets.
using a shovel to dig
holes in the wall 
to hide our eyes. we see what 
we want to see. we hear
what we want to hear.
i tell you, "i am not alive anymore."
you hear,
"let's get married & kill the moon."
you say,
"i almost became an angel tonight"
& i hear, "let's run away
& eat nothing but syrup." 
the mountain keeps all the words
we do not say to each other 
when the line cuts off. 
"i am just waiting" & "when are you"
& "there was that time 
when we kissed in the belly
of a whale." it turns these sentences 
into garland. white flowers & sometimes
fresh berries. the little decoration
hangs above my door
when i get home. i kill a centipede 
& thumb tac it to the wall
as a warning to the others.
you said you would call back.
you try & try but the cliffs take
every attempt. i hold the phone
like an orphaned shoe. 
my love
where do we go to speak?
i can meet you
at the cave. i can meet you
in a cloud. i know we are not
what we say we are anymore. 

train station

bring your bees home. feed 
the sun your daily handful 
of buttons. we do what we must
to remind the earth to keep going.
we go to the creek. wear our own
mushroom veils. you tell me,
"i find the old bottles here"
& we spend all day digging them
from the rocky soil. i fill each of mine
with tongues. a secret is a place
you get to keep yourself 
or so i have always thought. 
where no one else can see
the color of your teeth. keep my thumb
over the bottle mouth. on the couch
you say to me, "i need you to tell me
the truth." i think of the train station
up the street & of throwing 
the bottles on the tracks. whispers
drowned out by the tumbling engine.
we go there & wait for the trains
to go by. only then do feel like i can shout
everything into the pear-skin wind. 
this kind of breaking welcomes water.
falling in. the ravenous sun.
you shouting too. the words
turned into cicadas. they get away &
burrow like bottles. inside
each of mouth, a piece
of my runaway. when you find me again,
i will be inside a bottle.
rinse me out in the sink.
stick a flower in my mouth. 
talk to me then. you can
tell me anything. 

licorice beetle

the timer goes off & so we have to go
to knock down the house.
we bought candy by the pound.
gummy chicken's feet
& dead angels in little plastic bags.
i once got a phone call
from someone desperate to speak
to a lover. i had to say,
"i'm sorry this is not 
who you are looking for."
my father & i were black licorice collectors.
we took pride in devouring it
when everyone else was saying,
"how can you eat that?" the roots
grow through the ceiling 
& try to pluck out my teeth.
i just hand them over. i am a shark.
they will grow back. i hate when
people talk about manifesting
as if it's not boring witchcraft.
come on, let's light something on fire.
let's eat licorice until
our teeth are green. once 
the candy draw was covered
in bugs. my father removed 
our sweets like he were saving children
from a collapsing star. 
i reached in to a bag
to pull out a piece of licorice
& instead i held a smooth black beetle.
closed my eyes. put the licorice
in my mouth. there were 
no beetles of course. we were just
sharing a paranoia. he held me
& asked, "you saw them too right?"
i did. i saw all of them. the television
turns on by itself to an infomercial 
about bibles. the doorbell rings
& my father sends me to get it.
i feel like i am always the gravedigger
& never the body. he saves
the last piece for me. it crawls
all over my hand before
it lets me eat it.  

16 drinking glasses

the first one i broke 
on purpose. it was a winter storm
that lasted weeks.
i watched white pour
from a blazing sky. took one glass
in my hand & hurled it at
the kitchen floor. 
all the little fragments. 
i did not expect it to shatter
so profoundly. my father bought me
the sixteen glasses when 
i moved into my apartment. 
he said, "in case you need
more than one."
i imagined inviting sixteen birds
into my house or sixteen deer
or sixteen voles. each of them
with their little throats.
i filled the remaining glasses
with snow. watched it melt.
turn into private islands. 
it was rare anyone else 
came into my apartment
& when they did we had no where
to sit. i had taken the legs 
off my sofa. we would choose a glass
& float in them. the next five by accident.
hapless nights & unbridled hunger. 
two as sacrifice, pleading for spring.
green came. two more as a thank you.
i don't know what he imagined 
i could do with all the glasses.
all my other dishes
were mismatched. one plastic plate.
three tea cups from a yard sale. 
the next three i wept over
even though it was me
who had executed them. i started
to think of each glass as a person
who might live here too. 
come back. come back. i became
at home in my solitude. painted 
the ceiling with snakes. 
i tried to keep the last ones safe.
i wrapped them in scarves. i never
used them. gazed from afar.
that there, is my family. one by one though
i smothered them. wrapped the glasses
too tightly until they fissured 
& snapped. i took to drinking
from my cupped hands.
people knocked on the door
& i would shout
from the other side
"i don't have enough glasses
for all of us." 

egg timer

i number my heavens, one through
one-thousand. wait for my time out
in a corner of the yellowest place.
sometimes i warn people
about my dog. i say,
"he is always hungry."
i do not have a dog 
or do i? on the telephone there's
a man who is asking for 
the time. i twist the timer
& say, "we only have three minutes left."
a countdown is a way of life.
what is coming is not a butter sculpture 
or even a delicious loaf of banana bread.
we pull over to change drivers.
i put my head out the car window
on a balloon leash. when the egg goes off
there is always another. 
on the counter, a carton rests
full of different destinations.
one will only ring if
you can get everyone in your family
to smile. i don't know how to tell you
that i'm not just a soup spoon
for you to curl up inside. 
my family is preoccupied 
with then only circus of deaths. 
ask me what i want 
when the time is up. ask me
what i'm planning to eat tonight.
i have to choose between my left 
& right hand. cut one off.
watch it lay like a dead bird.
there are chickens whose only task
is to make more time. 
they rush & so it's always messy.
i twist the little egg again.
give me give five more minutes 
in the sky before
i have to come down 
& wash our plates in the sink. 

exam room 1

they tell me to wait.
out the window 
of the white room
is a creek full of dancers.
ribbons in the water.
pink comes like supper.
a bell in my throat.
i am here to remove my body.
i plan to tell the doctor
"go one bone at at time
until find which one is wrong."
they always peer
beneath the skin
like looking into an oven
to check if the turkey is done.
they will try to convince you
that you are close. give you
as many portals 
as you ask for. a circus
of blood. the chart
where i am a live specimen. 
i come here like 
an altar call. like "i can 
become a believer 
if you can make this better."
out the window, i watch
as the dancers are eaten
by a bear. the creek runs 
indigo. purple corn fields.
a car alarm. the doctor returns 
with a handful of hair.
puts the hair in my back pocket.
he says, "count the moons 
until they weather down
to the size of a thumb nail.
then you will be done."
i listen because there's no one else
to ask. he looks at my body quickly 
with a lollipop in his mouth. 
sucking sugar. 
he pulls out a rib & says,
"come back to me in six months."
tosses the rib in the sink 
& brushes the dust off his hands.
i don't even manage to ask him
to take just one more.
i was thinking my femur
or maybe even just
the rib's twin.