anomaly 

a pair of shoes in the 24 hour pawnshop window 
has a dream of running to your face.
my favorite part about new cities 
is the weightlessness.
tonight i am in dayton eating 
red curry in a window with
broken blinds. everyone has a cold
& the air coughs up feathers. 
at a corner store i buy chia pudding 
that makes me feel like i’m eating 
frog eggs. spring is as far away 
as it can get & at night i can taste 
the mushrooms beneath the bark.
you miss me more than you usually do
& i wonder if you know more
or less about me than when we first met.
on the way to the airport the world 
is dark as grass jelly & there are
somehow police everywhere. you text me
that you left your ringer on 
in case i need you. when we first met
i used to call you whenever we were 
apart even though neither of us 
can hear well enough to have 
a conversation. our voices like
butter planes in the dark. 
is there still grapes in the fridge?
was someone in this city here
with as many shovels as me?
i waited for an uber in a square where
just a few years ago there was 
a mass shooting. artists had tried
to make sense of it. i don’t remember 
the title. something about seeds. 
flowers grew. i talked to them.
a little black-eyed susan, asked me,
“is this your face or mine?”
i did not answer. the sun was already 
washing her face. i rolled my eyes 
in sugar. bought a bag of cranberries. 
woke three times in the night 
to look for you.  

spider 

i have been talking too much 
to the spiders. i learn their webs 
& watch as their abdomens swell 
with buzzing lockets. we bounce 
from subject to subject. i never know 
what humans are supposed to talk about.
my partner says, “it’s like you fell
from the sky.” the spiders sometimes 
descend like gymnasts from the ceiling 
while i am hunched over a keyboard.
they mistake the screen for a fresh sun.
all the planets i know of are worn out.
i would be too if i were pulling rocks 
from the darkness. i don’t kill spiders 
instead i cradle them to elsewhere in our house.
i try to explain the cruelty that is 
a body. the light goes right through 
my spiders. the one i met yesterday 
could fit his whole life on
my thumb nail. the spiders rarely 
respond. when they do it’s in prophecies 
“soon we will knit” & “when the deer
get back to the moon.” 
those make more sense to me
than most of my life lately. 
sometimes i confide in them,
“i am unsure i have ever been 
where i should be.”
the needle-leg mother asks,
“could you weave?” i respond,
“yes.” she’s answers,
“then you have found a place.” 
in the morning i nearly walk into
a web with the precision of a
stained glass window. one panel missing 
no host. i too have left
a part of my sky unfinished. 

backstroke 

i do not want to learn how to swim anymore.
instead, i would like to learn
to swallow every lake i find myself in.
once, in the angry summer,
we drove through the head of a needle
to a house in the middle of a birthday cake.  
there was a bear standing in the yard
like a car salesman. he did not leave
the whole time we were there. together
at the mucky bottom lake, i drowned
a few times before anyone noticed. 
i know i know, i just wanted attention.
we all did. we were boneless & barbeque. 
all my angels hovering above the ground.
in the water's reflection, the mountain checked
to make sure she was still beautiful. 
when was the last time you stared into a mirror
so long that you were no longer sure
it was yourself being spat out at you?
i remember the kneecap bathroom. 
it smelled deliciously of wood 
& weathered conversations. old shoes 
growing wings. i told you i do not want 
to learn how to swim but the truth is
i do. i do so badly. i went out to the woods
in the morning while everyone else
was still cave cricket sleep singing.
there, i found a pool of water full
of mosquitos & frogs. i waded into the water
up to my neck. i almost went further
but i got too afraid. when we drove home
i was nothing but a ribbon. you held
the steering wheel like a pie tin.
it wasn't enough. it couldn't have been
to get the motion right. in my fantasies 
i lay on my back. reach arms up. the grain mill.
the greeting card. stomach to the sky. 
already finished. legs kicking the butterflies
out of their sugar. in the driveway 
i caught a storm cloud & shoved it
in my mouth. you were too agreeable 
to say anything. you smiled like someone does
when the person on the other end 
of the line is clearly not in a swimming pool. 

man with scissors 

he says, "i'll cut the pear in half"
& he's talking about my head.
where do you carry your softness 
so that it doesn't go trampoline?
i hold my breath in the grocery store. i hold
my breath. i punch a hole through
a wall in the hope that there's honey inside.
there's not. or at least there hasn't been
for a long time. just pictures of fires.
black & white pictures. they could be
just very nice silk
i try to burry each finger on a different planet
so that wherever i end up evacuating to
i will have a memory of touch
that i can return to. berry tree. berry blood.
the astronauts feast & them i am just
a boiling without any hands. will you take me
away from my self? i need a little break
from skin. i just want to be the fur.
the nice fur of all the woodchucks 
who live by the side of the river.
if i were a toad, i would try to be
the biggest one there ever was. the thing
about men & scissors is they will always
find something you can lose
& they will convince you that you
are alright without it. i crave the pears.
their pale sugar. their bruisy faces.
do you want a piece of me? i do as well.
one bite in the cool dark 
of a morning. perched on a rock
by the stream. the man has never once
even severed a lock of hair from himself. 
the television sends a warning
that i do not bother heeding. 
plum juice is gone anyway. we'll need
to live off comets soon. please tell me
there will be pear trees there.
it does not need to be true. i have 
my own pair of scissors 
if i need to use them. 

backwards car

he says, "this will be okay" while
pressing his foot to the gas.
the world unwinds & i don't know
if i want to have a body anymore.
my blood like oil feeding a little machine. 
i always take things too far.
picture us married with eight children.
a house with too many windows. 
pot boiling on my forehead. 
everyone in the world is watching our date.
we are both almost sixteen. 
i have already turned into a crow
several times & he has told me
the same story about his mother
killing basil plants for fun.
in the parking lot i admit, "i don't know
how to say your last name." he says it
& i follow the shapes of his mouth.
i never get it right. 
it is such a shame we have
to meet each other like this,
so hungry. in the pizza shop
he orders for me. white pizza. 
i try to explain how & why my feet
don't always touch the ground.
he asks, "are you ghost?"
& i can't answer. 
he says he wishes he wasn't a triplet.
we drive backwards all the way
to a creek. past houses & cars,
all of them shouting & saying,
"you are going to hurt someone."
why don't i tell him to stop? why don't
i say "i don't think i want to 
try to love you." instead, i tell him
the opposite. i say, "when can
we meet again?" he promises to unwind 
the sky for me. he promises 
he will cut down trees to see me.
chew up the moon & spit it out.
alone afterwards, i walk backwards 
for the rest of the day. embarassed,
i lay on the floor of my bedroom.
turn into a crow again only now
without embarrassment. 
wild & feathered. i worried love was always
going to be about undoing yourself. 

bird radio

i think we should start packing our bags.
on the television they're talking
about war like it's candy. i turn on the radio
& all there is are blue jays yelling about the seed.
they say, "all we are is jupiter to you, aren't we?"
i've never run far enough away but that's 
what it means to live in the united states.
it's a labyrinth in a labyrinth. sometimes 
you will pull over on the side of the road
& your father will pull over too. you didn't know
he was following you. i know to pack light.
just the telephones & maybe the good knife.
clothes are everywhere. in little bond fires
on the side of the road. we change the radio
to a station of loons. it is calming the way
they speak like fog. like a breath that
consumes you in the morning dark.
i put a dream in the microwave & it comes out
covered in ants. i have enough sugar 
but not enough anything else. i used to think
we had enough heart to tend a fig tree. 
i will spare you a metaphor about the wasps.
if you don't know what i'm talking about,
please google it. but the fruit was always
just a waiting bell. the delivery person
asking to come inside, saying,
"i do not want to run anymore." 
we let them crash on the sofa but quickly
they become a happy meal. you take
what you can get. fries with the state lines.
a jump rope used as a choker. 
my favorite station is the song birds of course.
most of the time when you flick it on,
they are too shy to sing but sometimes
when the world is just right, you will hear them
sing about a before time that does not exist.
tell me this will all fit in a suite case
when we have to run. the birds & all.
the trembling & all. i accidentally turn on crows.
cover my ears. they always speak the truth.
i do not want the truth tonight. 
i just want you to tell me there is a future
in which we do not have to escape.  

self-portrait as a fly trap

i have been so hungry i grew teeth on my hands.
come & feed me your shoes. marvel at how
the carnivore can collect any of us. 
the ravenous flower who ran into
a field of knives to become a new gender.
the ants tell stories of me. they say,
"not all green is home." i learned everything i know
from him. from how he killed his violets
& how he worshiped burn piles 
out behind his parent's blue house.  
he bought me a bouquet of myself. i fed it
the house flies & flour moths. i let the mouths
burst from every wall of my bedroom. 
then my skin. i tended myself. hunted
by the porch light. told no one what i ate.
everyone else with their feet in the dirt.
drinking yolky sun. 
me, the little starvation waiting for a footstep.
i was always ready to close my jaws.
to lock the door. to let the phone ring until
it stopped. dear god what it takes
to admit, "i am a fisherman." 
a fly lands & i tell her, "do not be scared."
close around her. she is me. 
she is a little communion dress. 
hands raised like eucharist. i eat her face first
so she doesn't have to see. 

flytrap to fly 

this is how i write a love poem with my teeth. 
there was a flower once
that we both resembled.
your wings are little pocketbooks.
coins you placed on the counter.
i am here to be the gone machine. 
to be the sofa you do not stand up from.
television still laughing in the background. 
i open my mouth & sing to you
about the soil. we both once slept there
as freckles of words. do you know
what it feels like to hold 
a colony in your jaws? someday you will.
that is what i have learned 
from the windowsill. that today 
i am the one with a mouth 
but tomorrow you will be the bird
who hits the glass or you will be 
the animal with eyes made of gold.
come here & let us speak softly 
to one another. you can tell me 
what you want to see in the clouds
& i will knit them for you. you can confess
all your regrets here. i will swallow them
along with your wings. hold them
in my throat & wait for them
to turn into sugar. 

shoes by the door

let's kick down the barefoot door.
i have nothing for running,
just a kite made of house flies.
i crouch & treat each shoe like 
the animal it is. hungry for a mouthful
of stones. i collect doorways
in a little photo album beneath 
the floorboards. the shoes wake up 
at night & i have to come & teach them
homosexuality again. tongues of fire.
a television the size of my palm 
which i carry from room to room
like a candle. i let the shoes out
so that they can frolic. i ask them,
"can you just promise to come back?"
they don't always. sometimes
they get eaten by wandering bicycles.
i try so hard to cram my body
into sepulchers. it gets loose.
the shoes demand flesh. crave a warning.
i put them to sleep. two by two.
a party for an arch. the storm is coming
& they say the water will rise up
to our knees. for now though
we are married just like we wanted to be.
the door is locked & the shoes
are done kicking. i feed them each
a little beetle. they are greedy & 
try to swallow my hands too.  
i almost let them. i want to know
what is is they're yearning to make from me. 

at the saver's in hempstead 

we try on genders that used to 
belong to someone else. crooked mirror.
floral prints that yield fields of pilled winter hats. 
i forget where we said we were going.
the parking lot is a crushed can heaven. 
pigeons take turns guessing 
what each person who arrives 
is searching for. in the wracks of clothing
i'm looking for you. i'm looking for 
us on the night we met & decided 
to pursue a future as statues.
i told you, "my gender doesn't have legs"
& you said, "neither does mine."
the red tags mean no one wants 
to pretend this gender is worth something anymore.
i pick up my hunger & put it back down.
the sun is setting early. winter has 
a trash bag full of bones. opens it & offers
for us to sleep there for the night.
you buy shoes that don't fit & i buy
a button-up i'll never actually wear.
you ask me three times, "what do you think of them?"
as you lift the fake snakeskin shoes
as if they are little coffins. i tell you,
"they look perfect" when really i am thinking
of cradling farewell pigeons in them.
in the driveway you accuse me of trying
to be something that i'm not. 
i deflect it because i know it's true.
i want to ask you if you think
we are always trying to live inside someone else's clothes
or if someday we'll arrive & move like minnow do.
like we're slipping through ourselves.
i regret my purchases &, when you are asleep,
i throw out the button-up in a panic.
push it to the bottom of the trash can
so you won't see. stand there as if this is
a little funeral. the stars have all their fishing rods
out to tonight. i miss you. i miss myself.
i miss the way we once
broke our skin like bread.

low calorie cook book

i dog eared pages of the little death bible 
& said, "here is all my mouth will answer."
each rib like the lazy teeth of a xylophone. 
i played & played until everything 
was made of glass. trying to turn into a bird
for me meant hollowing every bone
i could find. my own & others. the spoon i used
to cry with. windows open, i feasted on breath.
why do we decide to become wells? here is where
the town goes to wish. a boy asking,
"let it rain toads tonight."
my mother worked with me. we used measuring spoons.
we stood on two separate burners of the oven.
i said, "do i look barbeque to you?" she was on the phone
with a doctor. the doctor was saying, "you have
to eat chicken." my boyfriend camped out
on the roof. said, "i have a wife somewhere." 
i learned that each flavor has the potential
to turn you into a hermit. i licked the ceiling.
taught the moths how to die. locked my door
& savored the sound of corn. she would
put a lid on my bowls of food. i waited
until they were cold. until the night had crab legs.
lit candles to balance on all of our heads.
this was the only way i could eat.
sitting on the floor of my bedroom, telephone
talking about fire & being the best child you can be. 

eyes in the back of my head

i traded a crow for their visions.
one bird eye without any shoes.
behind me is a jump rope garden
where all my little failures go
to have scones. do you ever feel like
even the sky is talking about you?
the clouds make trading cards
of my faces. they say, "look how
angry it was." i don't feel a lot anymore.
sometimes this concerns me. 
i go to a sand box & try digging for
a reaction. some kind of howl.
instead, i find the plastic dinosaur
i buried & lost years ago. he is just
a skeleton. i debate whether or not
to rebury him & i decide to let the hawks
have their way with his confessions.
truly, everyone's tongue is just
a temporary salamander. in the night
mine goes looking for rocks to tell
the truth to. i don't need
a shoe box for my lungs. i need 
a sail boat. i need a man made lake
where all the shorelines are 
rolled-up sleeves. in the back yard 
the neighbors have a meeting about
my paranoia. i show up & they raise
their hands like "i come in peace."
i raise mine too & then we're praising
the pizza box god. there is no where
to runaway in which there won't be
a whole world playing bluegrass 
behind your head. i turn around
& the music stops. using towels 
as curtains. the daylight bleeds
through a lifted skirt. they are saying
if i don't eat soon they are 
going to call in the elephants.
i sew my mouth shut. at first it was
a protest but now i don't remember
what exactly i was protesting. there is
always something worth a hunger strike.
i find a delivery man & he has
a bag of crickets. he says,
"did you order this?" i blink the eye
in the back of my head. 
see the bruise clouds coming & so 
i take the small bounty from him & run. 

sneaking into god's bedroom

we want to try in his clothes.
swallow his jewelry just like we did
with our parents'. there is a mirror here
where all you can see
are your sins. they come in the form
of insects. centipedes & weevils. 
put a blanket over the mirror.
in a drawer we find a gun with a bullet
ready inside. the gun says,
"happy birthday" & we run away from it.
a bedroom is so much like a grave.
here is where you go to be blood nothing. 
where you keep your stories
about the end. how & when you plan 
to take all the wallpaper with you.
i have never seen god. only his bedroom.
only his bottle of pills & his stale glass
of water. when my brother & i
snuck into our parents' room i always
left with something. a lipstick.
a bottlecap. i don't know what 
i was harvesting. their fragments.
proof we were kin. dust beneath
the bed. god has a painting of us
on his wall. the faces look all wrong.
like smudges. like they have been smudged 
from rubbing a thumb across the pigment. 
i have long wondered how many bedrooms
i am carrying. comforters & tissues
blooming like flowers across the ground.
god has a television without a plug. god has
a bible only when you open it
there are no words inside. 
the windows are open but no air
comes in, just the sound of construction.
the street outside is being gutted.
they're probably searching
for plastic babies again. my favorite thing
i ever took from god was
a little eye of the bird yet to be born. 
i found it on the windowsill.
maybe curing. maybe sun-bleaching. 
ran my fingers across the surface 
& promised the never creature,
"i will not take you back here." 

weeds 

i have at least a hundred siblings
if we're counting all the weeds
in my parent's yard. sometimes my father will
go through a phase of trying
to pull us all up. he'll work 
with his bare hands. dandelion boys
& crab grass girls. we spit our eyelashes 
into the dirt. more & more of us.
sometimes i feel sympathetic to him.
we'll go on a car ride & i'll forget 
everything about my body & we will
just be twin rootless cedars.
i want to ask him if he remembers 
the weed killer. if he remembers 
all the times my eyes came as potato bugs.
he thinks he's trying to save us.
the graveyards we have. the times
i have tried to tell him, "this is not
how i want to be loved." what did he think
he was doing in the shower with the curtain
made of butter? who did he think
i was? there was one night 
in a mcdonalds parking lot
where he left us there & we became 
the asphalt breakers. the churches of crows.
now, when i visit i go first to the yard
to talk to the others. i ask, "how many
are we now?" they answer with all
different numbers. i make the promises 
to leave as many of my teeth as i can.
how lonely do you get from you blood?
he sends me a blank letter.
all that is in the envelop is dandelion tufts.
my old hair or else another siblings.
i cannot tell us apart. 

eye of a needle

i do not generally like bible verses 
but i enjoy the ones that 
talk shit about rich people. 
the camels come with gossip
about celebrities. a private jet
they watched turn into a heron. 
gold toilets & gold windows 
& gold tongues. sometimes 
at night i bead by lamp glow.
the eye of the needle seems
like a gone basement door. a place
we could never go. lose your shoulders.
lose your skin. go through with only
your hair. i haven't believed in heaven
for at least a decade but i am sure
there is no gold there. maybe 
flowers. maybe justice. maybe 
a fountain where you can go
& see the versions of yourself 
you have loved most. i feel like
a lunch tray. here are my chicken fingers
& here are my guts. here is the camel
standing & knowing he is a parable.
i feed him a peanut butter 
& jelly sandwich anyway. 
the thread always finds a way through.
selves i drag along like thread.
i think in the fountain i would see
a little boy-girl in a big t-shirt 
talking to a snake. i want to live
with the toads. i want to see 
their coins turn into jupiter beetles 
in their hands. the shadows my fingers
make as i work turn become crows.
they pluck gems from cracks
in the floorboards. fly back 
& forth through every eye they please. 
the camels say,
"you know we all have the potential 
to get that hungry?" 

warehouse

we went to the warehouse to worship 
the keeping. the plastic breaths 
& the aisles of halos waiting to be delivered
to future martyrs. we find there is 
enough for everyone as long as 
you are not wild or hungry. the warehouse
is a dream of capture. of a harvest without harvest.
come & see how to ship out visions
of saints. packing peanuts & clear tape. 
repetition turned into a prayer.
come & let's pretend that there is
no outside. that we are here to live 
in fish bowls with iridescent pebbles.
sometimes we gather in the night
when the missionaries are not watching.
there we trade stories of the woods.
of dirt & sassafras trees. 
sometimes there will be a feral creature 
with fur & eloped eyes.
they are always detained quickly.
sometimes though we catch a fragment 
of their poetry.
once, one said, "you could be angry."
i sat with those words all night. i got up &
walked on all fours through the aisles,
pretending to be a beast.
bit open boxes & destroyed shipping labels.
i knew in the morning they would come
& tell me i was a threat to the process. 
that i was unraveling what has taken
so long to build. i did not care.
i could be angry & i was. 
there are no windows here.
i dream of cutting a peephole 
just so that i can drink one sip
of the cream heavy moon. 

sunday school

it was winter when we walked across
the church yard to watch a man carving mary.
i was in fifth grade & each lesson
was dedicated to learning the parts
of the mass. i don't remember them now.
i slept in chalices & let bells ring 
in my throat. i prayed all the time. obsessively.
my favorite prayer was the hail mary.
she seemed like she might understand
more of what it would be like to feel like
you live outside your body. i was a young queer
in the belly of a catholic church.
kept so much inside myself. there were
cathedrals between my ribs
where i went, harboring relics. a jaw.
a skull. the carver stood on a ladder 
& worked with all kinds of blades.
the garage of the rectory where he labored 
was frigid. i blew hot air on my hands
to warm them. he pointed to her 
& said, "do you know what this is?"
in a quiet voice i answered,
"the assumption." her arms reaching out.
she was being swallowed by heaven. 
angels pulling her skin. her flesh. 
i tried to read her eyes, half-finished.
dull in the wood. did she want to be devoured 
or did she want to die & sleep
in the soil? i thought of my wooden body.
the tree in the yard i climbed. saw 
the faces of saints in the knots. 
delighted, the carver praised me.
other children with their eyes darting 
around the woodshop. months later
the finished piece would be brought
into the church. placed right across
from where my family always sat.
i met her gaze. it was my own.
the look of an in-between creature.
not a plea, but a question,
"where will we go?"

mice

i tell you i don't know why i feel
like an avalanche today. the sky is saying, "i am going
to kill you." grey with a chance
of bricks. with a chance of door knocking.
a former lover in the drive way 
with a bucket of worms.
at the pet shop you ask to look
at the animals before we go. i always want to take
them all home. let them run wild in the house.
destroy my little floor board heaven. 
sometimes when we stand in the court yard
of the art museum we hear 
yelling from the jail a block away.
i always want to know what kind of yelling
it is but the cacophony of car horns
& police faces make it hard to tell. 
of course there is a difference in what
the walls mean. in the cage of mice
we see the flock eating the face of a dead one. 
they swarm him. it feels almost religious.
like "here is how we take the dead."
the shop workers are mortified
when we see it. they ferry the body,
half-gone, away. outside it is still not raining yet
even though the sky looks
like it wants to break so badly. 
i do too. i want to break so badly. run wild.
knock on people's doors & ask them
how many pet stores we are inside.
the snakes & the tortoises. the people
with hands. the people who learn to stand
on the ceiling at night. the skeleton
of the mouse. little wind chime.
what do the other mice say one another
in the wake, now knowing 
any one of them could be next.
is this how we see each other? 
the mice scramble on top of one another.
i want it to rain. i want it to pour 
so that we can get it over with.
the soaking & the sky shriek. instead
it does not storm. even the trees hold
their breath. at home i stand in the bathroom
to count my fingers, making sure
they're all there. 

mechanical insect 

in the night the angels take turns
winding up the false bugs between
the real ones. i am a classic case of capgras.
i know that everyone is always in the process
of trading skin with the soil. you are not
who you say you are & i am running without a face.
once i spoke to a boy on the subway
& i am certain he was an octopus.
a man came by to buy some earrings 
& he was petting a stuffed dog. his baby. 
how do you know what is & isn't a baby?
on facebook the dog shelter posts that they've found
puppies in a dumpster again. they are little 
radios. each of them on a different station.
the last line in the post says, "if you know
the mother, please bring her to us
no questions asked." i have seldom found myself
in a "no questions asked" scenario. 
at the hospital, you can leave your baby 
& they will fill it with strawberries 
until their name turns into a button-mash god. 
i was trying to tell you about the bugs.
i keep a fly swatter by my desk.
the moths are sometimes tiny versions
of my elementary school teachers. they scold me.
worst are those thick flies though. they are
wandering periods searching for
a thought to button-up for winter.
i smash one & find it is a little machine.
just like i am a little machine. the angels come
to collect their handiwork. they say,
"get into the dumpster." i obey because
when an angel speaks you have little choice. 
i lay there & wait to be rescued. to be sung to.
or, at least, for more insects to come 
in their little fairy cloud. each a little camera 
knit by the angels. they tell me
they just watch because they're bored. 

my dad makes batteries that power a death machine 

hundreds a day through his hands. he says the conveyer belt 
is a dream of tongues. of a language none of us
learned to speak. the machine has never drank enough.
in a sense my father is the machine. his fingers 
placing caps & wires. his throat like a water slide
into a pool of pears. sometimes i go into the factory
disguised as a dead bird. the men laugh about 
the life of a hamster wheel. sweat turns to milk.
the miracle of transforming their blood into a charge.
stacks & stacks of batteries. they make batteries 
for the military which is another way of saying
they make batteries for death. for killing. inside each one 
my father touches is a tiny replica of himself.
he is running from an unnamable gone-ness.
the house as a sighing field of grass. there is so much
to lose & so little to keep. the factory tests his blood
for lead. the factory gives him a day off in which 
he vacations inside every battery he's ever made.
wakes up screaming. a rocket fired into fathers. 
those fathers telling him they see the lighting 
& it was his. the machine that demands every joint.
every breath & muscle & night. he returns 
to the factory like a prodigal son. the line starts.
the other men feed the furnace pieces 
of their fingers. tip of the tongue. he does
the same. broken again. each time astonished at
how many fragments he had to scatter. 

on/off 

in the church of my blue 
there is a man without a face
always flicking the lights. in between each blink
the angels come & eat our hair 
until we are bald as blarney stones. 
sometimes the switches in the house
multiply in the night.
i will wake up to find a wall
of light switches, never sure which one
is actually tethered to the glow.
you become frustrated with me
for my perpetual indecisiveness.
i will walk in the ice heaven 
just to tell the gods, "i am hungry
for a green life." aren't we all though
hungry for the green life? 
the lack is always a limb. the one
you search for. the one you lost 
to time's cruel pruning. i have 
a vision of a jungle that is 
wild because we are all intact.
little beasts of many heads & many teeth.
dear god do i wish i was a creature tonight.
i don't want to have to shut
the windows & be bipedal all over
the house. instead, i would like
to let the light switch make
an angel of me. wings that fall
like cherry blossom guts. like the smell
of flowers asking the questions 
you're not supposed to ask
like "what if i chose another pair 
of hands?" like "who would i be
if i never knew him?" the angels shush
the congregation. the church is made
of popsicle sticks & shadows. 
i saved a seat for the other decision.
you say, "what i can't handle is
the back & forth." i am a prophet
of the "what if"? let's take back
dusk's violet eyebrows. 
tell our secrets until our mouths
fall off. they spend 
the rest of the night as moths. 

pink helicopter 

i want my emergency to be glamorous.
there should be photographs to remember
just how purple the flames were.
a bedazzled stretcher to carry me 
into a tunnel of love. where have you gone alone?
i have departed into the depths of 
of a great urgent tonight. i have carried
my cell phone with no one to call.
finger ready to dial 911 in the hopes that
an angel will answer. 
a mirror in my pocket that i use to check
if i still am the gender i claim to be.
when the pink helicopter arrives
& asks what kind of emergency i am having
i will say, "a crisis of lures." by which i mean
i am afraid i don't look like the self i keep
in pictures. call me a vampire. call me
a body lying in wait. call me a retired
attraction. in the hall of wax love poems 
i am the candle. the face soured 
by the moon's fist. i am begging anyone
with a flare gun to let the girlhood keepers know
i am not trying to steal anything. i am 
waving my arms. i am assembling 
debris in the shape of a "help" sign.
no one who ever arrives can help me. 
instead, most of them join me.
put their eyes in the offering bowl.
we take turns snapping pictures none
of us will ever see. 

drive-in theater

on the screen plays a home movie 
of me jumping off the roof.
this never happened or maybe it did
& i poured my memory into 
jelly jars again. i'm sitting with my uncle
& he talks like the past is an ice cream machine.
pumping swirls of "before before before."
"everything used to be..." he says like a litany. 
he wears a little theater curtain 
on his face. i ask him if he has a video
of himself jumping from a roof.
he does not. he tells me to be quiet
even though the sound on the movie 
is not working. he has told me
about the drive-ins many times. you used 
to put the speaker inside the car.
the movie made intimate. a voice
whispering into the cabin. i invent my own
sound track. it is all strings. horse hair.
horses running until their bodies are dust.
a horror movie in which i am both
the rubber monster & the running girls. 
he watches the glow like his life depends on it.
maybe it does. maybe our nostalgia 
is more than just a luxury organ. 
instead, maybe it is what we use 
to believe, "it could be like this again."
there is no one else at all at the drive-in.
it is just me & him. the thing about
this theater is no two people
see the same thing on the screen.
he is smiling with his tombstone teeth.
to him, the film is of something lemon-flavored.
a hard candy night. he does not
tell me what he sees when he looks.
likewise, i do not tell him what i see.
we let each other finish the movie.
what else could we do? 

lanternfly city

i watch a friend kill the lanternfly nymphs.
their thumb to the shoulders of a milkweed plant.
crunched bodies. 
when they are not looking i save one
to ask him what he plans to do 
when he rules the world. 
the lanternfly is young & does not want
to talk about the swarm. instead he wants to talk
about the color of nectarines. he writes a poem
only i can see. we walk down to 
the slit throat of the city where
no one has enough air. he says that lanternflies
& humans are just as hungry as one another.
i believe that. i ask him what he thinks
the lanternfly city will look like
& he shrugs & says it will probably look
just about the same. the thought of staying the same
makes me ache. i want the bright transformation.
a city of wings. of cloud festivals 
& trees that crack the sidewalks open
& release colonies of ants. when you get
right down to it, a species is only a collar 
tethering us back to the most urgent needs.
a place to belong. a place to sing.
he tells me he never meant to come here.
that there are lanternflies who are in a place
some would call home. origin is a series
of deaths because to become your face,
you had to be cut & cut & cut. 
squashed mothers. little graveyards 
in the middle of corn fields. i find a tree
covered with the nymphs. they tell me
the city is already beginning. soon i will be
a lanternfly too. just as ravenous. just as lost.
we will have to re-paint our flesh. 
stand in the shadows of the oldest trees
& hope they remember what to do 
when you are living between species. 

labor day weekend

i forget why dad comes over
but we stand on the porch & wait
for the parade to end.
it is a parade only him & i can see:
jupiter beetles & dinosaurs 
& a little brigade of men whose job it is
to spoon-feed the sun when it is sick.
sweat on our faces. i do not want
him to leave but i
do not have anything else
to say to him. loving my father has meant
cutting the heads off conversations
& collecting a tote bag of every truth unsaid
& everything question that has turned
into a salamander & wriggled away.
escape your need for closure while you can.
he crosses his arms. he remembers
when we used to play trumpet.
wake up the neighbors. the birds.
mouth to brass. the parade has knives.
the parade has so many sons.
i have always wanted to ask,
"do you know i am your son?"
sometimes the potential to hear
the response you do not want
is reason enough to leave
some hungers unanswered.
the parade drags on. we eat spearmint
from the dying bush. green between
our teeth. he says, "i should
get going" & i do not stop him. 
i finish the parade alone. it is him,
my father, a part of the procession
by accident, driving away from town.  

sleep running

the only time i run is in my sleep.
i dream of legs the size of ant colonies.
behind me are all the jewelry men
& wedding faces i have tried to sell on ebay. 
a chicken with a human mouth 
tries to catch up. he is selling a subscription
to the moon. he says, "if you don't
renew now, your free trial will end
& you will stop being able to look up."
there is no where to stop. the street
turns into a catacomb turns into
a radio wave. the voice of an old man
talking to himself & one other tongue.
you asked me once why i wake up
covered in sweat. i go to the shower,
still panting, limb trembling from 
my near escape. i tell you i have night terrors
but i leave out the part about
running until my body is bicycle.
in my hometown i run through the park.
street lights cast my spider shadow.
the owls & the night children run too.
barefoot. bare hands. a squirrel 
offering a rest in exchange for a breath.
i let the water spill over me. 
wear my lungs as slippers. mist in the air.
the morning sun, a little thumb print
on the day's chin. i sit on the floor
in the tub. rub my hands over my face.
remember when even the dandelions ran
to try to capture me. what they all
wanted with me, i still do not know. 
look at my face in the mirror
& see what is missing. a footprint
where my mouth used to be. 
spend the day trying to set traps for
whatever might chase me in the dark. 
useless. all the alley ways & all the corridors
& just full of mourning doves.
they pretend they do not remember,
saying, "what do you mean you were hunted?" 

puppy

puppy is a place you go when you
need the strawberry life. when you crave
an open wound to make a cake in. 
i have been the puppy & i have visited
the puppy like a pilgrimage 
& other times like a confessional.
puppy is the yarn ball unspooled. followed
to the mouth of a felt cave. the candle 
hovering just above your head. a tongue of flame.
a lost tooth in the gravel. there are fish tanks
of puppies & puppies in frames. 
i gave a puppy away once to a boy
who didn't deserve it. i said, 
"we can still be friends" after he turned
my face into a punch bowl. invited his friends.
they were all kissing strangers in the hallway.
i said, "excuse me, excuse me." 
the puppy got loose. the puppy got
a choke collar. we took the puppy to 
the doctor & the doctor looked just like
all bathroom men. i put my puppy
in my purse so i could sneak her into
a tornado room. it was just a simulation 
or so i was told. sometimes you pay
just to hear your name in the mouth
of a puppy. leash & licorice. jumping rope
on his back. a puppy in the glove box. 
i tell the puppy, "hold your breath"
as the cop sniffs for puppies. 
he says, "no puppies here" because
he's useless at recognizing joy. 
from now all i just keep them to myself.
the minute you start sharing the puppy
is the minute it becomes what someone else wants.
i pet my little salvation. she chases her tail
& so do i. i promise her, 
"we will never try to meet god."
she eats honey from a holy in my hand. 

my doctor tells me "there's so much we don't know"

when i taught the virus how to swim,
i lived inside a single breath for days. 
tied the hallway in a knot.
ate corn bread mix from the box.
i woke up once in the middle of the woods.
the virus had hair & a single tooth.
i followed it deep to the foot of a tree
where i tried to cut off my hands
but they kept growing back. one test claims
i am a ghost. another test suggests i will
need to have my mouth amputated.
for the final one a psychic meets me
in a parking lot. holds my hands 
& tells me, "sickness is just a state of mind."
those kinds of words get my people killed
& so i scramble away as best i can.
slept in the back seat of my car
& waited for the stink bugs to stop
playing their old punk music.
years later they are still lifting 
up my body like a stone. hefty little danger.
my fingers. my knees. there is so much
we do not know about the body.
it is more like the ocean
than i even thought. the waiting room
where i stand up & leave
deciding i need to be a dragonfly
for just today. to be gloriously unfixable.
the virus visits sometimes still.
i do not hate her like i know i should.
i tell her, "i know you were hungry."
she does not speak. sometimes comes
in the form of a bat or a bird,
other times, a centipede. we have come
to understand each other
the way predator & prey design 
ourselves as complimentary bodies.
my organs like sick pears. the virus
tells me what the doctors cannot.
she says, "you are alive. so am i." she says, 
"ask them more questions." i do even though 
i know there is so much they do not know. 
we end up talking about cranes.
both the birds & the lifts. 
the doctor asks me if 
i've ever tried to cut off my hands.
this is where i lie. 

to find a boy

i go outside to find a boy made of corn
but it is too early in the season.
instead i find one made of grass
& one made of cattails. the story goes that
your boyhood is something flammable.
to be dried out in the sun. i put dimes 
in my eye sockets. see all the places 
money is calling us to hide our eggs. 
in the yard we talk about how 
europeans keep their eggs 
on the counter & here in the united states
we keep them in the fridge with 
little stamps on their foreheads. 
i tell my chickens to find me a boy. there is
one in every attic & one in every basement
but i need one with wings. i need one
without any holes. brand new.
fresh out of a neat disaster.
i once went on a date with myself
& i noticed three minutes in & i excused
myself to the bathroom where i wept.
it was at the cafe in brooklyn 
where the pictures online made the place
look nicer than it was. i do & don't
need to be seen as a goat.
i spit out a key to a car i don't own.
the boy was nice enough. he held my hand
as we walked across the pier 
where boys were kissing & boys were
unzipping themselves like selkies 
from their boyhood skin. to be a  boy
is to always be trying to find
a place to take the boyhood off.
for some of us that only happens
in the mouths of our lovers. i try 
to live without skin as much as i can.
it's not easy though. i lose my bones.
root in lost-&-found bins for them.
catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror
& every time, it's different & yet
somehow completely unchanged. 

curfew

give the midnight neon
the benefit of the doubt.
we might just have enough animals
for the kind of revolt
with butter & lamb. without 
harps & without running.
we sneak out like only cockroaches can. 
you tasting the fallen pizza tree.
a dump or a future honeymoon.
slaughter daughter. slim laugh.
catch your breath. catch ur lilies.
copy & paste the old trauma 
but make it teal this time.
if i could be home already 
with the tv turned on to watch 
what happened, i would press “record.”
don’t try to sooth the beast.
just feed the beast ginger until 
he sings. tell me a lullaby backwards.
talk to the river with me.
i have come to feed it my teeth one by one then finally
let go my tongue so that it
can become the little fish
it always wanted. here are
our brief & rust-sticky lives.
tell me it’s not true. the sirens
have never been barefoot like us.
we have hunger on our side
by which i mean
the police are the agents of
anti-desire & to long is 
to live. we are fighting monuments.
they are fighting pigeons.
we sit on the roof of the broken
train station. wait for the sun
to slip one leg free of the blankets. 

headlight tree

do what the seance tells you.
i put on my personal protective wear
to walk to the park. everyone 
is oxygen again. breathing like fish nets.
i have never kissed another diver
but maybe i will tonight.
instead, i have shucked my face open
like a clam. tell me how the water
reaches god & comes back down again.
a hatchet grows a personality & gets
it's own reality show. then it runs
for president. i convince myself
we are trying to heal. what do you do
when the wound is a part of who you are?
a fabric of the self. every stitch
an urgency to try & stay together.
tell me, bone, do you remember
how we used to dance in the iris 
of the sun? do you remember how
the voles used to try & eat the horizon.
we shooed them away.
the headlight tree is always car horn.
always burned skin or at least
singed hair. it does not remember
what fruit it used to bear. now it just
holds hellishly bright light.
more grow each dark. a vision before
turning into a roadkill saint. 
you can pluck them though.
you can hold the scream until
it turns to hair. take a bite of 
the halo. it tastes like butter cream icing.
then, an after taste of blood.
metallic. a ghost knife passing
over the tongue. you cannot keep
the world safe. you cannot even 
keep yourself safe. we can gather though. we can
ask one another, "what do you remember?"
split the headlights in search of 
the old shadows. when they are found,
care for them like nestlings. kin. 
contrary to what poetry has said,
hope is not the thing with feathers.
the thing with feathers is us. hope
is somewhere else & this is too urgent
to worry about what hope is & isn't. 

cleaning up hair while we talk about sainthood

you make me promise not to get
on a plane & try to become a sea gull again.
we daydream about our deaths
& our glorious novels we’ve never written.
i have shaved my head for years now.
i love the feeling of getting down
to the scalp. it’s like finding the truth
in a skunk cabbage patch. i talk to you in my earbuds
as i work. the razor like a little ice skate.
i ask you what your patron saint is
& you tell me you don’t know any saints.
we can fix this by becoming saints ourselves.
i think i am the patron saint of
uncertainty. you agree that maybe
you are too. it is amazing how we can
make one another forget. i miss a few patches
of hair on my head. leave them as feed for the crows.
wash the hairs from the sink. they are
like grit. you are telling me you have been
considering getting on a boat
& never coming back. buying a necklace
of one-way tickets. i tell you that you
should shave your head & you laugh.
there is (unfortunately) always more
to get down to. the minute the hair is cut
it starts growing again. if not uncertainty
then i am the patron saint of not saying
the reason why i called. you hang up
because you have to go. it is later
than we said we would talk. i have
a plane ticket in my throat. i get in the shower
to spend jellyfish time. how to tell you i am
no longer a flute player by which
i mean i do not think i know you anymore.
which is either good or bad depending
on what evening we are talking about.
i look in the mirror & start over again
only you are not on the phone. i am there
alone with the razor ready.

full moon

when the full moon comes
everyone loses their eyes.
it is just a matter of 
whether you notice it or not.
we go outside to try to help others
before we help ourselves.
that leads to a quarry of eyes.
eyes in strawberry patches 
& eyes in the pockets of greedy men
who want to see more than they were given.
when i used to work the crisis hotline
calls always increased around
the full moon. 
people would say, "i need my eyes.
i need my eyes."
i would say, "i am here for you."
by which i meant. "i am here
for you in the dark." 
the trouble is that they mistake eyes 
for light. eyes for waking up.
once, my mother called & i pretended
not to know her. she said,
"i was eating the ceiling again
& then the planets started to blink."
what you see & what is there
is not always the same thing.
sometimes i see centipedes 
& they are really just seams where
one world bunches up against
the next. let's reject the blindness metaphor.
this is not about sight
but about control. if i can see
the hole in the ozone i can 
keep walking away from it. if i can see
my neighbors i can remind myself
i am not them & they are not me. 
eyes in the cupboard. eyes in the cereal box. 
the big secret is that the moon
is just one big eye. it always blinks
the exact same time as you
& thus we miss it. i didn't want to end
the call with my mother.
i told her, "we are alright"
& "tomorrow the moon will shrink."
deflating balloon. the stolen eye
with a little green halo for an iris. 
i pick up the phone & talk to anyone
i can find. i ask,
"whose runaway do you see?" 

telephone

we talk about skin & the boys 
we no longer want to be in love with.
i lay on my stomach, girlhood style,
while we talk for hours on an after in august.
we decide we hate fireworks
& that sex is actually better without completion.
for years you have lived only inside my phone.
i hate the phrase "long distance"
& i replace it with "last distance."
without our flesh, what do we become
to each other? shadows? banana leaves? 
suite cases? you are chasing a boy 
to boston. i am chasing a burning house. outside,
the sky is orange from forest fires in canada.
i become increasingly aware
i will probably never see you again.
there was a chance earlier this year.
i was in your town. i was sitting
at a bus stop eating my own hair. i could
have called you. instead, i kept running.
i hate the word "adult" because it is always 
handcuffed to "being an" adult which i think
is just what the world uses 
to steal us from each other. i talk
about all my friends like lovers because
we are. not like candle-lit mouths
but like running from the furnace. 
when we hang up, i walk from room to room.
log on to my computer to 
be an ouroboros for the night,
scrolling until i see a picture of you.
the film reel blanket. i hope you follow him
to the city & i hope it is everything you crave.
call me after & tell me what
the sky smelled like where you are.
mine in still a bonfire. my lungs 
like two shoes kicked off at the front door. 

goat mother

we could be the television repair men. 
i hold up a tape recorder to ask
"is your tongue loose?" i have a cupboard
just for lungs. breathe soot. breathe boots.
the goat mother is a place you go when 
you need to make something useless.
tell me i am not the cow you wanted. i am
a goat on the roof. i am the mother of all horns.
i am the architect of underworlds. we knock
on doors hoping one will open to reveal a whale. 
the town sometimes catches fire 
& we have to cover our eyes & pretend it was 
no one's fault. sometimes a person just
dies by murder. the passive voice says,
"look at the goldfish." i look at the goldfish
& they are all skeletons. when the television is broken
there's no use in running around & looking
for manna where there is none. this is what i mean
when i say i want to be a repair man. i want
to come in through the window & say,
"we don't have to look at the mail box anymore,
let's turn our thoughts into stratus clouds."
every once in awhile after seeing something happen
i will put my eye in gum wrappers.
unplug the television just to find it is 
so well maintained that it just keeps going.
i sometimes wonder if i have been conditioned 
to fav or untruths. they are generally more
comfortable. tell me i am good. tell me
i am the goat mother or else at least
that there is one looking out for me. i make
a plate of feathers & ring a bell calling, "dinner!"
you haven't lived until you've spent a year
only eating air. eyes like back doors. sneak out with me.

giant

have you ever become so huge
there's nothing big enough 
for you to eat? i crouch beside the red cedar. 
my body bigger than our house. i do not know
how i ended up in the bones of a mammoth
but my fingers make earthquakes 
when they touch the soil. this is what
i've always feared most. that i will become
so capacious there will be nowhere to rest. 
this is the giant's fate. to always keep
one eye open so as to not crush everything he loves.
the planet, like a gumball. blue flavor. quick night.
trying to find a pasture without cows
to sleep. i have dealt with my head as a balloon
& having frog skin for a whole summer
but nothing is as terrible as being a giant. 
when other humans see me they put on 
sunglasses. they hold their breath 
like they are going through a tunnel.
i wish someone would come & be a giant
with me. that we could maybe take care
of a little flock of cows. tend them. 
dress ourselves in moss & strings of lilac & hyacinth. 
then, in the dark, tell stories of our smallest selves.
whispering, "thimble" & "needle eye."
you then replying, "robin's egg" &
"strawberry seed." i've heard you have to wait
for transformation. that it is both of you
& around you. i am waiting to be
small enough to feast again. i am waiting
for a bed that will hold all my teeth 
as they fall like rain from a cloud that follows me.
when i am manageable-sized the first thing
i'm going to eat is an entire watermelon.
you see, i am prone to hugeness. 
there is not a house big enough. a ceiling
that doesn't strain under the sound
of my longing. would you come though
& be hungry with me? i want to dream flavors.
conjure our violet escapes. 

olive oil

my great grandmother feeds me spoonfuls
from where she rests as a hugeness.
the ghosts become larger before
they shrink to the size of strawberries.
little bells rung only when you wander
too far from the blood zoo. 
i have been told there are too many
& not enough geese. when i say "light as 
a feather" i mean this is how we walk
with the dead. careful not to ask too many questions
or else the haunting might become
our sleep lily. i have never known enough
about where i come from. instead i am
the walking chair. here are the limbs.
here is the island. the jump rope without jumpers.
in a dream we are all running from 
dinosaurs. only, one is a man in the family
& we all have to pretend we love him.
the thing about olive oil is that it is
both gold & green. my great grandmother loved
to use it for everything. floated in a glass of water
for divination. rubbed on the back of a fish
to bring it back to life. 
an olive tree grows sometimes in the yard.
no one else can see it & it speaks 
in riddles that lead nowhere.
"who is red & also translucent?"
"what is a hand without a bird?" in the end
i just eat what i can. put my tongue out
when she asks. let the olive oil turn me
into a chicken heart. a strawberry.
the open window where we let 
the dead in. they crack their knuckles.
play cards with moth corpses. 
i lock the door some nights 
then hear them scratching 
like stray cats. "go home," i say.
"you are our home," they whisper. 

trash dusk

the beautiful tells me to go down
to where the flies are. put each of my fingers
in little gum wrappers & wait for the swarm
to have a love poem about it.
i used to sleep between two dumpsters.
one was full of mannequin heads & the other
was full of all the delicious that the grocery store
couldn't manage to sell. beetles & gnats 
& juice bugs would come & call it
a land of plenty. that is where we live
even if it doesn't always seem like it.
the land says, "i put on earrings for the elegy."
i collect eyes from a grove. new eyes to replace
my old ones which are starting to become
obsolete. you cannot see all the bullshit
with the old version. some people i've heard
opt to let their old eyes turn into lemons.
i do not mean to always be the bearer of bad news.
i want to just go to a sunset & not know
it's really decomposing. that it's really
a decommissioned god. so many people
have worshipped the sun. the sun feels guilty
about everything it cannot do. the smell
of garbage is the smell of running away.
the car window rolled down. a hand
reaching into the night as if to grab 
a holy place. if you carry a plastic shopping bag
odds are that you'll find a chance 
to fill it. do not believe what you are told
about the taste of roses. they are bitter
& they will make you sick as the last
threads of light. do you still tell yourself
"tomorrow will be better?" i do not.
instead, i unwrap just one finger. play a game
where i pray it is a thumb. when i get
a thumb i let myself pretend to be whole.
go into the dumpster & find all the little stars
that used to talk in languages only they knew.
they smell like worms & rotting strawberries.
i fall asleep like only leaves do. 

ai image of us as _____

our spit out machine gave us a wedding
in which there were no chairs. like the apparatus 
i am too characterized by my absences.
some will call us soulless when they hear
about what we have done. the coal 
pushed to the side in the mouth like a bit of chew
or sucked-dull wad of bubble gum. 
i am sick of talking about evil as if it is
something dug from between shoulder blades
& backyard sandboxes. as if it is as common as rain.
the device had makers
who scoured for faces to feed it. they said,
"here are the most delicious arms" &
"here is the dreamland park of your hunger."
shot trees with their favorite guns. 
stood on their porch, pouring water 
onto the asphalt & laughing.
did the device, like me, weep as it learned to eat?
i have devoured onion from the yard. i have
put a spoon in my mouth to quell the future
ringing in my teeth. we were not on the street
without a stop sign. we were not
the girls whose heads did not match.
the device says, "give me another chance
to skewer your limbs." it blinks. the gods do not
have ears or at least so i have found.
instead if find it best to take all your pictures
in the dark so that no one can steal them.
our faces, like two dinner plates held
in a garden of shadow. this one is of our honeymoon.
there are no hands, just blur. a second arm for you.
what we will make with this runaway dog
i do not know. for now we have the story
of how the morning was dragged 
from beneath a thumb nail. 
we can ask one another, "do you remember
when we were made of leaves?"

shaving cream

i start with the hair
& move to flesh. my skin rests
like a table cloth on top 
of a dinner. i am a roasted chicken
& a trifle. i am the grandmother of 
all sweet forests. i go past flesh
& arrive at muscle. i have always been one
to pick at my face like a graffiti artist.
here is the secret to the universe. here is
the prophecy. why is it always written
in blood? underneath the wallpaper 
is the secret map to where all
the crows are plotting a fresh future 
for me. the muscle is tough. 
doesn't come apart easy. is the remainder 
of every time i didn't say, "help"
when that's what i meant. eventually
& after lots of tearing & lots of towels 
to soak up the mirrors, i arrive at the bone.
here is where i am told the gender
is stored. i find nothing but little rhinestones.
my teeth into bells. good god this is
what i wanted. to be the skeleton girlboy.
to run then, leaving the meat like
old magazine in a pile 
on the bathroom floor. wiping shaving cream
from my hands. i take my skull to 
the cedar tree. become a lantern
& a lighthouse. all the moth come 
to worship. i promise i'll come &
clean up the mess when i'm done.

the park

a man wanders in circle & feeds the geese
who are not there. once, i turned into a pigeon
just to get out of a date i didn't want to go on.
i saw the person arrive at the park.
he looked around but found someone else
to kiss. relief that i had not caused too much sadness.
a park is one of those almost places.
the deer that come are confused as to
whether or not they are in the future
or the past. a child runs so wild
he turns into a red tail hawk. haven't you ever
blinked & found yourself at the highest point
in one of the grandfather trees? i have
& up there i have heard angels gossip about us.
they are saying, "they think they're happy."
i do think i am happy at least for the most part.
as happy as you can be at park in the middle
of an empire of ammunition worship & jesus puppets.
i do not argue with the angels though. 
instead i go down the creek because at a park
there is always a creek. the water that sings 
about earrings & fingers. dip my own in there.
remember turning into a goldfish as a child
& dying just to get it over with.
at the park everyone is a family & no one is.
it is a reunion or else a collision. i want
to call everyone to a pavilion & say,
"let's celebrate my birthday." it is not 
my birthday but it could be if we all
wanted another confetti reason to celebrate.
the best parts of the park are where
you can pretend it is not a park. that you are
deep in the forest of wings. that no one
is going to find you for days. then, you glance
& accidentally there is a stoplight & there
is a man running away from the ghost
of his father. i would like to find
one of those perfect places & spit on the earth.
then wait for a dream house to grow.
it would not have to be large or even purple. 
just a little place to put my heart
in a jar by the bed. a tiny door to close
to block out the celestial chatter. 
i never want to leave the park. i transform 
back into a human. the man still wanders
in circles only now the geese are real 
& they have shopping bags they fill with silver. 

directions to my tongue

you make a left where all the birds fall 
from the sky. where the ghost of a fox
hunts daffodils. where all the children go
to stare as if an angel will appear.
you walk over the bridge of lizards.
i have never been there so it might be
a bridge of actual lizards or it might
be just a euphemism for men on their bellies.
haven't we all been a brick in a bridge?
i have used my bones to welcome 
animals into the wind chime season.
once you have crossed the bridge
you are going to have to talk to your father.
not the kind of talking you usually do
but the kind that involves blood.
the truth with all its grease & butter. 
then, he will remove a key from his mouth.
you will have to find the lock.
some people have had to search for years
but i will give you a secret, it is
usually at the back of your own throat. 
i believe gravity exists to remind us 
we are always pulling each other in.
my body to yours & yours to mine.
have you ever loved someone so much
you open your mouth & they're talking.
this is what it will mean to arrive
at my tongue. the last step is to hitchhike.
you will stick out your thumb
& wave it on the side of the highway.
no one will stop for hours. only get
into a truck if it is purple. ride for days.
watch home videos out the window.
a swing set on fire. a planet washed down
the drain. when you get here take off 
your shoes. lay down as if my tongue
is a bed of moss. i asked you here
so i could tell you what i always wanted
to tell you. about the blackberries
& about the bone you broke as we 
were running away from your father. 
his eyes like jupiter beetles. angry as ever.
i hope you know i mean to swallow you.
it is only right. do you remember making me
into a pill? rolled between your forefinger
& thumb until i was round. 
you know as well as anyone that our skin bends but 
does not forget. here is my tongue.
tell me, did you think you would be
this small when you returned?  

glow prophecies 

the pool hall was only open for a month.
we went there to kiss & make our eyes
into cue balls. blue chalk on my fingers
from rubbing the end of the stick.
in the corner, they had a pinball 
& mortal kombat machine. i liked to be the monsters
when we fought. it was the only time i really felt
like i could beat him. i smashed the buttons
as if each blow were crashing into his body
& not the little radiant avatar on the screen.
i used to wish for life in two dimensions.
in the game, there were so many less direction 
to hide. instead, i was paralyzed 
in the three dimensional world. all the pockets
on all sides of the pool table. so many places
to lose track of the truth. that is what
they do to you, shoot your eyes
into shadows & leave you chasing them.
the worst part is i would not describe him
as a terrible man. maybe careless or hunger 
is a better description. but then again
maybe i am too enamored with
the mortal kombat life. the thrust forward.
die backwards. i think of him in the dark of the pool hall.
glow of the neon wall signs casting pinks
& blues & greens across his face.
his smile was always off-kilter. 
in the game, i listened for the raspy voice
that would tell me "finish him." 
i took so much pleasure in that.
a pixel body severed or crushed. 
he always beat me at pool. cocky, sometimes
he would shoot behind him own back.
when the place closed 
we arrived to find the whole hall emptied.
black windows. it was as if
those nights had never happened.
he pulled by my belt
into the alley beside the hall. 
it smelled like flat soda & garbage. 
two dimensions, forward & back. 
he kissed me like a wad of gum. 
shadows cast around us. my eyes
somewhere else. in the pockets 
of a pool table who knows where. 

place

at valley forge the cannons wake up dazed.
roam alongside the deer that are eating 
each other's ribs.
the winter has enough sadness
for all of us. they look at their reflections
in the pools of half-frozen water. remember
the memory of a child turned
into ammunition. how they swallowed the skulls
& spat them out. though truly
they are just replicas or else grave markers.
massacre is this country's greatest love. 
the cannons saunter the woods & imagine themselves
living as animals. long deeply to die 
like the deer die. withering until
they are nothing but the sounds
of wind chimes. there was no battle
at valley forge. instead, there was 
a little nest of lost empires. they wrote letters
to their empty gods. fed them to one another.
mouths open. hungry as hunger 
would allow. the creases of the land.
the cannons now wondering if 
there is a story that could be told about them
in which they are not the ending. in which
they do not spit punctuations 
across the hillsides. they hear the snow coming
before anyone else. huddle together
pretending to be pack animals.
one cannon says to the other,
"i wish i was a house" & another asks,
"do you think it is too late 
for me to learn how to be the wind?" 

electronic universe

how little light do i need?
i sell all the bulbs in the house
for moss. spread it even as jam
across the floor. a new carpet
of meal worms & wood. 
did you know there are 
saints who run all night 
to make sure the sun hatches 
at dawn? i see them outside
on their motorcycles. use a butterfly net
to catch them. put them in little terrariums. 
i just need one day where the sun
stays curled & caterpillar. 
give me the black forest cake. give me
the ink velvet. 
i have tried to swallow 
as much dark as my body will hold.
spoons & kings. the basement smell
of mold & decaying halos. 
walking down there with 
a single candle. little planet.
i plug in my face & wait for it
to want to eat again. let's not confuse
terror with love. love with hunger.
i am in hunger with 
the ceiling grease. we try to scrub 
our chickens clean. they turn
into doves. they lay dove eggs
each of which bears 
the bad news. little notes
with nothing but dates inside.
what do you think they could mean?
i am not as hopeless as it might seem.
i have a night light. i have
a god i used to pray to. 
now, i huddle with the other tangerines.
we take turns eating each other's 
flashlight glow.
i am never quite full enough. 

how to get a mortgage 

bury your teeth in the front lawn
of an abandoned house.
in a city of vacant rooms,
you are the dog. we are all running from
the debris of the fiber glass moon.
you carry a bag on your back 
full of snow globes. each of them
are a place you died. you have
collected much more than nine lives.
the cats are not jealous of the ways
you keep coming back in search
of a place to chew your nails
like everyone else. to own the land
would mean to kill it.
to say, here is the blood i turned
into a landscape. into a rose bush.
instead, i want
to lay down & let the moss
build a house for me. 
give me a swimming pool full 
of rice. a cupboard of canned beans.
basement full of secret whales.
sometimes i swallow peach pits
in the hopes that one
will grow a house boat. 
little raft between my ribs.
i walk for years until i reach
a beach covered in tea pots.
there a shark washes up
on the shore to tell a prophecy.
"this will be water again," he says.
you blink your eyes & you see it.
the depths. your childhood home
in the bottom of a fishtank.
goldfish as neighbors.
they put a veil on your head
& tell you, "please be descent." 

men on fire

i've never learned how
to run away from god
but the men who race motors bikes
in the city seem to know how.
a police siren spits its teeth
at the asphalt. i wonder 
who its going to eat
& if the men know how
they plant to evade the color red. 
i am headed to a cemetery 
in my head where i can go & be
five years ago. i don't know
what i was then but i am 
a nostalgia sick creature.
i wear mice in my brain 
& feed them every coin i can find.
when we drive & you sing to me
i become something else.
be sweet like we used to be.
be a cup of heavy cream.
sometimes i want to join them.
buy a motorized bike
& try to catch up. discover
all the men are angels on their way
to make their heaven mischief.
we give the immortal too much credit.
all they want is a hoagie 
& a diet coke. somewhere a building
gets its neck broken 
from too many hungers.
people evacuate & stand 
on the street corner,
looking up at it. the cemetery i visit
does not allow flowers or men.
i tell the stones,
"i am neither" & they wink at me.
a dragon dies in a front lawn.
the world is not deep enough
to bury it. i hear the bikes again
as they go around the block
for the second time. the police car 
is running without eyes.
you park the car
at the look out & the city 
is one big siren. i tell you,
"i am on my way" &
i am talking into a tin can.
you are not on the other line
or else you are & just 
don't know what to say. 

stomach death

i make all my mirrors from ice cream.
sticky & melting. i lick my hands clean. 
i am the zoo where the animals stand & stare outwards.
dear god i have done everything
to replace my stomach. i have tried
making a drum & filling it with teeth.
i have tried a great boiling pot
& even a feather pillow. if all my hunger
could have legs it would run towards
the interstate. i put my tongue on a leash
& walk it down to the creek to drink. it refuses.
instead, it screams in the language of fire.
in my stomach, a ferris wheel eats 
every child who approaches. haven't you ever
gone on a rampage towards your body? i've taken
scissors. cut off limbs. removed organs 
like furniture. in my bedroom there is
no bed. just a hole in the floor
& a sign that says, "don't fall."
when i suck my stomach in, i always pretend 
i am an alchemist. that i can transform myself
into the one & only blanket fort.
do not believe me if i tell you
i am a creamsicle. instead, take a spatula 
& flip me on my back. i am the halo
without the hole cut. a dinner plate
piled high with uncooked fish.
i want to love the body the way rain does.
the way it spills & drenches. i want to 
follow my throat not like a tomb 
but like a tunnel. on the other side
i am told there are geese. 

fog maker

i did not want to lose you.
the fog came like ice cream trucks.
like a knife without a father.
we were walking as if neither
of us had ever waded into a grave before.
did you mean to leave me
with all the skulls of the voles?
i wanted to hold on 
to whatever filament would
give us more light. the apartment
the size of a thumb. come my love
let us not be dangers to one another.
the fog poured from a wound
in the mountain's stomach.
he was always trying to eat.
i never meant to be a man. then,
there i was with all these hands
reaching in to turn me
into an organ. the notifications
on the apps where gutless people
would ask, "are you awake?"
i took a walk through town in the fog
in the hopes of running into you.
i mean the you where my eyes live
& the you i meant into a pine cone's teeth.
no one believes me when i tell them
there is no way out. they say,
"don't you have a shovel?" &
"don't you have a mother?" i ask you though
have you ever tried to find anything
in a world this thick? pureed moon.
a serving fork. i was hoping
the water would take me with it.
that you would wake up &
i would be what coated the grass.
what waited like jewels on 
your windows. i would let you wear me
as a ring if you came back 
& let me be my dead self. 

carnival apparatus 

that summer, i went to the carnivals alone.
everyone was dying 
like silverfish. you lived inside 
a telephone. i said, "when i die
will you please come & marry me?"
you spoke & the line cut out & i asked "what?"
too many times until i just had to give up.
sometimes you can feel someone else
slipping out of your orbit.
sand through fingers. colander 
of corkscrew pasta.  butter melting into silk. 
i went on a ferris wheel. just me. there was
not even an attendant. the ferris wheel 
looked out over the whole county.
trees & little wounds where there once
were coal mines & the rail roads 
crisscrossing the land like stitches. 
i find myself wondering often
about what was removed; from myself
& from the land & from you.
i want to remember you in a crowded cafe
sitting across a tiny table from me. 
the carnival became everywhere
i needed it to be. in the grocery store.
in the woods where i always found dead deer.
you can build machines to keep yourself alive.
the carnivals saved me
& took me apart. once, on a summer night
where my blood had turned to sugar
i called you & you didn't pick up.
i was going to beg you to come 
watch the fireworks with me.
to be terrified is to know exactly
where the carnival is. 
survival is sometimes a process
of motion. the tilt-a-whirl. the scrambler.
vertebrae of neon. the summer always ends though.
there is always a skeleton
on the other side of the flesh. 
the ferris wheel always stopped
at the top for me. just myself & the old trees.
feet dangling above your mouth. 
call me back please my love.
tell me where you keep your carnivals. 
what you see when you look out
above everything.