legs

i traded my fingers
for a new pair of legs.
they ran like wild dogs
all night until
i reached a lighthouse.
everyone has their butcher block.
the cleaver with a grin
taped into place.
my father once
had me get up on all fours
for him to inspect
my bovine. a fallen bird
is taken into the dirt. 
the dirt makes a feather tree
where we can go & pay respects 
to times we lost our softness.
i think it can be dangerous
to think to yourself,
"if only i had different limbs."
i do this though. i imagine
a body that would call me
to sprint from one scar to
the next. instead i am a sea
of appendages. i fish for my tongue.
i have a net to collect my toes.
minnowing blood. the moon
sewn back into the body.
that wayward organ. i bless my legs.
i tell them i was lying when
i talked to the foxes about bartering
for new ones.
no fresh escapes for me. just my
beautiful bruised & blooming legs.
i hug my knees to my chest.
come, let's go & laugh with the embers
of the polished sun. let's pretend
until we believe we are whole.
i trip again in the yard. tumble.
lay in the earth until a woodpecker arrives
in the tree above my head 
to say, "you are a violin boy."
i cannot tell if he means it as an insult. 

forklift

we're going to need
the father machine
to pick up all these wings.
go on & talk to
whatever god we have
in the grease works.
my dad's dad was a pair
of hands. they both fed the beast
until the beast was 
a part of their language.
he has a forked tongue
& on the wrong nights
so do i. i will go
& pick up pallets
with my wanting. a warehouse
is a kind of organism. 
the dragon's lair.
to consume is to hold.
pennies plucked
from underneath lovers' tongues.
he kissed me a metal goodnight.
we played in the oil garden.
somedays i wondered barefoot
in a tongue no one else
could speak. the motor lights.
the angelic humming.
come & family me back
into the thrall. i do not want
to be a single earring even though
i most certainly am. which side
is the gay ear again? it doesn't matter.
if you're a ghost
you're a ghost & that's that.
if you're a man you're
a forklift. if you're a woman well
who knows. don't get me started
on angels. i eat some kickballs
fresh from the can. 
the scattering is too far gone.
we shouldn't worry about mess now
we should just worry about discovery.
when the light will pour in
& tell us to stop chewing. 
i used to fly you know?
i flew not like a bat but 
like a red tail hawk. i could 
pluck eyelashes from the clouds. 
i was no one's filament. 

manner school

i put a napkin in my lap to catch
the falling men. it always starts
with your family. my father 
& my uncle. 
at the diner everyone 
is a politeness lesson. 
the small fork goes in your soul
& the big fork is for picking up hair.
my uncle loved to teach me
how to be a perfection.
touching the tops of my knees
& scolding me to close my legs.
i have always been 
a gender without any keys.
balancing a dictionary of fingers
on my head. i wore frills 
that turned into gills.
i ate french fries with a fork & knife.
somehow it is never good enough.
i would come home 
from lunch with him 
& think, "you must be
a monster." in the mirror
my eyes turned to sunny-side-up eggs.
bacon tongue. i tried to wipe away
all the grease. my wrists becoming 
saucers. i carried all the weight of wanting.
wanting a daughter ghost. wanting
a pristine devouring. there is
always blood & guts & gore.
it just depends on who is washed
& who does the washing.
i took my gender to the backyard 
& put pine cones in his hair.
we learn to shape shift.
here is my proper gender.
my grilled cheese face. then, 
in the dark of my bedroom
i get to be the biggest ugliest spoon. 

hypochondriac 

did you know you can die of flowers?
they grow in your throat
& then you are 
the wrong kind of boy.
do i have "catastrophic" written
in my blood vessels?
i want to be tested for angels.
they have named diseases 
after our hopes & fantasies 
how am i supposed to walk around
& not wonder about 
the kinds of fires that might
be stoked by my hunger?
i go to a clinic where i am sure 
i am dead. they assure me i am not dead
even though all the other clients
are ghosts. they say,
"we need to rule out
all other possibilities."
i pour my blood into a chalice.
i spit onto a pocket knife.
the doctors excavate my purple
& determine it is specifically 
mauve. i knew it. i knew it
when i was awake at night,
heart as a bullfrog. i chased 
the organ down the hall.
they determine 
after everything
that i am making it up.
my arm falls off & becomes 
an infant. they say, 
"that can happen
to people like you."
i no longer want a cure. i just want
to be seen. i want a god
to come down & say
"your pain is so clear
it is made of glass." when the flowers come
i welcome them. violets 
& lilacs. first from the roof
of my mouth
& then from between my teeth. 

waiting room

some days i find a doctor
in my mailbox & he is promising
to make me into a bird.
i rehearse the prophecy,
"i have not slept for twenty-eight years."
count my fingers to remind myself
i still have something to grasp 
a bell with. on the television
there is always a man saying
more than he should. a tongue 
as a salamander. i overturn rocks
in the yard looking for prescriptions.
all my pill grow legs & live as beetles.
in the kitchen this morning 
i got on my knees 
to catch just one. a magazine
promises that everyone can be 
as thin as a lollipop leg.
white women with white teeth
& white shirts. i try to imagine
a life here. setting up a tent 
in the waiting room. starting
a fire. roasting ears of corn 
& feasting right in front
of the receptionist. instead
i cross my legs & my arms. 
try to pass the time by counting
angels i see falling out 
the one big window overlooking
a swampy field. when they come
the nurse is not a nurse
but a heron. i'm instantly comforted.
she's holding a blue balloon
which is another relief.
a red balloon is always a bad sign.
i almost don't want
to follow her, i've made 
such a little nest in this thicket.
the magazines become moths.
even the man on the television
stops talking. he scowls 
& waits for me to get up & follow her. 

squirrel meat 

don't tell me you're not a carnivore.
i saw you with a disaster 
in your mouth crawling
up the ankle of a fresh god.
sometimes i will go to the market
just to see my insides.
me, the cow walking towards
the bolt. do you know that's how
they do it? an axis through 
the brain? the earth itself
is the skull of a devoured calf. 
two-hearted beasts in their caverns.
i was once a survival. i crouched
in the throat of a mammoth.
the creature told me 
"if you hold still we will
find ourselves in a museum."
my people have fingers that turn
into birds. my people have
shake the walruses for their manna.
i will tell the truth. the squirrels
taste like gold. they are full
of coins & televisions.
who knew so much could fit
inside such a tiny body.
i say, "you know we 
are animals?" & the room 
runs away from itself. i saw
a tree of eyes. "oftentimes"
is my favorite crutch word 
to get me to say something
that is always true. there is 
always meat. i went strawberry picking
& found each fruit beating
like heart. blood on my fingers.
the squirrels, like messengers,
delivering a gospel of seeds.   

stage slap

the trick to making a slap look real
is the sound. we want flesh 
crashing flesh. the spot lights
always turned me into a ballerina
without feet. i tried to live
off pin cushions & flowers. i was always
fighting my hair. trying to put it up
but then it would go & turn into rodents:
ferrets especially but sometimes
a flock of mice. have you ever seen swarm?
i have & when there's a hoard 
of heartbeats all you can do 
is stand back. i practiced by 
destroying telephone poles
& sometimes men in dad clothes.
tuned the sound to be perfect.
a girl in an alley way. a girl 
on a fire escape. a girl in a blender.
"what is she going on about?"
taking the old teeth out
one by one & replacing them
with match box cars. don't get me wrong
i prefer the real thing. i like
my gender to be red & throbbing
from impact. we must make do.
we have to show them 
what they came to see which is
a binary of slapped vs. not. 
we have to convince them we've
been hit. crumpled like a tissue.
i wipe the nose of gods. they always ask
too many questions. "did you feel it?"
the answer of course being yes.
i always feel it. choreographed or not. 

smoked gouda 

my grandmother boiled milk
to drink before bed.
had hands like tree roots. 
cream in the fridge. her cat who 
at night convened with angels.
i only stayed over once. the hauntings 
smelled like chicken & newspapers.
sitting on the end of her bed
she sung to the dark without any teeth.
the tongue she kept in a jar. 
in the afternoon she took out
a wedge of smoked gouda. 
sunlight through her apartment window.
we ate one small piece at a time
like little mice in a room
too big for us. i know so little about
my elders. she took her eyes out
when we she was done & washed them 
in the sink. the radio as divination.
it talked in the voice of her husband,
a man without any bones at all.
i loved the cheese. had never had something
so rich & tasting of fire wood.
when left alone i snuck into the fridge
& nibbled right off the wedge.
salt & sweet. chewing. me, her 
little animal. a child in the thicket
of a heritage. we listened to opera 
& i pretended to like it for her.
i still wonder what she thought
when she went to take out the cheese later
& found my sneaky bites. did she curse me?
did she laugh? did she cut one straight line
to make the piece even? 

the last time

you were piloting the space ship 
without any eyes. 
my empty greek yogurt container
full of fingers. i put on a pair
to love you with. it was a night
in august. everything was indigo. 
even the street lamps. every restaurant 
we tried to eat at was dead or gutted
& in their place stood dollar stores.
we ended up in a gas station parking lot.
you asked if i ever devoured
a pigeon. i admitted, "yes, once."
even though i had much more times 
than that. i had imagined for months
that our lives would roll 
into one big pink ball of yarn.
that i might wake up every day
& find you on the ceiling, standing
with a knife in your mouth. 
we ended up just getting honey buns.
fingers sticky. washed our hands 
with air out the window. there was
no where to go & nothing to do.
just sirens & rhinos in the streets.
they greased the street lamps
with butter to keep any crowds 
grounded to earth. you tried to show me
how you could fly. wings stretched.
duck feathers. you couldn't 
get off the ground. you said
over & over, "i have done this
so many times." they way our futures 
fail us when someone is watching. 
i kept your camera. the one you left
on my nightstand. the following week
i took a train to a new ice cream city.
i always promised i would write to you.
your address rung church bells 
where it was folded on my desk.
i never did but i do still think of you
when the summer is full of holes.
bleeding beams of light. 

carnival glass

there are not enough bells.
i go down to the mystery face
of the old garden just to pluck eye lashes.
my art gets good 
when my life starts wearing cowboy boots.
that is to say, things are not good.
i resist the urge to throw a parade
in honor of my sadness. instead,
i go out in the raining yard 
& try to talk to the dead frog 
i found on the road. he is already 
doing much better now that he's dead.
he has a carousel. he has glasses
that show him only yellow things.
yellow is generally a safe color
unless of course it has to do with 
school buses. i pop out my eyes 
& wash them in grape juice. it stings
at first but then i can see a vineyard of eyes.
everyone's stares collected
in a hillside blaring "take on me."
i would never want to end up 
in a music video. my mouth moves
to glass lyrics. at the mercantile
we become goblins. i ask if you will
look at my face through a vase.
my face is turned into a ferris wheel.
i can't tell if it's an improvement.
don't be afraid of heights. they are just
where angel larvae are hatched.
my conclusion is that we should move again.
we should put our life into vessels. we should
grow wings (the bird kind
not the insect kind) & fly 
into the mountains made
of boots. not boot straps boots though.
i mean heeled beautiful boots.