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." 

stray

on the night the stray cats
started eating the trees
we ordered pizza. scrolled on our phones
& saw ads for armageddon.
they said, "why don't we just
get this over with." i scoffed.
i keep having visions of a giant
constrictor in our house. i keep
a draw full of implements 
that i would use to kill it,
if it were to attack you. keep your
heart in a radio. "do not feed the cats,"
they say. they say, "they are
not cats." but they looks like cats.
only they are now the size of lions.
i understand though. maybe
they deserve this. maybe they've all
put in enough time being wayward.
sometimes i wish that 
into the night i would become powerful
like this. enough to turn headlines
into worm races. i think all creatures
want revenge. it is the urge 
to return what cannot be returned.
the pizza tastes amazing. the night is
covered with lightning & the birds
learn how to sing like violins.
the cats do not stop there.
they grow & grow until they are
human-sized. some even walk 
on two legs. they paw at windows.
i close the curtains. when they come for us
i will be prepared. we make a little altar
to the monsters. piles of canned fish
& a wedding ring we found
under one of our tongues.
there is a rumor that 
if you are quiet & still enough
they will not even know you're there.
i know this is not true though.
disaster is a process of becoming
everyone's kindling. the television 
plays a commercial for the pizza
we are eating. this feels like
the snake swallowing her tail. 
boas in the crawl space. cats,
still growing, perched now
in the cedar tree. they feast on the birds
& then sing for them. 

the last man

a month ago all the men
turned into poplar trees.
i knew so little about poplar trees
until then. i grew one on my head
which i at first mistook for antlers.
i have often been mistaken
about my own gender. caught a glimpse
of myself in a shop window 
& thought "cottonwood" or worse
"traitor." i have been betrayed
by my own desire to be a graveyard.
did you know cottonwood 
is just another way of saying "poplar"
& sometimes i think "graveyard"
is just another way of saying "gender."
to be a place people come
to amble & remember that which is
no longer breathing. that which
is all but a ghost & a string of recollections.
cardboard boxes of photographs.
mourners & girl scouts playing man hunt 
& teenagers desperate for a place
to make their gender visible. 
i never meant to be a person 
who tends poplar trees if you know
what i mean. but that is the thing.
most of the time your gender
arrives like this. like unexpected white flowers.
like the way the poplar trees
still wear their human man shadows.
the one in the yard, my father, 
hands by his side, turning 
to drink his fill of the sun. 

party hats for absences 

are you going to the hole in the ozone?
i heard everyone is going to not be there tonight
& we are going to spend all our time asking,
"where is so and so?" i have sometimes 
removed my self from the world
like a smudge. other times, like a parasite.
what do you love to take? what do you love
to not be there for? i don't want to be there
when the fire finally reaches us. 
i want to be a skeleton in a museum of 
frogs by that point. i sometimes celebrate
all the ways i am already gone. i dig graves 
everywhere i sleep. crawl into the dirt 
& listen to the prophecies of worms.
they say we are all making good tv. 
has a hole ever opened in the ceiling for you
just like an old mouth? i feed it gummy sharks.
fire extinguishers need to be handy & so
do pocket knives. gut the fish they said.
it will be a meal they said. instead 
all i get from the fish are shoes. the celebrations
of missed gatherings are my favortie.
when someone apologizes & says,
"actually my face is full of gills tonight"
i rejoice. i say, "mine is too" even if 
it is not. a lie is sometimes actually 
both of its meanings at once. lie down. 
lie to yourself. a leak in the moon means 
by next year there will be no more milk.
we have to make the most of what we have.
no one else shows up. i sigh & leave
my telephone number on the wall
of the bathroom with a note that reads,
"will you call me even though 
i cannot promise anything?" 

several scheduled catastrophes

i knew this was going to be bad
when we walked on back of the heron
& you fed me fiddle heads. 
i tasted the songs you used to sing
to the dead snakes by the highway.
i have blocked off time on my calendar 
to cry. i have scheduled an email
to myself that reads, "forget."
you can tell the body to do an action
but that doesn't mean the feeling
won't have a life of it's own.
i still have the feeling that i missed out
on kissing a body made of fire
in high school. he played bass & sometimes
we would message into the night
about jupiter. he said, "i am so hungry."
i said, "i know where we can sneak
into the vineyard to eat grapes."
we never did but i went alone
& swallowed each fruit thinking
of his eyes. thinking of the heron & 
imagining a boy just like you. 
i knew i was going to have to throw out
all of my clothes. i knew there would be
no time for sleep. instead, i had funerals
for everyone i ever wanted. 
made room to be consumed. 
shaved my head in a black mirror.
in college i often took naps 
for strange amounts of time like
twenty-seven minutes or twelve minutes.
every rest counted. i do that same 
but with mania. "i am allowed to be
a colony of ants for the next 
eighty seconds," i tell myself. 
then it is an hour. then it is a life time.
the truth is there is no vineyard. 
it is just your face. these were just
your eyes. you said, "go ahead"
& i knew you meant, 
"i only have thirty more seconds
before we're both smoke." 

chainsaw carving

give me the history knife
alive with the scent of pine 
& bruises. i take a chunk of my liver
to all the artists that i know
hoping one will have a chainsaw 
lying around. hoping one
is a man with a pile of teeth beneath
his bed. the question of 
"who has shaped you?"
is both abundant & terrifying.
i think of becoming a closet
of sock puppets. here are all
the animals i have eaten 
in a jury to decide what kind of creature
is going to be carved out of my wood. 
they chant "ant hill" & i decide
a colony could suite me. it sounds
like a relief to be so many pieces
to blame. a buck stands on the ceiling.
a brother in the garbage disposal.
i have jars full of noises i no longer
allow to escape my throat. 
bird call. yell. scream. cough.
once i screamed & my dad became
a chainsaw. i saw him spin.
who has shaped you? who has
carved you with an audience?
who has said, "i'm so sorry"
as if the machine were not in his hand?
i want to tell you something different though.
once i was dead & so were all
the magnolia trees. then, there was
a mourning dove. he held a pairing knife.
cut my eyelids off & said,
"look at all the pink." i did.
i stared into the pink & the pink
stared back. i said, "i am not sorry."
the bird said, "i do not want you to be."

insecticide 

you have to reach the nest
if you want it to stop.
last spring i was plagued 
with ants. they crawled on all the walls
of my bedroom. they sang songs
about the sweetness they wanted
to devour from my irises:
little black berries. they carried 
pieces of my childhood & dropped them
onto the floor. a guitar pick.
a watermelon rind. you have to feed them
by hand. lie to them. say,
"let's eat together." sugar & poison.
at night i would spray all the corners
with insecticide. it smelled vaguely
like lemons. still, pulled by some
other worldly force, the ants
would march & march. they'd follow
the one before them right into 
pools of death. chemicals that 
turned them inside out. they'd writhe 
& i'd tell them, "i am sorry."
but it was an empty "i am sorry"
because i did not stop. instead,
i did more. i left traps outside.
by the growing crack in the house's spine.
then, as they still came, i'd plead,
"please. i have nothing for you here.
i have barely enough for my self."
i felt my life unraveling in every possible way.
my partner turning into 
a closet & then saying, "let's be
obelisks instead." the crack 
in the house's foundation leaking
during the season's first heavy rain.
in so many ways i lived just like the ants.
i walked through poison
in search of one little bite of sugar.
"how do we stop ourselves?"
i asked them. to which they did not reply. 

dog night

i wrestle a planet from his mouth.
slobber & all. i say, "i too want to eat
the light from the sky."
the bible is wrong about everything
but mostly creation.
in the first days of the world
there was nothing but dogs. the dogs ran
& the dogs swam. the dogs sought
love poems in the fields &
thus they created all the animals 
they could not capture. birds 
& rodents & even moths. that is
what they determined love meant.
to chase & almost swallow. my dog 
is like me. he craves the darkness
the world used to swell with.
he broke out the window
on the second floor. used tree branches
to ascend into the sky. i followed. i remembered 
doing the same when i was a teenager
& spent all my nights on all fours 
trying to run the static
out of my bones. i hold him close.
he writhes. hunger is a process
of losing yourself to a need. 
he begs. "i need to chew 
on a god." i tell him what he already knows.
"that is us, you know there is 
only us." 

my neighbor is making a fish in his yard

he owns a little plot of heaven land.
the other ghosts who smoke
on their windowsills & tether clotheslines 
to the walls of their apartments. 
the house with a half in its number 
was a place of angels & genesis. 
i watched fish crawl from the basement 
with their first legs. frogs whose eyes
blinked from the sink. it was worst
when we were snowed in for two weeks.
i saw my neighbor in his tiny sky yard.
he hunched over & brought bucket
after bucket of grease from his house.
formed the fish from feathers & wire.
it breathed like a thunder storm. 
i watched as it stalked the edges of his fence.
white pouring from the slit-throat sky.
i was terrified of his creation just like i was
terrified of the couple who fought long
into the night & the man who sold guns
off the front porch. once i cut his hair
& in the process i saw all kinds of fish
in his scalp. he asked, "what is wrong?"
& i said, "nothing." people react
in all different kinds of ways
when they are discovered. i always wanted
to be discovered but not like a hostage.
i wanted the fish to see me. 
swallow me like jonah. listen 
to my prophecies. when the snow melted 
all that was left were the bones.
damp cigarette butts on the sidewalk. 
a dead man on the roof or 
was he a fish?