storage full

i download my face to the cloud
& walk around headless as can be.
sometimes i exorcise my bones
& find videos of dragons. what are you keeping
in the desktop folder labeled "hunger"?
that is where i house the power point 
presentation on why i should stay alive.
the first slide is a picture of the moon.
my computer tells me, "we have ghosts."
i restart & hope we are less haunted.
machines hold all of my organs but 
especially my liver. filter out the noise
of table saws & the deli slicer.
this is the amphibian life. the between
of saving & starting. naming files
after gods. double clicking on your throat
& craving the swallow. if i opened 
your screen would i find a video call
with a monster? would i find a tape
of all of us in a bath of fire & stone?
i tell my face, "we cannot be full there is
still so much to salvage." i collect pictures
of laughing monsters. they have no life
outside of my two hands. you don't
understand i need this acre of cemetery.
where else is the elephant going 
to run from his taxonomy along with me?
i'm telling you, there is a river 
of nothing but eyes. there i go & learn
to bathe with everyone watching.
there is nothing left for me to empty.
it would be like tying my hands
to stones & tossing them in the river.  
the flesh is, after all, only a url
where i go to shake.

dad email

sometimes my dad sends me blank emails.
i think of them each as walls.
four in a row make a bedroom.
five in a row, a house with one side
of the roof missing. other days
he will write to me like i am dead 
& he misses me. i will reply in the same tone.
as if i am a ghost writing to him
& telling him i am at peace. once,
i sent an image of myself & a partner.
somehow in the transit, the picture turned
into just a picture of two song birds.
my father replied, "i am hungry."
i used to watch him pluck the feathers
from birds in our yard. no, he was not
preparing them to eat. he just wanted them
to know what it felt like to be earth bound.
i am terrified of my father. i want him
to send me a pair of shoes i could live inside.
when he was at work i would become 
a hermit inside his clothes. tent of a t-shirt.
curled up inside a chuck taylor. 
i have never sent a wall back. instead i tell him
i love him. instead i send him eyelashes
so that he can remember exactly how
i used to come apart in his house.
no matter where you go, your daughter-self
remains like a limb. i have put mine
in a little room. four walls. but still she says,
"he could be what we want him to be." 
i brush her hair each night. i check my email
& hold my breath, bracing for another signal
from him. when one doesn't come
i don't feel relief. instead, i check my inbox
all night. once he emailed me a whole room
in one night. i had to crawl inside it.
look in the cupboards. there i saw photographs 
of myself & him. in all of them our eyes 
were scooped out. i fled. tonight though
the inbox is empty & somehow i'm still waiting. 

cicada suit 

i want to take off my end-of-the-world costume. 
in other words, break out of my flesh
like a cicada on the throat of my parent's old pine tree.
as a child i would go there to harvest
their discarded skeletons. they stood like statues 
frozen on the trunk & branches. 
little memories of hunger. i too have screamed
in the dirt. i too have lived like a nesting doll.
one miniature fury after another.
when i look for my cicada suit i'm looking
for a way to pry apart bone from self.
as if there were a season for sacrifice. 
we keep the calendar in our blood. remember
exactly when the moon pulls us out. 
a drawer of diamonds. this coming year is
a double cicada year. two species will rise
from the dirt & yell themselves to pieces
by the porch lights. i consider crawling inside
one of the vessels. the dormant skeleton.
i imagine maybe it is the one & only portal
back through time. i do not want
to be a child again. i don't think anyone does
but i do think we believe in revision.
this time i would linger longer 
beneath the tree. this time i would learn
the language of the cicadas. this time
i would join them. this time i would not let
my father take out my teeth. this time i would 
keep them safe instead of
giving them to the next boy 
with a forest fire for a mouth. 
when they come i will not be ready as
i am never ready for the swarm. to see myself
as the creature molting. coming apart
with an audience. leaving behind 
an army of still lives clinging to the tree. 

mall wandering w/ you

buy me the honeycomb face.
the one with a colony already inside.
neon washes me until
i am just a coat hanger. we would go there
to the mall with no money. just legs.
a desire for windows. for watching.
for food court homilies. you pinching
the fat of my hips. i never wanted to be fourteen. 
no one should take a boyfriend to the mall. 
this was my mistake. i think it reminded you that
in the right contexts everyone is capable
of living inside a plastic bag. 
plucking a penny from the fountain,
you hand me the coin. a stolen wish.
"what would you like?" you ask 
as if i am not turning someone else's hunger
inside out. i loved most the moments 
in a dressing room alone. i would think,
"how do you call for help when you aren't
even sure what you need?"
sometimes i dreamed of going 
into a store where you could purchase
angels. there, i would take off a tiny part
of my soul. maybe just a baby sock sized sliver.
trade it for a place close to the sky light.
a kiosk salesperson pleads to 
straighten my hair. i let her because
i want to try being touched in a new way. 
she says, "you are gorgeous."
this is what she is paid to say but i need
to believe her. the touch is worth it.
you sometimes leave me & lay down
like roadkill in the walk way. 
i come & plead with you to rise
& when you do  you pretend as if
it never happened, "what?" you ask,
laughter harbored in your grin.
"i wasn't a dead bird. that was you."
feathers in my mouth. washing my face
in a bathroom sink. breathing just to find
a plastic bag around me. you're holding me
at your side. a little something something.
trinket or girl or plastic worm. 
i still have never made that wish.
i think if i don't, the original wish 
will get to remain. 

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."