marble tree

we played with the dead man's eyes
until they turned into marbles.
his body lied 
like a pile of broken windows.
we were children 
of the quarry 
& the smashed factory
where weeds grew like skeletons.
i always believed 
in transformation. that the landscape
was a playground 
of televisions. i invented alphabets 
to tell the truth. 
here is where men are
turning me into pink poultry meat.
only it was written in a tongue
the rocks & me understood.
i carried those marbles 
until all the other children
where gone. busy with hair ties 
& sugar free bubble gum. 
planted them in a ragged dirt pile
& waited for the marble tree
to grow. waited days & days.
watched the sun dry out.
plum to prune. it never sprouted.
i always wondered what i had 
done wrong. it is so hard
to kindle with nothing.
speaking to the earth
& begging let something
learn how to be alive. 
now years later i still believe
in marble trees though.
i think maybe if i returned
to the factory yard, the one
right beyond where the plane crashed,
i would find the tree gleaming
with little spheres. blinking 
dead man's eyes. they would 
sing to my like song birds.
swallow gulps of orange juice light.
They would promise me 
None of it was your fault. 

2 sweaters from giovanni's room in the basement of the old apartment 

the snow came in fists
when we visited the city that day. 
you both and me & our black english major boots. 
frost pounded on the doors of 
our faces. crawling in your toyota 
down the highway.
then, drinking tea & standing
in a panera trying to warm up. 
all we wanted
was grandfathers
or in another words
gay books. window glow.
the watering hole turned 
waterfall. i told you 
we have 
a history. now it is summer 
& the sweaters i bought stand
like dormant ghosts. the book store
had a thrift room 
& that's where i found them.
two dad sweaters 
that i layered on before
walking back out 
into the pennsylvania winter. 
one brown with patches
sewn on the elbows.
another an off-white turtle-neck. 
i wonder if they both belonged
to the same spirit.
if, maybe, he too carried them
like animals 
down into a basement
when march started to blush.
sometimes when i wear them
i smell a life i had before.
my queerness, my deepest lineage.
leading me back 
into the space in the sky
where water
becomes snow. decides 
to return to earth,
knuckles ready. 

rare earth theory 

was the first organism lonely?
i like to believe in both wholeness
& fracture. once, i stood 
on the mountain in the days
after a great snow storm. the soil bled 
frigid waters. angels & pigs gathered
to drink. i was one of them.
my greatest fear
is to be rare. i hope there are
more of me. flock of my bones.
herd of a chewed-up star. 
there is a debate about
whether the earth is ordinary 
or rare. once i met an extraterrestrial.
he spoke in syrup. took me apart
with a butter knife to see
what kind of board games 
i kept inside my chest. i told him
about the boy pieces & the girl pieces
& the little thimble. do not go
& tell people of everything
you've seen. i have washed
my eyes in nectar. tasted a tiny 
molten sliver of the earth's core.
in a sense, aren't we all
the first organism? arriving 
to a dinner party in which
i know no one. i go around
asking everyone if they believe
we are alone in the universe
by which i mean, are we all
poets? by which i mean 
there is no big-man god. 
in the snow i saw the tracks 
of squirrels rooting for 
their golden teeth they hid
when the sun was still full of yolks.

contact tracing

in the days after i saw the angel
the telephone rang over & over.
all the ghosts & all the police men
& all the doctors & all the boyfriends 
were calling to hear about my skin.
they asked, "have you died?" they asked,
"have you seen a bleeding moon?"
i answered honestly,
"yes, yes, yes." then they would
hang up as if it frustrated or terrified.
the sighting itself was everything
i could have ever wanted. the angel 
held a spoon of opal & said,
"do not stop eating." in the morning
i could not breathe. i had swallowed
too much. i had seen a land 
of stained glass children. 
i was told i became part of a map.
it was a doctor who called to say,
"you helped us follow him." he meant
the angel. i wondered if 
they could predict who was going
to be visited next or if 
our devices are always a tool of "after."
i have read online that 
if you catch an angel sighting
early enough, you might not 
hover above the ground forever.
it is a nice thought. i miss the soil
on some days but others
i am nothing but honored 
to have been visited. the telephone said
i could take stones & grind them up
& eat them. that it could maybe
weigh me down enough 
so that i inhale like an average animal.
instead, i live my life like a spearmint bush.
as wildly as i can. grow little white flowers.
tell everyone i meet about
the angel. what it was like
to die bursting with light.

amphibial love poem 

my skin breathes like jellyfish veils 
& white shoes made of butter.
queer love is the breathing flesh.
the craving of water
even when we are on land. 
i ask you, in the cool dark 
of my old bedroom, "do you remember
the bottom of the lake?"
when we, frog-hearted, burrowed
in the mud for the winter?
clementine peeled sun. our webbed hands.
sometimes we are walking 
in an eyeball pit & i do not think
anyone knows exactly what to do with us.
we are the sacred mismatched socks.
the story of liminal blood.
conduit or courier. carrying 
a letter beneath our tongues.
it reads, "you are not home."
this is why though we have scissors 
to cut the tongues of angles.
make bouquets of languages 
we will never speak. emerge, like 
paper weights, from the bottom
of the lake. i woke up because
i crave you & i am alive 
in your throat. sing to me again
about what you remember
of our gills. combing the water
for a species to say, "this is what i am."
i no longer wish for such a name.
if someone asks me again
what i am or what i call myself
i will say, "i am your lover."

recitation

i used to take out part of my skull
& store wind up birds inside.
we walked up main street
on a cold march evening
to read poetry to each other. 
plastic wrapped brownies. to be a child
is to never understand 
that you are a child. the way 
a tongue can divide. can serve
as an oar. i could talk us into anything.
into walking in the graveyard afterwards
& standing by the creek 
when the water was black as the sky.
telling you that stars taste like blueberries
even though i have never eaten one.
you would pluck out strands of your hair
& weave them together to form a cord.
you said, "one day it will be long enough
for me to break out our of your life."
the basement had fireflies that lived there
somehow year round. i don't remember
what any of my poems were about then.
i always thought of my self 
as a prophet. preaching to
the early march wild onions.
to the ragged grass of the graveyard. to the
wayward moon we used as a mirror.
you told me we were never going
to get any older. you told me we were
going to live inside this night
until our bones were feathers.
we both knew the sun had other plans
& at some point everyone runs out
of poems to read. 
while it lasted, we told the truth. 
i showed you only once
how to poem my face. 
there, the wind up birds were writing,
stringing metaphors like garland.
you asked, "is that how you stay alive?"
i said, "it is the only way i know how." 

street lamp

that night i planted my peach pits
in the parking lot outside your house.
the moon was over-baked
& i wore gloves i'd cut the fingers off of.
only two weeks left until winter break
i was spending my time loving you
& lighting matches just to watch
something consumed by fire. 
in your bed we'd watched 
bird cage, the robin williams movie. 
i'd never seen it & i found myself craving
a life above a neon dream. mostly,
i lived out of my car but you didn't know that.
instead, i was just another trans boy
with a soft voice & ill-fitting men's jeans. 
we ate caramel corn. you rested your head
on my shoulder. there is a kind of intimacy 
specific for trans people who have
only recently gotten to share
who they are. us, like two birds
whispering to one another 
about what migration is & the purposes
of a feather. re-learning how to breathe.
your deadname was still scratched 
on the drawer of your dresser
& i pretended not to see it. mine was
on all my credit cards & ids. 
it felt like living a beautiful secret life 
to be real in holy lamp light.
i always liked to stay in your parking lot
a few minutes after we said goodbye.
i think it was a desire for the night
to not carry me back alone again.
or else maybe i was bathing
in your neighborhood's glow.
tell me, friend, is there a peach tree
there now? i know it was winter
when i planted the pits. i know
the night was cold but i want to believe
something took root. if not,
then lie to me. tell me it fruits strangely 
in the first weeks of december
& that it tastes like caramel popcorn.

video of a god unboxing the sun

dear worms, this is what
i've been waiting all this time for.
i have been eating only 
my own hair. talking
to the stones & listening to the shapes
their words make in my mouth.
you are not a species yet
but i have always known you.
to be a god is to have a language
only you speak. to turn to the darkness
& have the darkness disperse.
come back, come back, i always plead. 
i have believed in dawn. the thought that
a light might bud & tell all the writhing,
"i am sorry for what i did to you
yesterday." or else maybe not 
an apology but a limb of sugar.
do not think of how the roots
refused their water or how 
another being turned into a pillar
of salt. instead, feel this. a yolk.
a table-top butter. i am always 
getting ahead of my self. alone, 
i talk until there are
enough of me to fill a universe. 
the wrapping paper petals away
like onion skins. the glow
turns my face into an apple pie.
i want to devour it. i want to 
hang it around my neck 
& run as far as i can. instead,
i know that it belongs
where it can grow bones. 
my voice fracturing into organisms.
i can see it all & yet now 
this little burning is all mine. 
greedy as i am, i take a thumb's worth
of sweet star & place it beneath
my tongue. a plum. light & creamy.
i feel millennia as its wings beat 
in my throat. 

nothing happened here in 1875

there is a house in town
with a plaque that proclaims
"nothing happened here."
i wish i had a t-shirt that said this same lie. 
don't we all want to be
the first planet? get to claim
our lineage like plucking rocks
from the shore? instead, the sign
instantly makes me suspicious.
i think "what is this house up to?"
who was a lover in the attic? whose bodies
are entombed in the crawl space?
nothing is the word 
of gods. a place where maybe
once they ate a secret fruit
that they decided none of us 
get to taste. before & before.
i want to knock on the door & say,
"tell me the secret. tell me exactly
what you want me to ask 
& i'll ask it." if someone did this to me
i might first say that i never wanted
to be known like this. like a denial.
i might show a scar or a bruise. 
i might turn into a chicken 
& eat the wild leftovers of
my grandmother's rot. i would definitely 
invite my visitor inside
& ask them "where does
nothing take you?" when the world
is too heavy & sharp i just pop out 
the drain & my mind goes into 
a big blue drink. goodbye blood.
goodbye bones, hello waterfall
& licorice. i search in books 
& online for an answer to 
what happened at the house.
i find none. this is after all where most
stories exist. waiting to be invited
into the emptied room of tongues.
when i first read the sign,
i read it wrong as "what happened
to you in 1875?" i think of a man's voice
as we end a date during the first week
i lived in the city. he asked 
the same, "what happened 
to you?" i did not think he would
understand me & maybe i was assuming
too much of him. i said, "nothing." 

dog in space

have you ever been sent
on a no-return mission?
the first living creature in space
was a dog.
she was found on the streets of moscow.
what did she eat in the plum shadows
cast by men bent
on tossing her bones?
i hope it was delicious.
i have gotten on my knees 
before a vessel & thought
"this will take me to god."
a tin can car. an airplane
to tennessee. that dog's name
was laika. did she 
respond to it or was it 
a fresh & strange sound in the mouths
of tall creatures? i want to make
the void proud on most days.
i want my wings to be packing peanuts
& icicles. i want a view
of the stomach of the universe.
to eat heartily & call home 
& say, "i have money now."
sometimes you can convince 
yourself you are a hero. in a way
aren't we all little gods?
that's of course what they want
you to think. that you are 
going out into the sea of chins
& though you will not emerge,
you will bring back evidence.
evidence of what?
laika died a few hours
into flight. she was alone in 
space's deep pupil. the world blinked
& she was gone. the streets
she ran down in search of food.
i will ask again
have you ever been told 
you are brave for living through
what they've done to you?
i trace the journeys his hands took
around my neck. i sing to a paper plane 
until its wings start to beat.
did she know where she was?
did the end come quick? i ask 
even though i know it never does.
there is the moment
when you say to yourself,
"they wanted my breath
& said they loved me."