french doors

i used to sleep in a bucket of teeth. 
daylight kicking the windows. we were
using blankets as curtains. a horse escaped
through town & i took them in. 
hid them behind the french doors
leading to the front room. i told the creature,
"stay as quiet as you can." i am an expert 
at secrets. it's in my blood. in my family
we do not say how we feel, instead we 
harbor it like bullets of milk. the french doors
were the most beautiful thing about 
that apartment. chipped crystal knobs.
they made me wonder if once the place
was once sturdier. if once someone
opened the front door & said something
like "wow" & really meant it. i broke
a lot of promises there. i promised not
to invite strangers. i promised not to keep
the horse but i did. i brushed her hair when
no one else could see us. the doors
had waffle mirrors. tiny portraits of us.
one night when i felt really small i walked
the horse down by the fountains. we drank
sick water. the horse admitted that they
had overstayed their welcome & became 
a tractor trailer. blaring lights. it felt like
a betrayal. we were supposed to be 
soft together. we were supposed to hide 
our real wounded selves. the last week 
i lived there, the one door fell off its hinge.
it was like the walls giving in. "no more,"
they said. "no more," i said in return. 
i shower in lightning storms. i talk to candles.
the room opened like a gash. the horses,
so many of them crawling out
from behind the bookshelf & underneath
the sofa. i lied by omission. i lied wild too. 
ghosts in the cupboard. a cockroach playing
violin. we leaned the doors up against
the wall as we emptied the place. 
i left fragments there. my ghost still
tries to sleep in the light. 

sidewalk salt

i get my constellations
from the grocery store. i know i should
not have eaten my hands but
here i am, doveless in 
the moonlight. i think of my loneliness
like a limb. leg or tail or fist. 
when it is gone, still the phantom
running. the itch to walk out
on a night full of doors. god i miss
the city. god i miss the mountain. 
i even miss the field behind
my parents' house where the vultures
took turns telling stories about
the times before the sky. when it snows,
the sidewalks in the city went
all patchwork. one house with
a shoveler. one house with a sidewalk salt
lover. enough to pretzel a life into
oblivion. crunching beneath 
my unraveling shoes. i talked 
to the mountain once & it said
everything tasted too salty. i suggested
that maybe it was because of 
how we handle the snow. the mountain
sighed. there was something important
that i did not understand. i asked 
if she could explain it to me &
the mountain said, "i would not
have enough time even if i tried."
in the kitchen sometimes i get it in
my head that i need a taste. my pointer finger
in the bowl of crystals. salt from
the stars & star from the wind
& salt from the salmon. snow water 
in the creeks now, gushing like 
a spilled tomb. 

pilgrim

when i missed you i would go
to the trash can behind the building
& worship the flies. we had faded fast.
moved in together quicker than we should have.
i missed everything about the distance.
the highways i traced like cat's cradle threads
to reach you. in that growing absence
between us, i became a dumpster 
disciple. loved it most back there 
when someone had just moved out.
dumped their life into the green maw.
sofas & televisions & bent-arm white fans.
nothing good enough to salvage. i imagined
my own items too. what i would take
& what i would keep when we moved out too.
the building was not a place where people stayed.
instead, the doors had birds living in them.
they repainted the basement twice &
all the world smelled like plastic lungs. 
one man on the fourth floor smoked out
his bedroom window. when i was visiting
the trash his ash would from time to time
end up in my hair. i considered taking
you with me sometimes. i knew though
that it was too late. you had started to build
a car in the far lot. filled it with stolen watches.
the bookshelf in the living room fell while
no one was home. a fence started to grow
inside the apartment. if i showed you the trash
we might love each other again. that would
be too much for me. i do have a habit
of running away in the aftermath of 
a great promise. my queerness is butter-legged
& bright. is it too late to tell you about the 
garbage bins now? years later? when i no longer
have your name in my phone? i do not want
to get closer, i just want you to know 
i was witnessing my gods, the liminal. 
a power cord dangling from the mouth 
of the metal bin. the flies, chasing a sweet moon. 

two truths & a lie

i have never run out of birds. i have
never loved this country. i have
always loved the soil. i have always
eaten handfuls of leaves: spearmint
& jupiter & sassafras. i have sometimes 
stayed up until the sun is whispering
to the moon before a mother comes home.
i have not believed in the kindness 
of others. i have thought everyone 
was made of soot. i have driven my car
beyond where i should drive my car.
i have stolen essential oils for the thrill. i have
run away from a city. i have run away
from a lover who did not love me
& one who did. i have never bought 
enough wood. i have missed people
i should not miss. i have filled my shoes 
with carpet beetles. i have pretended
to be my father. i have sent a letter to
someone who didn't want to know me 
anymore. i have burned a flag. i have
burned a pile of wood with a mouse inside.
have carried a mouse into the middle
of the fields & let him go to fend for himself.
i have worn my mom's clothes when
she wasn't home. i have pretended to be
from a different county. i have betrayed 
the ancestors. i have made the ghosts proud.
i have never overdrafted on my bank account. 
i have always had enough money to pay off
the war collector. i have moved the mountain
to look at all the bugs underneath. i have
laughed enough to make the day worth it. 
i have never gone to bed hungry. 

elixir of life

i have drank so many televisions
in the dark. sleeplessness used to be
so much more intimate.
i would crawl down a ladder 
into my mother's mouth. that was 
when my father walked the monster 
all night long. there we would
drink the elixir of life together. 
her feet like fresh stones. my eyes,
quarters in a well. i understand why
men have been strangling trees
for centuries in search of a youth potion.
i do not think we want to live forever.
i think we want the old glow. the bruise 
alive & sugared. the way each moon 
used to brush our hair. sometimes i still
wake up in the middle of the water.
i think of calling her. asking her if
she remembers the box tv. if she remembers
when the two pine trees who peered in
the window at us. if they are still ghosts
walking outside & brushing their heads
against the starscape. i follow a "90s/2000s"
nostalgia instagram page. i look at it
much more than i should. i don't even
think i want to go back. i want all of 
that smallness to be here & now. 
to be carried like a little bean in the palm
of the story's hand. i follow in the traditions.
i gulp down whatever flowers i can. an infomercial
long & stumbling. the windows, open.
my mother with a birthday cake face.
the filling, birds. the pine trees, cut down long ago. 

apple 

in the three window days
i sometimes ate apples while looking
in the mirror. i learned so much
about my face. my hunger like
a trash truck in the murky morning. 
shoveling teeth. the neighbors' bathroom
was right above me. i heard him singing.
"lord lord almighty," he said
into his own mirror. i wondered 
about telepathy & if i could 
convince him to eat an apple with me too.
there are those videos of andy wharhol 
eating a burger. i watched them
with a former lover in a museum. 
i considered once recording myself
eating the apple. immediately i closed
the phone camera. i am not that kind
of artist. this was not a performance.
it was a ritual. the floor of the bathroom
was a birthplace of many centipedes. 
once, i fed a piece of apple to the centipede. 
he told me, "i am so sorry for all of this."
i explained it was not his apology to make.
the country has made horrible choices
one after another. this place treats
its choices as inevitable. he carried the apple
to his dark place & i did the same with mine.
outside people had gotten sick of the pandemic.
wore their faces like balloons. the neighbor
had lungs like punching bags. summer sung 
hairless in the sink. i grew tired of 
the apples. i do not think i learned all 
i could. instead, i think i reached a precipice
of potentially seeing too much. the animal of
my jaw. my blood, a creek on a bear's back. 
once the neighbor said, "no no no." a long exhale.
no footsteps. he stood there. 
i had not been eating. i rushed to the kitchen.
one sad apple left. i had to devour it. 
had to find a way to share whatever grief
no matter how small, was visiting him. 
i stayed there until he moved first. his steps
like fallen trees on the mountain that peered
down on the little street. 

isle of apples

sometimes i see king arthur 
at the gas station, two iced teas
in one hand. i used to follow him, stubborn man.
i wanted only one thing, a map
to the isle of apples. i read about 
this healing place covered
in apple trees. my mouth watered 
& i started wandering in the dark 
hoping to stumble upon it. i am
not a knight or a king or noble.
i am a snake person, belly to earth
where it belongs. i give in to temptations.
every garden i enter, eden. once 
& only once i caught him. cornered 
the king on a long weathered pennsylvania road.
i am not sure what he finds here. 
we were flanked by broken-eyed houses.
windchimes sung. he did not try to escape
anymore. i wondered then how many
people try to hunt him. beg him 
for fragments of divine. of healing.
i did not even know what kind of restoration
i thought the isle could give me. i was
obsessed with the color i thought the light would give
as it fell through so many branches. ripe fruit. 
i did not ask him though to take me there.
instead, i asked, "what was it like?"
he wept. an old man now. ragged 
in the guts of the world. he said,
"it was everything you would 
want it to be." i think he is my father or
my father's father. i knew then he would
not deliver me. instead though, he removed
a single fruit from his pocket. not a shiny
storybook apple but a little fist in the dark.
he gave it to me. it was not enough 
but i received it. are great men always like this?
mirrors of something beautiful you
cannot see. i do not dream of secret realms now.
instead, i walk out in the fields. i steal an apple
from the neighbor's tree. swallow it whole. 
i still have never eaten the one he gave me. 

oil 

i put the sun in my mouth
& drive in the dark. one summer we slept
in the yard & took turns eating stars.
they left grease stains on our lips & thighs
where we'd wiped our hands. 
i parked the car in the wendies lot
& used their wifi to pull veils from 
the faces of gods. when i was
an altar boy, i got to light the candles.
the big ones were oil fed. their flames
came easy. thrashed beneath the breath
of the priest. i struggled to put them out.
wanted an eternal light to carry until
the land was blanketed in salt.
i imagined carrying one of the candles home. 
sitting it in my room. a mass held
for only me & the wall bugs. when we emptied out
my aunt's house we found so many rosaries.
i wonder if she ever held her hands
over a host & blessed it. i don't trust priests
but i do like their uniforms. when i was
going through a wicca phase i thought
of buying a robe. try on being my own
kind of holy. i have since torn apart 
any ideas of holiness. who the fuck cares
if i'm holy? i am something better than holy. 
not the flame but the oil in the guts of 
a tower. i am infinite. my grease, the grease
of the world. the fire, only dancing because
so am i. in the parking lot i lit
a birthday candle & held it until the limb
was gone. no oil. no light besides the 
ugly street lamps. these days i let myself
have as much burning as i need. i do not need
headlights. that is how much i glow. 

kissing booth

i build a kissing booth in 
my darkness. no one visits. i decide
i am raising money for a good cause.
my mouth, a piggy bank. they have
forsaken the penny & thus i will
only accept payment in pennies
from here forward. count yourself
into my mouth. i want copper.
i want a wire from me into the earth.
because the power grid is dying
i have been returning to the potato.
once i think we made a battery from one.
i buy hundreds to try & open 
just one light. someone comes from
really really far away for the kissing booth
& by the time they get here i am not longer
interested in money. i tell them 
they can have it all for free. i did that once
when i was selling my wings in a bedroom
without a window. the man smelled
like sidewalks. he was not as mean
as he could have been. we made it work.
when he was done he told me,
"i am sorry, i am stealing business."
he was another kissing booth attendee. 
i told him it was alright. he left 
out the window without any shoes.
from his shoes i made flower pots but
the flowers always smelled like him. 
i have never been good with my mouth.
could not whistle. could not yawn.
a boyfriend in high school once put
a bottle rocket between my teeth & said,
"go!" i did not catch fire. from then on
he knew i was not going to be a good wife.
still, we traded each other's eyelashes for years
until i got the courage to report him to
the council of kissing booths. he was 
forced to pay all the back fees of all
the kisses he took without paying. 
money is never enough. i used to have
a job where i almost made enough. 
i didn't know what to do with the brief
flash of stability so i bought toys.
played with them in the dim light of
my basement. buried the kissing booths
just for them to resurface in the front yard.
i didn't know what the neighbors would think.
lately i let it happen. i have a mouth & a jar.
why shouldn't i open it when i can? why shouldn't
a stranger come into my mouth 
& take his shoes off. i hope that other 
booth attendee is doing well. i hope his family
has pictures of him. that they know
only as much as they can bear. 

building the robot

the pieces come like rain.
bolts & blades. tubes & oil. 
instructions in the mailbox. they read,
"build the robot." i avoid the work. instead,
i mow the lawn. i decapitated the 
thorn weeds. i pray like i used to with
my eyes beneath the soil.
finally though the robot cannot be
avoided anymore. he throbs like a sick limb
beneath the surface of my flesh.
there are billboards that announce 
his omnipresence. "love the robot." "we are
the robot." i have simple time
dreams of searching the forest desperately
for huckleberries. their deep purple stains
beneath my fingernails. the robot
was not inevitable. in fact, i read
a newspaper story that the robot was funded
by a hand without a body. that it milks
our tongues. an endless machine. 
i cease to sleep. i build the robot. i do not
want the robot but here it is. it makes
all the promises i do not want it to make.
it says, "we are gods." my eyes well up.
the birds scatter into the dark hills. they are
furious with me. we used to speak when i
was a child. did i forget their language 
or did they stop trying to converse with me?
soon it is only the robot. i plug it in
where the television used to live. it says,
"all you need is a past." i do not want to share 
anything with it. i feed my memories 
to a turtle in a mountain pond. i look
over my shoulder the whole time. 
the turtle asks, "what are you so afraid of?"
i lower my voice to as soft a whisper as i can
& reply, "i am afraid of my hands." 
the turtle devours them for me. a favor. 
each finger, one by one. then each limb
until i am just a shaking grain. still, the robot
finds me. squeezes my face until i am
a pop of energy, then the relief of dust.