glow prophecies 

the pool hall was only open for a month.
we went there to kiss & make our eyes
into cue balls. blue chalk on my fingers
from rubbing the end of the stick.
in the corner, they had a pinball 
& mortal kombat machine. i liked to be the monsters
when we fought. it was the only time i really felt
like i could beat him. i smashed the buttons
as if each blow were crashing into his body
& not the little radiant avatar on the screen.
i used to wish for life in two dimensions.
in the game, there were so many less direction 
to hide. instead, i was paralyzed 
in the three dimensional world. all the pockets
on all sides of the pool table. so many places
to lose track of the truth. that is what
they do to you, shoot your eyes
into shadows & leave you chasing them.
the worst part is i would not describe him
as a terrible man. maybe careless or hunger 
is a better description. but then again
maybe i am too enamored with
the mortal kombat life. the thrust forward.
die backwards. i think of him in the dark of the pool hall.
glow of the neon wall signs casting pinks
& blues & greens across his face.
his smile was always off-kilter. 
in the game, i listened for the raspy voice
that would tell me "finish him." 
i took so much pleasure in that.
a pixel body severed or crushed. 
he always beat me at pool. cocky, sometimes
he would shoot behind him own back.
when the place closed 
we arrived to find the whole hall emptied.
black windows. it was as if
those nights had never happened.
he pulled by my belt
into the alley beside the hall. 
it smelled like flat soda & garbage. 
two dimensions, forward & back. 
he kissed me like a wad of gum. 
shadows cast around us. my eyes
somewhere else. in the pockets 
of a pool table who knows where. 

place

at valley forge the cannons wake up dazed.
roam alongside the deer that are eating 
each other's ribs.
the winter has enough sadness
for all of us. they look at their reflections
in the pools of half-frozen water. remember
the memory of a child turned
into ammunition. how they swallowed the skulls
& spat them out. though truly
they are just replicas or else grave markers.
massacre is this country's greatest love. 
the cannons saunter the woods & imagine themselves
living as animals. long deeply to die 
like the deer die. withering until
they are nothing but the sounds
of wind chimes. there was no battle
at valley forge. instead, there was 
a little nest of lost empires. they wrote letters
to their empty gods. fed them to one another.
mouths open. hungry as hunger 
would allow. the creases of the land.
the cannons now wondering if 
there is a story that could be told about them
in which they are not the ending. in which
they do not spit punctuations 
across the hillsides. they hear the snow coming
before anyone else. huddle together
pretending to be pack animals.
one cannon says to the other,
"i wish i was a house" & another asks,
"do you think it is too late 
for me to learn how to be the wind?" 

electronic universe

how little light do i need?
i sell all the bulbs in the house
for moss. spread it even as jam
across the floor. a new carpet
of meal worms & wood. 
did you know there are 
saints who run all night 
to make sure the sun hatches 
at dawn? i see them outside
on their motorcycles. use a butterfly net
to catch them. put them in little terrariums. 
i just need one day where the sun
stays curled & caterpillar. 
give me the black forest cake. give me
the ink velvet. 
i have tried to swallow 
as much dark as my body will hold.
spoons & kings. the basement smell
of mold & decaying halos. 
walking down there with 
a single candle. little planet.
i plug in my face & wait for it
to want to eat again. let's not confuse
terror with love. love with hunger.
i am in hunger with 
the ceiling grease. we try to scrub 
our chickens clean. they turn
into doves. they lay dove eggs
each of which bears 
the bad news. little notes
with nothing but dates inside.
what do you think they could mean?
i am not as hopeless as it might seem.
i have a night light. i have
a god i used to pray to. 
now, i huddle with the other tangerines.
we take turns eating each other's 
flashlight glow.
i am never quite full enough. 

how to get a mortgage 

bury your teeth in the front lawn
of an abandoned house.
in a city of vacant rooms,
you are the dog. we are all running from
the debris of the fiber glass moon.
you carry a bag on your back 
full of snow globes. each of them
are a place you died. you have
collected much more than nine lives.
the cats are not jealous of the ways
you keep coming back in search
of a place to chew your nails
like everyone else. to own the land
would mean to kill it.
to say, here is the blood i turned
into a landscape. into a rose bush.
instead, i want
to lay down & let the moss
build a house for me. 
give me a swimming pool full 
of rice. a cupboard of canned beans.
basement full of secret whales.
sometimes i swallow peach pits
in the hopes that one
will grow a house boat. 
little raft between my ribs.
i walk for years until i reach
a beach covered in tea pots.
there a shark washes up
on the shore to tell a prophecy.
"this will be water again," he says.
you blink your eyes & you see it.
the depths. your childhood home
in the bottom of a fishtank.
goldfish as neighbors.
they put a veil on your head
& tell you, "please be descent." 

men on fire

i've never learned how
to run away from god
but the men who race motors bikes
in the city seem to know how.
a police siren spits its teeth
at the asphalt. i wonder 
who its going to eat
& if the men know how
they plant to evade the color red. 
i am headed to a cemetery 
in my head where i can go & be
five years ago. i don't know
what i was then but i am 
a nostalgia sick creature.
i wear mice in my brain 
& feed them every coin i can find.
when we drive & you sing to me
i become something else.
be sweet like we used to be.
be a cup of heavy cream.
sometimes i want to join them.
buy a motorized bike
& try to catch up. discover
all the men are angels on their way
to make their heaven mischief.
we give the immortal too much credit.
all they want is a hoagie 
& a diet coke. somewhere a building
gets its neck broken 
from too many hungers.
people evacuate & stand 
on the street corner,
looking up at it. the cemetery i visit
does not allow flowers or men.
i tell the stones,
"i am neither" & they wink at me.
a dragon dies in a front lawn.
the world is not deep enough
to bury it. i hear the bikes again
as they go around the block
for the second time. the police car 
is running without eyes.
you park the car
at the look out & the city 
is one big siren. i tell you,
"i am on my way" &
i am talking into a tin can.
you are not on the other line
or else you are & just 
don't know what to say. 

stomach death

i make all my mirrors from ice cream.
sticky & melting. i lick my hands clean. 
i am the zoo where the animals stand & stare outwards.
dear god i have done everything
to replace my stomach. i have tried
making a drum & filling it with teeth.
i have tried a great boiling pot
& even a feather pillow. if all my hunger
could have legs it would run towards
the interstate. i put my tongue on a leash
& walk it down to the creek to drink. it refuses.
instead, it screams in the language of fire.
in my stomach, a ferris wheel eats 
every child who approaches. haven't you ever
gone on a rampage towards your body? i've taken
scissors. cut off limbs. removed organs 
like furniture. in my bedroom there is
no bed. just a hole in the floor
& a sign that says, "don't fall."
when i suck my stomach in, i always pretend 
i am an alchemist. that i can transform myself
into the one & only blanket fort.
do not believe me if i tell you
i am a creamsicle. instead, take a spatula 
& flip me on my back. i am the halo
without the hole cut. a dinner plate
piled high with uncooked fish.
i want to love the body the way rain does.
the way it spills & drenches. i want to 
follow my throat not like a tomb 
but like a tunnel. on the other side
i am told there are geese. 

fog maker

i did not want to lose you.
the fog came like ice cream trucks.
like a knife without a father.
we were walking as if neither
of us had ever waded into a grave before.
did you mean to leave me
with all the skulls of the voles?
i wanted to hold on 
to whatever filament would
give us more light. the apartment
the size of a thumb. come my love
let us not be dangers to one another.
the fog poured from a wound
in the mountain's stomach.
he was always trying to eat.
i never meant to be a man. then,
there i was with all these hands
reaching in to turn me
into an organ. the notifications
on the apps where gutless people
would ask, "are you awake?"
i took a walk through town in the fog
in the hopes of running into you.
i mean the you where my eyes live
& the you i meant into a pine cone's teeth.
no one believes me when i tell them
there is no way out. they say,
"don't you have a shovel?" &
"don't you have a mother?" i ask you though
have you ever tried to find anything
in a world this thick? pureed moon.
a serving fork. i was hoping
the water would take me with it.
that you would wake up &
i would be what coated the grass.
what waited like jewels on 
your windows. i would let you wear me
as a ring if you came back 
& let me be my dead self. 

carnival apparatus 

that summer, i went to the carnivals alone.
everyone was dying 
like silverfish. you lived inside 
a telephone. i said, "when i die
will you please come & marry me?"
you spoke & the line cut out & i asked "what?"
too many times until i just had to give up.
sometimes you can feel someone else
slipping out of your orbit.
sand through fingers. colander 
of corkscrew pasta.  butter melting into silk. 
i went on a ferris wheel. just me. there was
not even an attendant. the ferris wheel 
looked out over the whole county.
trees & little wounds where there once
were coal mines & the rail roads 
crisscrossing the land like stitches. 
i find myself wondering often
about what was removed; from myself
& from the land & from you.
i want to remember you in a crowded cafe
sitting across a tiny table from me. 
the carnival became everywhere
i needed it to be. in the grocery store.
in the woods where i always found dead deer.
you can build machines to keep yourself alive.
the carnivals saved me
& took me apart. once, on a summer night
where my blood had turned to sugar
i called you & you didn't pick up.
i was going to beg you to come 
watch the fireworks with me.
to be terrified is to know exactly
where the carnival is. 
survival is sometimes a process
of motion. the tilt-a-whirl. the scrambler.
vertebrae of neon. the summer always ends though.
there is always a skeleton
on the other side of the flesh. 
the ferris wheel always stopped
at the top for me. just myself & the old trees.
feet dangling above your mouth. 
call me back please my love.
tell me where you keep your carnivals. 
what you see when you look out
above everything. 

alternative uses for a golf course

a place to scream.
set up a carnival of dragonflies.
a fire where we burn our hair.
bury the jar of a nails.
cut your tongue off & pray it becomes
a whale. dig in the earth until
you find bones. cow bones
& fox bones & the bones of us
as snakes. a wedding. a funeral.
a first communion. we eat handfuls
of salt. a place to run & forget your legs.
a place to go to tell your lover,
"if we do not stop, i am going
to become a moth." plant butternut squash 
& tell them they can grow as huge
as they like. swallow dwarf planets.
take pictures of our eyes. use a measuring spoon
& scoop out bites of the sun.
feed each other noise. pray there
is another winter. pray this year
wasn't the last snow. a place to lay down
& have a meal of only eyelashes.
hole to plant knives & wait
for the knife tree to grow. a place
to hatch children & tell them,
"escape while you can." a place to 
hold your lover's hand & say,
"what else can we do?" there are
few things more painful than trying
& failing at tenderness. 
this is golf course terrain.
this is the little heart smacked across
the field. the cattail that used to grow.
the milkweed & the golden rod.
your hand brushing mine.
i say, "take me home."
a not-home. a zoo. a place to 
run away & hide from hunger. 
the site of a future weeping willow. 
your space ship. 
my baby tooth's coffin. 
burrow like a lost fist
turned into a toad. 

vial

the velvet lives like your old sofa.
like a cupcake with cream cheese icing
that you fed me as if i were
a stray dog. we were children 
in the ocean zoo. your blood
& mine like curtains blown open.
i stand with my mouth full
of who-know-what. the nurses ask me
if i am still there. this is a seance.
the blood draw, like a tiny offering
to the old angel. a request,
"let us be immortal as trees." 
snapping off a twig & finding 
the tree's own crimson. i find myself
the jewel thief in the doctor's office.
i could take just one vial 
of my own blood. still warm.
run away with it. wait for it
to turn into a garnet or
a salamander. what of yourself
have you lost to the color red? 
trowel in my mouth. the roses 
that refused to grow in the flower box
out our city window. dear god
it is as if i am shopping in the window
of my own skeleton. i miss it.
i miss everything about it. 
about the dress made of card board.
about pretending we were
boyfriends in the disco ball fury 
of a middle school dance. 
in the car afterwards i search my self
to be sure i didn't actually steal 
the blood. i did not. i am heartbroken,
wishing i was a wilder ghost.