car burial 

we hear the kings used to die 
with everything they owned.
when i slept in my car 
i collected small, brilliant joys.
counting the stars i could see
through the moon roof. my little hatch
into the sky. eating a sleeve 
of oreos & brushing the crumbs 
on the floor. every once in awhile 
a sheepman would come
& stare through the windows.
i would pretend to be a doll
until he left. holding as still
as i could. i know i am 
not a king but i have this hunger
to take my tiny delights with me.
it is like trying to walk
with a candle 
on your head.
i hold them like the wrangled necks
of plastic grocery bags.
here are my licorice ropes. here are
my frilled-edge socks 
& a lime green spoon from
the frozen yogurt place. i will
find a place i can just drive 
into the earth. somehow still
i think i will be able to peer
through the moon roof & see
stars in the dark & the soil.
there's no need for coffins
or boxes. i have my rust chariot.
i know i am not a king nor
do i want to be 
i just need to hold this glow. i just
need someone to know 
when they dig me up
that i was not always afraid.
sometimes i laughed 
by myself. i licked my fingers.
i locked the doors 
& never spoke my name 
into the dusk sky least 
it might come & take me. 

a new periodic table of elements 

i know there is something wrong with me
because i think i would make a good angel.
not one of the prophecy angels 
(i've never had great people skills)
but one of the builder angels 
who says things like "what if there was 
an element that sang but only in the dark."
i would take a sketch pad & sit on the moon.
dream all kinds of laughter to be dug
from a hole in the worried earth.
maybe it is arrogance or maybe it is 
a desire to be a painter. i just think
i could sew some delights that humans
would worship. a sweet lavender rock.
maybe bird creatures who were their own
element. in the end though i know i am prone 
to satanhood. i don't think i would
last long as an angel. my inevitable fall
might come from too much ambition
or maybe just being a brat. telling god,
"i don't care if think this is too much."
if i am a patron of anything it is of "too much."
but, i think it would all be worth it.
my new periodic table of trinkets
would remain even after all my feathers
were gone. a certain kind of breeze 
that smelled like cedar smoke. a mineral that
shines but only for queer people.
maybe it is better i am just a poet
with little dreams i spin into fishtanks. 
still, i can see my unfettered devil self.
he-she grants glorious wishes. makes everything
glow radiant & wild. invents enough elements 
to fill a dictionary. to feed every wing.
to stock the sky with pears. 

the coal miner ghosts are still digging

i go to join them. no pix axe or shovel
just our bloodied hands. the mountain
like a sick beast. she spits her eyes out
in bursts of color. i tell the other workers
that there is a flock of birds just beneath
the surface. we work to free them.
there are no birds. instead, there are
remains. pressed angels. wings of
old species. black pupil stones. i want 
to lie to them & tell them to rest.
tell them that we can just let the mountain
swallow us. glass candy people. sun outside 
soupy sky bobbing like a buoy.
they dream of an ending of the vein.
one last rock removed. curing the hills.
nothing left to take. i too have been
in the endless way. a rotten belief that
the work will save you. as if salvation 
has ever been about removal. they come 
& tell us, "just a little more." i think i hear
the birds singing. not the canary
but the blue bird with the peach-red chest.
the trees outside our heads. blossoms 
we give our lovers. i tell the miners
we could run away all together.
if we left together, what would they 
be able to do to us? they do not want
to leave. they are afraid even dead. 
even hundreds of years after the mine
has been closed. after bears have
made makeshift caves of the wounds.
then, still after they've been filled in
with rubble. a scar is a place of abandonment.
if you are lucky, of an escape.  

dehumidifier 

in the mountain house
i learned how to talk to centipedes.
put my ear to the wooden floor
& heard them in the basement 
summoning angels. sometimes 
i miss my old solitude there.
i felt all my seams. snipped them
when i could & watched beetles spill
from my guts. i loved to stay up late
putting on makeup in the smudged mirror.
pretty little prophet in a silk robe.
the chaos of becoming an anchor.
a place for god to bend down
& send pigeons. in the little library box
across the street, i watched the bugs go
to hold their midnight masses. 
a chapel is a place you go to lose a piece
of your body. i thought i needed
to rid the house of clouds so i bought
a dehumidifier. let it drink the sky.
fill its belly with sweat each day.
instead of helping though,
it draw the centipedes in. they congregated.
they said, "this is my new religion."
swarms beneath the tank. i told them,
"i am throwing this all
down the drain." they did not listen.
traveled from far & wide in search 
of a severed creek. we are all just looking
for water. i had to throw the machine away
but even after they kept coming.
i shouted at them, "this is not a lake."
but it was. it was always a lake.
fish skeletons in the air. all the legs
in the whole world, treading water.
the bottom not a question
of how deep but how long
you can last without using your teeth.
my words turned inside out.
there were days i could not speak
to anyone but the bugs. tuning fork tongue.
a ring of bodies where the machine was. 

giftwrap 

we make gifts of the mundane.
a toothbrush in a little red box. a dead bird
in a nest of tissue paper. 
come let's get older. let's eat nothing
but confetti until the cows have wings. 
i am hungry for a taste of luxury.
of velvet packages & mailmen in the sky.
we do not get rich enough or maybe
we get rich too often. i don't know
how to crave without betraying myself. 
i have enough. i have a little cruet 
of oil i use to bless the tangerines.
the deer come to lick the salt pillars
in our yard. i have run from gods before
but now i am safe here. 
it is better to just give them the show they want.
roll the rock. ride the horse.
rip the snakes from the soil. grow dragon beans
& eat them all on one wild night.
i have held my heart like a blue speckled quail egg.
tiny & rattling. let's not get too distracted
by the costume jewelry. there are people
who wear crowns of teeth. if you get
right down to it what i want is a surprise party.
i want every to jump out from behind 
an elephant & say, "you are not dead!"
the gift is the reminder. a kazoo in the pulpit.
chicken & wearing their glow feathers.
i find a block of gold & tell the fairies 
to come & eat it before i get
any ideas about who i am. 

beach house for snakes

let's take a get away. let's buy
the teeth they had in the window.
i have a suitcase full of mirrors,
all of the broken. a fractured moon.
let's bring the spare limbs tonight.
not to alarm you but there are
less & less summers every time you
go out to the tree house. the snakes
buried their legs to use later.
for when time comes apart
like the lips of an orange. lobe by lobe.
we stayed there once. sand in our mouths.
at night, the storms would 
shake every tree. fruit falling like fists.
i held my breath for the whole week.
a light house in the closet.
i sliced it cucumber-wise. no more fur.
no more fire, just the tongue
jumping rope in the hallway.
every draw was full of shed skins.
the snakes, somewhere else. 
always somewhere else. i covered my eyes.
drank nothing but cranberry juice.
we could get away. my mother was 
a disciple of the get away. she said,
"here is our sea shell life." my skin softer
than ever before. freckles farmed 
from breath & rain. i'm going to stay
the night if you promise to stay awake
until i fall asleep. nightlight. doorknob.
the snakes, drinking pina coladas
underneath a plastic palm tree.
we are in a new kind of folding.
the highways turn accordion. 
we miss our turn. end up at the dead end
where hope meets beet greens.
my fingers turn purple. i shave my head.
everyone goes back without me. 

centipede day care

go be him in you little boy house.
a trolley that goes from hell 
to the gas station. eating our fingers
in exchange for more legs. 
this is always a bargain. what will i give
& what will be taken from me?
i work in the centipede day care these days.
a line of mini vans come to drop off
their precious syllables. we sing.
put our tongues in the glove box.
you will not need them when you work
with insects. instead, we talk with
our feelings. i weep & so do they.
they are crying about climate change
& i am crying about the cost of funerals.
we burned my grandfather to avoid 
that kind of expense. he has un-scattered ashes.
sometimes i want to feed them
to the feral cats. let him live again
as the mischievous comet he was. 
we cannot know what the dead wanted
but we can use it to get what we want.
that is what the united states have done
for centuries. the centipedes like
to eat bibles. i feed them first
from revelation which they say
tastes like sugar. a rogue radio show host
tells the truth about the moon landing.
it was real. it was real & people starved
to death that night & the stars were all
centipedes waiting to be loved.
we can disagree on a lot & i can still love you
if you agree to go with me to dairy queen.
i can want to feel safe in the ways
i was always told we were. plastic spoon.
plastic cup. the cemetery brimming with
centipedes from work. i am polite & so 
i wave to them. they are busy 
with them gameboys. it's not enough
to be hungry for a gender. you have to
go & carve it from a piece of soap.
mine comes with more legs than you
could ever count. when the parents come
to pick up their nightmares 
& hide them. i say, "these are my horrors now."  

feather tree

when we found the dead birds
we planted them like peach pits.
i was born into the art
of making nothing
from nothing. the skunk cabbage 
harvested by the river. wild onion
like little translucent hearts
chopped & tossed in the hot oil. 
everything dissolved in my mouth.
once, we caught a squirrel 
& let her go. we all have meat.
even the trees. the willows &
the beech with. where the dead birds
were buried the feather trees grew.
first like fists & then like choke cherries.
the shrapnel of an old scream.
at night they called out to each other
from the knots in the bark. 
feathers blowing in the wind.
onto the porch & the driveway.
i liked to collect them to make myself
new eyelids after mine had run away.
we were taught
never to look away. sometimes this
turned my irises into tap shoes.
the feathers were all shapes & sizes.
a dove. a blue bird. a crow.
no birds in sight, just their wings
haunting the old sky. 
tapestry on the bedroom wall
of the tiny god who also does not know
where we are. sometimes butter could cure
the hollowing. the way hunger
expands inside you to fill the lack.
i have not yet collected enough feathers
to make a bird but when i'm done
i'll tie a letter to his leg
& send it off to whoever wants 
to listen. the letter will begin,
"will you tell me what you've swallowed
so that i don't feel so gone?" 

the garden sage plant on the windowsill always turns towards the light

i am looking for the honey wand 
to swallow like a sword. i'm not sure
if sweetness is ever not chaos. we turn the plant
each day & each day the sage reaches 
to press her leaves to the window.
i want to tell her i am sorry for our insistence 
on evenness & balance. 
i too have wanted to press my face
to the lines between where i am & where i want to burn.
i wonder if it would be so bad to just carry her
out into the yard. let her stand there
in a dead wedding dress & hold on to whatever
she wants to hold onto. i have lost so many hands
to fires that i thought would love me.
feeding them & feeding them. first they want
your eyelashes & then your hair. 
it is a brutal summer. just like every summer
comes now. the heat, in blood wings. 
so, i turn her. i let her reach again.
with her permission, pluck a few leaves
to place in my mouth. chew them.
bitter & then sound. bells turned
upside down to be used as chalices.
i am going out to the yard instead. i am 
painting my face with a cloud 
& waving to the sage plant, mouthing,
"it is better in there." 

you were my parking lot fantasy 

i used to meet you on lunch breaks
when you worked at guitar center.
once, it was raining and my car stalled twice
on the way to see you. everything felt
like an emergency. the sky. your fingers.
the way, the first time we met you promised
you loved me. i am, if nothing else,
a fool for a good confession. maybe it's because
i was raised catholic. i am still searching
for a holy person to tell me i am forgiven.
you kissed me like chewing gum. pink.
the rain came harder. my teeth like
hopscotch. your fingers around mine.
you said, "i would never 
show you to my family" as if it were
a joke. i always wore a binder around you.
i held my breath. you pulled me 
into the downpour to kiss me. i now
distrust cinema because of you. romance 
is so much more about death than 
any other genre. here i where i went
to corpse myself. you went back inside
& i sat in the car for almost an hour after.
wiped the water from my face.
cars came & went from the parking lot.
their headlights like tossed pennies.
the next day i found out you were 
seeing other people. the fires you set
in windows. my car stalled more & more
the next day. it was as if it were telling me,
"stop yourself." i am terrible at stopping
myself. instead, i speak a language
of floods until no one else knows
what i'm saying. i don't remember
the last things we said to each other. 
you were standing outside my window
with a guitar. your fingers, those wild birds.
the sky, still slate grey & rampant.