the tegan & sara poster on your bedroom wall

it was so easy to not be myself with you.
dusk in the city. my teeth falling out
& turning into christmas lights.
i strung them up & helped you hang them
on your wall. your cat batted at them
while i watched you play video games.
there was a tree on your block
wrapped with yarn & bells. she liked to tell me,
"you seem lost." i would plug my ears & lie, saying,
"i am home." to me home is wherever i am
currently gutting myself. 
sometimes i wonder if you ever felt the same.
if maybe you got to be someone else with me.
i know you'd just left your ex. 
some of her stuff was still on a shelf
in your bedroom. that afternoon i thought
you wanted to sleep with me but instead
we napped until our eyes were hard boiled 
& heavy. i looked up to see your tegan & sara poster
right above your bed. i asked, 
"do you still listen to them?" 
"no," you admitted. "my ex & i liked to see
their shows. the poster is hers."
i thought about how in my dorm room
i used some posters just to take up space.
how a portal is a portal even if it goes
in the direction you don't want it to. 
you said, "i'm still tired" & you closed your eyes.
i was wide awake. i tried to just appreciate 
the quite. my restless teeth gleaming
on the walls, knitting shadows throughout
the room. i think that was the last time
we were close to each other.
when we finally got up, we ate bagels 
standing at your kitchen counter. 
cream cheese. paper plates. the hungry tree
on your street. a cracked window & april air. 

instructions on finding a place to scream &/or being a sibling

you tell me, "get the pilot"
though we are not on a plane
& the sky is full of bison teeth. 
once, as children, i thought i could
run away. i told only you.
i packed a bag of pants.
you said, "don't become a dragon.
i need you." i stayed. 
there is a hole in the wall in our parents' house
that you made when you were angry.
we are a family of portals & lost stories.
sometimes i think we should be feeding the hole.
i drop in a ring. a pawpaw seed.
a single needle. the fissure is always
the hungriest part. i want to land
by which i mean i want to know
where we are. earlier this year
there was a small earthquake 
& books fell from all the shelves
in my house. you called me after
& said, "are you still alive?" you had been
in the woods & felt the ground tremble.
there are these little moments that
teach us urgency. 
each year is one year closer to me getting
a pilot license for us. i am told
it is a terrible process. it involves
an angel sacrifice & a pile of magazines.
waiting room after waiting room. i will fly us
to a waterfall. there we can scream 
& everyone will think it is just water.
don't you want to be just water?
i am only sorry for the times 
i woke you up in the middle of the night
to ask if you were still alive. you always blinked.
eyes like state quarters. you'd say, "what?"
& that was enough. 

bell tower

i tell you i am going to the grocery store
but i lie & instead i catch as many birds 
as i can. i fill the car. i sneak them inside.
fill the cupboards. i want to be hungry.
i want them to fill our mouths while we sleep
until we wake up cloud-bound. 
in my hometown the bell has always been fickle.
sometimes we'll go weeks with time being
thick & viscous & then out of the blue the tower
will remember who we are & it will start tolling
every fifteen minutes. birds come from miles around
to be my grandchildren. about a hundred years ago
i sat for a portrait with my whole family.
we were leaves. when the bell comes i always hope
it'll say something new like "congratulations"
instead of "maybe, maybe, maybe."
it's a shame i didn't go to the store
because we needed onions. we needed 
a sharper knife. we needed an attic for me
to keep all my teeth in. dear god if you could see
all the graves i've had to dig for birds.
a few times you've asked what they were
& i said i was just burying shoes. 
i want to get out of here. i want to have
enough birds to carry us & all our things
to a place without skin. we can go 
& be garland. sleep beneath beds &
cross our arms like the dead. they don't survive though.
most of them beg to go back
to their mountains & their bells. the bells
become rabid. every five minutes. every three minutes
every minute. i check again & the birds
were never birds. hole-riddled socks.
pillow cases. a walkie talkie with 
an angel on the other side. i forgot
about the garlic braided into our hair. 
you refuse to kiss me until i tell you 
where the dove came from. i confess
the truth. i found her inside my iris. 
i pulled her out in the hopes that she would
know what i am missing.  

the morning after trash day

i tell the remaining plastic bottles that
in hundreds of thousands of years
maybe we'll both learn again how to be soil.
i hope we are trees with eyes. i hope
all the black garbage bags go to sleep in the sun.
i hope it never stops raining. 
i pick candy wrappers 
from the pokeberry that grows
on the side of the highway. the plants say,
"can we breathe with you?" i do not agree
to accept their kindness.
sometimes i feel like i am already a spirit.
i tell them, "i am sorry but i do not have
a mouth."
ghost upon ghost. it is what i am made for.
slipping between one word & another. 
a need & a vessel. 
the garbage truck carries an aching belly.
i know what it's like. i have lived with
people i'm afraid of. i have bargained with
the window & said, "tomorrow we will carry
all of this to the hole in the earth."
i take landfill pilgrimages whenever i can.
the piles the trucks miss always leave
a trail you can follow to the wound. 
the deer love to walk there.
they search for bones & televisions.
i ask them to help me hop the fence
but they want to keep the festering
for themselves. every once in awhile
i'll join a feast. a coven of raccoons as they 
hold a ceremony over half-rotten vegetables.
the seeds ring like bells. one holds up their hands
& says, "grow into a revenge forest."
the gods are not coming. we are them 
& we are stumbling in a land 
of rashes & wood. the truck's headlights
cast my shadow as a running man
even though i am standing still 
picking up a diet coke can from the brush. 

10,000 dollar chair

we go into the beautiful store
to cosplay rich people.
it is one of our favorite games.
you put on your gloves.
i take out my teeth & resolve
not to smile. you know the place 
is expensive if there are 
no price tags. it is time to be afraid.
the store today only has one chair.
it wears a sign hung around its neck
that reads, "do not sit, do not ever sit."
i imagine a world where
for years i try to save up for this chair.
maybe it is a thousand dollars
or maybe it is ten thousand dollars.
i would not put on my costume. i would
walk in here & say "i'm here to sit."
why do i knit fantasies of revenge wealth?
i do not want a chair. i do not even want
a mouth full of rings. 
instead, i live the tombstone tooth life. 
ghosts play hide & seek in my mouth.
when we are done i return 
to an apartment of an apartment.
i go to my room & find the chair
waiting for me. i'm terrified. i close the door
to contain it. i don't know what
it would want from me. i am just
a boy of a girl or a girl of a boy 
(depending on who you ask).
i am just a body with your average 
millionaire day dreams. i tell myself
"if i had blank i would blank." 
i open the door a crack to peer in
at the chair. it is closer. an inch
from the crack in the door. i cry,
"what do you want?" 
everything, i assume. i think it wants
my everything. my hungers 
& my tomorrow doorbells. i call you
but you do not pick up. i wonder 
if it has already gotten you.
"i do not want to play the game again,"
i say on a voicemail. turn to see
the door to my room wide open.
the chair at the threshold trembling. 

arsonists 

we stick together. 
i found you because you were
burning sheet music on your roof. 
we fall in love as our people always do. 
eat pizza in gas station parking lots. 
take pictures walking the railroad tracks. 
all of this just so we could
bring what we want to burn
to your backyard.
calendars & teeth. a pair of eyes.
the sun & the moon move
like dolphins in the sky.
up & down. we stand still
as the world rushes cuckoo clock.
i've always thought your hands
were too soft to kill me.
i tell myself this
when, in the dark, 
their shadows bloomed so large
they could choke me. 
your smile turns
into ash. you bring 
your axe body spray & play
it in the flames. a tiny little explosion.
you say, "that is my head."
i see the fires in your throat. 
i never wanted to end up
so angry. so contained.
first in my body & then in yours. 
the only thing left is burning.
we have never found anything
in the ash but we take turns
convincing each other that we will.
sometimes when we kiss
we find apricots. they're always
not quite ripe. you pull out 
your own hair to keep the fire going.
i do the same. this can't go on 
much longer, can it? 
one of us has to make the move
to add the other to the flames.
i know you will make 
the first move. when you do
do not treat me like kindling.
look at me & try to remember
the green lighter we found on the park bench,
how a fire always begins
with a soft but weighty hunger.
you cannot have a fire 
without a witness. 

goodbye yellow 

each night another neighbor
puts a couch out on the curb
with a little sign that says, "free."
we salvage them & turn them
into horses. the horses have nowhere
to stand in our little attic lives
& so we give them driver's licenses 
& tell them to go & gather
as many ears of corn as they can. 
the yard fills with husks. 
it's harvest time or else it is 
time to celebrate the great death
of all the bees. goodbye yellow.
goodbye gold. goodbye red.
insect wings fall like snow. the horses 
miss being places where people
took their spines & laid them down
like shovels. they kick in 
the neighbors' windows
and they find the horses 
lying in living rooms with the television
set to a static channel. snow on top
of snow. what do you do when 
what you were is so thoroughly gone
that no one can recognize you 
anymore? i ring doorbells.
i gather the horses. ride them
to the forest & i tell them,
"if you want, you can be deer."
they take me up on the offer.
learn a new kind of running.
still, sometimes, one or two are successful.
i'll discover a couch in the woods.
animals perching on the cushions 
& worms in the foam. home is 
breath. the exhale. the perfect place
to decompose. whenever i find one,
i sit with the creatures. i feel
the couch still running away
from all the glass & the rain. 

radio surfing for a single bone 

you taught me a new restlessness.
driving, you would click the "seek" button
over & over, culling the air for a throat you wanted.
always in the passenger seat, i waited,
let the skipping world arrive
in brief calls for help.
i remember parking at the shore in maine.
i ate fruit loops from a little plastic bag
& you talked about what you wanted
to do with me after we were married. 
you rubbed my knee in circles
like golden rings. my left knee you caressed 
is the worst in all my body to this day.
can your bones respond with their own curses? 
they say, "he wants to toss you like
a smooth stone across the water."
we talked & all the while he pushed the button.
dispatches came through from the tin foil world.
finally he landed on a gritty tongue.
a man singing about angels. he believed in god
more than he believed in my lungs.
once, he grabbed me by the hair 
& said, "i love you." i felt a knob on a radio.
it is impossible to live while another person
waits for you to be what they need.
me, every voice through the radio.
his thumb in my mouth. bowling ball headed.
i rolled through the darkness. fog on the water.
he said, "we don't have to go back
to pennsylvania." i did not say anything.
instead, i reached over & helped him
keep surfing the radio stations.
i never felt so desperate for a place to land.
give me a song. a curse. anything. 
finally, a beat i knew. 
i said, "i love this song." i don't remember
what i chose but it didn't suite the moment.
some 2010s pop song. he listened for a beat
or so before he put the car into gear.

blood river

i follow the big tongue into the ocean.
they say languages came from 
a shattered tower but i think they arrived
in the water. heads thrust beneath the current.
there, spirits possessed our mouths
& taught us exactly how to say,
"i am lost." in the blood river the fish 
are already dead. easy to scoop from the water
& eat like apples. i call you over & over 
& you do not pick up because you are air now.
no one floats in the blood river. 
if you go in the deep you will just become
a stone, smoothed by the passing
of all your ghosts. the tree goes backwards.
i am holding my grandfather by the collar
of his shirt. he is running without any hands.
i tell him, "put those back." the language he speaks
is not my own. instead. our words pass each other
like chickens & goats. the longer i'm in the river
the more accustomed i become to red.
red sky. red rupture. red teeth. a bonfire 
somehow floating on the surface of the blood.
did you know that there is no such thing 
as an ocean? we are running out of time
to reach a nowhere open. where we become
part of the birds learning. where no one
can tell us, "you are not delivered." 
i cup my hands. look into the pond. 
there the tadpoles all have our noses
& our fear of silence. i hold them as i walk.
they do not scream though they are terrified.

square knot

the question becomes
with what do you hold yourself together?
the ice cream melts on my way to you
& each stop feels like a rosary bead.
smooth. forefinger & thumb.
i am concerned about the eggs
in the chicken coop & whether or not
this year will have any ribs left.
when i was a girl scout 
we once took turns practicing knots we had
no use for. i held out my finger
as a loom. let the other girls practice
on my skin. this is what it means 
to live in this country. like racing an onion.
test subject. teleprompter. 
they take bids on how & for what they
kill us. for democracy or for profit 
or for unity or for freedom.
i pick at knots in my thread.
sometimes when we bead, the seeds
blink like eyes. when i get back
to the air bnb i am glad i did not
eat my ice cream without you.
the rooms are small. plastic red spoon.
you open packets of ketchup. 
i hear blood. on our way here, 
we passed a sunken house
glazed with dusk light in the middle
of the old woods. you said,
"i wouldn't mind living 
in a place like that if we 
could be safe." we drive there,
ice cream still melting, burrow inside.
tell each other our favorite unhistory.
"there is no such thing as the united states." 
grow our hair out. braid it.
finally, then, make use of that knot,
by tying our heads together. 
the ice cream goes fast. i lick the cup.