ghost tornado 

my father told the story of death
& how he visited my grandfather
at the house on noble street.
shutters banging & turning into geese wings. 
the trees that bent into jaw bones.
chickens in the yard, running 
towards their red coop. the tornado touched down
& followed the railroad tracks in lyons.
plucked rooves from nearby houses.
angels' faces torn off & turned into grey clouds.
sometimes, as a child, i would watch
the house remember this. it came on dark nights
& when my blood poured out through
a memory on my tongue. each fissure
is a rope thrown down the throat
of a ghost. the phantom of the tornado 
visiting without any teeth. without any
of the rattling. just returning to say,
"you begged." i am often mistaken
for my father or my grandfather by spirits.
i do not correct them. i try to see if i can 
live in a way that heals the tributaries 
we share. once though, the tornado came
with all of her fury. all the pictures fell 
off the walls of my bedroom. i begged just like
my grandfather who thought death
was coming for him. who thought
the world was ending. maybe the world
was ending. has already ended. will end again.
i asked the tornado, "what have you come for?"
&, to my surprise, she spoke to me. she said,
"i have come for your genders 
i need all of them to rest." i told her
i do not know how to give something
written into me, away. 

we take turns saying aloud the names of small towns we pass

when was the last time you walked into a knuckle?
the cave behind a knee? sometimes i believe we are
traversing the body of a giant. her kneecaps, the mountains.
sleeping lips. cracked neck. night falls & every street is a television game.
you say, "east texas" & i say, "paradox." you say, "smicksburg"
& i say, "centralia." watching the hills name each other.
the land which asks, "who shall we eat tonight?"
we talk about teeth & where to plant new ones. the headlights,
like fresh eyes ready to see a destiny. instead, they take us
to gas station with catastrophe bathrooms. chewing pink gum
& drinking root beer. tell me love, if i were a town,
what would you call me? would you stop at my long-since-vacant
grocery store? coal fire in my throat. a row of houses,
all of which with their lights on all hours of the nights.
a lighthouse is not just a thumb by the sea. it is wherever 
you go to remember where you are from & where you are going.
i say, "harmony" & you say, "seven springs."

on the night the moon roof opened & let in a heron

you were always telling me that they
are good luck; the heron with dimes
for eyes. they are glinting in the headlight glow
on the highway leaving philadelphia. 
i am starving which is to say it has been
six years since i've eaten anything
of substance. i live mostly on the hair of stars.
the heron plays with the radio. 
i have a credit card the size of a catastrophe.
my bank has over drawn three times this month
& each time i reach into my pocket & find 
it full of vole skulls. sometimes maggots.
to hunt for treasure is to believe in god.
i do not believe in god. i believe in herons.
the heron does not speak. rolls down the window
to feel the wind in his feathers. he steals
my telephone & calls you & i beg him not to.
i tell him, "i am not ready to be in love."
for me, it is always like a disease. the moon's chin
in the moon roof. her cloud skirts & whiskers. 
i do not know where i am going
& i do not want to find out. the way home
becomes less & less a destination & more
a craving. the desire to have you here
instead of the heron. the heron's jealousy.
he asks, "do you not want the prophecy?"
i could drive into the river, grow feathers,
& become one of them. you do not pick up.
i am headed towards you. the apartments
are one fire or else they will be. the heron asks,
"have you ever seen two herons at once?"
i am not sure & so i do not answer.
i drive until, at a stop light, i open the door
& push him out. regret floods my bones.
i roll down the window to tell him,
"i am sorry." he shouts back, "you are not sorry
you are scared." moon roof still open,
the moon spits a me. i drive onto turnpike.

rejuvenation 

i am told there is a surgery
to turn us back into fish.
when the procedure is done
the doctor puts on a pair of waiters 
and walks out into the surf 
& throws you to the kelp mother.
is it always a mistake to return?
when i cut myself gills i feel
like i can breathe only
they close & then i am a person again
strolling through target 
with a credit card. i used to 
have this compulsion of trying
fit myself back into clothes i wore
as a child. breaking seams.
i said, "look i am still a daisy 
in the mouth of my mother."
there is nothing left but the fabric.
but the corn & the thread &
the taste of a ripe mango sun.
the first years i was back
in my hometown
i haunted every memory i could.
stood in the tree where 
i kissed boys in lighting storms.
took my body to the sewing machine.
here is my face without 
the scar. here is my chest
without the steering wheel.
i go & get a mirror. work on it 
until it gives in & finally says,
"here you can look at yourself
when you were a girl." i see 
nothing but a pair of hands.
do not believe anyone who says
return is about rejuvenating
the old flesh. instead, i believe
in flooding my museums 
with birds. i live somewhere between
memorial & dreamscape.
we are not gone. we were
never gone. 
 

limb death

when my phone died, i hadn't backed up data
for four years. 
at the shop off the highway
we loaded the old memory onto
the new phone. it took me back
to 2018 when we were still talking.
you were waiting to come inside my dorm.
where was i? maybe pacing.
maybe eating moths. did you love me then?
i am sorry but i do not remember
if i loved you. i do remember the night
we spent standing in the parking lot
in the rain. i imagined being struck
by lightning & turning into a god.
you told me about your pet hissing cockroaches.
i told you about the jar 
of my own teeth i kept in the closet.
we had shoe box lives. carrying fingers 
& elbows in plastic bags 
from one season to another. 
i think we tried to not make promises.
it was the summer before i left
for grad school. forgive me but i forget
where you said you were going.
a trip to the moon? a sawmill 
to remove your feet & replace them
with hooves. i almost text you
as if we are still in a different world. 
as if you are still outside
of my dorm waiting to be let in.
instead, i pause & delete the conversation.
it is like losing a limb 
all over again. burying a hand
& waiting for another to grow back.
do you still have our messages? do you
still have the thumb i gave you? 
come inside. let's be fists if not wings. 

elegy to a dead iphone 

i want to believe we will escape.
drive home on a cut in the earth.
all the water rolls off the back
of the mountain & through my head.
dear god the fishes have bullets now
& so do the birds. they say,
"defend the angels." i saw
your eyes spin like radio dials. we were
standing at a gas station looking
for a hole in the wall to climb into.
home was a lighter & a little incense cone.
praying to the umbilical cord
that it might tie us back into 
a swarm. instead, the beautiful hope machine
said, "we are going to have to walk 
back to the pie tin alone." i wept.
craved sugar drowned cherries. 
you held me & said, "we can wait."
i still don't know what you meant.
wait on god? wait on the sky?
wait on the road to lead us into 
a boneless place of rest & cauliflower? 
in the car we split a cosmic brownie.
i licked my fingers. the headlights 
were halos. one for each of us.
i said, "i just want to be 
in my bed." there was no bed to be had.
instead, we slept in the back seat.
you with your face against the window,
me a crumpled fruit snack wrapper
against your chest. for a moment
of levity i opened the moon roof.
glimpse of squinting stars. 
lights of the parking lot trying
to drown them out. you, promising me,
"we will." i filled that in "we will 
find our way back." but maybe you meant
"we will wake up to the sound
of sea gulls" or, even better, "we will
not need the ghost anymore. 
we will treat the road as the deer do,
like a dance with death." 
 

light ice cream 

tell me you are avoiding a conversation
with the gods. now, you do not have to choose
between satisfaction & hunger.
we make food without any marrow. 
in the ice cream section i find the ice cream
with the least calories. put a spoon in my mouth.
count my steps to the moon's melting chin.
when i say i am ravenous i mean 
there is a door kicked in where my stomach 
should be. i mean i have tied notes
to the legs of carrier pigeons just to find
they are delivering them to the tree in the yard.
i did not even know who they were for.
the first time i realized we could measure
just how much we are supposed to consume
in a day i was giddy. finally, a way to understand 
my body in proximity to death.
we do not spend the day. the day 
spins us like spools of thread. i love
to scrape the bottom of the pint & pretend
i am a libertine. yes, this is the carcass 
of a swan. yes this is exactly where 
irises go to turn to seed. lick the spoon.
taste the sound of cream. once, when 
i was a child, i ate whole fat ice cream.
i did not know it was whole fat, i just
sat in front of a television & it sang to me.
i am terrified of what it means 
to indulge. i do not know if i ever do 
anymore. if i did though, it would involve 
a ritual sacrifice. cutting off my own thumb
& feeding it to a cow. saying,
"thank you for your blood." the cow
unzipping his flesh to reveal he was 
a flock of spoons all along. the serving size
is a half a cup. we all know 
no one is going to eat just half a cup. 

how r u?

sometimes i get text messages
from the birds. they ask,
"why are you dying like this?"
they ask "how r u?" by which they mean,
"does your species plan to grow wings?"
i sometimes harvest feathers 
in a vain attempt to become a crow.
i would be well suited to that life
of screaming & searching for treasure
in the mouths of dead gods.
instead, i have fingers to attempt to.
lately, i have been holding them up
to the sun & waiting for them to grow eyes.
but, to answer their question. i am 
glowing. i am on fire in a good way
& in a bad way. good in that sometimes
i cannot sleep i am so angry. i search the house
for a reminder that there is love enough
to fill every vessel in the house. that,
on the right day, we could welcome a cloud
into our house. comb her fur. feed her pickles.
bad in the sense that i do not ever sleep
through the night. bad in the sense that
my uncertainty about the world we need
sometimes transforms into doubt.
i start to build a bunker full of wisteria trees.
do you know you can eat
the flowers? all & all i am catastrophic.
that is how i am. 
i am chasing butterflies. i am so in love
that sometimes i forget i was once alone
walking through a blizzard in february
dreaming of boys just like the boy i love.
i don't ever text back to the birds.
after all, they are only ever a few breaths away.
i wave to them in the window.
i keep my original answer. i am glowing.
i open my mouth to show them
the fire i've built there. magazines 
& eyelashes burn there. the birds reply,
"we are glowing too." 

bees nest 

the first bee i saw crawled on the back window
in late june. little did i know that soon
they would fill every moment with words
about their hugeness. they would whisper
as i would try to sleep & even when i tried
to kiss you, "you know we are the size
of the whole side of the house." i didn't live 
there long but i dreamed of winning enough money
to buy our little row house even with 
with fractured foundation. a part of me
was maybe dreaming of holding on to the bees.
owning them like they owned me.
it was not long until the whole back hallway
stank of their death. a musty sweet smell.
their bodies laying in little graveyards.
i vacuumed them up & more would come.
they watched me constantly & so they knew too much.
"you are in love with unraveling" they'd pronounce
& i would say, "i know." the nights 
i drove to see you even when the moon
was eating his own eyes. climbing, like a pear
into your mouth & begging, "will you make me
your little god." i envied the life
of the hidden queen. every single bee
as he died sang of her. to be loved like air.
to be loved with rampant hunger.
i think my love of the bees was really
a craving for the house to devour us. 
make us into bees too. the work, they said,
was hard but you got used to it. dying 
in search of the sun just to be reborn
as a hum. when i left the bees were furious.
i didn't want you there. i didn't want you
to see how much i begged them to wait for me.
i cut off a finger & handed it over.
pleaded, "let this be a brother." they dispersed.
by this time they were the walls themselves.
they said, "take your blood with you."
i still find carcasses sometimes 
in old boxes. old shoes. i hoard them.
lay them out on a line in the windowsill.

orchard

that was the year the apple trees grew bones.
femurs & skulls & teeth. we all talked about apples
like a past-tense god. i ate my own hair one night
because it smelled like jonagold. my first job
was working at the orchard. i was surrounded 
my men with hairy arms who did not pack lunch.
instead, they reached & tore off the fruit 
like they were trying to find air to breathe.
i was not always the slowest picker. usually, 
i was middle of the pack. their skin dried my skin.
some night i worried i was turning into an apple.
i would run my thumb across my face & worry
about worms & rot. the orchard is endless it will
start to become your everywhere. i would wake up
& walk through an orchard to school & into 
an orchard in my bedroom. there were orchards
of dead birds & orchards of beer bottles.
the sound of wind through branches. always something
to collect. fill the basket or the crate. i loved most
to eat as i worked. apple juice on my chin.
i am not sure if i was the first one to notice 
the bones but i felt like i was the only one.
gone picking just to find fingers & vertebrae.
the men kept working though. they picked
& picked. i told them, "don't you see the bones?"
they did not speak as usual. they were just trying
to find a life with their hands. crates & crates
of bones. even the boss man pretended like
he didn't see them. he nodded at our harvest.
carted our labor off to the farmer's markets.
i wept in my bedroom after that shift.
i went to the bathroom & looked at my face
in the mirror. did he grab me or did he not?
why do i not trust my memory? i worried
that the bones were all my bones. so many 
of my bones. had they watched? 
i never went back to the orchard. slowly,
the trees receded. i still see them though.
sometimes they bear apples. other times 
there is a full skeleton dangling from a branch.
& at my core i am a harvester. i always climb 
the branches. i always pick them clean.