renaming

you wrote your name in spaghetti &
fed it to the pigeons. do you remember
the angels you would pass
when you lived in the city
& every day was ghost feed? 
they had signs with options on them.
things to call yourself. "disaster" 
& "dirt" & "deep." sifting in the river
you found the teeth of prehistoric selves.
those selves got their names 
from chewing on geodes. it was a process
of taking apart the skeleton
& looking for a price tag. what 
do you want the fire to call out when
it comes for you? you do not want
to be remembered as the stack of ideas,
"whisk" & "worm" & "wool."  
to become a new name is to step
through an archway & watch 
the world behind you go orpheus 
in the distance. you've never meant
any change to be permanent but then
there you with a butterknife 
& a beautiful face. this was the only option.
you had to race the rats. you had
to cut the old song out
with scissors & feed it to the pigeons.
they then are the last ones
to say your old name & then it is gone.  

floodwater 

in a world of meat & buckets
we tried to survive as half-finish fish.
"do not open the window," you said
after it had rained for 
eighteen years. 
we were the portal babies.
the cherubs painted without gills.
outside, everyone else had gone
primordial. wriggling with their
tendrils. the soup of heat
& burning angels. we had decided
to hold our evolution hostage.
become shut-ins. watch reruns 
until the words of the characters
slipped like butter from out mouths.
remote control batteries died. 
electricity turned to song.
staring at the black tv & still seeing
the episodes rolling as ghosts.
a knock on the front door came
each & every night. i was 
the tempted one. you said,
"go to sleep." i imagined 
opening the door & finding 
the world as it once never was.
green grass & yolky sun. 
peering out the window,
shipwrecks as far as the eye could see.
"what if it's this time," i'd always think
hoping for a utopia. of course,
i opened the door one night.
you had been tired
from running in circles.
dizzy, you fell into bed.
i knew it was my chance. 
yes yes yes, i touched the knob
like a forbidden fruit. turned it
& the water came like a fist.
flooded the whole downstairs
before i could shut it. i gasped
for air. i wept. i knew you would be
furious at me. i tried to find a way
to bailed the water out.
tried prayers & spoons. 
when you found out though you 
did not yell & you did not scream.
you said, "i was curious too"
about the knocking & the dream
of a fresh world. you kissed 
my forehead & helped me
out of the water & up
the stairs into dry blankets. 
outside the windows, i heard screaming
all night long. only in the morning
did it stop. ghost maybe
begging to come inside. they were so close. 

blood letting 

who do you want to give
your bile? the doctor 
is a lego man. he says,
"fork over your eyes in exchange
for a life without pain."
sometimes the pain is so a part of you
that you wonder if you would
be the same body if it were released.
joints that sing like wet violins
& choking oboes. i remember of course
a time where it wasn't so bad.
when i could stand in the yard
& run towards an angel with all my might
without falling apart. the skeleton 
is an unfurling creature. each tomorrow
a slip & slide hymnal. 
you watch the blood rush swell
from trickle to river. a garden hose.
feeding the grass every cherry pie
& snow cone. soon you will faint
& the doctor will say you are
on the mend. he will use a pocket watch
to measure your wings. when you wake
you will open your eyes & find
quarters in their place. those little holy
george washingtons gazing silver
a the hearth room. he will say,
"it is a miracle." the angels in the yard
will squawk like geese. return to their migration.
you will return to the place
where the blood was spilled.
think of turning it into pillows 
& handing them out on a street corner
to strangers, telling them,
"my blood still want to kill me."

whipped cream

i used to eat everything by tablespoon.
bees & caterpillars & birthdays.
you tell me i need to stop thinking
that i am alone. i have never confessed to you
about the plum tree or even 
the ghost kitchen. i stand there
at night & prune leaves. open the fridge
to find rows & rows of whipped cream.
"feast" is a word that has never
come to visit my teeth. instead,
i know the mundane famine of almost living.
almost enough. almost on fire.
almost homeless. almost eating plastic.
almost kissing a dagger. so badly i want 
to not have to return to these sepulchers
i want to crack a whole carton of eggs into the pan.
feed all the wandering bears but not feed
myself. dear lover, here it is.
here is the grove of horses. here are
their hooves. here is the last time
i ran. to be not alone would mean
i would need to show you the light bulbs.
that is too much work for one lifetime,
isn't it? well, tonight i will show you
one thing. here is the bowl of whipped cream.
here is the spoon i use. here is 
the way my stomach feels full of clouds
when i am done. here is how
i try to lick the last tastes of sweetness 
from the bottom of the bowl. 

roller skate baby

in the back of your car 
we ate our shoelaces. 
me, the backup friend 
& you a girl with electric fruit. 
back then, everyone was roller-skating 
their way into a television show
while i tried to learn
how to clip my fingernails.
i had a museum of bathroom mirrors
waiting for me every time i opened
my closet. i hate the idea 
of queerness & transness as a secret
or a confession. still, i wanted to tell you
so badly that i liked girls & boys.
you were sucking on a ring pop
listening to the alternative radio station.
 my body is a gumball machine. 
you had asked me
if i liked any boys. i said, "yes"
& in my head i thought, 
"sarcophagus." in the roller rink 
parking lot your lips were blue.
i said the boy's name which was,
"destination." you furrowed 
your brow & looked like you wanted
to reply, "i do not know him."
you held my hand as girls do.
as girls do, right? walking into
the neon toothed parking lot.
we were what, seventeen? still
made of pop rocks. i craved
to ask, "do you want to practice 
kissing?" we had done this before
on sleepovers & on bedroom floors.
instead i noted your stretched shadow.
licorice asphalt. streetlamp glow,
illuminating your face. 

jupiter forecast 

someone i love asks how i will feed myself
without a pig. i tell them i am skilled 
at sacrifice. once, i lived out of the carcass
of a whale. i crawled to the bottom of the ocean
each night with only a dinner plate
& a fork. ate canned beans & dreamed 
a television in my head. no one can know
the depths of our private loneliness. here is where
i keep my planet. it is rock candy & ready.
the truth is there is some uncertainty 
to living at the end of the world. but hasn't everyone
always lived at the end of the world?
the coming precipice might not be a destination
but what it means to crawl 
from bed & see the sun. i go to the crows
for advice since they know more 
than most. they advise me to not live extravagantly.
i admit, "but that is my gender." they laugh
& say, "then steal whatever you can 
from the factory. trinkets & guns & glitter."
"i do not want guns," i tell them but they fly
away & do not tell me any more. i till the earth.
i plant my teeth. move on to fingers. have you
ever tried planting without hands? 
it is not as terrible as it might seem. 
waiting in the fresh earth & trying to not pray.
asking whatever beings sit beneath the surface,
"can you give me something delicious?"

frostbite

the morning had no tongue or breath.
relearning how to talk to trees
i stumbled with a pocket of girlhood.
the flesh becomes a playground. 
all the boys come with fireworks 
in their eyes. a pepper spray birthday. 
turning seventeen inside a bomb.
outside, everyone is dying. outside
everyone is living on roots. carrots 
& rusted pipes & the legs of our grandfathers.
you do not know you skin is dying
until it is too late. burning. a race inside
blood. bone turned into sculpture. 
moving the limb & saying, "alive
alive." nothing. on the other side
of numb is an electric fence. the cows 
wear sweaters. i shake my body 
trying to find my heart. it is like
panning for gold. i wait too long. 
inside the barn by a space heater's
red glowing prophecy. the other farm hand says,
"we have to get you inside." i see the plum-colored skin.
the oceans come to sing there. dead dolphins 
& a fishman without a face. some doesn't return.
turns into catacombs. a hymn 
to my former body. the cold is not
an absence of gender but a machine of it.
instead of man and woman i purpose
helpless and whole. i was neither. 

disco ball migration

we all put on our sunglasses to stay alive. 
the glint & guts were loud as fire ants.
no one wanted to dance anymore but
the jubilation was mandated. you must
smile for the big cheeseburger. you must
shake your body like a bell. a priest blessed
the teeth of new disciples. we were too young
to know that this was it. this was where
you lose your voice. captured in 
a traveling salesperson's brief case. walking
he would wait years to put his ear 
to the leather & hear our hesitation. our fears
of growing up inside a polluted snow globe.
when i could no longer breathe i turned
into a jump rope. the trees turned into
telephone poles straining to hold up
the sky. this was years ago now. it is funny
how the fires can become normal. once,
an alarm town & now walking to grocery store
i think to myself, "another another another."
the smoothening edges of a catastrophe.
again, the lights spill from the slit throat
of the sky. come all the pigs & pillow rocks.
stoning a man in the street outside my window.
i used to think i could open my arms wide
& catch the metal as it came. instead, now,
i become the prayer keeper. a coin under
my tongue. visiting the dead like statues. 
do not worry about anything. there is
a suggestion box at the end of the world.
there, i go. cut off my hand. feed it to the lips. 
 

ammonite 

do you remember not having a skull?
everything rung like saltwater taffy.
you did not have to wake up
like a fried fish stick. instead, we rose
as bottles from the dirt. we held
our televisions close to the chest.
no one had dollar signs in their teeth.
when we opened our mouths
it was only for nectar. visa gift cards
in the daffodils. a plastic bag
to stuff the contents of a frenzy. 
i stand on a street corner in the city
& wonder how my bones talk to one another.
if they say, "lets go back to being
ocean bodies" or if they are just 
the knot work of my fears. i would like
to be a cohesive being. instead, i think
i am most likely a selkie in the wrong shell.
a morsel of pixels conjured to talk 
about lips. the stoplights tell a hymn 
of fruitless movement. a shop door 
cracks a seam in realness. i keep
a can opener in my purse in case
i have to find a way out of this life
& back into the primordial echo. 
radio show about ammonites
where they discuss jesus. they say,
"everything is real to the new species 
if you say it with enough billions."
dead birds piled to make a church.
i consider walking backwards all day.
i arrive at a corner store. buying 
a diet soda & drinking it 
on the same street corner where 
god kicked a tin can into my face.
we might never get back to that headless bliss.
i close my eyes. eat the artificial angel. 
become the glistening of an ancient skeleton. 

salt bicycle

there is a forecast of rabbit rain.
we were all children in the wild 
shoulders of august. 
the afternoon rang every bell
it could find. you were the boy prophet
& i was the girl prophet
at least for that night. spent the first
part of the day gazing into the oracle
which spat out every kind of sadness.
curtains drawn. your father had
just died three weeks before
& we had not talked about it since.
i had stopped letting myself eat.
discovered the horrifying glory
of disappearance. my body a hallway maker.
we took turns taking bites
out of mealy ghost apples. a video game
knocked on the windows. i told you,
"let's go & be kingdoms." pedaling
down the sacrifice hill. your hair
turning into butterscotch.
i considered you my corn husk. 
my cantaloupe speaker. spitting
cherry seeds at the sun. of course
i could feel it was going to rain 
in my bones & blood but i let us go
anyway to the edge of the world
on bicycles made of salt.
overlooking the highway. 
downpour. earth-shattering.
the bicycles dissolving
in the deluge. nothing but pickle tongue. 
nothing but tuning forks. moon. 
"how are we going to get home?"
you asked. all i could think was
"we are not going home." it was like
the whole town fell away behind us.