cold brew

i soak my bones in your throat.
it does not make soup. 
we take the train into the beast's
little knee. kneel in the museum,
notebooks in our hands like all prophets do.
the sky has earbuds in. the train 
is only as long as we need. or maybe
it is not enough & we are pulling
our lives like field ox. a stretched arm.
a candle lit behind each eye. i want
to be swallowed & turned into 
a mosquito. i want to pierce my tongue
into the moon. my hands are cold
& this winter is thick. do i fall asleep
in the puddle? does the straw led
to a carousel or is this the kind of journey
that takes a tooth away? i park the car
on the wrong side of the war. the police
do not know what we do behind
the laundry mat right beneath the 
"no weeping" sign. we buy gas ten dollars
at a time. drink cold brew at the little shop
that rattles when the train comes. 
cheeks flushed. our one friend just started
experimenting with eyelash extensions. 
i stay awake all night. spit hummingbirds
into the sink. jars of sticky old spices buzzing
above the stove. you sleep on the window
where the trees should be. 

pocket bible

what a relief
my god gets smaller every year.
at the august fair there was a man
handing out bibles the size
of my palm. i asked for five.
the man was ecstatic. did i take them
in earnest? belief memory is the hardest
to track. it's hard for me to know
what the faith suit felt like. 
i was fifteen. i bought a magnifying glass
to read the bibles. 
put one in my purse. i never really
got past genesis. the bible is a slow burn.
it only really gets good when
you reach jesus. each year at the fair
i would see the man again & the bibles
would get smaller & smaller. a thumb's height
& then a strawberry hard candy.  
i accepted them. sucked on the bibles 
all night in the hopes
that something miracle might transfer to me. 
in college i listened to an audiobook 
of the bible. some of the stories 
were familiar from having gone to church.
other ones felt outer space. i know i was
looking for something in the pocket bible
that i never found. i dated a boy once
who loved jesus & god that was awful. 
he wanted me to love jesus too & so 
i stared into the dead little books until
they became moths. until they became
horrible albatrosses. i didn't see the bible man
at the fair after that. i wonder if he started
to get smaller too. if now his bibles 
are the size of sand grains. if maybe only he
can read them. i am glad my pocket bibles
managed to escape. eyelash-winged little breaths.
even the source can get away. 
my beliefs have turned crepuscular. a great darkness
always comes with tiny points of light. the stars, each 
a bible turned inside out. the light waiting
to swallow the sky. the bible man still at the fair ground
in the middle of winter. his book, a fleck of salt
dissolving on his tongue. 

our whole house used to fit in the dishwasher

who taught you how to be clean?
i have had to cough up a skeleton key
to climb out of my body.
the roof could use some tender love
& care. my dogs sometimes argue.
my old one, left hovering in the living room
without a place to lay down. once,
a hole opened in the ceiling & poured dust
all over my room. i did not clean it.
instead, i wrote my name. left paw prints
as if i were one of the mice in the basement.
the dishwasher died years ago & now 
it is used for doorknobs & other ways out.
i keep dreaming of gutting it to make
a proper portal. sometimes cleaning can be 
a form of blessing. i have tried to bless
all the wall that've held me (some better
than others). i have not always been
a good keeper. some spaces beg to be dirty.
the apartment on union held a mouthful 
of the old tenants. their light scent never fully gone. 
the house here has halos from the its markers. their
mismatched screws. their ugly carpet. 
i hate the warmth after the washing. 
how the machine knows just how to burn
a thumb out of the sky. in a dream my father
is on fire & i have to put him out. i put him
in the dishwasher. in a dream
we are hurricane children again & the town
is blinking on & off. i am an expert 
at making megaliths smaller & smaller
until they can be held & lulled to sleep.
i wash the windows. i wash the doors. i wash
my face until it shines. there is a peephole
on the dishwasher for everyone to look out
& see me with my shoes still on in the house. 
when i open it i know they will scold me. 

threadbare

my dad is the other side 
of a loom. he wears shirts until
they are windows. holes that stretch 
beneath the arms. i have boarded up
whole bodies. i have burned 
the evidence. my father still wears
shirts i gave him when i was a teenager.
i used to get him one every christmas.
a penguin. nirvana. a caged rat
after the smashing pumpkins song.
i am trying to follow in his tradition
of holding my body like a portal 
to the next world. my father keeps
few objects. a book spatchcocked 
at the end of the bed. a pair of shoes 
with the soles worn to the asphalt.
once when he was in the shower
i found a shirt balled up on the ground.
i had come home in the early pandemic
when i still believed a rebirth was coming.
i picked the shirt up. it was still warm.
the shirt, once coarse, was softened by time.
his flesh moving across the fabric.
he brings a new meaning to the phrase
"breaking in." i put my hand on one side
& held the shirt up to the hall light.
saw my hand. heard the shower shut off
& dropped the shirt back onto the ground.
i have a shirt i have had since i was nineteen.
to only myself i call it my "father" shirt. 
i sleep in it. let my body weather the threads.
he seldom retires a shirt even when 
they're threadbare. i imagine a burial 
for one of the older shirts. he would 
never allow it. instead, the shirt became
workshop rags. footprints in the sawdust. 
the door to the basement cracked so that
in the living room we can hear him work. 

how to clean up broken glass

i get on my knees. is this too
a kind of worship? it was my mother
who first taught me how to clean up
broken glass. i forget who knocked
over the dish, me or her. we are a family
of accidents. a father in another city.
a rocking chair on mars & the telescopes
we use to find one another. dinner plate moons
gone fracture. she would wet two towels.
one for me & one for her. then we worked,
lifting as many slivers as we could from the floor. 
daggers or jack knives stuck in the cloth.
i have always been too bold. i pick up
the big pieces with my bare fingers
even when all my loved ones tell me not to.
sharks' teeth or waxing gibbous. there is
no good place to take a fragment. i would know
because i am made of them. an unlocked door.
a car crash at midday. your laughter 
without me on a phone call with god. 
i imagine a magnificent plate knit together
from all the broken ones. monstrously 
mismatched. nothing like kintsugi.
this is the making of a vessel that leaks
everything i hold slowly escapes. the trick is
that there is not trick. you will always find
another chip from the plate or the glass
weeks or even years later. every once i awhile
they will cut you. sitting on the lip
of the tub, staring at my heel. i pinch.
remove the freckle of glass. hold it in
my own palm like a compass wing. i wish
i broke them on purpose. that i was 
a bull animal in a mirror house. but for us
shattering is always an accident. 
something lost. our we always to blame
for how we break? i keep what i can
of the whole. this, a vocation. 

exile to the island of stones

i wait on the tip of your tongue.
gods i need a place to bury my heart.
i am a maker of time capsules.
the island in the middle of the creek grows.
maybe another girl boy creature
comes to move the rocks. i name my 
new country "whispered." 
a headline crosses the moon 
like an airplane. i am waiting for 
so many answers. where i will end up?
what will i do if i fail the next trial
that this horrible country gives me?
the island of stones is not safe it is just
a secret for now. secrets do not last long
in a land of cameras. i keep a stoplight
for a necklace. call my mother 
on the drive home. make fairy boats
out of my shoes. a candle in each. it is winter
but i am ready to feel the earth.
on my college campus years ago
there was a boy who refused to wear shoes.
one day was so so bitter cold & yet still
there he was, wind blowing the hairs
on the tops of his feet. i would invite him 
to the stone island along with
all my beloveds. folding chairs.
an airplane across the moon. 
we could make a pinata out of 
the terrible newspapers. invite everyone
we can find with a strange heart. never break 
the pinata. we love to invert a purpose.   
instead hang it from a tree. a symbol 
of transmutation. make the time last
for as long as we have it. is this what
it means to laugh at the end of 
the world? the island is small. we will fit
as many people as we can. wash our faces
in the creek water. sleep facing the stars.
one of us, a watchman, will take 
a fish net & scoop the airplane off the moon. 

midnight animals 

like honey ghosts, suns dwindle. 
the tongue, a bed sheet. our snakeweed brush
in the yard leveled by wind & the first snows.
winter solstice is my favorite knot on the year's belt. 
as all pairs of lung, i know our need
for the star's return. for the warmth breath
& the light. still, i am the under-the-bed
creature. i am the plate of apples left 
at the food of the woods. there is a slavic legend
that at midnight on the solstice that 
all the animals have a brief window where
they can speak. i have seen it. the coyotes 
standing like people & singing. the chickens 
crying out for a mother feather. 
the geese who pass through this area on
their way to another realm, they tell stories
of the earliest times. when the land curved 
like a glance. before the sweet birds
went into the earth. i join them 
with my fresh midnight animal voice. we are
all far too critical of the dark. there are
some truth that only live here. some flowers
that only speak to the moon. grudges with origins
long forgotten. i invite the animals inside.
beg them to stay. to help me stretch the dark
as long as it will hold us. they are more
obedient than me. follow the changes
like disciples. i do not fight them when
they leave. the possums & the raccoons 
& the squirrels & even some spiders. 
they voices knit garlands that decorate 
my throat. i could spend every day like this. 
this is why i am not a midnight animal.
i do not know when to stay or depart. 
i open windows. burn cedar & sage. 
does the land forgive me? the toads sleep 
like pocket watches in the dirt. 

vending machine

the first one came & i couldn't remember
if i had ordered it. there are always
those late-night desires.
a credit card in the dark. the delivery man
with all his unpriestly judgements.
i was pretty sure i would have remembered
requesting a vending machine. fully stocked.
it was the same as the one that used to be
out back behind the middle school
where i used quarters to buy sprites.
a cold can that i sipped on the walk home
across the field. of course, i fed it.
what you feed, you become. the machine
stood in the middle of the living room.
my partner & i tried to move it
but in retaliation, it always got bigger until
its head was touching the ceiling. 
we accepted it. started requesting cash back
at the grocery store so that we could buy
our little sodas & watch the television
to distract ourselves. the second machine
i was sure i did not ask for. it arrived
in the already small bathroom. a tampon machine
even though neither of use tampons.
the machine preached about all the uses
for tampons. earrings & garland & laughter.
so, i bought some. i had hoped somehow
that a purchase could make it stop.
the hunger that it planted in me 
was like a centipede. so many legs. 
over the next year, every room gained
a vending machine. one for forks & one
for televisions & one for 
holidays & one for lube 
& one for prepackaged apples. 
everything that emerged was always
slightly off. colors that did not sing. 
it became harder & harder to move 
around the house. my partner wept. he said,
"i won't be mad if you just tell me
what is going on." i did not know. i was 
terrified of my hands & of the machines.
appeasing a horror only gets you so far.
the most confusing part was how
they were always restocked despite
no delivery people coming to fill them.
i started to wonder if what came
from their little mouth-portals were real.
i came to the first one. the giant soda machine
in the middle of the living room. i started
to leave it offerings. i hoped to appease it.
sometimes then it would give me
two cans for one quarter. a steal.
drinking them in the summer dusk,
my partner & i dream of what other machines
might come. what they might bring.
how we might survive them. 

girl inside the fridge 

when i climb into the fridge
i am a girl. this confuses my family
because i am not a girl really
in the biblically accurate way but more in
the way that all mangos are girls.
alone (but not alone) i am so verdant  
in the fridge. 
no white hot light to make us have
to perform. sometimes i say "us"
when i mean "me." i am choosing
to not unpack that but really
sometimes i feel like
a little ant hill trying
to govern a gender. 
i love the fridge's cool dark.
the way the tofu speaks of sauce.
all the mismatched tupperware who hold
their breath. i could live several hundred lives
inside our fridge. watch the lettuce wilt
& turn horror. a dress of lemon bites.
get married to the eel over & over.
my gender gets thick & chewy. my gender
is like a pair of rubber boots.
inside the fridge i don't have
to have a government. inside the fridge
a crisper drawer can make promises 
that no one else can. "you are whole
& edible." thank you thank you.
when the door opens we all know
how to behave. smile. pose. hope
to stay. i have been living the doll house
severed wall life for as long
as i could remember. when i am really needing
a release i go to the back where the celery freezes.
there we get to be angels. my gender, gutted 
or butter. snow, creeping across our flesh
like scales. here i am glorious. a piece
of a star. my girl gender, a secret inside
my boy gender inside me elsewhere face.
i don't want to be real or maybe i do
& i just belong to the brief dark &
the hard boiled eggs. each, a harbored moon.
bellies full of bells. 

uses for water

washing your face.
becoming a fish. breathing
in the old way. breathing 
in the new way. rinsing the dishes
after a sticky meal. shampooing
your hair after three days
without a tongue. becoming 
human. becoming land. learning
the real story. hibernating all 
winter in the sweet mud. 
mixing a spoonful of crystal light 
into a red sickly drink. drowning
a fist. drowning a mouth. 
cooling a nuclear power gut.
bellying a bomb across 
the ocean. hiding a submarine 
full of fury. becoming not
the land. becoming not the
animal. blood. blood. more blood. 
your blood. my blood. the pig's blood.
what you are made of.
only the empire thinks,
"there are not enough data centers."
a warehouse full of little machines.
our bodies like lakes wrapping
around them as if we can brush
our teeth with horror. as if the salmon
will still be able to speak to us. 
a dry wishing fountain full of pennies.
we will learn to add a drop of water.
maybe even just spit. i want to be
a stream when i grow up & grow on.
i do not want to be a conduit for
this unnamable hunger.