motion activated light

i will know when you're home.
the geese will cut off their heads
& their bodies will fly south.
i don't have to tell you it's winter.
dead trees. coiled-fist leaves.
the television will spit rotten strawberries
from its mouth. i will not be able
to sleep. starting at the door
with an axe in my hand. 
for me the past is a place full 
of hay. mold & dampness. 
the driveway of my parent's house
used to have a lamp that spat light
when i returned. it pulled a shadow
from my shoulders like taffy.
trucks going way too fast 
down the country road. road kill machines.
the rabbits would trip the light too.
their little skeletons. once, a rabbit
who was struck by a car. the rabbit limped
& then turned into a bible. 
i have a hard time being holy
even if i'm dying. i brought carrots
to the bible. i prayed the rabbit would return.
tripping the light over & over.
you, my father, yelling, "stay still."
i froze in the glow. waited for the light
to stop. convinced myself i could
move so slowly the sensor
could not see me. i crawled 
for hours the short distance back home. invisible.
i felt accomplished. i know by the taste
of the water. the milk in the sky.
you always slammed doors. did you do that
to trip the light? did you look
for your shadow? did you pause
in the driveway & marvel at it?
when you are home i do not want to be.
i slip myself into the darkness
& make prayers to rabbits & doorknobs.
you are not home not at all. a home
is defined as your absence. here,
the lights do not search for bodies.
here, it is just my bones & my myriad of shadows.
i sit outside on a tree stump by the ghost moon.
headless geese fly overhead. 

every icarus

& the joke of it is
the sun is just a basement dart board.
this is a story about
who is a father & who gets
to be fathered. i worked
for hours in my bedroom
trying to build a pair
of working wings. i spit 
on my hands. i prayed
with saint cards. i sewed
stray pigeon feathers 
to form garlands. wrapping myself
like roadkill. all the while
my father stood in the doorway.
he took a steak knife
& carved "ungrateful"
into the wall or was that
my thigh? a thigh & a wall
are similar just like
an ocean & a driveway are similar
& a fall & kneeling.
i always knew i was going to
plummet. this is what happens
when you try to put masculinity 
in between your teeth.
i screamed, "mine mine mine"
as if i could wrench it 
from my father's throat.
he is the axe by the door. 
he is why birds die suddenly 
mid-flight. i am not a bird though.
i am a cherry tree or a loose veil cloud
or a boy just like every other boy
who lives inside a stained glass house.

ice road

i have no idea where
my manhood is going.
he's got cargo.
he's eating bbq ribs 
as he drives
& licking his fingers.
once, i shot him through the head
but he just kept going. for me
a gender is always something hunted.
i carry a pitch fork.
i set traps. i'll try 
the nice guy routine &
i'll put on a football game
& pretend to be watching.
yes we could get along.
maybe this is a place i could
settle into. then something brushes
my skin wrong & i am running again.
he needs to be useful.
that is his biggest flaw. 
utility should never
be sacrificed for glamour.
glamour is where
the witchcraft is.
he chooses roads of ice.
headlight like blooming skulls.
chewing the inside
of his mouth. everything is
a close call. a wife on the line.
the wife is me. i stand at the sink
& see the snow coming down.
manhood is not coming home tonight.
relief pours over me.
i get to be giddy. i get to be
empty of delivery. instead 
i get to eat the ceiling again.
when he gets home he'll ask,
"how did this happen?"
i'll wipe my chin & say,
"i was hungry 
& you weren't here." 

consulting the cards

i don't want to know the truth.
give me the cryptic ending.
there will be angels as pizza delivery drivers.
i clip my toe nails into the toilet 
while on the phone with
my ex father. he says
he misses me & i think,
"yeah i bet you miss 
having someone to chew on."
i plant my ears 
beneath the sycamore.
the sycamore groans & tries
to dig them up. no one wants
to hear what i hear. a chain saw.
a choking rabbit. a glass
dropped on the kitchen floor.
there are still shards of glass
deep in the flesh of my feet.
why don't i make a fortune emergency?
i plug the phone into a sap scab.
vibrating sun. false teeth in the mail
& coming soon (thank god).
there are not enough drivers
to complete your ressurection.
instead, i lay here 
in the freshly mowed yard 
& i think about turkish delight.
how i've never had it & probably never will.
sugar on my fingers.
my father is on the way 
or so he says
& i laugh at him because
he doesn't know where
to be on the way to. 
i could tell you
the cards promise a lit match
& a feast of quail eggs. i could tell you
they are showing a squirrel funeral.
it's all more or less the same.
the future has a piece of sinew 
in its mouth. my father is
not here. i am free to a good home. 

bildungsroman with strawberries & an ice pick 

we are too old to be children.
i steal the atmosphere 
& you steal the gun. 
i am falling in love 
too fast again
& we are in time square & 
i do not want to know who i am.
poetry is better
when it's not being sold.
that is why i sold videos
of my teeth online. 
there is always a part of your body
that will need to belong
to another.
this is for survival. 
when you spend too long
adhering to tenants you do not believe in
there is a rushing out of the self.
i washed the feet of men.
they told me i would make
a wonderful boy.
an antique market
on the side of the road 
where we ate grocery store strawberries
& made too many promises.
boyhood is a place where
all the pocket knives are born.
i would watch them emerge 
unbidden from the palm
of the man's hand. 
he refused to weep. we are driving 
away from our life & pretending
we have another. a hotel in the sky.
it lasts too long. you read me poems.
we argue about everything.
it is easy to fall out of love
when you have no money
& only jars of your own blood.
unscrewing the lid
to take a sip. garnet lips.
i used the rest of mine to buy you flowers.
they turned out to be
carnivorous. 
love me until
i am dust. rusted ice pick
i keep in my trunk. it wasn't for you.
it was for the winter. 
winter has six fingers. has a fourth
& fifth eye. frost on the windows.
waiting on your porch.
each breath a cloud. an angel.
do not believe for one second
you have become a human.
it is a process without an arrival.
here is where i learn 
to swallow a whole necklace. here is
where you apologize without apologizing.
i lock the door that night.
text god, "i am not your son."
no answer. you call eigthy-two times
& i finally pick up. 

feather pillow

all through the night
there are starlings.
"look a chickadee"
you say & then i'm there
standing on the bed
with a blow torch 
in my hand.
put it down slowly. 
i was the one
who went out to the coop
to pick the chicken.
grabbed them & stuffed them
into the nightmare.
we must eat to survive
or so i am told.
there are animals
who don't. butterflies
without mouths. 
i do not want to live
this life if it is only
going to be darknesses
like this. sometimes
i cut out my tongue
just to watch it grow back.
slug factory. 
i do not know
if there is a place i could sleep
in the way i want to.
there used to be
the old apartment.
with sun coming in 
every window. i did that
for you though. i didn't 
do that for me. tell me please
what does it look like
inside a feather?
is everyone laying down
& looking up 
through the leaves of a tree?
is everyone sick & in bed?
the pillow was not as comfortable
as you might think.
instead it felt 
like a body bag. i breathed in
the animal. tossed & turned.
a pocket full of change.
i want to lie down
but the birds keep plucking
at my strings & propping me upright.
wake up. wake up. wake up. 
i am the birds of course.

firework harvest

when was the last time your father
was your father? i was at a county fair
& i was a snail. he held me in his hand
& said, "i love my daughter."
sometimes a touch is a site
of fire. i watch the man run
with his red flaming baton 
to light the bed posts & send them 
into the sky. why has it taken me
so long to remember exactly 
all the places i have been severed?
once in a poetry workshop
a classmate lamented
"nothing has ever happened
to me" by which they meant,
"how am i supposed to write poetry
without trauma?" the truth is 
the county is fair is a place we've all been.
everyone has a father like mine.
one without eyes when it's convenient.
when you realize the truth 
is a lemon tree you have to buy 
a shovel. you have to go & talk
to the snails you once were.
rid yourself of salt. when was
the last time you begged? 
i don't enjoy the word "trauma"
i think it's used too broadly
to mean "bruising." i don't have
trauma i have a firework harvest.
i have a fire i walk with in my hands
& anything could light the sky up
with a flash of sound. i love my father
even though he one ate me
like funnel cake. once licked
his fingers. how is a girl supposed to
resist turning into a snail?
i watched the fireworks with him.
i always watch
the fireworks with him. 
gold & red & green. i swore once
i saw one that was blue
but maybe it was just
a ribbon cake. do not limit
the ways you write. do not believe
for one second that pain
is delicious. it is electric.
it is enduring & edible. 
i want to tell my classmate,
"would you like to borrow
my father?" 

field mice

the bed is full of girlhood
by which i mean fear.
a gender is always
a synonym for an emotion. 
the field mice are boy tonight.
monster machine comes
to cut the corn 
& they run to our house.
talking in the hallway
the mice say,
"in another life 
i was a headlight."
lately i do not believe
in true anything.
there's no true genders
or no true morning or
no true family. this is 
horrible or freeing 
or both. it's always both
but i'm bisexual so 
i just always say that.
there might not even be
a true conscious.
it's fun to believe that maybe 
my words are not my words
by a sum of a lot of water
& salt & pepper. 
i make a little dinner
for the field mice 
& tell no one. i tell them,
"i am a boy too."
they rejoice & we have
a boyhood party. then they 
are gone & i am in bed
talking about terror again.
you are talking about
a paranoia of mice 
in the mattress.
i feel for them & find 
my first lipstick.
crush it in my hand 
before you can see.
it's cruel how the season comes back.
always a girl or a boy
or a girl or a boy. when i say
i'm neither i do not think
i'm much different 
than anyone else. i am just
charting those changes.
most people walk through them
like a fallow field.
i talk to mice. i let them
in my bed. 

funnel cake crown

i'm not that kind of beautiful.
i am in the fryer letting my skin
turn flakey & full. a bruise is a place 
to plant the future continent.
a living ground for meal worms 
& fathers we get to burry.
i do not want to be treated
like a dessert anymore.
running through the house
tracking powdered sugar everywhere.
there is always a war going on
even if it's just in a snow globe
to you. once i saw a man
fist fighting another man
on the sidewalk outside my window.
a tooth fell free from one of the men's mouths.
after the glass candy sirens
i went down in search for it.
i wanted a souvenir. but there are
other kinds of beautiful i could be
if you wanted. if you wanted
is something i say when i mean
i want you so badly i am turning
into a sawmill & cutting off my fingers.
i stop talking to my mother.
she becomes a quilt mice nest in.
the apartment is a refrigerator box
& then it's a dance studio &
then i buy an aquarium so large
it takes up the space of my heart.
sometimes someone does something
so bad to you that you have to
just operate as if it never happened.
i do not believe in death but i have
been dead at least once. 
i call for delivery. it's a pizza 
i'm going to feed to a bear. 
you tell me you are sick of people
saying sorry. the word is my beautiful slug.
i carry it into a salt field & say,
"we are going to be okay"
when i am certain the word is not.

grease trap

don't twist your guts at me.
i am only the knife sharpener.
i've never even eaten
a fried twinkie. do you know
on other planets
they don't worry
about calories & fat?
they just eat until they are
complete. once i sat outside
a mcdonalds & counted swans
as they swum down the interstate.
everything in the united states
happens on the side
of a road. we see a train & i remember
taking the train to work in the city.
my eyes often fell out 
& instead of putting them back in
i would eat a protein bar
that tasted vaguely of birthday cake.
the grind is sad & so is the grease.
i didn't mean to stop talking
to everyone it just was easier that way
& then i was free to set any fire
i had been waiting to. i do not enjoy
any fried food except when 
it is in my mouth. there i can 
remember the fryers at the back
of the malt shop. a bubbling grease stain.
how the grease became a god
in the throat of the contraption.
cleaning the gunk & livers
from its teeth. this is what it takes
to spit out a golden necklace. this is
what it takes to choke on
a planet. i am terrible at chewing.
instead, i swallow as much as i can.
my hunger is hapless & often rude.
don't mind me. i am not 
trying to make the best of anything.
i'm trying to unclog the machine
& see it flow with water. 
i'm trying to call home
& have the home be a different home 
entirely. one without mornings.
one with a toaster perpetually dinging
to say, "we are ready for you."