centipede day care

go be him in you little boy house.
a trolley that goes from hell 
to the gas station. eating our fingers
in exchange for more legs. 
this is always a bargain. what will i give
& what will be taken from me?
i work in the centipede day care these days.
a line of mini vans come to drop off
their precious syllables. we sing.
put our tongues in the glove box.
you will not need them when you work
with insects. instead, we talk with
our feelings. i weep & so do they.
they are crying about climate change
& i am crying about the cost of funerals.
we burned my grandfather to avoid 
that kind of expense. he has un-scattered ashes.
sometimes i want to feed them
to the feral cats. let him live again
as the mischievous comet he was. 
we cannot know what the dead wanted
but we can use it to get what we want.
that is what the united states have done
for centuries. the centipedes like
to eat bibles. i feed them first
from revelation which they say
tastes like sugar. a rogue radio show host
tells the truth about the moon landing.
it was real. it was real & people starved
to death that night & the stars were all
centipedes waiting to be loved.
we can disagree on a lot & i can still love you
if you agree to go with me to dairy queen.
i can want to feel safe in the ways
i was always told we were. plastic spoon.
plastic cup. the cemetery brimming with
centipedes from work. i am polite & so 
i wave to them. they are busy 
with them gameboys. it's not enough
to be hungry for a gender. you have to
go & carve it from a piece of soap.
mine comes with more legs than you
could ever count. when the parents come
to pick up their nightmares 
& hide them. i say, "these are my horrors now."  

feather tree

when we found the dead birds
we planted them like peach pits.
i was born into the art
of making nothing
from nothing. the skunk cabbage 
harvested by the river. wild onion
like little translucent hearts
chopped & tossed in the hot oil. 
everything dissolved in my mouth.
once, we caught a squirrel 
& let her go. we all have meat.
even the trees. the willows &
the beech with. where the dead birds
were buried the feather trees grew.
first like fists & then like choke cherries.
the shrapnel of an old scream.
at night they called out to each other
from the knots in the bark. 
feathers blowing in the wind.
onto the porch & the driveway.
i liked to collect them to make myself
new eyelids after mine had run away.
we were taught
never to look away. sometimes this
turned my irises into tap shoes.
the feathers were all shapes & sizes.
a dove. a blue bird. a crow.
no birds in sight, just their wings
haunting the old sky. 
tapestry on the bedroom wall
of the tiny god who also does not know
where we are. sometimes butter could cure
the hollowing. the way hunger
expands inside you to fill the lack.
i have not yet collected enough feathers
to make a bird but when i'm done
i'll tie a letter to his leg
& send it off to whoever wants 
to listen. the letter will begin,
"will you tell me what you've swallowed
so that i don't feel so gone?" 

the garden sage plant on the windowsill always turns towards the light

i am looking for the honey wand 
to swallow like a sword. i'm not sure
if sweetness is ever not chaos. we turn the plant
each day & each day the sage reaches 
to press her leaves to the window.
i want to tell her i am sorry for our insistence 
on evenness & balance. 
i too have wanted to press my face
to the lines between where i am & where i want to burn.
i wonder if it would be so bad to just carry her
out into the yard. let her stand there
in a dead wedding dress & hold on to whatever
she wants to hold onto. i have lost so many hands
to fires that i thought would love me.
feeding them & feeding them. first they want
your eyelashes & then your hair. 
it is a brutal summer. just like every summer
comes now. the heat, in blood wings. 
so, i turn her. i let her reach again.
with her permission, pluck a few leaves
to place in my mouth. chew them.
bitter & then sound. bells turned
upside down to be used as chalices.
i am going out to the yard instead. i am 
painting my face with a cloud 
& waving to the sage plant, mouthing,
"it is better in there." 

you were my parking lot fantasy 

i used to meet you on lunch breaks
when you worked at guitar center.
once, it was raining and my car stalled twice
on the way to see you. everything felt
like an emergency. the sky. your fingers.
the way, the first time we met you promised
you loved me. i am, if nothing else,
a fool for a good confession. maybe it's because
i was raised catholic. i am still searching
for a holy person to tell me i am forgiven.
you kissed me like chewing gum. pink.
the rain came harder. my teeth like
hopscotch. your fingers around mine.
you said, "i would never 
show you to my family" as if it were
a joke. i always wore a binder around you.
i held my breath. you pulled me 
into the downpour to kiss me. i now
distrust cinema because of you. romance 
is so much more about death than 
any other genre. here i where i went
to corpse myself. you went back inside
& i sat in the car for almost an hour after.
wiped the water from my face.
cars came & went from the parking lot.
their headlights like tossed pennies.
the next day i found out you were 
seeing other people. the fires you set
in windows. my car stalled more & more
the next day. it was as if it were telling me,
"stop yourself." i am terrible at stopping
myself. instead, i speak a language
of floods until no one else knows
what i'm saying. i don't remember
the last things we said to each other. 
you were standing outside my window
with a guitar. your fingers, those wild birds.
the sky, still slate grey & rampant. 

blood magick

we did the puppet work & reached our hands
inside each other's stomachs. worship me like ice worships
the eaves. we sat in a circle & made our sacrifices.
me, a warm bowl of tongues. you a braid
of red fox tails. blood is always more than blood.
a river. a sleeping ocean. a memory of us
in the big king-sized bed talking about knives.
you always wanted to take a cruise. i wanted
only to float as a dead leaf. no one is coming 
to make a shrine for you. instead, you have to know
where you want you blood to go. i have filled
chalices. i have held special emergency holy weeks.
let's not pretend we haven't tried to be gods. 
instead, the carnivores have always been the disciples.
the radio talkers. the fathers of flightless birds.
where do you go when you are hungry 
for danger? i have loved so many people as a way
of hurting myself. is that love? magick? 
i have been abandoning all ideas of purity.
instead, i go to the river after it has finally rained
for days. mud & laughter. the drowned rabbits 
carrying each other's paws for luck
in the next life. you said, "i want to hold
a knife to your throat." i swallowed your hands.
the dorm room. you in the parking lot.
you on the ceiling as a chandelier. don't tell me you
weren't following my trail of blood. 
i saw you lick your fingers. in your stomach
i always found broken statues. you would 
pull nuts & bolts from mine. a machine
shedding its structure. coming apart as if you
were the fountain who could spit me out.
fill my lips with coins. spending each
on a spell where the not-birds carry you 
out of my past & into an old raspberry jam jar. 

mandrake

we would go out in the yard 
burying microphones. the talk
of worms & mandrakes.
they would say things like,
"buy one get one free." tongues
from the plastic water. a little flute
in the sky saying, "you are not
you are not you are not."
once i fell in love with a soil person.
he reached up only a hand from the earth.
pointed upwards. there was the piano falling
it was too late. when you are starving
even a radio is an oasis. sometimes
i would pretend i was a host too.
"up next is a terrible rain." the mandrakes 
are always telling lies about the worms.
the worms insist that they are beautiful.
pocket mirrors. a collection basket
full of mice. is it enough to talk to an angel? 
is it enough to see the figure
of a man in a mandrake or are we just
too pastel-thumbed. blurring the lines
between ghost & girl. between horizon 
& a deadly cliffside. the view is everything.
the sky bleeds from a tiny slit
in its side. sticky jam red. orange bruise.
i pluck the mandrake 
from the soil & he scrambles to cover
his unmentionables. my heart breaks 
as it should. i clothe him in a doll dress.  
put him in a bassinette. he asks,
"were you ever a mandrake?" i tell him
i was not but once a whole tree
grew from my head overnight.
i had to find a lover to chop it does
but it still sways. the phantom limb.
songbirds come to me in search
of the branches. 

parking lot burial 

she asks me, "what are you doing
to yourself?" i get in the car
& drive & drive until i reach the parking lot.
there are sea gulls
who come here just to die.
they watch television on their backs.
make vlogs about the garbage they find
in the dumpster behind the stop & shop.
i come here too on a night in the winter
looking for somewhere to hide
all my feathers. they keep spilling
from my mouth & i can't ever conceal them.
i thought i could make a person
for her to love. i hear waves even though
there's a highway between here & the beach.
the ocean has always been just
a mania away for me. i remember 
parking my car in jersey once just
to look for jellyfish, i found none
but i did find a funeral the gulls were having.
in my religion, a parking lot is always
a holy space. a shrine to longing.
& waiting. a stolen mouth. elegy for 
the meadows that used to bloom 
& their ghosts 
who still search in the broken glass
for the color blue. i cannot go home.
my gutted place. plastic drawers
full of everything i want to be. 
i always join a gull funeral when i see one.
say a few words, "i'm sure 
he cut the sky like butter."
the birds chatter. i tear a button 
from my jacket to leave as an offering. 
they birds disperse & only i remain.
a little knot in the ground 
where, in the summer, dandelions
punched their way through the asphalt. 
i know she is waiting for me by the window
with a bowl full of all my feathers i left. 

husband poem

i am a widow in the sense that
i have cut my hair & buried it
with my husband. sometimes it rises
from the grave to ask for lollipops.
we are all just sugar spirits.
child-fingered & goat-hearted. 
i reach for a jar swarmed by ants.
he used to stand on the ceiling
& tell me how he wanted to be worshipped.
i made lemon fish & fist-stuffed chicken. 
when my hair is furious 
it will look for him. he is no longer
my husband. instead, he is a man 
with a radio for a mouth. his birthday
is knit into my calendar. i tell him,
"this is not your face" when i lift
a potato from the dirt & find him screaming.
i used to think i could grow my hair
long enough to please him. 
horse bridle. wedding bridal. 
the sour peaches the trees grew for us.
each of them, our children. i filled my pockets.
felt their soft infant hair. 
i entombed them with my hair
where they will always be dragons.
sometimes i see myself 
as a living sever. where the world was
cut into another continent.
i run away from everything i can
but especially men. especially husbands.
keep what i must. 
i still have keys to their houses.
spoons stolen from the their cabinets.
what's ours is ours. my hair. 
my heaven. your pit. 

man with scissors 

he says, "i'll cut the pear in half"
& he's talking about my head.
where do you carry your softness 
so that it doesn't go trampoline?
i hold my breath in the grocery store. i hold
my breath. i punch a hole through
a wall in the hope that there's honey inside.
there's not. or at least there hasn't been
for a long time. just pictures of fires.
black & white pictures. they could be
just very nice silk
i try to burry each finger on a different planet
so that wherever i end up evacuating to
i will have a memory of touch
that i can return to. berry tree. berry blood.
the astronauts feast & them i am just
a boiling without any hands. will you take me
away from my self? i need a little break
from skin. i just want to be the fur.
the nice fur of all the woodchucks 
who live by the side of the river.
if i were a toad, i would try to be
the biggest one there ever was. the thing
about men & scissors is they will always
find something you can lose
& they will convince you that you
are alright without it. i crave the pears.
their pale sugar. their bruisy faces.
do you want a piece of me? i do as well.
one bite in the cool dark 
of a morning. perched on a rock
by the stream. the man has never once
even severed a lock of hair from himself. 
the television sends a warning
that i do not bother heeding. 
plum juice is gone anyway. we'll need
to live off comets soon. please tell me
there will be pear trees there.
it does not need to be true. i have 
my own pair of scissors 
if i need to use them. 

backwards car

he says, "this will be okay" while
pressing his foot to the gas.
the world unwinds & i don't know
if i want to have a body anymore.
my blood like oil feeding a little machine. 
i always take things too far.
picture us married with eight children.
a house with too many windows. 
pot boiling on my forehead. 
everyone in the world is watching our date.
we are both almost sixteen. 
i have already turned into a crow
several times & he has told me
the same story about his mother
killing basil plants for fun.
in the parking lot i admit, "i don't know
how to say your last name." he says it
& i follow the shapes of his mouth.
i never get it right. 
it is such a shame we have
to meet each other like this,
so hungry. in the pizza shop
he orders for me. white pizza. 
i try to explain how & why my feet
don't always touch the ground.
he asks, "are you ghost?"
& i can't answer. 
he says he wishes he wasn't a triplet.
we drive backwards all the way
to a creek. past houses & cars,
all of them shouting & saying,
"you are going to hurt someone."
why don't i tell him to stop? why don't
i say "i don't think i want to 
try to love you." instead, i tell him
the opposite. i say, "when can
we meet again?" he promises to unwind 
the sky for me. he promises 
he will cut down trees to see me.
chew up the moon & spit it out.
alone afterwards, i walk backwards 
for the rest of the day. embarassed,
i lay on the floor of my bedroom.
turn into a crow again only now
without embarrassment. 
wild & feathered. i worried love was always
going to be about undoing yourself.