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. 

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.