my doctor tells me "there's so much we don't know"

when i taught the virus how to swim,
i lived inside a single breath for days. 
tied the hallway in a knot.
ate corn bread mix from the box.
i woke up once in the middle of the woods.
the virus had hair & a single tooth.
i followed it deep to the foot of a tree
where i tried to cut off my hands
but they kept growing back. one test claims
i am a ghost. another test suggests i will
need to have my mouth amputated.
for the final one a psychic meets me
in a parking lot. holds my hands 
& tells me, "sickness is just a state of mind."
those kinds of words get my people killed
& so i scramble away as best i can.
slept in the back seat of my car
& waited for the stink bugs to stop
playing their old punk music.
years later they are still lifting 
up my body like a stone. hefty little danger.
my fingers. my knees. there is so much
we do not know about the body.
it is more like the ocean
than i even thought. the waiting room
where i stand up & leave
deciding i need to be a dragonfly
for just today. to be gloriously unfixable.
the virus visits sometimes still.
i do not hate her like i know i should.
i tell her, "i know you were hungry."
she does not speak. sometimes comes
in the form of a bat or a bird,
other times, a centipede. we have come
to understand each other
the way predator & prey design 
ourselves as complimentary bodies.
my organs like sick pears. the virus
tells me what the doctors cannot.
she says, "you are alive. so am i." she says, 
"ask them more questions." i do even though 
i know there is so much they do not know. 
we end up talking about cranes.
both the birds & the lifts. 
the doctor asks me if 
i've ever tried to cut off my hands.
this is where i lie. 

to find a boy

i go outside to find a boy made of corn
but it is too early in the season.
instead i find one made of grass
& one made of cattails. the story goes that
your boyhood is something flammable.
to be dried out in the sun. i put dimes 
in my eye sockets. see all the places 
money is calling us to hide our eggs. 
in the yard we talk about how 
europeans keep their eggs 
on the counter & here in the united states
we keep them in the fridge with 
little stamps on their foreheads. 
i tell my chickens to find me a boy. there is
one in every attic & one in every basement
but i need one with wings. i need one
without any holes. brand new.
fresh out of a neat disaster.
i once went on a date with myself
& i noticed three minutes in & i excused
myself to the bathroom where i wept.
it was at the cafe in brooklyn 
where the pictures online made the place
look nicer than it was. i do & don't
need to be seen as a goat.
i spit out a key to a car i don't own.
the boy was nice enough. he held my hand
as we walked across the pier 
where boys were kissing & boys were
unzipping themselves like selkies 
from their boyhood skin. to be a  boy
is to always be trying to find
a place to take the boyhood off.
for some of us that only happens
in the mouths of our lovers. i try 
to live without skin as much as i can.
it's not easy though. i lose my bones.
root in lost-&-found bins for them.
catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror
& every time, it's different & yet
somehow completely unchanged. 

curfew

give the midnight neon
the benefit of the doubt.
we might just have enough animals
for the kind of revolt
with butter & lamb. without 
harps & without running.
we sneak out like only cockroaches can. 
you tasting the fallen pizza tree.
a dump or a future honeymoon.
slaughter daughter. slim laugh.
catch your breath. catch ur lilies.
copy & paste the old trauma 
but make it teal this time.
if i could be home already 
with the tv turned on to watch 
what happened, i would press “record.”
don’t try to sooth the beast.
just feed the beast ginger until 
he sings. tell me a lullaby backwards.
talk to the river with me.
i have come to feed it my teeth one by one then finally
let go my tongue so that it
can become the little fish
it always wanted. here are
our brief & rust-sticky lives.
tell me it’s not true. the sirens
have never been barefoot like us.
we have hunger on our side
by which i mean
the police are the agents of
anti-desire & to long is 
to live. we are fighting monuments.
they are fighting pigeons.
we sit on the roof of the broken
train station. wait for the sun
to slip one leg free of the blankets. 

headlight tree

do what the seance tells you.
i put on my personal protective wear
to walk to the park. everyone 
is oxygen again. breathing like fish nets.
i have never kissed another diver
but maybe i will tonight.
instead, i have shucked my face open
like a clam. tell me how the water
reaches god & comes back down again.
a hatchet grows a personality & gets
it's own reality show. then it runs
for president. i convince myself
we are trying to heal. what do you do
when the wound is a part of who you are?
a fabric of the self. every stitch
an urgency to try & stay together.
tell me, bone, do you remember
how we used to dance in the iris 
of the sun? do you remember how
the voles used to try & eat the horizon.
we shooed them away.
the headlight tree is always car horn.
always burned skin or at least
singed hair. it does not remember
what fruit it used to bear. now it just
holds hellishly bright light.
more grow each dark. a vision before
turning into a roadkill saint. 
you can pluck them though.
you can hold the scream until
it turns to hair. take a bite of 
the halo. it tastes like butter cream icing.
then, an after taste of blood.
metallic. a ghost knife passing
over the tongue. you cannot keep
the world safe. you cannot even 
keep yourself safe. we can gather though. we can
ask one another, "what do you remember?"
split the headlights in search of 
the old shadows. when they are found,
care for them like nestlings. kin. 
contrary to what poetry has said,
hope is not the thing with feathers.
the thing with feathers is us. hope
is somewhere else & this is too urgent
to worry about what hope is & isn't. 

cleaning up hair while we talk about sainthood

you make me promise not to get
on a plane & try to become a sea gull again.
we daydream about our deaths
& our glorious novels we’ve never written.
i have shaved my head for years now.
i love the feeling of getting down
to the scalp. it’s like finding the truth
in a skunk cabbage patch. i talk to you in my earbuds
as i work. the razor like a little ice skate.
i ask you what your patron saint is
& you tell me you don’t know any saints.
we can fix this by becoming saints ourselves.
i think i am the patron saint of
uncertainty. you agree that maybe
you are too. it is amazing how we can
make one another forget. i miss a few patches
of hair on my head. leave them as feed for the crows.
wash the hairs from the sink. they are
like grit. you are telling me you have been
considering getting on a boat
& never coming back. buying a necklace
of one-way tickets. i tell you that you
should shave your head & you laugh.
there is (unfortunately) always more
to get down to. the minute the hair is cut
it starts growing again. if not uncertainty
then i am the patron saint of not saying
the reason why i called. you hang up
because you have to go. it is later
than we said we would talk. i have
a plane ticket in my throat. i get in the shower
to spend jellyfish time. how to tell you i am
no longer a flute player by which
i mean i do not think i know you anymore.
which is either good or bad depending
on what evening we are talking about.
i look in the mirror & start over again
only you are not on the phone. i am there
alone with the razor ready.

full moon

when the full moon comes
everyone loses their eyes.
it is just a matter of 
whether you notice it or not.
we go outside to try to help others
before we help ourselves.
that leads to a quarry of eyes.
eyes in strawberry patches 
& eyes in the pockets of greedy men
who want to see more than they were given.
when i used to work the crisis hotline
calls always increased around
the full moon. 
people would say, "i need my eyes.
i need my eyes."
i would say, "i am here for you."
by which i meant. "i am here
for you in the dark." 
the trouble is that they mistake eyes 
for light. eyes for waking up.
once, my mother called & i pretended
not to know her. she said,
"i was eating the ceiling again
& then the planets started to blink."
what you see & what is there
is not always the same thing.
sometimes i see centipedes 
& they are really just seams where
one world bunches up against
the next. let's reject the blindness metaphor.
this is not about sight
but about control. if i can see
the hole in the ozone i can 
keep walking away from it. if i can see
my neighbors i can remind myself
i am not them & they are not me. 
eyes in the cupboard. eyes in the cereal box. 
the big secret is that the moon
is just one big eye. it always blinks
the exact same time as you
& thus we miss it. i didn't want to end
the call with my mother.
i told her, "we are alright"
& "tomorrow the moon will shrink."
deflating balloon. the stolen eye
with a little green halo for an iris. 
i pick up the phone & talk to anyone
i can find. i ask,
"whose runaway do you see?" 

telephone

we talk about skin & the boys 
we no longer want to be in love with.
i lay on my stomach, girlhood style,
while we talk for hours on an after in august.
we decide we hate fireworks
& that sex is actually better without completion.
for years you have lived only inside my phone.
i hate the phrase "long distance"
& i replace it with "last distance."
without our flesh, what do we become
to each other? shadows? banana leaves? 
suite cases? you are chasing a boy 
to boston. i am chasing a burning house. outside,
the sky is orange from forest fires in canada.
i become increasingly aware
i will probably never see you again.
there was a chance earlier this year.
i was in your town. i was sitting
at a bus stop eating my own hair. i could
have called you. instead, i kept running.
i hate the word "adult" because it is always 
handcuffed to "being an" adult which i think
is just what the world uses 
to steal us from each other. i talk
about all my friends like lovers because
we are. not like candle-lit mouths
but like running from the furnace. 
when we hang up, i walk from room to room.
log on to my computer to 
be an ouroboros for the night,
scrolling until i see a picture of you.
the film reel blanket. i hope you follow him
to the city & i hope it is everything you crave.
call me after & tell me what
the sky smelled like where you are.
mine in still a bonfire. my lungs 
like two shoes kicked off at the front door. 

goat mother

we could be the television repair men. 
i hold up a tape recorder to ask
"is your tongue loose?" i have a cupboard
just for lungs. breathe soot. breathe boots.
the goat mother is a place you go when 
you need to make something useless.
tell me i am not the cow you wanted. i am
a goat on the roof. i am the mother of all horns.
i am the architect of underworlds. we knock
on doors hoping one will open to reveal a whale. 
the town sometimes catches fire 
& we have to cover our eyes & pretend it was 
no one's fault. sometimes a person just
dies by murder. the passive voice says,
"look at the goldfish." i look at the goldfish
& they are all skeletons. when the television is broken
there's no use in running around & looking
for manna where there is none. this is what i mean
when i say i want to be a repair man. i want
to come in through the window & say,
"we don't have to look at the mail box anymore,
let's turn our thoughts into stratus clouds."
every once in awhile after seeing something happen
i will put my eye in gum wrappers.
unplug the television just to find it is 
so well maintained that it just keeps going.
i sometimes wonder if i have been conditioned 
to fav or untruths. they are generally more
comfortable. tell me i am good. tell me
i am the goat mother or else at least
that there is one looking out for me. i make
a plate of feathers & ring a bell calling, "dinner!"
you haven't lived until you've spent a year
only eating air. eyes like back doors. sneak out with me.

giant

have you ever become so huge
there's nothing big enough 
for you to eat? i crouch beside the red cedar. 
my body bigger than our house. i do not know
how i ended up in the bones of a mammoth
but my fingers make earthquakes 
when they touch the soil. this is what
i've always feared most. that i will become
so capacious there will be nowhere to rest. 
this is the giant's fate. to always keep
one eye open so as to not crush everything he loves.
the planet, like a gumball. blue flavor. quick night.
trying to find a pasture without cows
to sleep. i have dealt with my head as a balloon
& having frog skin for a whole summer
but nothing is as terrible as being a giant. 
when other humans see me they put on 
sunglasses. they hold their breath 
like they are going through a tunnel.
i wish someone would come & be a giant
with me. that we could maybe take care
of a little flock of cows. tend them. 
dress ourselves in moss & strings of lilac & hyacinth. 
then, in the dark, tell stories of our smallest selves.
whispering, "thimble" & "needle eye."
you then replying, "robin's egg" &
"strawberry seed." i've heard you have to wait
for transformation. that it is both of you
& around you. i am waiting to be
small enough to feast again. i am waiting
for a bed that will hold all my teeth 
as they fall like rain from a cloud that follows me.
when i am manageable-sized the first thing
i'm going to eat is an entire watermelon.
you see, i am prone to hugeness. 
there is not a house big enough. a ceiling
that doesn't strain under the sound
of my longing. would you come though
& be hungry with me? i want to dream flavors.
conjure our violet escapes. 

olive oil

my great grandmother feeds me spoonfuls
from where she rests as a hugeness.
the ghosts become larger before
they shrink to the size of strawberries.
little bells rung only when you wander
too far from the blood zoo. 
i have been told there are too many
& not enough geese. when i say "light as 
a feather" i mean this is how we walk
with the dead. careful not to ask too many questions
or else the haunting might become
our sleep lily. i have never known enough
about where i come from. instead i am
the walking chair. here are the limbs.
here is the island. the jump rope without jumpers.
in a dream we are all running from 
dinosaurs. only, one is a man in the family
& we all have to pretend we love him.
the thing about olive oil is that it is
both gold & green. my great grandmother loved
to use it for everything. floated in a glass of water
for divination. rubbed on the back of a fish
to bring it back to life. 
an olive tree grows sometimes in the yard.
no one else can see it & it speaks 
in riddles that lead nowhere.
"who is red & also translucent?"
"what is a hand without a bird?" in the end
i just eat what i can. put my tongue out
when she asks. let the olive oil turn me
into a chicken heart. a strawberry.
the open window where we let 
the dead in. they crack their knuckles.
play cards with moth corpses. 
i lock the door some nights 
then hear them scratching 
like stray cats. "go home," i say.
"you are our home," they whisper.