bird radio

i think we should start packing our bags.
on the television they're talking
about war like it's candy. i turn on the radio
& all there is are blue jays yelling about the seed.
they say, "all we are is jupiter to you, aren't we?"
i've never run far enough away but that's 
what it means to live in the united states.
it's a labyrinth in a labyrinth. sometimes 
you will pull over on the side of the road
& your father will pull over too. you didn't know
he was following you. i know to pack light.
just the telephones & maybe the good knife.
clothes are everywhere. in little bond fires
on the side of the road. we change the radio
to a station of loons. it is calming the way
they speak like fog. like a breath that
consumes you in the morning dark.
i put a dream in the microwave & it comes out
covered in ants. i have enough sugar 
but not enough anything else. i used to think
we had enough heart to tend a fig tree. 
i will spare you a metaphor about the wasps.
if you don't know what i'm talking about,
please google it. but the fruit was always
just a waiting bell. the delivery person
asking to come inside, saying,
"i do not want to run anymore." 
we let them crash on the sofa but quickly
they become a happy meal. you take
what you can get. fries with the state lines.
a jump rope used as a choker. 
my favorite station is the song birds of course.
most of the time when you flick it on,
they are too shy to sing but sometimes
when the world is just right, you will hear them
sing about a before time that does not exist.
tell me this will all fit in a suite case
when we have to run. the birds & all.
the trembling & all. i accidentally turn on crows.
cover my ears. they always speak the truth.
i do not want the truth tonight. 
i just want you to tell me there is a future
in which we do not have to escape.  

self-portrait as a fly trap

i have been so hungry i grew teeth on my hands.
come & feed me your shoes. marvel at how
the carnivore can collect any of us. 
the ravenous flower who ran into
a field of knives to become a new gender.
the ants tell stories of me. they say,
"not all green is home." i learned everything i know
from him. from how he killed his violets
& how he worshiped burn piles 
out behind his parent's blue house.  
he bought me a bouquet of myself. i fed it
the house flies & flour moths. i let the mouths
burst from every wall of my bedroom. 
then my skin. i tended myself. hunted
by the porch light. told no one what i ate.
everyone else with their feet in the dirt.
drinking yolky sun. 
me, the little starvation waiting for a footstep.
i was always ready to close my jaws.
to lock the door. to let the phone ring until
it stopped. dear god what it takes
to admit, "i am a fisherman." 
a fly lands & i tell her, "do not be scared."
close around her. she is me. 
she is a little communion dress. 
hands raised like eucharist. i eat her face first
so she doesn't have to see. 

flytrap to fly 

this is how i write a love poem with my teeth. 
there was a flower once
that we both resembled.
your wings are little pocketbooks.
coins you placed on the counter.
i am here to be the gone machine. 
to be the sofa you do not stand up from.
television still laughing in the background. 
i open my mouth & sing to you
about the soil. we both once slept there
as freckles of words. do you know
what it feels like to hold 
a colony in your jaws? someday you will.
that is what i have learned 
from the windowsill. that today 
i am the one with a mouth 
but tomorrow you will be the bird
who hits the glass or you will be 
the animal with eyes made of gold.
come here & let us speak softly 
to one another. you can tell me 
what you want to see in the clouds
& i will knit them for you. you can confess
all your regrets here. i will swallow them
along with your wings. hold them
in my throat & wait for them
to turn into sugar. 

shoes by the door

let's kick down the barefoot door.
i have nothing for running,
just a kite made of house flies.
i crouch & treat each shoe like 
the animal it is. hungry for a mouthful
of stones. i collect doorways
in a little photo album beneath 
the floorboards. the shoes wake up 
at night & i have to come & teach them
homosexuality again. tongues of fire.
a television the size of my palm 
which i carry from room to room
like a candle. i let the shoes out
so that they can frolic. i ask them,
"can you just promise to come back?"
they don't always. sometimes
they get eaten by wandering bicycles.
i try so hard to cram my body
into sepulchers. it gets loose.
the shoes demand flesh. crave a warning.
i put them to sleep. two by two.
a party for an arch. the storm is coming
& they say the water will rise up
to our knees. for now though
we are married just like we wanted to be.
the door is locked & the shoes
are done kicking. i feed them each
a little beetle. they are greedy & 
try to swallow my hands too.  
i almost let them. i want to know
what is is they're yearning to make from me. 

at the saver's in hempstead 

we try on genders that used to 
belong to someone else. crooked mirror.
floral prints that yield fields of pilled winter hats. 
i forget where we said we were going.
the parking lot is a crushed can heaven. 
pigeons take turns guessing 
what each person who arrives 
is searching for. in the wracks of clothing
i'm looking for you. i'm looking for 
us on the night we met & decided 
to pursue a future as statues.
i told you, "my gender doesn't have legs"
& you said, "neither does mine."
the red tags mean no one wants 
to pretend this gender is worth something anymore.
i pick up my hunger & put it back down.
the sun is setting early. winter has 
a trash bag full of bones. opens it & offers
for us to sleep there for the night.
you buy shoes that don't fit & i buy
a button-up i'll never actually wear.
you ask me three times, "what do you think of them?"
as you lift the fake snakeskin shoes
as if they are little coffins. i tell you,
"they look perfect" when really i am thinking
of cradling farewell pigeons in them.
in the driveway you accuse me of trying
to be something that i'm not. 
i deflect it because i know it's true.
i want to ask you if you think
we are always trying to live inside someone else's clothes
or if someday we'll arrive & move like minnow do.
like we're slipping through ourselves.
i regret my purchases &, when you are asleep,
i throw out the button-up in a panic.
push it to the bottom of the trash can
so you won't see. stand there as if this is
a little funeral. the stars have all their fishing rods
out to tonight. i miss you. i miss myself.
i miss the way we once
broke our skin like bread.

low calorie cook book

i dog eared pages of the little death bible 
& said, "here is all my mouth will answer."
each rib like the lazy teeth of a xylophone. 
i played & played until everything 
was made of glass. trying to turn into a bird
for me meant hollowing every bone
i could find. my own & others. the spoon i used
to cry with. windows open, i feasted on breath.
why do we decide to become wells? here is where
the town goes to wish. a boy asking,
"let it rain toads tonight."
my mother worked with me. we used measuring spoons.
we stood on two separate burners of the oven.
i said, "do i look barbeque to you?" she was on the phone
with a doctor. the doctor was saying, "you have
to eat chicken." my boyfriend camped out
on the roof. said, "i have a wife somewhere." 
i learned that each flavor has the potential
to turn you into a hermit. i licked the ceiling.
taught the moths how to die. locked my door
& savored the sound of corn. she would
put a lid on my bowls of food. i waited
until they were cold. until the night had crab legs.
lit candles to balance on all of our heads.
this was the only way i could eat.
sitting on the floor of my bedroom, telephone
talking about fire & being the best child you can be. 

eyes in the back of my head

i traded a crow for their visions.
one bird eye without any shoes.
behind me is a jump rope garden
where all my little failures go
to have scones. do you ever feel like
even the sky is talking about you?
the clouds make trading cards
of my faces. they say, "look how
angry it was." i don't feel a lot anymore.
sometimes this concerns me. 
i go to a sand box & try digging for
a reaction. some kind of howl.
instead, i find the plastic dinosaur
i buried & lost years ago. he is just
a skeleton. i debate whether or not
to rebury him & i decide to let the hawks
have their way with his confessions.
truly, everyone's tongue is just
a temporary salamander. in the night
mine goes looking for rocks to tell
the truth to. i don't need
a shoe box for my lungs. i need 
a sail boat. i need a man made lake
where all the shorelines are 
rolled-up sleeves. in the back yard 
the neighbors have a meeting about
my paranoia. i show up & they raise
their hands like "i come in peace."
i raise mine too & then we're praising
the pizza box god. there is no where
to runaway in which there won't be
a whole world playing bluegrass 
behind your head. i turn around
& the music stops. using towels 
as curtains. the daylight bleeds
through a lifted skirt. they are saying
if i don't eat soon they are 
going to call in the elephants.
i sew my mouth shut. at first it was
a protest but now i don't remember
what exactly i was protesting. there is
always something worth a hunger strike.
i find a delivery man & he has
a bag of crickets. he says,
"did you order this?" i blink the eye
in the back of my head. 
see the bruise clouds coming & so 
i take the small bounty from him & run. 

sneaking into god's bedroom

we want to try in his clothes.
swallow his jewelry just like we did
with our parents'. there is a mirror here
where all you can see
are your sins. they come in the form
of insects. centipedes & weevils. 
put a blanket over the mirror.
in a drawer we find a gun with a bullet
ready inside. the gun says,
"happy birthday" & we run away from it.
a bedroom is so much like a grave.
here is where you go to be blood nothing. 
where you keep your stories
about the end. how & when you plan 
to take all the wallpaper with you.
i have never seen god. only his bedroom.
only his bottle of pills & his stale glass
of water. when my brother & i
snuck into our parents' room i always
left with something. a lipstick.
a bottlecap. i don't know what 
i was harvesting. their fragments.
proof we were kin. dust beneath
the bed. god has a painting of us
on his wall. the faces look all wrong.
like smudges. like they have been smudged 
from rubbing a thumb across the pigment. 
i have long wondered how many bedrooms
i am carrying. comforters & tissues
blooming like flowers across the ground.
god has a television without a plug. god has
a bible only when you open it
there are no words inside. 
the windows are open but no air
comes in, just the sound of construction.
the street outside is being gutted.
they're probably searching
for plastic babies again. my favorite thing
i ever took from god was
a little eye of the bird yet to be born. 
i found it on the windowsill.
maybe curing. maybe sun-bleaching. 
ran my fingers across the surface 
& promised the never creature,
"i will not take you back here." 

weeds 

i have at least a hundred siblings
if we're counting all the weeds
in my parent's yard. sometimes my father will
go through a phase of trying
to pull us all up. he'll work 
with his bare hands. dandelion boys
& crab grass girls. we spit our eyelashes 
into the dirt. more & more of us.
sometimes i feel sympathetic to him.
we'll go on a car ride & i'll forget 
everything about my body & we will
just be twin rootless cedars.
i want to ask him if he remembers 
the weed killer. if he remembers 
all the times my eyes came as potato bugs.
he thinks he's trying to save us.
the graveyards we have. the times
i have tried to tell him, "this is not
how i want to be loved." what did he think
he was doing in the shower with the curtain
made of butter? who did he think
i was? there was one night 
in a mcdonalds parking lot
where he left us there & we became 
the asphalt breakers. the churches of crows.
now, when i visit i go first to the yard
to talk to the others. i ask, "how many
are we now?" they answer with all
different numbers. i make the promises 
to leave as many of my teeth as i can.
how lonely do you get from you blood?
he sends me a blank letter.
all that is in the envelop is dandelion tufts.
my old hair or else another siblings.
i cannot tell us apart. 

eye of a needle

i do not generally like bible verses 
but i enjoy the ones that 
talk shit about rich people. 
the camels come with gossip
about celebrities. a private jet
they watched turn into a heron. 
gold toilets & gold windows 
& gold tongues. sometimes 
at night i bead by lamp glow.
the eye of the needle seems
like a gone basement door. a place
we could never go. lose your shoulders.
lose your skin. go through with only
your hair. i haven't believed in heaven
for at least a decade but i am sure
there is no gold there. maybe 
flowers. maybe justice. maybe 
a fountain where you can go
& see the versions of yourself 
you have loved most. i feel like
a lunch tray. here are my chicken fingers
& here are my guts. here is the camel
standing & knowing he is a parable.
i feed him a peanut butter 
& jelly sandwich anyway. 
the thread always finds a way through.
selves i drag along like thread.
i think in the fountain i would see
a little boy-girl in a big t-shirt 
talking to a snake. i want to live
with the toads. i want to see 
their coins turn into jupiter beetles 
in their hands. the shadows my fingers
make as i work turn become crows.
they pluck gems from cracks
in the floorboards. fly back 
& forth through every eye they please. 
the camels say,
"you know we all have the potential 
to get that hungry?"