avocado roll

trading our neon,
you splinter with me. my little rain cloud
on a leash. we drink from plastic cups.
ice machine. children under the table.
outside all the cars have assassin assignments.
not us. we are runaways. we are ripe.
pits in our stomachs. stomachs 
in our throats. pulling either side 
of a pack of chopsticks like a wishbone.
tell me, where did you think you would be tonight?
where are you now? soy sauce jungle.
bathrooms for jupiter. 
in the booth we do not sit across
from one another. we sit
side by side. shoe-kissing. 
your electric flower smell. o my darling.
i find our names as crosswords
in the paper menu. wasabi tongue. gills
of ginger. would you like the last piece?

jesus hotline

i'm calling to become 
a pear tree. i'm calling because
i am lost on the side of the highway
walking towards a mountain of shoes.
dear god, let me be a son.
let me be a promised vat of honey.
the bugs are waking up
& we go to tell them, "go back
to sleep." it is not easy 
to ask the void for help. to give
our vacancies a name, call it,
"almighty." the billboard has
an image of jesus. blue-eyed 
& shining. a hotline underneath 
his chin. above the sign reads,
"you are not alone."
the cars rush by like racing dogs.
they chase the eternal rabbit. i bite
& dial. on the other end 
of the line elevator music plays.
angels scramble. no one has ever
called this number before. 
they expected it to be someone
who is ready to worship.
instead, it is me, a fragment of flesh.
a non-believer sifting
for another ghost. no one answers
& i hang up. the angels eat possum apples 
& congratulate one another 
for nothing. i get back in the car.
wait for the vehicle to leave the ground.
i fly just above the tree line.
enter the billboard through a hole
in my wanting.  live inside 
the threads of the jesus's eye.
a phone rings & i answer it.
myself on the other end of the line.
i ask, "are you ready to be saved?" 

tunnel of love

i don't need to be turned into chocolate
to be devoured. here is my cordial cherry.
here is how i gut myself 
in the interest of becoming a swan.
dear lover, haven't you ever 
taken yourself apart without a manual?
become a tiny wreckage? 
i ask you to put chlorine in the lake. i ask you
if you know where the opening is.
a mouth in the shape of a heart. 
it is dark & everyone is a follicle. everyone is
taking a handful. everyone is finding
the limit & holding it by the neck.
tin foil wrapped. cream. coconut. 
we say "boundary" like it is a place
but it is a motion. we say "love" like it is a state
but it is a movement. how a body 
can fit beside another in a boat
& emerge on the other side. 
how the angels can come to pass judgement 
& your lover will not rat you out to them. 
the kept secret. the teeth without a proper home.
kissing in the purple dark & trusting
the face you hold is soft & made of dirt.
o i want to be dug deep. i want the ride
to last longer. give me the carnival 
without anyone else but you. i need 
a night of passages. tiny manageable journeys. 
the rocking little rowboat. 
frogs on the roof of my mouth 
telling me, "kiss him now, & make us
a colony of princes." 

no licorice 

when the fiberglass house was crush
until the weight of my gender
i had to spend years plucking thorns
from my gums. once, we had a shrine
to the television. we fed her every quarter 
but she always only wanted their faces. 
chicken in the oven. chicken in the yard.
a peacock calls & demands a pizza delivery man
for a lover. the way they will tell you,
"hard work" with pockets full of remotes.
the way you can apply for a future. the way
the future is strangled by shoe laces
& dangled from the telephone wire.
the phone book but every name is my own.
calling yourself & he is not picking up.
on a night like this we should be drinking
flower tea. we should be speaking softly
to angels & pleading for a bit
of the holy honey. as we walk in the forest
i tell you, "i need to go & pet the moss."
this is my equivalent of going to touch grass
which i actually think is something more people
should try to do. my father made replicas 
of our family out of beer bottles. our fun house faces
in the bend of the glass. they're going
to say, "we're all family here" & i'm going to say
"so we all have secrets?" if i had a bag of licorice
to eat i would. i would not share even if
it was labeled "sharable size." the nods
we make to one another with language.
"i see you are too big to fit your own life.
here is some sugar." the landline is displeased
that we no longer touch her. she talks to her own
umbilical cord. she says, "he is a monster."
i let her say what she has to tell herself. 
haven't you ever found comfort in staring
at someone through their bedroom window?
there, you think, there is a little ghost. 

broken glass

i don't want to be little
i want to hover just above the ground.
you put me in one of those
bug capture containers & we travel
to where the town turns mud.
everything stuck & everything broken.
whenever we pass those apartments 
you ask if we can drive by
to look in the dumpsters. you sew me
clothing in smaller & smaller sizes.
first newborn & then glove-sized
& then i am just a paper doll.
you tac me to the corkboard 
of our lives. there was one afternoon
we found a piano. you told me to 
put it in my mouth & play 
& so i did. i tried so hard. all the keys
were discordant & you said i played
like that on purpose to attract flies.
i promised i did not but every word
i spoke came out as camels. i never meant
to be a music box but then there was 
a key & then it was sunday night
& no one else was around. i cling 
to my old life like a mussel. 
in a puddle i watch a miniature ship
sink. the ant-sized humans run & scream
& i say to you, "i do not want
to be that small." you say, "we'll see." 
i know my self. if we pull over we are 
going to find a tomb. you are going
to ask if i killed the man & i will make
my next false admission. i sympathize 
with every kind of prisoner.
especially the ones who grow 
so many wings they do not know
where to hide them. mostly i wonder
what you would do if one morning
you woke to find me in the yard 
as big as the red cedar? would you
still love me or would you walk me down
to where all the dead sofas & end tables live.
would you lay me down there 
& tell me to wait to be found? 

burying the grandfather

the grandfather was a compost dream.
was a cigar shop with an open door. was
meat in the fridge. thumbing through
a newspaper in search of obituaries.
i keep my own little private grandfather
in a can in my bedroom. i can hardly breathe.
i have a frying pan that is waiting
for a baby. we had the perfect hole for him.
his big clock face was trying to tell us
that it was midnight. gong gong gong 
went his throat. he was screaming,
"do not bury me here where the feral cats
play cards!" there wasn't another open spot.
his clock had a moon entombed 
inside a sun. isn't that how it always goes.
inside every grandfather is a chicken egg
with a grandmother inside. ancestry has a way
of skipping a stone across a monster's face.
i never intended to keep him above
for so long. we thought he would crawl 
beneath the house himself like all the others.
a grandfather is something that does not
go quietly. is a shock color or a class ring.
peaches in their shallow graves.
still, if you put your ear to the dirt
you can hear him telling you the wrong time.
now it is five in the morning & he believes
it is time for us to become his favorite chicken coop.
the grandfather has feathers himself. has a bond fire 
always burning. i throw in an old pair of eyes.
it does not destroy what they have seen.
instead, i see everything in smoke & stars.
bones cast for hopscotch. i keep a shovel 
by my bed at night in case i need to hear
his voice. cold winter night when the ground
is already frozen. i go out. dig until my body is
nothing but a dragon. there he is. 
just a little fist full of time. he groans & asks,
"what are you looking for?" i do not know
& so i do not answer. of course i will not find it here. 

drum

call me when you become a room.
when you stretch the skin tight enough
to yell. i promise i will help you.
my uncle had a drum that hung
on the wall of his patchwork side of the house.
premiered walls. a hole he punched
when he was full of whiskey. alone there
i would drum while he was at work 
at the battery factory. lead blood.
lead soul. i come from a long like
of heavy men. men who sink in the bath tub.
men he feed sharks with their hands.
the drum drummed me. the drum 
took up my parent's house. i sometimes
escaped with the drum & we both
turned into men. it was terrifying. it was red.
then when i put the drum down 
i felt dizzy. time travel is actually very mundane.
the drum always landed me inside
an acorn's dreams but once i was 
the memory of lady bugs as they crawled
through the walls of the house. 
a nest is a place without a drum. i promise
myself i will never purchase one.
like tarot cards, your gender is 
something gifted. here is your drum.
here is your throat. beat it until
everyone comes home. the living
& the dead & the in-between. 
there is not much to do when the world is
too loud to think. i am telling you though.
i will be there with a shoe full of candy. i will
hold your hand & wait for you to transition. 
i vibrate with you. i open all the windows
so your face doesn't get trapped 
like mine did inside the hunger 
of a palm. a half-broken plate. 
the bell tower chiming. it is time candles.
it is time for dust. 

antennae love poem

i swear i can hear the future's marmalade.
as a child, i loved to feed the ants.
first in the yard & then in the house
& then pieces of my body:
finger, hand, lung. their antennae twitched.
i tried to grow my own. 
attempted planting twigs 
into my skull. tried removing the television's.
instead, that just made me listen 
to policeman speak: everything about order
& meatloaf.  i had to shake it from my body.
i had to eat nothing but lemon custard 
to become a human again. 
then there was the problem of still
not being able to speak to the ants.
their order was not like the policeman's.
instead their order was like a quilt or like
the way a fern knows 
to grow fronds. i craved to hear
the color of a zephyr or the mother noise
of rising bread. to crawl on all six legs
& reach towards a queen's infinite shoulders. 
i still want to be an ant most days
as i did when i was a child. i was jealous then.
sometimes i killed ants out of that envy.
wiped their stories off
on my thigh. each a little punctuation.
period. period. period. come to the end
of my hunger. i have lawn chairs.
i have lemonade. the policemen are far away
writing a ticket for a wound in the sun. 
o how i love to be guilty & whole.
i buy a whole bag of sugar
& pour it out in the front yard & wait. 

accordion graveyard 

don't be sad about the end 
of the world. on tv tonight
we watch a show on "dark tourism."
the host visits a japanese coastline 
where a tsunami swallowed people's lives whole.
he walks in a graveyard & says,
"the stones were the only thing
too heavy to be washed away."
one of his crew members takes selfies
by the rubble. what do the dead know
about reverence? i once had a friend
who found an accordion at a flea market.
it belonged to a dead man as all accordions do. 
he played it poorly week after week.
sat on the stoop outside our dorm.
whenever he played i could see the grim reaper.
he waltzed slowly & all alone.
i imagined stealing the accordion 
& burying it out behind the houses on main street.
there i could begin an accordion graveyard.
what do you tell yourself,
trying to make it true? as if it were a spell?
mine is the do not being sad
about the end of the world. i guess it is
already here & we are already making 
our homes in it & we are already walking
in accordion graveyards. the ones 
beneath our feet & the ones in our throats.
sometimes i open my mouth
to see rubble. to see a man taking a selfie
& his sunglasses. reflections of 
a powdered moon. the grim reaper 
living in every window. my friend, now a flock
of geese. now a fallen tree where no one
has heard it. at the end of the scene 
the host man says, with regret in his voice,
"this place is so sad" as if he thought
he would find something else
visiting a site of destruction. the ghosts laugh at him. 
sky greys like a mouthful of feathers. 
spirits get our their accordions & play. 
don't be sad about the end of the world.

supplement 

they can force anything into
the shape of a pill. i saw a jar
of cantaloupe pills & another jar of quail eye pills.
in place of the moon, drinking
a great big glass of milk. i feel sick 
to my stomach about the sci-fi future.
where is the beautiful bomb?
where are my forks? when are you going
to turn & ask me, "should we start
considering a life on mars."
we're driving & i ask you if we should
learn how to fly. you think i mean airplanes
but i mean wings. we should learn
some more skills for survival. in the morning
i take a supplement for the sun &
another supplement for grief. 
the grief piles one on top of the next 
& i want to keep feeling but i feel like
a parrot eating saltines. crumbs fall
like snow. i just want to stay alive
& then i am weeping over a video
of a tarantula trying to sing. how do you 
prevail through your own smallness?
i do not know. sometimes i live
whole weeks inside a pill. i'm someone else's 
100% daily value of degeneration.
take me to where the acorns go
to talk about god. i want to know what 
they believe in that spurs some of them,
still, & despite everything, to decide
to become trees. i am most often less brave. 
i swallow it down with water. 
smooth & sterile. they will try to tell you
breathing comes naturally.