rock tumbling 

when my father was a boy
he used to take his teeth
& tumble them until they shined.
sell them for quarters
that he would spend
on junk ammo. stay up all night
shooting at the moon. he never
landed a single shot
but once he shot a whale
& the whale loomed 
blimp-like over his aunt's house.
i got his ability 
to grow teeth back
like a shark. he promised all of us
he no longer sold but sometimes
i would hear the whirl of the machine.
the grit in its guts 
& the rocks bruise-kissing
in their little dark world. 
i would go to watch him. he collected
all kinds of rocks from beside creeks
& from holes in the walls. then, of course,
plucking out his own teeth 
like ripe raspberries. 
when he was really alone
he would become a little boy again.
i pictured him & me 
inside the tumbler
falling over each other 
until we shine. the grit beneath
our fingernails. his tongue of marble.
"we don't have to tell anyone,"
he said the one time i caught him.
he placed a tooth in my hand
& said, "this is for you."

sacrifice of a bull

i hold on to the last patch of corn
in the field behind our house.
the cold is not cold enough.
the sun has worms
& is ready for composting.
all along the sides 
of our winding roads 
there are cobs chipped
& scattered like broken dishes.
i could be thinner. i could be 
the sacrificial bull who is made beautiful 
just before the harvest. we picked 
the persimmons. we gathered
chestnuts. it is too late for most kinds
of holiness. instead, we have the meat room
& the knife that is not sharp enough.
all day i worry about fingers. 
i eat the spare bugs. try to fit
my horns through doorways.
ask other ghosts, "would you like
to be an offering?" 
they pretend not to hear me.
this is the worst kind
of hot potato. passing the slaughter.
when the machine finally comes 
i am ready. i stand on the roof.
the sun is a trampled clementine.
gnats the size of airplanes hover
overhead. i don't need a father
or even a god. i need the july corn. 
the hunters who found me.
fed me cream & said,
"wouldn't you like to save us?"

glass bottle tree

i once grew a world
inside a breath.
we wondered in fields
of marshmallow &
no one even had a face.
the bottle swelled.
full of ships & teeth. 
you never forgot
how much you loved me.
the tree i grew there 
was an apple tree
& a pear tree 
when we needed it to be.
always in fruit. always
in bloom. i do not believe in
an afterlife
but i do believe in moths.
i can tell you about the world
as i used to know it 
& we can crawl 
one by one
into the green glass bottle. 
i will point
to all my still lives 
& say, "i know we are hungry
but we cannot eat here 
anymore." 

video game

we are sitting in the attic
without clothes on. 
the television screen burns.
you are bare as a stripped moon.
all tangerine in the evergreen light.
there is another level & another.
kill the monster 
with the plastic spoon. 
my mother does not know
your mother. instead, we put
red pepper flakes on our pizza.
get them lodged beneath
our nails. i feel them every time 
you touch me. 
kick the trees until they bleed.
do video games make us velvet 
or have we been that way all along?
these are not questions we need
but questions that swarm.
gnats in our eyes. 
instead we ask 
"how much longer can we play
until i am just a sock puppet & you are
driving home with my brain in 
your stomach?"
you lose & i keep playing.
as long as i'm playing i am not
really naked & you are not really
a hungry boy. the buttons fall
off the controller. 
my gooseflesh spreads. i am 
a butter turkey. later you will
have this on a home movie 
& i will be cutting my tongue out
for the final time. 
you only get nine tries 
at speaking. i wasted them all
telling you, "please, no." 
i win again. pixel. scabbed elbow.
the smell of your rotten hair. 

august / not august 2020

i put the month in my mouth
& chewed it like bubblegum.
it was cinnamon flavor.
no one else in the world
was alive. it was just me & the ghosts.
i left my apartment only
to drive to the creek where the bears 
were trying to worship.
i asked several times if i could join them
but they just laughed at me 
& said, "if you want to be eaten."
i considered this a valid option.
the warmth of bear guts 
could swaddle me. i slept heavy & often
on the sofa & beside the bed. 
sometimes when i woke up
i found my eyes 
in the sink. i would try & wash them.
hoping the halos would leave.
sickness left me an amphibian.
i needed the bath. i needed salt.
i needed a telephone without a portal. 
you called me less than i wanted.
i knew we couldn't have a future. 
i imagined sending you a letter 
from inside the bear saying,
"you will never guess where i am now."
the end is always too soon
& not soon enough. august collapsed
around me. a demolition. sidewalk heat. 
here & gone. i tried to claw the month back.
chewed the flavorless gum. 
went to the creek to find the bears gone.
that was when i knew i had to accept
that i had survived & it was september. 

exam

i take my pomegranate 
to the doctor. the doctor has a waiting room
full of people holding fruit in their hands.
a banana & a mango & even a handful 
of kiwis. we're all starting to rot & the flies come
like rubberneckers. i shoo them away.
i consider what the internet told me to do.
"squeeze as hard as you can." nothing
left to do but find the nectar.
i could sit in my bathtub to do it. i wouldn't
have to tell anyone, just wash well enough
to get the stains out.
i turn the fruit over in my hands,
searching for the legs. search for the mouth.
i have lost all my teeth more than once.
planted grass seeds in the holes & waited
for them to return. i am not convinced
the doctor has ever seen a pomegranate before.
i might have to show her the trick 
to opening them. i might have to hold it up
& say, "did you know they think eve actually
ate a pomegranate & not an apple in the garden
of eden?" she might smile or she might
write something in the mythical chart 
i have never seen. i like to imagine it
as a poem about myself. i watch someone else
in the waiting room give up. peels the banana
& weeps as she consumes it. 
we avert our eyes. i don't know
if she wants to be watched. finally,
they take me back & i regret coming.
i blurt out to the nurse as she weighs
my fruit, "i have been devoured
with a spoon." she laughs & says,
"you & everyone else." i feel sick. the pairing knife.
she sits with me. she says,
"we will eat it together then." the door is
far away. the neon lights say, "good luck."
my fingers red. my palm red. the pith 
like wadded up wedding dresses.
the nurse shakes her head to say,
"you have nothing at all to worry about."
i finish & she add, "we'll call you 
with the results if there is something
you need to know." weeks pass.
the phone doesn't ring.

beautiful poem 

i don't know how to write
about beautiful things anymore.
i do like the color of testosterone 
in the vial. a light gold. at least,
mine is. i still remember 
the first time i saw one.
the testosterone vial 
wasn't my own but a lover's
on the edge of their sink. i wanted
to touch the vial but didn't.
the tiny glass. pock-marked top 
from the dip of the needle.
months later, 
my friend took me into the city
to get mine for the first time.
it was december & i was 
wearing my binder longer than
i should have. we fit ourselves into
all kinds of vessels. sometimes i would
sit on the windowsill in my dorm room
& just let the headlights 
of cars on main street bathe me.
i decided not to give myself a shot that night.
instead, let the light pass through
my three little testosterone snow globes. 
recently my lover asked me,
"why don't you switch to the gel?"
suggesting that maybe i could
stop taking injections. i felt sad
& insisted i did not want to stop.
it's hard to let myself 
find anything beautiful because 
it is always too late. i want 
to save my life 3 milliliters 
at a time. do not tell me there are
easier ways to be alive. i want the ritual. 
the alchemy. another election ad
pops up on my youtube video 
& says, "trans gender ideology." 
it is so bad right now that you have
to laugh. i am so afraid to tell you
what i think is beautiful. 

workhouse/horse 

you asked me if i ever stop.
it was midnight & i was trying
to write another version of us into existence.
one where we lived in a snow globe
& both got rich off ideas.
our apartment lost windows
every week. i tried to keep them open.
stacked books in their mouths. 
i went down to the train station just to breathe.
the pigeons would say,
"you are no longer in love."
i begged them to stop. i told them,
"i am not ready."
we had one key which lived
in our mouths. taking turns
reaching for the teeth. 
on weekends we stopped laughing.
stopped taking the train into 
the graveyard. hungers that turned
into needs. please make me into a kite.
please do not read my texts.
let me keep my secrets & you can
keep yours. the windowless 
apartment where everything that entered
became trapped. trapped knees.
trapped dogs. trapped horns. 
once, i tried to scale the walls
of the hallway. my foot went through
the drywall & on the other side
i found thousands of photographs.
they were all of us. i stuffed them back
inside, urgent & terrified.
i thought i could work enough
to make something new. that miraculously
the eyes would open again 
& light would turn us into ivy. 
instead, i lit a candle. saw your face
tangerine. you asked me again,
"do you ever stop?" 

what do i look like?

i rub the mirror raw
until there is only water.
in the mailbox, there is nothing
but screaming. i put my ears
in the wood stove
& listen to the red horse.
sometimes i see myself in pictures
& i am convinced it is an actor
who has been hired to play me.
not even a very good look alike.
on tiktok i watched 
a hallucination simulation. 
i thought, "mine are usually better."
of all the utensils i think
it's safe to say i most closely resemble
a spoon. vessel garden 
where we pot our hands
in the hopes of oak trees.
the raven says, "lower taxes"
& i am naive because i try to ask
follow-up questions like,
"will you actually help us?" 
i already know the answer is
"no & i am going to eat your arm."
it is best to duct tape saviors 
& put them on the moon. 
corvids are the best kind of radio.
a blue asks me, "whose land 
was stolen today?" i try to make a list
but the list turns into a snake
& escape between the rocks.
my life feels like a handful
of salt. i touch a grain to my tongue. 
stop showing up 
in movies as an extra. instead,
i find my eyes always in bowls
of soup. i can see too much 
& i don't sleep. 

blue bath towel

in the death box, i always used
the same towel to dry my body.
steam on the bathroom mirror.
i never wiped it off
instead thrived in the blur-pastel portrait
it left of me. it is not possible 
to find yourself. or, at least, i never was
very good at it. i went to the city 
of hungry souls. walked down 
avenue of the americas like i was 
not just a girl in a little blue towel
from target.  
upstairs the neighbor made
his horror mash. shoes throw
at the floor. my blood grew windows.
from them i could see all of my lives.
each of them on fire. i called home
only one holidays. i would say,
"i am so big." meanwhile i pinched
grains of salt. let them dissolve on my tongue.
the towel hung on the back 
of the bathroom door. often grew wings.
once, i had to catch it as if tried
to escape out to front door.
it is an emergency when you notice
even all the objects trying to leave you.
i begged the towel,
"please, you can be so warm."
it was true, though mostly
i left her mildew ridden & damp. 
sometimes, the day after i did the wash,
i would find her breathing.
i fed her thimbles of diet coke
& sometimes a jolly rancher or two. 
the not-sugar & the sugar. i like to think
maybe we were either side
of a buried stone. i still remember one night
when i laid in bed for hours 
wrapped like a fresh corpse in the towel.
i was trying to think my way out
of a night. find the pastel world 
where there was nothing more 
than stories about faces.