darkroom

the camera wakes up
with fur & noise. goes to capture 
my bruised back. haven't you ever 
taken a shovel to the night sky
in search of the quiet you need?
you ask me, "why do you push me
away?" i get on a hot air balloon.
i fly to the arctic where the sky is tight
as a drum. there, my grandfather shivers
& dreams of his rain forest. 
colorful feather angels. an alien 
watching as humans work to built
a temple from dust. the alien flies away
& until he dies tells the story as,
"they were terrifying." i do not want
to be alone. i find myself in the black light
holding up images of our faces.
i cannot tell them apart. fun house teeth.
shut eyes. my father, face down
in developing solution. i lift him
& he is as light as a piece of paper.
printed across his face is my face.
i put the crime scene on a rocket ship.
"don't open the door," i plead.
"you have to let me see," you say
through the door. i am orpheus 
or eurydice. the sun has a knive 
in his pocket. he says, "there is no photograph."
i weep in reply, "but can't you hear them?" 

this is your brain w/o worms

we could be the bbq girlfriend gender
but we're busy trying to find a midnight. 
licking our fingers. balance is held
in the gore of it all. strawberry gutted,
i walked right into the bear trap.
in the doctor chair he pulls out
a magnifying glass & presses it to my ear.
as a child, my uncle liked to torture me
with a story about worms that came
& ate your brain while you slept.
he said, "they crawl in through your ear."
awake with a can of bug spray,
i'd keep vigil over my head. maybe this is
when i started not sleeping. i confess this all
to the doctor who is wearing a mask.
he takes off the mask & reveals he is
just a collaboration of worms. he says,
"do not be afraid" stealing the language
of angels. i do not want to be emptied.
the doctor takes a picture though
& shows me that my brain is already 
full of insects. i feel suddenly at peace.
sometimes when you fear something
for so long, it can feel like an exhale for
it to actually come to pass. here i am
with my whole gender ahead of me.
all my napkin girlness & my boy teeth.
"what do i do to take care of them?"
i ask & the doctor hands me a music box.
"sing each full moon," he instructs. 
i take my bugs & me into the street.
there, everyone is eating their own 
wheel of cheese. i worry now in the opposite direction.
what if the bugs decide to leave
& i am turned into a hand puppet?
i ask the worms in my quiet voice,
"you like it here, right?" they answer 
with demands for baja blast.
i can do that, i think. i can do that. 
we have a drive-through hymn. 
briefly, then, they are satisfied. 

watering fake flowers

you tell yourself
"this time it will be different."
i remember the sun tapestry 
that hung on the far wall of 
your bedroom. your tiny window
staring at the brick wall
of the bodega next to our building.
eating french fries 
from angels & pretending 
we were the prophets. the way a wrist 
can become a stem. i bought you flowers 
from the gas station & we devoured them
with ranch dressing.
took a trowel to the wooden floors
& tried to find third-floor soil.
nothing by photographs
lay beneath. that's where we put
the plastic flowers: a hydrangea bush
& roses & marigolds. 
i got on my knees to water them.
poured a river from my wrist.
you had your headphones in. you were
sharpening a letter opener. 
my heart was always a jackelope around you. 
remembering how easily 
i turned into a rat. you,
chasing me
down the narrow hallway.
once, it rained so hard the alley ways flooded.
you came home as a drenched dog.
i brought you a towel to dry you off
& you shoved me against the wall.
you said, "lay down." i became
the plastic flower. a carnation.
a needy root. i always though maybe
they might come alive.
that through a process of dreaming
i could make us soft & moss-like.
what i've never told you is
sometimes
but only when you weren't home
the flowers would turn real.
they would laugh & blow kisses.
i would say, "will you stay?"
they would reply
or maybe just echo, "will you stay?" 

i tell you i want to be a gravedigger 

you say, "you know how deep you 
would have to dig?" i am guilty 
of romanticizing soil & thinking only
in terms of summertime. a shovel in hand
& nothing but the talk of doves.
breaking the first layer
of grass & weeds
is like pulling hair from 
my own skull.
i wouldn't put on headphones i would
listen to the shlack of lifted earth.
stand in the fissure, lowering myself
like a skeleton. postage stamp of blue sky above. 
cloud animals stampeding & telling one another
"someone has died." everyone knows
that the first stage after death
is to live a day as a cloud animal.
i hope i am a fox with a funhouse face. 
maybe what i'm craving 
is the promise of completion. 
how a wound can be excavated 
& healed. even that is not true though.
returners come with arms full
of flowers & pictures & food.  as a gravedigger i would
make it my duty to ensure 
each headstone's gifts remained 
perfectly placed despite the wind
& rain. maybe my desire then is 
to be a caretaker. to hold on 
to the liminal. to make a home here. 
i do not know how to respond to your question
about how deep i would have to dig. 
i answer concretely because sometimes
we have to talk in numbers
to say what we mean. "six feet.
that's taller than me." 

what i'd like our gravestones to say

here was a finger puppet.
an orange julius. come take off
your shoes & your face while you're at it.
bring pie & lotus flowers. bring
your tattoo gun & give each other
extra eyes. turn the television on.
i don't want to watch the news 
put on something i've seen before.
play twister. play boombox love poetry.
kiss each other. invite me to your birthday.
you do not need a seance
just a bowl of hard candies. 
leave a toe nail clipper here. leave
a photograph of what we used 
to look like before my annihilation.
here is where i was turned 
into grease. here is where i was 
taken from my dress. thumb
to candle flame. here was a sweet tooth.
here was a women with an apple tree
coming out of her mouth. here was
a boy who walked late at night 
through the pupils of grin-handed men.
here is a future octopus. here is
where i want to meet you again. 
here is where i hang 
the disco ball. bring perfume.
bring a trans flag & all the pronoun pins
your can manage. bring candles.
bring your ripe peach heart.
here was a person. here was a root.
do not call me dead. i was taken. do not
call me dead. i am a waterfall
waiting for the right moment.
as my lover bring me your weeping ocean.
as my community bring my
your rage. bring me your teeth. 
when you leave here 
talk as if i am laying
in the ground right below your feet. 

iced tea

the mood board is a dream
of sorcery. all the thumb tacs i keep
in my cheeks. what is flesh but
a backyard trampoline? you look at me
& say, "don't let this become us"
as we pass a house without a door.
sometimes i consider buying you 
a planet for us to make out on.
then i check my bank account 
& i am too full of myself. i am too
eager to be a dragon. there are 
more men in this world than fire exits.
what i'm trying to say is let's not
tell too much of the truth. let's not
claim to eat pudding when we're 
eating blood. the knife collector
knocks on our door & promises
that he has a great sale for us. 
there's nothing to do but run
& try to quench your thirst.
as a girl sometimes we would brew iced tea
by leaving it out in great jugs in the sun.
i wanted all my "girlfriends" to be girlfriends
which is ironic because now i only really love
beautiful boys. let the angels spit into the leaves.
crack my spine for ice cubes.
a postage stamp of splenda. 
drink until i have a headache forest.
"this is delicious" i say while pretending
to swallow whatever moon we've milked
to make this day. i have never once
lied to you. whenever i lie 
it's someone else. a falcon on my tongue.
i can't be blamed for what happens
after we are quenched. this is our
backyard fib. this is the rotten oldsmobile
& the wiffle ball bat. close your eyes.
"go touch grass," 
the electric prophet instructs. 
there is no grass so we pretend. 

anti-homecoming

i take a ride on a hot air balloon
hoping you will see me & know
i am doing something else today without you.
sometimes "home" is a plate
of vanilla wafers & sometimes it is
a car horn being pressed over & over.
from where i am, everyone looks
like centipedes. distance is 
the greatest alchemist. goodbye 
fireflies & goodbye gun shots at night
& the race car sounds of neighbors.
i wish i could take a crow bar
& pry the "me" out of "home."
i am not from anywhere. i am a salamander
who does not remember what 
the rocks called out when i hatched. 
a yard sale sign written in headache markers.
to return would assume there is
a stagnant place where the dinosaurs 
don't even know they're supposed to die.
i believe in ghost therapy. going out
& talking to the dead versions of yourself
to learn the exact the moments they died. 
a chronology of bones & telegrams.
there are so many trees i used to worship
that are now just telephone booths
or rotting pickup trucks. do you know
the marsh used to have a prom night?
all bugs & creatures would assemble 
& dance like nothing 
would ever kill them. so no,
i am not coming. i will stay up here
where everything is a dinner plate. 
canned pea row houses. a street built
from shed pupils. what will you do 
with the whites of your eyes? 

gender marker

not be confused with grave marker. not to be
mistaken for a goal post or a golden goose.
not to be confused with syrup 
from the oldest maple tree. not to be 
wrongly identified as mason jars full
of watermelon ants. not to be falsely said 
to be a god. not to be confused with weeping.
not to be incorrectly seen as a portal 
in belly of a space ship. not to be mistaken
for a loose tooth. not to be inaccurately 
depicted as a sinking ship. not to be confused with
mirrors or water shoes. not to be confused with
the silver jaw of an angel. not to be 
mistaken for a way out or a way towards 
validity. not to be misguided by ammonites 
& their quest for jewelry in the primordial 
shopping mall. not to be confused with
our mothers or our fathers. not to be 
misinterpreted as prophecy.
not to be unexacted as a garbage island. not to be
spoken of on unfounded terms of 
"sweat" & "spirit." not to be mistaken
as a highway towards personhood.
not to be confused with grief. not to be
confused with joy. not to be saltines 
or shoelaces. not to be confused with realness. 

roofers

the geese come & start building
a god on the roof. haven't you ever
gotten together your debris
& thought, "i could worship this?"
being born into salt means always
checking the weather. is the love jukebox 
going to melt into an ocean 
or are we going to stay up all night
talking about deer? the work is brief 
& involves molting. losing a face
to gain an old one. i wonder if 
we are all nesting dolls. trying to find
the popcorn at the center. i used to think
i could make a life out of parables 
but now i am inspecting the house
of stained glass & teeth. the roofers 
are here to make sure the ceiling
no longer leaks. to ensure we have
a barrier between us & heaven. 
tin roof song. a banjo we buy
just to bury. don't worry. i am sure 
when all is said & done there will be
someone operating this machine.
he might have opera glasses
for all i know. he might drink lemonade 
& cross his legs just like i do.
the roofers leave behind remnants 
of their excavation. stray fins.
a broken gutter. we go out together
to collect the pieces. the god is shiny 
& not at all what we expected.
i try to stay positive for you.
i say, "it looks like the father
i always wanted." you say, "i don't know
what it is but it'll keep us 
out of the shoelace waterfall."
have you ever had your door kicked down?
there is little to be done about it.
we go inside & try to be silk worms 
for the rest of the evening. 

worm 

i have as many hearts 
as you want me to have. 
cut off my hand & it becomes
it's own private love poem. 
row houses that caught fire
on that night in march
when the soil was coughing up sunglasses.
i thought we would put forevers
in the oven like pretzels. i thought i would
turn into a pile of socks with you.
when i was a young girl 
we used to play a playground game
called "worm graveyard"
going out the day after a rain
to harvest the dead worms 
& burry them. hearts like kickballs
one drying after the other
in the bruise-laden sun.
everything is too brief but 
especially worms. we made headstones
from leaves. said elegies.
one worm who loved video games
& another who wanted to be
a sky diver. our dreams are like this.
little hymns in the ice age.
i'm telling you though
i can find another & another heart
if you will just keep me
as i want to be remembered.
a shovel in a bucket of marshmallow.
the radio gargling with salt water.
to be a worm is to cut in half 
& decide which side to say farewell to.
or to always live with two bowl 
of chips on your lap. i sometimes want
to call you again. i want to tell you
about the worms in the parking lot
& the worm graveyards & 
the worm life i am living.
there are days when i think with
all of my hearts & days where 
i let a child come & cut off my head.
tell me, have you lived like this too?
how would you say farewell 
to the worms? what would you use
as a headstone? i imagine
cutting off my fingers. planting each
in the damp earth. kneeling until
they come alive not as children
but released selves that no longer
need me to dream of cream.