the morning after trash day

i tell the remaining plastic bottles that
in hundreds of thousands of years
maybe we'll both learn again how to be soil.
i hope we are trees with eyes. i hope
all the black garbage bags go to sleep in the sun.
i hope it never stops raining. 
i pick candy wrappers 
from the pokeberry that grows
on the side of the highway. the plants say,
"can we breathe with you?" i do not agree
to accept their kindness.
sometimes i feel like i am already a spirit.
i tell them, "i am sorry but i do not have
a mouth."
ghost upon ghost. it is what i am made for.
slipping between one word & another. 
a need & a vessel. 
the garbage truck carries an aching belly.
i know what it's like. i have lived with
people i'm afraid of. i have bargained with
the window & said, "tomorrow we will carry
all of this to the hole in the earth."
i take landfill pilgrimages whenever i can.
the piles the trucks miss always leave
a trail you can follow to the wound. 
the deer love to walk there.
they search for bones & televisions.
i ask them to help me hop the fence
but they want to keep the festering
for themselves. every once in awhile
i'll join a feast. a coven of raccoons as they 
hold a ceremony over half-rotten vegetables.
the seeds ring like bells. one holds up their hands
& says, "grow into a revenge forest."
the gods are not coming. we are them 
& we are stumbling in a land 
of rashes & wood. the truck's headlights
cast my shadow as a running man
even though i am standing still 
picking up a diet coke can from the brush. 

10,000 dollar chair

we go into the beautiful store
to cosplay rich people.
it is one of our favorite games.
you put on your gloves.
i take out my teeth & resolve
not to smile. you know the place 
is expensive if there are 
no price tags. it is time to be afraid.
the store today only has one chair.
it wears a sign hung around its neck
that reads, "do not sit, do not ever sit."
i imagine a world where
for years i try to save up for this chair.
maybe it is a thousand dollars
or maybe it is ten thousand dollars.
i would not put on my costume. i would
walk in here & say "i'm here to sit."
why do i knit fantasies of revenge wealth?
i do not want a chair. i do not even want
a mouth full of rings. 
instead, i live the tombstone tooth life. 
ghosts play hide & seek in my mouth.
when we are done i return 
to an apartment of an apartment.
i go to my room & find the chair
waiting for me. i'm terrified. i close the door
to contain it. i don't know what
it would want from me. i am just
a boy of a girl or a girl of a boy 
(depending on who you ask).
i am just a body with your average 
millionaire day dreams. i tell myself
"if i had blank i would blank." 
i open the door a crack to peer in
at the chair. it is closer. an inch
from the crack in the door. i cry,
"what do you want?" 
everything, i assume. i think it wants
my everything. my hungers 
& my tomorrow doorbells. i call you
but you do not pick up. i wonder 
if it has already gotten you.
"i do not want to play the game again,"
i say on a voicemail. turn to see
the door to my room wide open.
the chair at the threshold trembling. 

arsonists 

we stick together. 
i found you because you were
burning sheet music on your roof. 
we fall in love as our people always do. 
eat pizza in gas station parking lots. 
take pictures walking the railroad tracks. 
all of this just so we could
bring what we want to burn
to your backyard.
calendars & teeth. a pair of eyes.
the sun & the moon move
like dolphins in the sky.
up & down. we stand still
as the world rushes cuckoo clock.
i've always thought your hands
were too soft to kill me.
i tell myself this
when, in the dark, 
their shadows bloomed so large
they could choke me. 
your smile turns
into ash. you bring 
your axe body spray & play
it in the flames. a tiny little explosion.
you say, "that is my head."
i see the fires in your throat. 
i never wanted to end up
so angry. so contained.
first in my body & then in yours. 
the only thing left is burning.
we have never found anything
in the ash but we take turns
convincing each other that we will.
sometimes when we kiss
we find apricots. they're always
not quite ripe. you pull out 
your own hair to keep the fire going.
i do the same. this can't go on 
much longer, can it? 
one of us has to make the move
to add the other to the flames.
i know you will make 
the first move. when you do
do not treat me like kindling.
look at me & try to remember
the green lighter we found on the park bench,
how a fire always begins
with a soft but weighty hunger.
you cannot have a fire 
without a witness. 

goodbye yellow 

each night another neighbor
puts a couch out on the curb
with a little sign that says, "free."
we salvage them & turn them
into horses. the horses have nowhere
to stand in our little attic lives
& so we give them driver's licenses 
& tell them to go & gather
as many ears of corn as they can. 
the yard fills with husks. 
it's harvest time or else it is 
time to celebrate the great death
of all the bees. goodbye yellow.
goodbye gold. goodbye red.
insect wings fall like snow. the horses 
miss being places where people
took their spines & laid them down
like shovels. they kick in 
the neighbors' windows
and they find the horses 
lying in living rooms with the television
set to a static channel. snow on top
of snow. what do you do when 
what you were is so thoroughly gone
that no one can recognize you 
anymore? i ring doorbells.
i gather the horses. ride them
to the forest & i tell them,
"if you want, you can be deer."
they take me up on the offer.
learn a new kind of running.
still, sometimes, one or two are successful.
i'll discover a couch in the woods.
animals perching on the cushions 
& worms in the foam. home is 
breath. the exhale. the perfect place
to decompose. whenever i find one,
i sit with the creatures. i feel
the couch still running away
from all the glass & the rain. 

radio surfing for a single bone 

you taught me a new restlessness.
driving, you would click the "seek" button
over & over, culling the air for a throat you wanted.
always in the passenger seat, i waited,
let the skipping world arrive
in brief calls for help.
i remember parking at the shore in maine.
i ate fruit loops from a little plastic bag
& you talked about what you wanted
to do with me after we were married. 
you rubbed my knee in circles
like golden rings. my left knee you caressed 
is the worst in all my body to this day.
can your bones respond with their own curses? 
they say, "he wants to toss you like
a smooth stone across the water."
we talked & all the while he pushed the button.
dispatches came through from the tin foil world.
finally he landed on a gritty tongue.
a man singing about angels. he believed in god
more than he believed in my lungs.
once, he grabbed me by the hair 
& said, "i love you." i felt a knob on a radio.
it is impossible to live while another person
waits for you to be what they need.
me, every voice through the radio.
his thumb in my mouth. bowling ball headed.
i rolled through the darkness. fog on the water.
he said, "we don't have to go back
to pennsylvania." i did not say anything.
instead, i reached over & helped him
keep surfing the radio stations.
i never felt so desperate for a place to land.
give me a song. a curse. anything. 
finally, a beat i knew. 
i said, "i love this song." i don't remember
what i chose but it didn't suite the moment.
some 2010s pop song. he listened for a beat
or so before he put the car into gear.

blood river

i follow the big tongue into the ocean.
they say languages came from 
a shattered tower but i think they arrived
in the water. heads thrust beneath the current.
there, spirits possessed our mouths
& taught us exactly how to say,
"i am lost." in the blood river the fish 
are already dead. easy to scoop from the water
& eat like apples. i call you over & over 
& you do not pick up because you are air now.
no one floats in the blood river. 
if you go in the deep you will just become
a stone, smoothed by the passing
of all your ghosts. the tree goes backwards.
i am holding my grandfather by the collar
of his shirt. he is running without any hands.
i tell him, "put those back." the language he speaks
is not my own. instead. our words pass each other
like chickens & goats. the longer i'm in the river
the more accustomed i become to red.
red sky. red rupture. red teeth. a bonfire 
somehow floating on the surface of the blood.
did you know that there is no such thing 
as an ocean? we are running out of time
to reach a nowhere open. where we become
part of the birds learning. where no one
can tell us, "you are not delivered." 
i cup my hands. look into the pond. 
there the tadpoles all have our noses
& our fear of silence. i hold them as i walk.
they do not scream though they are terrified.

square knot

the question becomes
with what do you hold yourself together?
the ice cream melts on my way to you
& each stop feels like a rosary bead.
smooth. forefinger & thumb.
i am concerned about the eggs
in the chicken coop & whether or not
this year will have any ribs left.
when i was a girl scout 
we once took turns practicing knots we had
no use for. i held out my finger
as a loom. let the other girls practice
on my skin. this is what it means 
to live in this country. like racing an onion.
test subject. teleprompter. 
they take bids on how & for what they
kill us. for democracy or for profit 
or for unity or for freedom.
i pick at knots in my thread.
sometimes when we bead, the seeds
blink like eyes. when i get back
to the air bnb i am glad i did not
eat my ice cream without you.
the rooms are small. plastic red spoon.
you open packets of ketchup. 
i hear blood. on our way here, 
we passed a sunken house
glazed with dusk light in the middle
of the old woods. you said,
"i wouldn't mind living 
in a place like that if we 
could be safe." we drive there,
ice cream still melting, burrow inside.
tell each other our favorite unhistory.
"there is no such thing as the united states." 
grow our hair out. braid it.
finally, then, make use of that knot,
by tying our heads together. 
the ice cream goes fast. i lick the cup.

baby deer

we find them grazing on the side
of the highway & pull over.
the deer still have 
their velvet. i know what it was like
to be hungry in front of 
an audience. we pluck leaves.
tell them, "come home with us
& be our children." 
earlier today
in the infusion center
the person on the other side
of the separator from us
talks the whole time about her babies.
you put in ear plugs
but i listen. she says,
"my toddler talks & worms come out."
she says, "i always wanted to graze
on the side of the highway."
i wanted to interject & say,
"i have too." though i know i would not be
a cautious enough deer. i would be
the little road kill angel. 
lay flowers in my ribs. the deer sit
& watch television. we show them
the cartoons we liked as children.
the deer want to go to space camp.
then they want to stay up
watching horror movies. 
their friends come over.
hoof print on the ceiling.
i told you before we picked them up,
"i don't know how to be a body."
i was trying to say,
"i love our children" by which i mean
the ones we don't have. 
do you know what it's like
to want what you don't want?
the deer eat dandelions. the deer learn
how to get the mail. how to make
boxed mac & cheese. they sing
to themselves & then to us.
i go alone to eat leaves by the side
of the highway. i want to know 
who i was before them.
you drive by & find me. we have
no deer. you are worried. you don't know
where i went. i apologize until 
i have antlers. you climb them
& build yourself a tree house there. 

twin spearmint bushes 

on the porch, we ate our hands.
the storm had a shiny baseball bat
& he smacked the rooves of every house
on the mountain. deer ran, carrying
photo albums in their teeth. 
raccoons trying to catch their own hair.
birds with gps pulled up in the hearts.
take me to the next heaven. 
a good july storm will shuck you.
i remember running inside
& closing the blinds
as if to say, "no one is home."
my two spearmint bushes still outside
pounded on the door. they said,
"we remember when the television 
was white as gold." i did not know
what they were talking about.
they were trying to say anything to get inside.
i dreamed of them as house guests.
all of us, myself & my two spearmint bushes
sitting on the couch. their roots 
entangled with mine. one telling me,
"it is not so bad to have to drink the sun."
storm snarl. the lighting knitting a fracture
in the sky's porcelain laugh. 
wind came & undid those two plants.
i tasted their ringing on my tongue.
their eyelids still on the windowsill 
readying for tea. i said i was sorry.
the storm did not. i went to sleep & dreamed
of the roof torn from the throat.
a cloud peering down at me 
& admonishing, "you left them alone."
spearmint growing in the walls. spearmint
busting in door. when i woke
the sky was vanilla again. i went out 
& i found the twin spearmint scattered
across the sidewalk. i picked them up.
i wept. they were speaking in a language
of colors. "blue, black, white."
they survived but they never forgave me.
when i drank their tea it tasted 
like walking backwards. 

for the garter snake

i would bring him pennies in case he'd like
to buy a bicycle. i don't know
what snakes crave. maybe a perfect
halo of sun. enough to take the blood
into thunder. i used to meet him at the edge
of the yard where the neighbor's trees
talked to themselves. the snake would 
knit words into the ground.
"please" over & over. i always wondered
if someone had taught him the word
or if it had come to him naturally. 
sometimes our mouths are cellar doors.
take me into the mess. i brought him
a can of soda to share with me.
then, i brought him a picture of 
my grandfather & asked the snake
if he thought we looked related.
the snake said, "more." the gaps 
in our language were like water over rocks.
sometimes i would ask him,
"do you think i could cut it as a snake?"
that would always make him 
run away. i like to think he was shy
but truly i think he knew i was just searching
for any kind of escape. into a new species.
into a new horror. this is my life pattern.
running through rings of fire.
one day the snake did not return.
i had brought him a flute in case
he liked music. i ran my fingers
through the grass. found nothing but
a soda tab from the drink i'd tried to share.
do you know what it's like
to crave a collapsed distance? 
i want to hear him confess everything
he's ever wanted to confess. 
then, i want him to listen to me.
i don't know if we'd have to go
one word at a time. i can bend my body
into a "please" too. i already have so many times.