mice

i tell you i don't know why i feel
like an avalanche today. the sky is saying, "i am going
to kill you." grey with a chance
of bricks. with a chance of door knocking.
a former lover in the drive way 
with a bucket of worms.
at the pet shop you ask to look
at the animals before we go. i always want to take
them all home. let them run wild in the house.
destroy my little floor board heaven. 
sometimes when we stand in the court yard
of the art museum we hear 
yelling from the jail a block away.
i always want to know what kind of yelling
it is but the cacophony of car horns
& police faces make it hard to tell. 
of course there is a difference in what
the walls mean. in the cage of mice
we see the flock eating the face of a dead one. 
they swarm him. it feels almost religious.
like "here is how we take the dead."
the shop workers are mortified
when we see it. they ferry the body,
half-gone, away. outside it is still not raining yet
even though the sky looks
like it wants to break so badly. 
i do too. i want to break so badly. run wild.
knock on people's doors & ask them
how many pet stores we are inside.
the snakes & the tortoises. the people
with hands. the people who learn to stand
on the ceiling at night. the skeleton
of the mouse. little wind chime.
what do the other mice say one another
in the wake, now knowing 
any one of them could be next.
is this how we see each other? 
the mice scramble on top of one another.
i want it to rain. i want it to pour 
so that we can get it over with.
the soaking & the sky shriek. instead
it does not storm. even the trees hold
their breath. at home i stand in the bathroom
to count my fingers, making sure
they're all there. 

mechanical insect 

in the night the angels take turns
winding up the false bugs between
the real ones. i am a classic case of capgras.
i know that everyone is always in the process
of trading skin with the soil. you are not
who you say you are & i am running without a face.
once i spoke to a boy on the subway
& i am certain he was an octopus.
a man came by to buy some earrings 
& he was petting a stuffed dog. his baby. 
how do you know what is & isn't a baby?
on facebook the dog shelter posts that they've found
puppies in a dumpster again. they are little 
radios. each of them on a different station.
the last line in the post says, "if you know
the mother, please bring her to us
no questions asked." i have seldom found myself
in a "no questions asked" scenario. 
at the hospital, you can leave your baby 
& they will fill it with strawberries 
until their name turns into a button-mash god. 
i was trying to tell you about the bugs.
i keep a fly swatter by my desk.
the moths are sometimes tiny versions
of my elementary school teachers. they scold me.
worst are those thick flies though. they are
wandering periods searching for
a thought to button-up for winter.
i smash one & find it is a little machine.
just like i am a little machine. the angels come
to collect their handiwork. they say,
"get into the dumpster." i obey because
when an angel speaks you have little choice. 
i lay there & wait to be rescued. to be sung to.
or, at least, for more insects to come 
in their little fairy cloud. each a little camera 
knit by the angels. they tell me
they just watch because they're bored. 

my dad makes batteries that power a death machine 

hundreds a day through his hands. he says the conveyer belt 
is a dream of tongues. of a language none of us
learned to speak. the machine has never drank enough.
in a sense my father is the machine. his fingers 
placing caps & wires. his throat like a water slide
into a pool of pears. sometimes i go into the factory
disguised as a dead bird. the men laugh about 
the life of a hamster wheel. sweat turns to milk.
the miracle of transforming their blood into a charge.
stacks & stacks of batteries. they make batteries 
for the military which is another way of saying
they make batteries for death. for killing. inside each one 
my father touches is a tiny replica of himself.
he is running from an unnamable gone-ness.
the house as a sighing field of grass. there is so much
to lose & so little to keep. the factory tests his blood
for lead. the factory gives him a day off in which 
he vacations inside every battery he's ever made.
wakes up screaming. a rocket fired into fathers. 
those fathers telling him they see the lighting 
& it was his. the machine that demands every joint.
every breath & muscle & night. he returns 
to the factory like a prodigal son. the line starts.
the other men feed the furnace pieces 
of their fingers. tip of the tongue. he does
the same. broken again. each time astonished at
how many fragments he had to scatter. 

on/off 

in the church of my blue 
there is a man without a face
always flicking the lights. in between each blink
the angels come & eat our hair 
until we are bald as blarney stones. 
sometimes the switches in the house
multiply in the night.
i will wake up to find a wall
of light switches, never sure which one
is actually tethered to the glow.
you become frustrated with me
for my perpetual indecisiveness.
i will walk in the ice heaven 
just to tell the gods, "i am hungry
for a green life." aren't we all though
hungry for the green life? 
the lack is always a limb. the one
you search for. the one you lost 
to time's cruel pruning. i have 
a vision of a jungle that is 
wild because we are all intact.
little beasts of many heads & many teeth.
dear god do i wish i was a creature tonight.
i don't want to have to shut
the windows & be bipedal all over
the house. instead, i would like
to let the light switch make
an angel of me. wings that fall
like cherry blossom guts. like the smell
of flowers asking the questions 
you're not supposed to ask
like "what if i chose another pair 
of hands?" like "who would i be
if i never knew him?" the angels shush
the congregation. the church is made
of popsicle sticks & shadows. 
i saved a seat for the other decision.
you say, "what i can't handle is
the back & forth." i am a prophet
of the "what if"? let's take back
dusk's violet eyebrows. 
tell our secrets until our mouths
fall off. they spend 
the rest of the night as moths. 

pink helicopter 

i want my emergency to be glamorous.
there should be photographs to remember
just how purple the flames were.
a bedazzled stretcher to carry me 
into a tunnel of love. where have you gone alone?
i have departed into the depths of 
of a great urgent tonight. i have carried
my cell phone with no one to call.
finger ready to dial 911 in the hopes that
an angel will answer. 
a mirror in my pocket that i use to check
if i still am the gender i claim to be.
when the pink helicopter arrives
& asks what kind of emergency i am having
i will say, "a crisis of lures." by which i mean
i am afraid i don't look like the self i keep
in pictures. call me a vampire. call me
a body lying in wait. call me a retired
attraction. in the hall of wax love poems 
i am the candle. the face soured 
by the moon's fist. i am begging anyone
with a flare gun to let the girlhood keepers know
i am not trying to steal anything. i am 
waving my arms. i am assembling 
debris in the shape of a "help" sign.
no one who ever arrives can help me. 
instead, most of them join me.
put their eyes in the offering bowl.
we take turns snapping pictures none
of us will ever see. 

drive-in theater

on the screen plays a home movie 
of me jumping off the roof.
this never happened or maybe it did
& i poured my memory into 
jelly jars again. i'm sitting with my uncle
& he talks like the past is an ice cream machine.
pumping swirls of "before before before."
"everything used to be..." he says like a litany. 
he wears a little theater curtain 
on his face. i ask him if he has a video
of himself jumping from a roof.
he does not. he tells me to be quiet
even though the sound on the movie 
is not working. he has told me
about the drive-ins many times. you used 
to put the speaker inside the car.
the movie made intimate. a voice
whispering into the cabin. i invent my own
sound track. it is all strings. horse hair.
horses running until their bodies are dust.
a horror movie in which i am both
the rubber monster & the running girls. 
he watches the glow like his life depends on it.
maybe it does. maybe our nostalgia 
is more than just a luxury organ. 
instead, maybe it is what we use 
to believe, "it could be like this again."
there is no one else at all at the drive-in.
it is just me & him. the thing about
this theater is no two people
see the same thing on the screen.
he is smiling with his tombstone teeth.
to him, the film is of something lemon-flavored.
a hard candy night. he does not
tell me what he sees when he looks.
likewise, i do not tell him what i see.
we let each other finish the movie.
what else could we do? 

lanternfly city

i watch a friend kill the lanternfly nymphs.
their thumb to the shoulders of a milkweed plant.
crunched bodies. 
when they are not looking i save one
to ask him what he plans to do 
when he rules the world. 
the lanternfly is young & does not want
to talk about the swarm. instead he wants to talk
about the color of nectarines. he writes a poem
only i can see. we walk down to 
the slit throat of the city where
no one has enough air. he says that lanternflies
& humans are just as hungry as one another.
i believe that. i ask him what he thinks
the lanternfly city will look like
& he shrugs & says it will probably look
just about the same. the thought of staying the same
makes me ache. i want the bright transformation.
a city of wings. of cloud festivals 
& trees that crack the sidewalks open
& release colonies of ants. when you get
right down to it, a species is only a collar 
tethering us back to the most urgent needs.
a place to belong. a place to sing.
he tells me he never meant to come here.
that there are lanternflies who are in a place
some would call home. origin is a series
of deaths because to become your face,
you had to be cut & cut & cut. 
squashed mothers. little graveyards 
in the middle of corn fields. i find a tree
covered with the nymphs. they tell me
the city is already beginning. soon i will be
a lanternfly too. just as ravenous. just as lost.
we will have to re-paint our flesh. 
stand in the shadows of the oldest trees
& hope they remember what to do 
when you are living between species. 

labor day weekend

i forget why dad comes over
but we stand on the porch & wait
for the parade to end.
it is a parade only him & i can see:
jupiter beetles & dinosaurs 
& a little brigade of men whose job it is
to spoon-feed the sun when it is sick.
sweat on our faces. i do not want
him to leave but i
do not have anything else
to say to him. loving my father has meant
cutting the heads off conversations
& collecting a tote bag of every truth unsaid
& everything question that has turned
into a salamander & wriggled away.
escape your need for closure while you can.
he crosses his arms. he remembers
when we used to play trumpet.
wake up the neighbors. the birds.
mouth to brass. the parade has knives.
the parade has so many sons.
i have always wanted to ask,
"do you know i am your son?"
sometimes the potential to hear
the response you do not want
is reason enough to leave
some hungers unanswered.
the parade drags on. we eat spearmint
from the dying bush. green between
our teeth. he says, "i should
get going" & i do not stop him. 
i finish the parade alone. it is him,
my father, a part of the procession
by accident, driving away from town.  

sleep running

the only time i run is in my sleep.
i dream of legs the size of ant colonies.
behind me are all the jewelry men
& wedding faces i have tried to sell on ebay. 
a chicken with a human mouth 
tries to catch up. he is selling a subscription
to the moon. he says, "if you don't
renew now, your free trial will end
& you will stop being able to look up."
there is no where to stop. the street
turns into a catacomb turns into
a radio wave. the voice of an old man
talking to himself & one other tongue.
you asked me once why i wake up
covered in sweat. i go to the shower,
still panting, limb trembling from 
my near escape. i tell you i have night terrors
but i leave out the part about
running until my body is bicycle.
in my hometown i run through the park.
street lights cast my spider shadow.
the owls & the night children run too.
barefoot. bare hands. a squirrel 
offering a rest in exchange for a breath.
i let the water spill over me. 
wear my lungs as slippers. mist in the air.
the morning sun, a little thumb print
on the day's chin. i sit on the floor
in the tub. rub my hands over my face.
remember when even the dandelions ran
to try to capture me. what they all
wanted with me, i still do not know. 
look at my face in the mirror
& see what is missing. a footprint
where my mouth used to be. 
spend the day trying to set traps for
whatever might chase me in the dark. 
useless. all the alley ways & all the corridors
& just full of mourning doves.
they pretend they do not remember,
saying, "what do you mean you were hunted?" 

puppy

puppy is a place you go when you
need the strawberry life. when you crave
an open wound to make a cake in. 
i have been the puppy & i have visited
the puppy like a pilgrimage 
& other times like a confessional.
puppy is the yarn ball unspooled. followed
to the mouth of a felt cave. the candle 
hovering just above your head. a tongue of flame.
a lost tooth in the gravel. there are fish tanks
of puppies & puppies in frames. 
i gave a puppy away once to a boy
who didn't deserve it. i said, 
"we can still be friends" after he turned
my face into a punch bowl. invited his friends.
they were all kissing strangers in the hallway.
i said, "excuse me, excuse me." 
the puppy got loose. the puppy got
a choke collar. we took the puppy to 
the doctor & the doctor looked just like
all bathroom men. i put my puppy
in my purse so i could sneak her into
a tornado room. it was just a simulation 
or so i was told. sometimes you pay
just to hear your name in the mouth
of a puppy. leash & licorice. jumping rope
on his back. a puppy in the glove box. 
i tell the puppy, "hold your breath"
as the cop sniffs for puppies. 
he says, "no puppies here" because
he's useless at recognizing joy. 
from now all i just keep them to myself.
the minute you start sharing the puppy
is the minute it becomes what someone else wants.
i pet my little salvation. she chases her tail
& so do i. i promise her, 
"we will never try to meet god."
she eats honey from a holy in my hand.