valley forge

i was just a thimble of water carried
in my father's pocket. we come from
a long line of reenactors. put on your
throat story. be the snow soldier
on august's thumb. i loved the cannons most.
how we kneeled & filled them
with grapefruit. in the united states
the biggest enemy is always secretly 
your peach pit dream. the rotting self. 
where the worm lives
& talks about salvation. the weeping soil.
a turned shovel in the wet earth. he knew
there would never be enough to drink.
once, my father saw a ghost. or was it
that he heard one? the boy in the attic 
still marching from one side of a terror
to another. his boots without him.
his head without him. a jar of peaches.
forks stuck in the ground like gravestones.
the army doctors would hold their saws.
they would say, "look at the trees, they
lose limbs & still find their green."
in the end, he will swallow me.
he will say we are in the midst of a war.
of course we are. because what is war
if not an urge against history.  
for now though, we rest. we tell the dead,
"we are here to be you." they say,
"we are here to do the same." 

comet

like a comet 
i burn a hole through my mother. 
i draw a crowd. everyone with
their nighttime clothes.
some in robes & others
in sequins. how do you
lay yourself down? 
what are your bones made of
now that we are fuel
for the orbit?
we were all standing on the roof
& listening to a television.
the news announced 
that this moment comes around
only once every thousand years.
we will not see our own burning
again like this. instead 
the blues will have to be stolen
from beneath the tongues
of the crows. come with me.
i have a patch. i tell her,
"i love you like oil loves."
like the slick belly of an iron pan
but also like a tomb
marked only by a "x" in the ground.
the comet is not a comet
but a bird. the stars are not stars
but insects glowing 
& waiting for the right moment
to eat everything they came for. 
you can sew the wound shut
but it will always grin
back at you in the candy mirror.
when i say i burn
i mean i am coming back
in a thousand years.
all our blood, still here,
still rupturing our mother's hunger
for a daughter. 
waiting for the news to say,
"it is time to grow gills.
it is time to go back 
to the swamp of eyelids 
& telephone darkness." 
i point to the light in the sky.
we watch as it comes & goes. 

i lived alone in a wooden heart

the ceiling leaked on the first night i moved in.
i stood for hours watching it before i did anything.
waterfall gushed from bathroom heaven
to the floor. everything soaking.
the drowned legs of centipedes. tell me god
who was the first woman to invent a roof?
when the rain came did she think,
"i am betraying my father" or "i am thristy"?
sometimes i crave that kind of alone again
that the apartment in the mountains gave me.
how it turns every organ into wood. 
blood as shoelaces. watching the future mildew
& rot. how water is always a story of washing away.
of exactly how we will depart.
the tiles warped & sung. my bath towels
turned into stomachs. i thought o fishbowl life, 
give me the cell phone reception i used to have 
in the big molten city or at least a wire into 
the golden eyelids of the ghost deer. 
i watched a tutorial on how to stop bleeding.
pressure. there is no way to put pressure
on an open sky. i let so much water pour.
finally, i called the landlord. 
she had a can opener voice.
she sent her son who crawled on the roof.
removed leaves like clots that were blocking the gutters.
he said, "it is a good thing you called me right away."
i reminisce about a timeline in which i never call.
instead, i let the rain consume me. live like
a mercreature. water through the whole house.
twist & bend. wood turned to mush.
all my organs, little swamps. the crawling bugs
that come & do not ask questions.
i know i should not be left alone
but o how i crave it.  

sudden rain

tell me when you're coming.
there had been marbles
in the sky.
we walked on ripe pear feet.
blood or nectar. you had the radio
in your throat. i was calling you
on a tin can across the ocean.
do not test the sky. you should never
test the sky. it turned black 
like spilled pupils. i leave messages.
you are not coming. it is just me
in a terrarium of plastic trees.
i tell myself my life can be
as small as i need it. can fit
in a purse. can live in a closet
that smells like moths. i am not
sleeping in my car. 
instead, my car is sleeping 
in me. the tires always spinning.
i wake up with a hunger for gambling.
the air full of veils. when the sky breaks
it throws plates. it tells me,
"you knew it was over." a plane
or a butterfly ghost. is that way you used
to leave? i do not have that luxury.
i am standing in the middle 
of a sudden rain. the umbrella turns
into a pummeled mouth. 
cracked teeth. nothing between 
me & the downpour. salamander skin.
calling you through a river. 
you do not pick up. you are not coming
but tell me when you are.
when you're next knelt 
& swallowing handfuls 
of the fattened moon. i will be there
with my dead bird in my hand. 
i will tell you everything you missed.

storage full

i download my face to the cloud
& walk around headless as can be.
sometimes i exorcise my bones
& find videos of dragons. what are you keeping
in the desktop folder labeled "hunger"?
that is where i house the power point 
presentation on why i should stay alive.
the first slide is a picture of the moon.
my computer tells me, "we have ghosts."
i restart & hope we are less haunted.
machines hold all of my organs but 
especially my liver. filter out the noise
of table saws & the deli slicer.
this is the amphibian life. the between
of saving & starting. naming files
after gods. double clicking on your throat
& craving the swallow. if i opened 
your screen would i find a video call
with a monster? would i find a tape
of all of us in a bath of fire & stone?
i tell my face, "we cannot be full there is
still so much to salvage." i collect pictures
of laughing monsters. they have no life
outside of my two hands. you don't
understand i need this acre of cemetery.
where else is the elephant going 
to run from his taxonomy along with me?
i'm telling you, there is a river 
of nothing but eyes. there i go & learn
to bathe with everyone watching.
there is nothing left for me to empty.
it would be like tying my hands
to stones & tossing them in the river.  
the flesh is, after all, only a url
where i go to shake.

dad email

sometimes my dad sends me blank emails.
i think of them each as walls.
four in a row make a bedroom.
five in a row, a house with one side
of the roof missing. other days
he will write to me like i am dead 
& he misses me. i will reply in the same tone.
as if i am a ghost writing to him
& telling him i am at peace. once,
i sent an image of myself & a partner.
somehow in the transit, the picture turned
into just a picture of two song birds.
my father replied, "i am hungry."
i used to watch him pluck the feathers
from birds in our yard. no, he was not
preparing them to eat. he just wanted them
to know what it felt like to be earth bound.
i am terrified of my father. i want him
to send me a pair of shoes i could live inside.
when he was at work i would become 
a hermit inside his clothes. tent of a t-shirt.
curled up inside a chuck taylor. 
i have never sent a wall back. instead i tell him
i love him. instead i send him eyelashes
so that he can remember exactly how
i used to come apart in his house.
no matter where you go, your daughter-self
remains like a limb. i have put mine
in a little room. four walls. but still she says,
"he could be what we want him to be." 
i brush her hair each night. i check my email
& hold my breath, bracing for another signal
from him. when one doesn't come
i don't feel relief. instead, i check my inbox
all night. once he emailed me a whole room
in one night. i had to crawl inside it.
look in the cupboards. there i saw photographs 
of myself & him. in all of them our eyes 
were scooped out. i fled. tonight though
the inbox is empty & somehow i'm still waiting. 

cicada suit 

i want to take off my end-of-the-world costume. 
in other words, break out of my flesh
like a cicada on the throat of my parent's old pine tree.
as a child i would go there to harvest
their discarded skeletons. they stood like statues 
frozen on the trunk & branches. 
little memories of hunger. i too have screamed
in the dirt. i too have lived like a nesting doll.
one miniature fury after another.
when i look for my cicada suit i'm looking
for a way to pry apart bone from self.
as if there were a season for sacrifice. 
we keep the calendar in our blood. remember
exactly when the moon pulls us out. 
a drawer of diamonds. this coming year is
a double cicada year. two species will rise
from the dirt & yell themselves to pieces
by the porch lights. i consider crawling inside
one of the vessels. the dormant skeleton.
i imagine maybe it is the one & only portal
back through time. i do not want
to be a child again. i don't think anyone does
but i do think we believe in revision.
this time i would linger longer 
beneath the tree. this time i would learn
the language of the cicadas. this time
i would join them. this time i would not let
my father take out my teeth. this time i would 
keep them safe instead of
giving them to the next boy 
with a forest fire for a mouth. 
when they come i will not be ready as
i am never ready for the swarm. to see myself
as the creature molting. coming apart
with an audience. leaving behind 
an army of still lives clinging to the tree. 

mall wandering w/ you

buy me the honeycomb face.
the one with a colony already inside.
neon washes me until
i am just a coat hanger. we would go there
to the mall with no money. just legs.
a desire for windows. for watching.
for food court homilies. you pinching
the fat of my hips. i never wanted to be fourteen. 
no one should take a boyfriend to the mall. 
this was my mistake. i think it reminded you that
in the right contexts everyone is capable
of living inside a plastic bag. 
plucking a penny from the fountain,
you hand me the coin. a stolen wish.
"what would you like?" you ask 
as if i am not turning someone else's hunger
inside out. i loved most the moments 
in a dressing room alone. i would think,
"how do you call for help when you aren't
even sure what you need?"
sometimes i dreamed of going 
into a store where you could purchase
angels. there, i would take off a tiny part
of my soul. maybe just a baby sock sized sliver.
trade it for a place close to the sky light.
a kiosk salesperson pleads to 
straighten my hair. i let her because
i want to try being touched in a new way. 
she says, "you are gorgeous."
this is what she is paid to say but i need
to believe her. the touch is worth it.
you sometimes leave me & lay down
like roadkill in the walk way. 
i come & plead with you to rise
& when you do  you pretend as if
it never happened, "what?" you ask,
laughter harbored in your grin.
"i wasn't a dead bird. that was you."
feathers in my mouth. washing my face
in a bathroom sink. breathing just to find
a plastic bag around me. you're holding me
at your side. a little something something.
trinket or girl or plastic worm. 
i still have never made that wish.
i think if i don't, the original wish 
will get to remain. 

caramel 

i put the house on my tongue
& walked out into the ferris wheel wilderness.
that was the summer where
everyone was trying to be as high above 
the town as they could. i had
callouses on my knuckles
& callouses on my fingers from two
different kinds of repetition. 
playing guitar in my bedroom
until caramel candies spilled from 
the instrument's belly. i did not eat
any of them. my knuckles were from
punching holes in the wall or at least
that's all i'm going to admit to. i ate
as much sugar as i could & then floated
on a life raft in the shape of a hand.
i liked to pretend the hand was
your hand. when i say "you"
i just mean everyone i wanted
to love me when i was fifteen.
i climbed a tree that turned out to be
a vein. on the ferris wheel the town
looked like a diorama of 
a ghost. the clock tower that 
i climbed that electric winter. 
afterwards the house always tasted 
like rain. i have watched the spirit leave
a cake. you cannot eat the house
alone even if you unhinge your jaw.
even if you are convinced no one
would notice. ants came & ate
all the caramels. i wept, thinking,
"if i would have let myself have
just one." the wall always healed itself.
it was like i never punched a hole in it.
instead. i took off my hands & spoke
softly to them. i said,
"go on. i know you know how
to be a blue jay." they refused. 
the ferris wheel became a dinner plate
rolling on the kitchen floor. 
you were the size of an ant. no. you were
an ant & you came hungry.
i wanted to be so far above the town
i could not even see 
how much of us you were going to devour.

headlight bug bite

i get chewed up by your yellow yesterday 
& tossed like a shadow onto 
a chorus of trees. i drive faster
than i should because there is always
someone to outrun. do you feel like
you're being chased? well, you are.
the angel is a category of insects.
the holy ones. the ones without telephone numbers.
grease the wheels of the elsewhere maker.
i check my body 
for your bite marks. i will have to
come up with an excuse as to why
i have been letting the world eat me.
bone & dough. the wooden spoon 
in the glove box. i pull over on the side
of the road. your face is a gas station.
your headlights are teeth jutting 
into a pudding world. there is never
enough stomach to explain what happened.
instead, you have to resort 
to the realm of noise. a wrong turn.
a construction zone operating 
in the middle of the night. you come 
to find they are not dissecting the road.
they are taking apart a monument.
the monument screams, "i want to be
remembered!" i have gone too slow too.
i have driven into a wreckage farm 
where everyone is trying to die
in the most glorious way possible.
i want none of that. i want to 
be alive when the world is nothing
but windows. i want to look out.
i want to point & say,
"they look just like us" even when
they do not. they are angels. they are
a swarm. heaven in a pickle jar.
shake the forest & the lightning bugs
will wake up. spell your name
in the branches. say, "they can
still see you."