finger trap 

i put the highway in a tupperware
to take it to my grandfather.
his eyes spin like wild tops 
& in his teeth he holds a snake.
i was baptized twice:
once in the broth pot
& once by him in the backyard kiddie pool.
the snake has a telephone
& is calling an angel to arrest us.
i take comfort in knowing
i'm descended from dishonor.
honor is overrated & always flows back
to police. instead i come from 
a costume jewelry necklace of escapes.
dominos in their natural habitat.
my grandfather died 
in what became my bedroom.
his ghost would play cards 
by himself. he doesn't need the highway
but i'm trying to say, "look i am
still alive." when you need evidence
to prove that, you might be
less alive than you think.
i get italian water ice & turn my skull
into a fingertrap: a self-capture where
mice arrive to beg for everything
you've got in your pockets. 
luckily, i don't have anything good.
i don't have heirlooms. i don't have
photo albums. i have stories 
& a cane. i have a mirror that 
when i peer into, i see a tunnel of faces.
you can back yourself into a burn pile
or you can say, "here is the highway."
his ghost eats it with a plastic fork 
then wipes his mouth on his sleeve. 

finger trap

i would drive two hours to see you
for just a spoonful of peanut butter.
eating your other half
of a stale bagel
in your studio. 
pigeons outside had more
self-preservation than me.
i am always knitting
a future of vaults.
rapunzel moon in chastity.
you gave me a key & i thought
that meant we were pouring cement.
i thought this was a house
of fingers. instead, i turned 
my eyes into snails. you stopped responding.
i drove & parked outside 
your apartment building,
worrying that you had died.
the city was always a snow globe
tucked into your cheek.
muck of winter. the warmth 
of your breath 
on the thin windows.
each again made me a collector
of pennies. heads up or tails,
i didn't care.
once, i started driving there
& my car's engine began
to spill smoke. i could have
turned back but instead
i kept driving until the engine 
swarmed with knuckles. a ringing phone.
the piles of knees i had shed.
you saying, "goodnight"
into a cereal bowl. i could reach you
& i couldn't get home.
i walked until the ground was
made of keyboards. finally 
a stork came by & said,
"you look like you believe
in god." i responded,
"you are wrong." the bird said,
"we're going to need to amputate."
he pointed to my fingers
one fused to the other
from promises i shouldn't have
kept making. they took months 
to grow back. months after
we stopped talking &
i turned into a salamander 
in a new city. still i wonder
if there is a chapel where
our thumbs go to be lovers
if they are happy. if a limb is ever gone. 
if you understood i wasn't burning
myself on the sidewalk for you. 

killing tree

there was blood for days 
after we cut down the pines.
a pair of legs stood
where their stumps used to be.
all the feral cats came
& brought offerings 
of mailboxes & lighters.
one of my father's favorite phrases is,
"it is the way it is." 
he repeated that to himself
from the rocking chair
in my old bedroom.
by this time i was dead too.
i only had a handful
of state quarters to my name.
i took sips from his glasses
of beer as vengeance. 
some people pour out 
& some people drink the world dry.
i wondered about the flesh,
the wood. the birds who used to
knit baby blankets in the branches.
the trees were not gone though
they were angry. i watched
as they shook their bomb shelters
at us. as they waved a sword.
as blood continued to gush
from the legs. my father said
in the bones of our house
there was wood rot
in the shape of the trees.
he said that was why 
we had to kill them. 
i stood in the yard with the legs.
i always wanted a witness,
someone to see what he did to me.
i told the trees i would witness them.
stand so long in the yard
that my own shadow 
would too rot a place in the skin
of the house. the legs 
were my legs. the shadows
were always my shadows.
the feral cats brought dead geese
& empty bottles. i thanked them,
slipping them thimbles of cream. 

 vending machine 

i shake the hunger box.
smell of bat blood & buttercup voices.
the machine says,
"i know you are really a girl."
i say, "i know you are
really an angel."
plastic is a way of saying
"let's not spend too much time here."
passing through town.
when i was a waitress i met
so many people who ate stop signs.
they were ravenous & then
would always send their meals back.
if you don't believe me
there's a scar underneath my tongue
from trying to talk to 
a strange man. sometimes i wake up
in the middle of the night
& find a vending machine
in the corner of my bedroom.
i announce that i am not hungry
but the machine just creeps forward.
coins pour from my mouth
& i try to shove them back in.
despite our best efforts
we're all made of money 
which is another way of saying
made of our own survival.
i try to picture a world where
we don't have to eat our fingers
until there are none left.
i give in & buy a little heart
from the portal. the heart tastes
like raspberry & chocolate. 
i want another & another
& i have enough coins to do so.
who needs self-restraint when the void 
is ripe & ready? when 
all you need to do is beg? 

beakless

you insisted, "that is a bird"
but i think i know what a dead summer looks like.
eyes like crawfish.
halos of snakes. 
we ate supper 
from silkworm knots
beneath the telephone trees.
i tried to speak for days
& nothing came out but flies.
gnats & then those thick flies
that look like punctuation
or blueberries. you were patient at first
but then it was too much.
you threw the globe at me
& then the binoculars.
i used them to look for birds.
i thought, "there has to be just one."
none of them had beaks anymore.
still, i heard them singing.
the beaks had run off 
to become new kinds of escape.
the birds were left
no longer birds
but husks 
of their former taxonomy.
i approached one slowly.
put my hand 
where the beak should be.
i nodded, as if to say, "speak."
the bird called.
it was a mourning dove. 
the call rung through me
& i saw my voice as 
a flock of dandelions
or then as a syringe
full of gold. let the not-bird go.
you later you continued,
"i know that was a bird."
i still did not respond.
i just filled my mouth with feathers
& spat them out the window
when you weren't looking.
i pretended i was leaving 
the nest. there i go. scattered. 

ghost furniture 

i plead with you until you let me
leave a chair open for visitors. 
the rocking one with the gnarled cushion. 
we were going to throw it away. 
a pile of shoes spills from the hall closet
that wasn't there last night. leather heels
& slippers. i put them in a garbage bag. 
in the morning you are weeping
standing on the stairs. you say,
"i keep remembering." i distract you
with a television the size of my palm.
birds roost beneath the bed. i tell you
about the woman with cherries for eyes.
we go to her where she lives 
inside the well door with spiders. she is not there.
you tell me you believe me even though
i can tell you're scared. it is august when
you get rid of the chair. this house is hot.
dead air conditioner still coughing
in the window. you say,
"this is our house." i tell you,
"every space is shared." you are sick
of the visitors. i build doll house chairs.
the guests return. the chairs multiply.
become actual size. isn't that how it always is? 
a fixation is the size of your thumb 
& then you have a living room too crowded with chairs 
to imagine sitting. then the shoes. 
even more than before.
they topple from drawers & down the stairs.
"i didn't want this," you say &
it is midnight & i wanted to sleep hours ago.
the radio plays & we beg for it to shut off.
sometimes a dad rock station & other times
opera vibrating the spine of the place.
"it was you," you say one morning
while we sit on the ground in the quiet.
the sun has cat eyes. the road outside 
is made of fire. "it was," i admit. 
"i was lonely." 

hypnos 

i filled my dresser with snakes
at the old apartment. i was lonely
& snakes were the only thing
that would come to mind.
i had no one to be or do 
& yet i could still never sleep.
i stayed up all night. put my mouth
to the shower drain & tried to talk to
octopi who might feel empty too.
once, in a pleading let-me-sleep fit
i sacrified a cave cricket. the cricket 
turned instantly into a telephone
& it rang like mad. i knew
if i picked it up my whole family's ghosts
would be on the other line.
you should be wary that ghosts can come
even when someone isn't dead.
i have seen my own ghosts. 
they creaked floor boards &
turned the television on. they ate
the bread i baked on the equinox. 
upstairs, my neighbors spit at each other.
the snakes, still snakes, would sometimes
stop moving & just be shoe laces.
i wept at the snakes & begged them
to not tease me. i craved their company.
their writhing. they feed off my stray eyes
that wandered in the dark as mice.
at night there are no gods. when i left
the apartment i didn't want
to open the drawers. instead, i lugged
the whole dresser to the cub. 
i kissed each handle. i said,
"goodbye snakes." the snakes said,
"you are a coward." in that moment
they were right. i could not even
take apart that life. i left it. a severed limb.
do you know how many times
i have done this? shedding everything i can.
my car, a getaway car. a ghost there
standing on the ceiling. smell of mildew.
my socks lodged still in the guts
of the dryer. you can never go back. 

magickal thinking

there is a tulip in the space shuttle
trying to talk to me.
sometimes i will move my hand
& worry i have caused
a car accident. i never asked 
to have god blood. an ancestor
hundreds of years ago
bit the neck of goat 
& drank until he was holy. 
or else maybe he sacrificed 
a finger, i never remember. 
all i know is that the mailbox 
has been spreading lies about me.
once, for weeks, i thought 
the old ladies at the bus station
were waiting for me to leave
in order to start talking 
about my hands. i look for evidence
my thoughts are real. to be an oracle 
is to dig wells wherever you can.
as a child i was furious
& broke every fallen twig i could find.
that overturned a yard tree.
paintings fall from walls. doors
off hinges. i like to be 
a little wonderfully deranged.
i know if i were born in a different time
or just in a different place
there might be special kinds
of lock boxes for me. there might be
machines to try to unwind me 
from my skeleton. instead, i wander.
bless everything blue. 
i try to talk to glasses of water
& sometimes they talk back. there is
so much wisdom in the mundane.
everything is a symbol 
if you have a head made of jupiter beetles.
i catch the sun just right.
glint. gleam. then open my wings 
& fly in my madness. 

dust worship

i grind my teeth into sandbox. 
all the children bury themselves
& become plastic dinosaurs.
poetry is magick because it also
is always about transformation.
no one walks into a day & doesn't leave
on their reptile hands & knees 
praying to the shoe gravel.
once i spent a year living in someone's ear.
or was it their tongue? the two
can become the same & then you are
screaming, "fuck you" in an empty house.
sometimes a word would arrive
& i would have to kill it with
the fly swatter so none of us 
turned into a plastic bag.
please don't try to tell me
that you love me. i don't want
to be loved in this poem. i want 
to go outside & let a mosquito bite me.
watch my arm swell like there's
a pearl underneath the flesh.
then, work all week to release that pearl.
everything precious is prone to escape.
i build a shrine to dust. the wind comes
& takes the dust away. i start
inventing evil contraptions
that might prevent a future exodus 
but then i remember living on a tongue.
how it could be a dove or a snake
or a slide whistle depending on the day.
you cannot cage each grain.
the dust will do what it does.
it will leave & it will return to the floors
of the house. i lay on the hardwood.
put my ear to the dirt. i hear
it singing. a throat full of beads & pearls.
my blood is a shoe kicked on 
the side of the stair to get the mud off.
when you closed your lips
i used to see a moon on the ceiling
of your mouth. i thought
i could build a ladder of dust.
reach up & touch it. i imagined 
it as the texture of a honeydew
i never reached it though.

no toll roads

i no longer believe in gas stations.
i drive the car until it's a bucket
full of fish. park it & keep walking.
the highway says,
"motor vehicles only"
but i am an engine. i am 
an angel's little machine.
once, i accidentally put in directions
to new york city 
without any tolls. the trip was
eight hours when it was usually two
or three & it was too late
to change course
by the time i noticed. i thought about
how roads are false veins
laid like scribbles in the earth's
blood. turning around & around 
to point the right direction.
headlights boring holes
in the night's overdue veil.
the car died more than once
& i had to restart it. praying
to the gods of guts & gears.
there was no one else in the world
for those hours. only the twist
& the pinch of distance. 
i marveled at my gps.
asked aloud to no one
"what did people do before this?"
i wish there was more time
to be lost. i have not been lost enough.
i do remember print out directions. 
my mother pointing to an exit 
as my father drove us
to the beach for the day.
when i finally arrived 
i kneeled & kissed to the asphalt.
there were angels outside my apartment
eating the fingers of anyone 
who passed by. i offered mine willingly.
i said, "i do not believe in gas stations."
not anymore. devouring a fish raw,
the angel said, "you are not home."
angels never lie. i slept in my car
& pretended all night
i was floating down 
an afterlife river.