limb death

when my phone died, i hadn't backed up data
for four years. 
at the shop off the highway
we loaded the old memory onto
the new phone. it took me back
to 2018 when we were still talking.
you were waiting to come inside my dorm.
where was i? maybe pacing.
maybe eating moths. did you love me then?
i am sorry but i do not remember
if i loved you. i do remember the night
we spent standing in the parking lot
in the rain. i imagined being struck
by lightning & turning into a god.
you told me about your pet hissing cockroaches.
i told you about the jar 
of my own teeth i kept in the closet.
we had shoe box lives. carrying fingers 
& elbows in plastic bags 
from one season to another. 
i think we tried to not make promises.
it was the summer before i left
for grad school. forgive me but i forget
where you said you were going.
a trip to the moon? a sawmill 
to remove your feet & replace them
with hooves. i almost text you
as if we are still in a different world. 
as if you are still outside
of my dorm waiting to be let in.
instead, i pause & delete the conversation.
it is like losing a limb 
all over again. burying a hand
& waiting for another to grow back.
do you still have our messages? do you
still have the thumb i gave you? 
come inside. let's be fists if not wings. 

elegy to a dead iphone 

i want to believe we will escape.
drive home on a cut in the earth.
all the water rolls off the back
of the mountain & through my head.
dear god the fishes have bullets now
& so do the birds. they say,
"defend the angels." i saw
your eyes spin like radio dials. we were
standing at a gas station looking
for a hole in the wall to climb into.
home was a lighter & a little incense cone.
praying to the umbilical cord
that it might tie us back into 
a swarm. instead, the beautiful hope machine
said, "we are going to have to walk 
back to the pie tin alone." i wept.
craved sugar drowned cherries. 
you held me & said, "we can wait."
i still don't know what you meant.
wait on god? wait on the sky?
wait on the road to lead us into 
a boneless place of rest & cauliflower? 
in the car we split a cosmic brownie.
i licked my fingers. the headlights 
were halos. one for each of us.
i said, "i just want to be 
in my bed." there was no bed to be had.
instead, we slept in the back seat.
you with your face against the window,
me a crumpled fruit snack wrapper
against your chest. for a moment
of levity i opened the moon roof.
glimpse of squinting stars. 
lights of the parking lot trying
to drown them out. you, promising me,
"we will." i filled that in "we will 
find our way back." but maybe you meant
"we will wake up to the sound
of sea gulls" or, even better, "we will
not need the ghost anymore. 
we will treat the road as the deer do,
like a dance with death." 
 

light ice cream 

tell me you are avoiding a conversation
with the gods. now, you do not have to choose
between satisfaction & hunger.
we make food without any marrow. 
in the ice cream section i find the ice cream
with the least calories. put a spoon in my mouth.
count my steps to the moon's melting chin.
when i say i am ravenous i mean 
there is a door kicked in where my stomach 
should be. i mean i have tied notes
to the legs of carrier pigeons just to find
they are delivering them to the tree in the yard.
i did not even know who they were for.
the first time i realized we could measure
just how much we are supposed to consume
in a day i was giddy. finally, a way to understand 
my body in proximity to death.
we do not spend the day. the day 
spins us like spools of thread. i love
to scrape the bottom of the pint & pretend
i am a libertine. yes, this is the carcass 
of a swan. yes this is exactly where 
irises go to turn to seed. lick the spoon.
taste the sound of cream. once, when 
i was a child, i ate whole fat ice cream.
i did not know it was whole fat, i just
sat in front of a television & it sang to me.
i am terrified of what it means 
to indulge. i do not know if i ever do 
anymore. if i did though, it would involve 
a ritual sacrifice. cutting off my own thumb
& feeding it to a cow. saying,
"thank you for your blood." the cow
unzipping his flesh to reveal he was 
a flock of spoons all along. the serving size
is a half a cup. we all know 
no one is going to eat just half a cup. 

how r u?

sometimes i get text messages
from the birds. they ask,
"why are you dying like this?"
they ask "how r u?" by which they mean,
"does your species plan to grow wings?"
i sometimes harvest feathers 
in a vain attempt to become a crow.
i would be well suited to that life
of screaming & searching for treasure
in the mouths of dead gods.
instead, i have fingers to attempt to.
lately, i have been holding them up
to the sun & waiting for them to grow eyes.
but, to answer their question. i am 
glowing. i am on fire in a good way
& in a bad way. good in that sometimes
i cannot sleep i am so angry. i search the house
for a reminder that there is love enough
to fill every vessel in the house. that,
on the right day, we could welcome a cloud
into our house. comb her fur. feed her pickles.
bad in the sense that i do not ever sleep
through the night. bad in the sense that
my uncertainty about the world we need
sometimes transforms into doubt.
i start to build a bunker full of wisteria trees.
do you know you can eat
the flowers? all & all i am catastrophic.
that is how i am. 
i am chasing butterflies. i am so in love
that sometimes i forget i was once alone
walking through a blizzard in february
dreaming of boys just like the boy i love.
i don't ever text back to the birds.
after all, they are only ever a few breaths away.
i wave to them in the window.
i keep my original answer. i am glowing.
i open my mouth to show them
the fire i've built there. magazines 
& eyelashes burn there. the birds reply,
"we are glowing too." 

bees nest 

the first bee i saw crawled on the back window
in late june. little did i know that soon
they would fill every moment with words
about their hugeness. they would whisper
as i would try to sleep & even when i tried
to kiss you, "you know we are the size
of the whole side of the house." i didn't live 
there long but i dreamed of winning enough money
to buy our little row house even with 
with fractured foundation. a part of me
was maybe dreaming of holding on to the bees.
owning them like they owned me.
it was not long until the whole back hallway
stank of their death. a musty sweet smell.
their bodies laying in little graveyards.
i vacuumed them up & more would come.
they watched me constantly & so they knew too much.
"you are in love with unraveling" they'd pronounce
& i would say, "i know." the nights 
i drove to see you even when the moon
was eating his own eyes. climbing, like a pear
into your mouth & begging, "will you make me
your little god." i envied the life
of the hidden queen. every single bee
as he died sang of her. to be loved like air.
to be loved with rampant hunger.
i think my love of the bees was really
a craving for the house to devour us. 
make us into bees too. the work, they said,
was hard but you got used to it. dying 
in search of the sun just to be reborn
as a hum. when i left the bees were furious.
i didn't want you there. i didn't want you
to see how much i begged them to wait for me.
i cut off a finger & handed it over.
pleaded, "let this be a brother." they dispersed.
by this time they were the walls themselves.
they said, "take your blood with you."
i still find carcasses sometimes 
in old boxes. old shoes. i hoard them.
lay them out on a line in the windowsill.

orchard

that was the year the apple trees grew bones.
femurs & skulls & teeth. we all talked about apples
like a past-tense god. i ate my own hair one night
because it smelled like jonagold. my first job
was working at the orchard. i was surrounded 
my men with hairy arms who did not pack lunch.
instead, they reached & tore off the fruit 
like they were trying to find air to breathe.
i was not always the slowest picker. usually, 
i was middle of the pack. their skin dried my skin.
some night i worried i was turning into an apple.
i would run my thumb across my face & worry
about worms & rot. the orchard is endless it will
start to become your everywhere. i would wake up
& walk through an orchard to school & into 
an orchard in my bedroom. there were orchards
of dead birds & orchards of beer bottles.
the sound of wind through branches. always something
to collect. fill the basket or the crate. i loved most
to eat as i worked. apple juice on my chin.
i am not sure if i was the first one to notice 
the bones but i felt like i was the only one.
gone picking just to find fingers & vertebrae.
the men kept working though. they picked
& picked. i told them, "don't you see the bones?"
they did not speak as usual. they were just trying
to find a life with their hands. crates & crates
of bones. even the boss man pretended like
he didn't see them. he nodded at our harvest.
carted our labor off to the farmer's markets.
i wept in my bedroom after that shift.
i went to the bathroom & looked at my face
in the mirror. did he grab me or did he not?
why do i not trust my memory? i worried
that the bones were all my bones. so many 
of my bones. had they watched? 
i never went back to the orchard. slowly,
the trees receded. i still see them though.
sometimes they bear apples. other times 
there is a full skeleton dangling from a branch.
& at my core i am a harvester. i always climb 
the branches. i always pick them clean.

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.