how to breathe

i am sorry. i can only tell you
what i've done to breathe.
this will not work for everyone. 
i knit gills from the stray threads
of my mother's knitting.
one follicle at a time. blue & purple
& speckled brown. all the while
trying to fill my lungs with coins.
what will you take with you
when you turn back to the water?
this is how i think of memory:
the fish in me that craves the deepest
depth the ocean can offer. cave or chasm
or trench. there, trading in our eyes
for prophecies, i will rest. i have always been
hungry for what i cannot breathe.
give me ghost knots & smoke. give me
the piano wire hair of angels. 
i could never understand why
everyone else was alive on the playground
& i was so dead. i'd walk down 
to the creek where there floated 
all the bodies of not-girls. i would
talk to them & they would tell me
all i needed was water. cattails & tall grass.
the gills now like a pleated skirt
which i wear to hear everyone talking.
tell me, what organs have you made
to stay alive? i have one single wing,
a third eye, & the gills. the other children
with their big lungs full of gnats.
they don't even know how loud
their throats are. we know though.
we hear every breath. the snakes in the grass
tell me, "do not dream of being like them."
i lie & tell the snakes, "i don't."
of course i do. who doesn't want
to inhale & have the whole world 
bent to our tongue? that has never been
what i've known. though, lately,
my teeth have been piano keys. 
i invite the minnows to come & play. 

costume jewelry

tell me it's okay
to miss my sickness sometimes. 
how a mania can form a burrow
where everything glints in the light.
we go to the flea market where each stand
is a little graveyard. whose pearls around
skipping around my neck? whose heads
rolled out of their felt hats? the dead birds
circling overhead waiting to take back
their feathers. i sometimes like to believe
in false gods. i prefer costume jewelry
over the real stuff. i like a diamond
without a tongue. a ruby that would
snap under foot. maybe it is because
they are so much more like me.
i have a set of teeth i use just to say,
"i am doing well how about you?"
sometimes my crazy is my favorite
little worm field. look at the chandeliers.
look at the centipedes. i'm not afraid
of worshipping vacancies. i catch
our reflection in the sapphire. my warped
water balloon face. running into a furnace
of glass eyes. let's not pretend 
there wasn't a wound in the ground
where the bones came out. i am promising
that once you get over the fact
that the necklace is not going
to talk back to you, you can say anything.
i pray for trees to grow pearls. i pray
for platinum nights & to loose my feet
to the escape. sliding along a collar bone 
of a dead girl. me, the dead girl
dressed to the nines in costume jewels.
this is what i mean when i talk about
my other life. there she was & also
there she never ever was. 
now, let me go off & be delusional.
i do not want to know these are made
of glass. tell me we are the gold children.
tell me the bugs on the walls 
are not bugs at all, but gems. 

vacuum gut 

i breathe in the dust 
in an attempt to find gold.
or else i am kidding myself.
i know i look for trouble. 
run my tongue across the floor.
here are the paper clip funerals.
then, the eye lash speakeasies.
everyone is hiding something
& i love to clean because
you can find clues on the ground.
once i found a runaway note
from my father
when i was vacuuming 
my parents' house. he said,
"i am a crow now." i put the letter
in my mouth & chewed. 
the body is great at making sense
of debris. i cough whenever
i smell bleach. it is the scent of
"i do not want you to know
what was done here." i have lived
a crime scene life. weeks ago
opening the guts of the vacuum
to find a single tooth. it was 
not my tooth. i know someone
was here gnawing on
the stairs. it has made me
an expert at hiding the seam.
the key must be swallowed 
as a limb. goodbye nighttime.
cloth moved across a greasy stove.
we have been doing nothing
but roasting lamb. by lamb
i mean a child. by a child
i mean myself as a child. 
she sleeps in the oven. peers
out of the door. asks me,
"is it time yet?" i keep working.
wipe down the toilet. the walls.
my own face. once i found
tangles of tinsel. i plucked them
from the innards of the machine.
braided them together. joy is best
kept like this. small & unexpected.
i get on my knees &
continue to worship. 

botanical cure for all despair 

the doctor fills my mouth with dirt.
i try to talk & say, "i want a cherry blossom"
but he cannot hear me
& so he plants a pear tree.
i am a child of pear trees.
the one outside my aunt's house.
how she never harvested the fruit 
until instead of pears, eyes grew.
then mouths. the mouths said,
"why are you not hungry for me?"
the doctor is not a doctor 
but a boyfriend. haven't you ever
believed in love as a panacea?
well, not quite love. when i say love here
i me desire. when i say desire i mean
he took everything he could from me.
i have stuck shovels in my flesh.
lied & said, "i have playdough lungs."
breathed in the noise of an unlocking door.
the taste of soil. how it stings
& sooths. how it carries
the bone shards of the first mammals
who ran, terrified from a ball of fire
in the sky. why are we not worshipping
the sun? why are we not having secret
rendezvous with the ghost of the moon?
the pear tree grows & grows
& like all promises, is abandoned
by the planter. the roots. the branches.
the children who come to climb there
& carve their initials into my throat.
i tell them, "it is not love if it means
you must destroy." then again
here i am with a stomach full
of ancestors. each of them a pear.
each of them fallen in the yard,
rotting like a pile of shoes. 
then, the flesh is sweet. then i weep
in the form of fledglings. 
then the doctor says, "it is a miracle."
cure is a synonym for 
"i want to forget you."

potential museums

in my parent's bedroom
i label each artifact. here is
the only full-length mirror 
in the whole house. 
here is mom's makeup bag
that smells like roses. the dried
lipstick. the fractured blush pan.
everywhere is a museum
if you live like me, with history rot
in your mouth. i have gone there too.
labeled your tongue, "unknown artist."
no i don't believe in curators
or even really picture frames. 
let the penguins run wild. let them
talk to the pigeons &  conspire
to their heart's content.
my father was a builder of museums too.
he mad them in the basement. 
little replicas of us. he would say,
"here is my hungry daughter"
making the eyes blink at me. 
i am the patron saint of falling short.
of calling in the middle of the night
just to hang up. each telephone 
worthy of a plaque that reads,
"we missed our flight." let's not
forget about bathrooms.
the trashcan labeled "tell me more."
what about the gift shops though?
they are always about try
to take that which cannot
be taken. it is a museum after all
not a gender. once i had a boy
reach in my mouth & take one
of my teeth. or was that my father?
or do i have two teeth missing?
it is best not to worry too much
about the underground collection.
a museum is what you see. is what
you want to bury like a king.
the work of a museum is never done.
each room has the capacity 
for fracturing into a shrine.
i will not let this be a shrine.
this is for the greedy & the guiltless.
will you come with me just to look?

the last light bulb 

everyone is always saying "i remember when."
nostalgia demands butter & throats.
this is to say, i remember when
they grew on trees. when, in a moment
of darkness we would go out with 
our open palms & return with enough bulbs
to make a new sun. the problem with 
looking back is it's always a miniature lie. 
the trees sung during storms. threw their eyes
at the gravel driveway. begged us, "learn
to speak into the shadow."
i cry but only gumballs come out.
then, only little prizes wrapped in plastic. 
the gathering begins after dusk.
word passed from knuckle to knuckle
then tooth to tooth. 
there is one more bulb alight on a sycamore tree.
the shadows stretch the length
of every hunger we've ever had. we follow it.
like moths. like disasters. like fodder fish
to the angler's question. how will 
you use your light? this is something
no one ever asked me. so, i spent as much
as i could on windows. on pine sol & 
trumpets. there is a new religion 
for the final bulb. they worship without eyes.
fill their sockets with replicas of dim lightbulbs.
i am told if you are not careful
you will begin to worship the past.
i hold up my hand in the glow 
of the bulb. see the shadow, an unfettered spider
reaching for a breath of absent gold. 

city on my face

there is a stoplight
between every one of my teeth.
i expect to see you in the morning
when the pigeons turn into police.
you will pass me & take a bite
out of my skull. all the balloons
will pour out & make a threat.
there is a camera we can wear
as a necklace. it blinks like
an eye & captures your every move.
i am going to a museum to become
the relic people want to worship.
no one likes a living monument.
i have had purses hung on my tongue.
shouldering through a crowd 
of mimes. here is the wall. here is
the box we're in. if you take 
a black light to my neck
you'd see all the footprints &
not in a sexy way. if you
took a thumb to my lips
you'd become a new street preacher.
the end is coming or else 
it will be laminated & in brochure form.
i define a city as anywhere 
we go to be ravenous. to be thirsty.
there are no where cities & everywhere cities.
that means you are always there
& you are always gone. sometimes
i would, arrogantly worry 
about running into you
as if the ocean doesn't have bigger 
destinies to align. as if the ghosts 
don't have enough chess to play
at the park. a street eats its own legs
& then eats me. my phone rings
& it is not you. it is a rat that
crawls out & onward 
into a hole in the atmosphere. 

proportions of a crucifix 

you didn't grow up catholic
if you didn't think that maybe
the adults gathered at night
& sometimes chose someone new
to crucify. i would check my own hands
& my father's for stigmata or scars.
i was fascinated by the gore. 
once, when no one else was home,
took the crucifix down
from above the living room
& traced the tributaries 
of jesus's blood. the gash on his side.
tiny gems of blood forming
a second halo. wondered if salvation
was something i should be able
to feel. almost like a wound.
every year i was the altar boy
for the stations of the cross 
at our church. it was the only time 
i was really interested in god. 
his head was always too big
on the crosses we had. i held one.
a hot air balloon. tears. the weight in my arms.
his hands contorted like pinned spiders.
the heft little queer not-boys bear. 
candles. incense. 
i am not that enticed 
by the question "why would god
sacrifice his only son?" i know
what a father is. i know what it means
to be a gender. to always fall short.
i am however drawn to blood.
this is the one thing i take away
from being catholic. the blood.
the milk. the body. how the cross is
always too big for jesus 
or always too small. it is as if
he is trying to fit into a mythology
or a mythology is trying
to fit into him & i know 
exactly what that feels like.
i really did think that. that maybe
the adults got together
& sometimes selected a new god.
tied them down to planks
of wood maybe out behind
the rectory. i always wondered
if this was an honor or a curse.
i feared at every gathering
a ritual like this might begin. 
planned several escapes. a dash 
into the cornfield. hiding beneath
the blue station wagon. 
a queer not-boy trying to out run
the blood that would come from being a son. 

we talk about the weather but really we're talking about the distance between us

i am so glad to go outside again.
the daffodils have tongues out 
& eyes blinking at the ardent light. 
yesterday it snowed in april
& i almost called you 
to ask if you remember when we 
built a house from the snow. 
you would not have been home then.
we talk in the driveway. i wonder if
you still call me "niece" 
when i am not around. it is almost always better
to not know how others speak of you. 
they can conjure all the ghosts they want.
you tell me soon it will be 
baseball season. baseball season is
always just around the corner.
the sun is getting bigger they say.
a thunderstorm is coming. a blizzard
is in the pillowcase. i love to wake up
to the fog, you say & i imagine
you walking the dirt paths 
that weave between the corn fields.
in the fog i disperse. i become a silk scarf,
or, worse, a veil. winds are picking up.
pull leaves from the oak trees.
hands slapping the pavement.
it will be time to remove the storm windows.
then it will be time to turn off the heat.
put the jackets back in the foyer. 
those itchy red gloves. you tell me
you look forward to the heat. 
i tell you that i put in my air conditioners
this morning. stood in front of the cool air.
hurricane season is no longer a season,
it is a way of life. naming the children
who will tear the shingles from the roof.
i wonder if, in the back of your freezer,
there's still a sphere of hail 
from the time they fell the size of golf balls.
we harvested them like the seeds 
of future faces. if it is there, i think 
i want it back. i do not call you though.
it rains. nothing grand or extravagant.
the kind of rain not worth talking about.

community guidelines 

do not speak the name of the devil fish. 
instead, call him "father." do not look
off camera at the ghost. do not ever
insinuate that the world is ending.
the world is not ending, it is just
a permanent temporary fire.  instead of
"grief" say "guts." instead of "guts"
say "gills." are you breathing? good.
you are not allowed to die here. instead,
if you feel like you need to, you can
be unalive in the garden of thumbs.
do not talk about who is killing the bees.
instead, make a diorama of the dead bees.
make them beautiful. do not name
the person who chased you with 
a kitchen knife. instead, call him, 
"television" or, if you must, call him,
"nowhere." instead of "nowhere" say
"a place in which nothing exists."
if a hole opens in the universe
while you are filming, you should
pretend it is not happening. we would
not like to upset the future generations
who will look to you like a god. gods
defining quality is that they are not afraid. 
instead, pretend it is just a swarm
of butterflies. instead of "love"
say, "butter." instead of "hungry"
say, "elevator." there are so many words,
why be vulgar? why not be clean?
if you are clean everyone will see you
& even if only for moment they might
just think, "that is a prophet."
but, do not ever say "prophet"
instead say, "neighbor." most of all though
do not say you are witnessing 
a massacre. "massacre" is not advertiser friendly.
you want to be advertiser friendly.
instead, turn your tongue over like
a bedsheet. invite your followers to rest there.
then, in the dark, without the camera on,
you can talk to them if you must.
instead of "massacre" you can say, "country." 

ghost tornado 

my father told the story of death
& how he visited my grandfather
at the house on noble street.
shutters banging & turning into geese wings. 
the trees that bent into jaw bones.
chickens in the yard, running 
towards their red coop. the tornado touched down
& followed the railroad tracks in lyons.
plucked rooves from nearby houses.
angels' faces torn off & turned into grey clouds.
sometimes, as a child, i would watch
the house remember this. it came on dark nights
& when my blood poured out through
a memory on my tongue. each fissure
is a rope thrown down the throat
of a ghost. the phantom of the tornado 
visiting without any teeth. without any
of the rattling. just returning to say,
"you begged." i am often mistaken
for my father or my grandfather by spirits.
i do not correct them. i try to see if i can 
live in a way that heals the tributaries 
we share. once though, the tornado came
with all of her fury. all the pictures fell 
off the walls of my bedroom. i begged just like
my grandfather who thought death
was coming for him. who thought
the world was ending. maybe the world
was ending. has already ended. will end again.
i asked the tornado, "what have you come for?"
&, to my surprise, she spoke to me. she said,
"i have come for your genders 
i need all of them to rest." i told her
i do not know how to give something
written into me, away. 

we take turns saying aloud the names of small towns we pass

when was the last time you walked into a knuckle?
the cave behind a knee? sometimes i believe we are
traversing the body of a giant. her kneecaps, the mountains.
sleeping lips. cracked neck. night falls & every street is a television game.
you say, "east texas" & i say, "paradox." you say, "smicksburg"
& i say, "centralia." watching the hills name each other.
the land which asks, "who shall we eat tonight?"
we talk about teeth & where to plant new ones. the headlights,
like fresh eyes ready to see a destiny. instead, they take us
to gas station with catastrophe bathrooms. chewing pink gum
& drinking root beer. tell me love, if i were a town,
what would you call me? would you stop at my long-since-vacant
grocery store? coal fire in my throat. a row of houses,
all of which with their lights on all hours of the nights.
a lighthouse is not just a thumb by the sea. it is wherever 
you go to remember where you are from & where you are going.
i say, "harmony" & you say, "seven springs."

on the night the moon roof opened & let in a heron

you were always telling me that they
are good luck; the heron with dimes
for eyes. they are glinting in the headlight glow
on the highway leaving philadelphia. 
i am starving which is to say it has been
six years since i've eaten anything
of substance. i live mostly on the hair of stars.
the heron plays with the radio. 
i have a credit card the size of a catastrophe.
my bank has over drawn three times this month
& each time i reach into my pocket & find 
it full of vole skulls. sometimes maggots.
to hunt for treasure is to believe in god.
i do not believe in god. i believe in herons.
the heron does not speak. rolls down the window
to feel the wind in his feathers. he steals
my telephone & calls you & i beg him not to.
i tell him, "i am not ready to be in love."
for me, it is always like a disease. the moon's chin
in the moon roof. her cloud skirts & whiskers. 
i do not know where i am going
& i do not want to find out. the way home
becomes less & less a destination & more
a craving. the desire to have you here
instead of the heron. the heron's jealousy.
he asks, "do you not want the prophecy?"
i could drive into the river, grow feathers,
& become one of them. you do not pick up.
i am headed towards you. the apartments
are one fire or else they will be. the heron asks,
"have you ever seen two herons at once?"
i am not sure & so i do not answer.
i drive until, at a stop light, i open the door
& push him out. regret floods my bones.
i roll down the window to tell him,
"i am sorry." he shouts back, "you are not sorry
you are scared." moon roof still open,
the moon spits a me. i drive onto turnpike.

rejuvenation 

i am told there is a surgery
to turn us back into fish.
when the procedure is done
the doctor puts on a pair of waiters 
and walks out into the surf 
& throws you to the kelp mother.
is it always a mistake to return?
when i cut myself gills i feel
like i can breathe only
they close & then i am a person again
strolling through target 
with a credit card. i used to 
have this compulsion of trying
fit myself back into clothes i wore
as a child. breaking seams.
i said, "look i am still a daisy 
in the mouth of my mother."
there is nothing left but the fabric.
but the corn & the thread &
the taste of a ripe mango sun.
the first years i was back
in my hometown
i haunted every memory i could.
stood in the tree where 
i kissed boys in lighting storms.
took my body to the sewing machine.
here is my face without 
the scar. here is my chest
without the steering wheel.
i go & get a mirror. work on it 
until it gives in & finally says,
"here you can look at yourself
when you were a girl." i see 
nothing but a pair of hands.
do not believe anyone who says
return is about rejuvenating
the old flesh. instead, i believe
in flooding my museums 
with birds. i live somewhere between
memorial & dreamscape.
we are not gone. we were
never gone. 
 

limb death

when my phone died, i hadn't backed up data
for four years. 
at the shop off the highway
we loaded the old memory onto
the new phone. it took me back
to 2018 when we were still talking.
you were waiting to come inside my dorm.
where was i? maybe pacing.
maybe eating moths. did you love me then?
i am sorry but i do not remember
if i loved you. i do remember the night
we spent standing in the parking lot
in the rain. i imagined being struck
by lightning & turning into a god.
you told me about your pet hissing cockroaches.
i told you about the jar 
of my own teeth i kept in the closet.
we had shoe box lives. carrying fingers 
& elbows in plastic bags 
from one season to another. 
i think we tried to not make promises.
it was the summer before i left
for grad school. forgive me but i forget
where you said you were going.
a trip to the moon? a sawmill 
to remove your feet & replace them
with hooves. i almost text you
as if we are still in a different world. 
as if you are still outside
of my dorm waiting to be let in.
instead, i pause & delete the conversation.
it is like losing a limb 
all over again. burying a hand
& waiting for another to grow back.
do you still have our messages? do you
still have the thumb i gave you? 
come inside. let's be fists if not wings. 

elegy to a dead iphone 

i want to believe we will escape.
drive home on a cut in the earth.
all the water rolls off the back
of the mountain & through my head.
dear god the fishes have bullets now
& so do the birds. they say,
"defend the angels." i saw
your eyes spin like radio dials. we were
standing at a gas station looking
for a hole in the wall to climb into.
home was a lighter & a little incense cone.
praying to the umbilical cord
that it might tie us back into 
a swarm. instead, the beautiful hope machine
said, "we are going to have to walk 
back to the pie tin alone." i wept.
craved sugar drowned cherries. 
you held me & said, "we can wait."
i still don't know what you meant.
wait on god? wait on the sky?
wait on the road to lead us into 
a boneless place of rest & cauliflower? 
in the car we split a cosmic brownie.
i licked my fingers. the headlights 
were halos. one for each of us.
i said, "i just want to be 
in my bed." there was no bed to be had.
instead, we slept in the back seat.
you with your face against the window,
me a crumpled fruit snack wrapper
against your chest. for a moment
of levity i opened the moon roof.
glimpse of squinting stars. 
lights of the parking lot trying
to drown them out. you, promising me,
"we will." i filled that in "we will 
find our way back." but maybe you meant
"we will wake up to the sound
of sea gulls" or, even better, "we will
not need the ghost anymore. 
we will treat the road as the deer do,
like a dance with death." 
 

light ice cream 

tell me you are avoiding a conversation
with the gods. now, you do not have to choose
between satisfaction & hunger.
we make food without any marrow. 
in the ice cream section i find the ice cream
with the least calories. put a spoon in my mouth.
count my steps to the moon's melting chin.
when i say i am ravenous i mean 
there is a door kicked in where my stomach 
should be. i mean i have tied notes
to the legs of carrier pigeons just to find
they are delivering them to the tree in the yard.
i did not even know who they were for.
the first time i realized we could measure
just how much we are supposed to consume
in a day i was giddy. finally, a way to understand 
my body in proximity to death.
we do not spend the day. the day 
spins us like spools of thread. i love
to scrape the bottom of the pint & pretend
i am a libertine. yes, this is the carcass 
of a swan. yes this is exactly where 
irises go to turn to seed. lick the spoon.
taste the sound of cream. once, when 
i was a child, i ate whole fat ice cream.
i did not know it was whole fat, i just
sat in front of a television & it sang to me.
i am terrified of what it means 
to indulge. i do not know if i ever do 
anymore. if i did though, it would involve 
a ritual sacrifice. cutting off my own thumb
& feeding it to a cow. saying,
"thank you for your blood." the cow
unzipping his flesh to reveal he was 
a flock of spoons all along. the serving size
is a half a cup. we all know 
no one is going to eat just half a cup. 

how r u?

sometimes i get text messages
from the birds. they ask,
"why are you dying like this?"
they ask "how r u?" by which they mean,
"does your species plan to grow wings?"
i sometimes harvest feathers 
in a vain attempt to become a crow.
i would be well suited to that life
of screaming & searching for treasure
in the mouths of dead gods.
instead, i have fingers to attempt to.
lately, i have been holding them up
to the sun & waiting for them to grow eyes.
but, to answer their question. i am 
glowing. i am on fire in a good way
& in a bad way. good in that sometimes
i cannot sleep i am so angry. i search the house
for a reminder that there is love enough
to fill every vessel in the house. that,
on the right day, we could welcome a cloud
into our house. comb her fur. feed her pickles.
bad in the sense that i do not ever sleep
through the night. bad in the sense that
my uncertainty about the world we need
sometimes transforms into doubt.
i start to build a bunker full of wisteria trees.
do you know you can eat
the flowers? all & all i am catastrophic.
that is how i am. 
i am chasing butterflies. i am so in love
that sometimes i forget i was once alone
walking through a blizzard in february
dreaming of boys just like the boy i love.
i don't ever text back to the birds.
after all, they are only ever a few breaths away.
i wave to them in the window.
i keep my original answer. i am glowing.
i open my mouth to show them
the fire i've built there. magazines 
& eyelashes burn there. the birds reply,
"we are glowing too." 

bees nest 

the first bee i saw crawled on the back window
in late june. little did i know that soon
they would fill every moment with words
about their hugeness. they would whisper
as i would try to sleep & even when i tried
to kiss you, "you know we are the size
of the whole side of the house." i didn't live 
there long but i dreamed of winning enough money
to buy our little row house even with 
with fractured foundation. a part of me
was maybe dreaming of holding on to the bees.
owning them like they owned me.
it was not long until the whole back hallway
stank of their death. a musty sweet smell.
their bodies laying in little graveyards.
i vacuumed them up & more would come.
they watched me constantly & so they knew too much.
"you are in love with unraveling" they'd pronounce
& i would say, "i know." the nights 
i drove to see you even when the moon
was eating his own eyes. climbing, like a pear
into your mouth & begging, "will you make me
your little god." i envied the life
of the hidden queen. every single bee
as he died sang of her. to be loved like air.
to be loved with rampant hunger.
i think my love of the bees was really
a craving for the house to devour us. 
make us into bees too. the work, they said,
was hard but you got used to it. dying 
in search of the sun just to be reborn
as a hum. when i left the bees were furious.
i didn't want you there. i didn't want you
to see how much i begged them to wait for me.
i cut off a finger & handed it over.
pleaded, "let this be a brother." they dispersed.
by this time they were the walls themselves.
they said, "take your blood with you."
i still find carcasses sometimes 
in old boxes. old shoes. i hoard them.
lay them out on a line in the windowsill.

orchard

that was the year the apple trees grew bones.
femurs & skulls & teeth. we all talked about apples
like a past-tense god. i ate my own hair one night
because it smelled like jonagold. my first job
was working at the orchard. i was surrounded 
my men with hairy arms who did not pack lunch.
instead, they reached & tore off the fruit 
like they were trying to find air to breathe.
i was not always the slowest picker. usually, 
i was middle of the pack. their skin dried my skin.
some night i worried i was turning into an apple.
i would run my thumb across my face & worry
about worms & rot. the orchard is endless it will
start to become your everywhere. i would wake up
& walk through an orchard to school & into 
an orchard in my bedroom. there were orchards
of dead birds & orchards of beer bottles.
the sound of wind through branches. always something
to collect. fill the basket or the crate. i loved most
to eat as i worked. apple juice on my chin.
i am not sure if i was the first one to notice 
the bones but i felt like i was the only one.
gone picking just to find fingers & vertebrae.
the men kept working though. they picked
& picked. i told them, "don't you see the bones?"
they did not speak as usual. they were just trying
to find a life with their hands. crates & crates
of bones. even the boss man pretended like
he didn't see them. he nodded at our harvest.
carted our labor off to the farmer's markets.
i wept in my bedroom after that shift.
i went to the bathroom & looked at my face
in the mirror. did he grab me or did he not?
why do i not trust my memory? i worried
that the bones were all my bones. so many 
of my bones. had they watched? 
i never went back to the orchard. slowly,
the trees receded. i still see them though.
sometimes they bear apples. other times 
there is a full skeleton dangling from a branch.
& at my core i am a harvester. i always climb 
the branches. i always pick them clean.

valley forge

i was just a thimble of water carried
in my father's pocket. we come from
a long line of reenactors. put on your
throat story. be the snow soldier
on august's thumb. i loved the cannons most.
how we kneeled & filled them
with grapefruit. in the united states
the biggest enemy is always secretly 
your peach pit dream. the rotting self. 
where the worm lives
& talks about salvation. the weeping soil.
a turned shovel in the wet earth. he knew
there would never be enough to drink.
once, my father saw a ghost. or was it
that he heard one? the boy in the attic 
still marching from one side of a terror
to another. his boots without him.
his head without him. a jar of peaches.
forks stuck in the ground like gravestones.
the army doctors would hold their saws.
they would say, "look at the trees, they
lose limbs & still find their green."
in the end, he will swallow me.
he will say we are in the midst of a war.
of course we are. because what is war
if not an urge against history.  
for now though, we rest. we tell the dead,
"we are here to be you." they say,
"we are here to do the same." 

comet

like a comet 
i burn a hole through my mother. 
i draw a crowd. everyone with
their nighttime clothes.
some in robes & others
in sequins. how do you
lay yourself down? 
what are your bones made of
now that we are fuel
for the orbit?
we were all standing on the roof
& listening to a television.
the news announced 
that this moment comes around
only once every thousand years.
we will not see our own burning
again like this. instead 
the blues will have to be stolen
from beneath the tongues
of the crows. come with me.
i have a patch. i tell her,
"i love you like oil loves."
like the slick belly of an iron pan
but also like a tomb
marked only by a "x" in the ground.
the comet is not a comet
but a bird. the stars are not stars
but insects glowing 
& waiting for the right moment
to eat everything they came for. 
you can sew the wound shut
but it will always grin
back at you in the candy mirror.
when i say i burn
i mean i am coming back
in a thousand years.
all our blood, still here,
still rupturing our mother's hunger
for a daughter. 
waiting for the news to say,
"it is time to grow gills.
it is time to go back 
to the swamp of eyelids 
& telephone darkness." 
i point to the light in the sky.
we watch as it comes & goes. 

i lived alone in a wooden heart

the ceiling leaked on the first night i moved in.
i stood for hours watching it before i did anything.
waterfall gushed from bathroom heaven
to the floor. everything soaking.
the drowned legs of centipedes. tell me god
who was the first woman to invent a roof?
when the rain came did she think,
"i am betraying my father" or "i am thristy"?
sometimes i crave that kind of alone again
that the apartment in the mountains gave me.
how it turns every organ into wood. 
blood as shoelaces. watching the future mildew
& rot. how water is always a story of washing away.
of exactly how we will depart.
the tiles warped & sung. my bath towels
turned into stomachs. i thought o fishbowl life, 
give me the cell phone reception i used to have 
in the big molten city or at least a wire into 
the golden eyelids of the ghost deer. 
i watched a tutorial on how to stop bleeding.
pressure. there is no way to put pressure
on an open sky. i let so much water pour.
finally, i called the landlord. 
she had a can opener voice.
she sent her son who crawled on the roof.
removed leaves like clots that were blocking the gutters.
he said, "it is a good thing you called me right away."
i reminisce about a timeline in which i never call.
instead, i let the rain consume me. live like
a mercreature. water through the whole house.
twist & bend. wood turned to mush.
all my organs, little swamps. the crawling bugs
that come & do not ask questions.
i know i should not be left alone
but o how i crave it.  

sudden rain

tell me when you're coming.
there had been marbles
in the sky.
we walked on ripe pear feet.
blood or nectar. you had the radio
in your throat. i was calling you
on a tin can across the ocean.
do not test the sky. you should never
test the sky. it turned black 
like spilled pupils. i leave messages.
you are not coming. it is just me
in a terrarium of plastic trees.
i tell myself my life can be
as small as i need it. can fit
in a purse. can live in a closet
that smells like moths. i am not
sleeping in my car. 
instead, my car is sleeping 
in me. the tires always spinning.
i wake up with a hunger for gambling.
the air full of veils. when the sky breaks
it throws plates. it tells me,
"you knew it was over." a plane
or a butterfly ghost. is that way you used
to leave? i do not have that luxury.
i am standing in the middle 
of a sudden rain. the umbrella turns
into a pummeled mouth. 
cracked teeth. nothing between 
me & the downpour. salamander skin.
calling you through a river. 
you do not pick up. you are not coming
but tell me when you are.
when you're next knelt 
& swallowing handfuls 
of the fattened moon. i will be there
with my dead bird in my hand. 
i will tell you everything you missed.

storage full

i download my face to the cloud
& walk around headless as can be.
sometimes i exorcise my bones
& find videos of dragons. what are you keeping
in the desktop folder labeled "hunger"?
that is where i house the power point 
presentation on why i should stay alive.
the first slide is a picture of the moon.
my computer tells me, "we have ghosts."
i restart & hope we are less haunted.
machines hold all of my organs but 
especially my liver. filter out the noise
of table saws & the deli slicer.
this is the amphibian life. the between
of saving & starting. naming files
after gods. double clicking on your throat
& craving the swallow. if i opened 
your screen would i find a video call
with a monster? would i find a tape
of all of us in a bath of fire & stone?
i tell my face, "we cannot be full there is
still so much to salvage." i collect pictures
of laughing monsters. they have no life
outside of my two hands. you don't
understand i need this acre of cemetery.
where else is the elephant going 
to run from his taxonomy along with me?
i'm telling you, there is a river 
of nothing but eyes. there i go & learn
to bathe with everyone watching.
there is nothing left for me to empty.
it would be like tying my hands
to stones & tossing them in the river.  
the flesh is, after all, only a url
where i go to shake.

dad email

sometimes my dad sends me blank emails.
i think of them each as walls.
four in a row make a bedroom.
five in a row, a house with one side
of the roof missing. other days
he will write to me like i am dead 
& he misses me. i will reply in the same tone.
as if i am a ghost writing to him
& telling him i am at peace. once,
i sent an image of myself & a partner.
somehow in the transit, the picture turned
into just a picture of two song birds.
my father replied, "i am hungry."
i used to watch him pluck the feathers
from birds in our yard. no, he was not
preparing them to eat. he just wanted them
to know what it felt like to be earth bound.
i am terrified of my father. i want him
to send me a pair of shoes i could live inside.
when he was at work i would become 
a hermit inside his clothes. tent of a t-shirt.
curled up inside a chuck taylor. 
i have never sent a wall back. instead i tell him
i love him. instead i send him eyelashes
so that he can remember exactly how
i used to come apart in his house.
no matter where you go, your daughter-self
remains like a limb. i have put mine
in a little room. four walls. but still she says,
"he could be what we want him to be." 
i brush her hair each night. i check my email
& hold my breath, bracing for another signal
from him. when one doesn't come
i don't feel relief. instead, i check my inbox
all night. once he emailed me a whole room
in one night. i had to crawl inside it.
look in the cupboards. there i saw photographs 
of myself & him. in all of them our eyes 
were scooped out. i fled. tonight though
the inbox is empty & somehow i'm still waiting. 

cicada suit 

i want to take off my end-of-the-world costume. 
in other words, break out of my flesh
like a cicada on the throat of my parent's old pine tree.
as a child i would go there to harvest
their discarded skeletons. they stood like statues 
frozen on the trunk & branches. 
little memories of hunger. i too have screamed
in the dirt. i too have lived like a nesting doll.
one miniature fury after another.
when i look for my cicada suit i'm looking
for a way to pry apart bone from self.
as if there were a season for sacrifice. 
we keep the calendar in our blood. remember
exactly when the moon pulls us out. 
a drawer of diamonds. this coming year is
a double cicada year. two species will rise
from the dirt & yell themselves to pieces
by the porch lights. i consider crawling inside
one of the vessels. the dormant skeleton.
i imagine maybe it is the one & only portal
back through time. i do not want
to be a child again. i don't think anyone does
but i do think we believe in revision.
this time i would linger longer 
beneath the tree. this time i would learn
the language of the cicadas. this time
i would join them. this time i would not let
my father take out my teeth. this time i would 
keep them safe instead of
giving them to the next boy 
with a forest fire for a mouth. 
when they come i will not be ready as
i am never ready for the swarm. to see myself
as the creature molting. coming apart
with an audience. leaving behind 
an army of still lives clinging to the tree. 

mall wandering w/ you

buy me the honeycomb face.
the one with a colony already inside.
neon washes me until
i am just a coat hanger. we would go there
to the mall with no money. just legs.
a desire for windows. for watching.
for food court homilies. you pinching
the fat of my hips. i never wanted to be fourteen. 
no one should take a boyfriend to the mall. 
this was my mistake. i think it reminded you that
in the right contexts everyone is capable
of living inside a plastic bag. 
plucking a penny from the fountain,
you hand me the coin. a stolen wish.
"what would you like?" you ask 
as if i am not turning someone else's hunger
inside out. i loved most the moments 
in a dressing room alone. i would think,
"how do you call for help when you aren't
even sure what you need?"
sometimes i dreamed of going 
into a store where you could purchase
angels. there, i would take off a tiny part
of my soul. maybe just a baby sock sized sliver.
trade it for a place close to the sky light.
a kiosk salesperson pleads to 
straighten my hair. i let her because
i want to try being touched in a new way. 
she says, "you are gorgeous."
this is what she is paid to say but i need
to believe her. the touch is worth it.
you sometimes leave me & lay down
like roadkill in the walk way. 
i come & plead with you to rise
& when you do  you pretend as if
it never happened, "what?" you ask,
laughter harbored in your grin.
"i wasn't a dead bird. that was you."
feathers in my mouth. washing my face
in a bathroom sink. breathing just to find
a plastic bag around me. you're holding me
at your side. a little something something.
trinket or girl or plastic worm. 
i still have never made that wish.
i think if i don't, the original wish 
will get to remain. 

caramel 

i put the house on my tongue
& walked out into the ferris wheel wilderness.
that was the summer where
everyone was trying to be as high above 
the town as they could. i had
callouses on my knuckles
& callouses on my fingers from two
different kinds of repetition. 
playing guitar in my bedroom
until caramel candies spilled from 
the instrument's belly. i did not eat
any of them. my knuckles were from
punching holes in the wall or at least
that's all i'm going to admit to. i ate
as much sugar as i could & then floated
on a life raft in the shape of a hand.
i liked to pretend the hand was
your hand. when i say "you"
i just mean everyone i wanted
to love me when i was fifteen.
i climbed a tree that turned out to be
a vein. on the ferris wheel the town
looked like a diorama of 
a ghost. the clock tower that 
i climbed that electric winter. 
afterwards the house always tasted 
like rain. i have watched the spirit leave
a cake. you cannot eat the house
alone even if you unhinge your jaw.
even if you are convinced no one
would notice. ants came & ate
all the caramels. i wept, thinking,
"if i would have let myself have
just one." the wall always healed itself.
it was like i never punched a hole in it.
instead. i took off my hands & spoke
softly to them. i said,
"go on. i know you know how
to be a blue jay." they refused. 
the ferris wheel became a dinner plate
rolling on the kitchen floor. 
you were the size of an ant. no. you were
an ant & you came hungry.
i wanted to be so far above the town
i could not even see 
how much of us you were going to devour.

headlight bug bite

i get chewed up by your yellow yesterday 
& tossed like a shadow onto 
a chorus of trees. i drive faster
than i should because there is always
someone to outrun. do you feel like
you're being chased? well, you are.
the angel is a category of insects.
the holy ones. the ones without telephone numbers.
grease the wheels of the elsewhere maker.
i check my body 
for your bite marks. i will have to
come up with an excuse as to why
i have been letting the world eat me.
bone & dough. the wooden spoon 
in the glove box. i pull over on the side
of the road. your face is a gas station.
your headlights are teeth jutting 
into a pudding world. there is never
enough stomach to explain what happened.
instead, you have to resort 
to the realm of noise. a wrong turn.
a construction zone operating 
in the middle of the night. you come 
to find they are not dissecting the road.
they are taking apart a monument.
the monument screams, "i want to be
remembered!" i have gone too slow too.
i have driven into a wreckage farm 
where everyone is trying to die
in the most glorious way possible.
i want none of that. i want to 
be alive when the world is nothing
but windows. i want to look out.
i want to point & say,
"they look just like us" even when
they do not. they are angels. they are
a swarm. heaven in a pickle jar.
shake the forest & the lightning bugs
will wake up. spell your name
in the branches. say, "they can
still see you." 

stray

on the night the stray cats
started eating the trees
we ordered pizza. scrolled on our phones
& saw ads for armageddon.
they said, "why don't we just
get this over with." i scoffed.
i keep having visions of a giant
constrictor in our house. i keep
a draw full of implements 
that i would use to kill it,
if it were to attack you. keep your
heart in a radio. "do not feed the cats,"
they say. they say, "they are
not cats." but they looks like cats.
only they are now the size of lions.
i understand though. maybe
they deserve this. maybe they've all
put in enough time being wayward.
sometimes i wish that 
into the night i would become powerful
like this. enough to turn headlines
into worm races. i think all creatures
want revenge. it is the urge 
to return what cannot be returned.
the pizza tastes amazing. the night is
covered with lightning & the birds
learn how to sing like violins.
the cats do not stop there.
they grow & grow until they are
human-sized. some even walk 
on two legs. they paw at windows.
i close the curtains. when they come for us
i will be prepared. we make a little altar
to the monsters. piles of canned fish
& a wedding ring we found
under one of our tongues.
there is a rumor that 
if you are quiet & still enough
they will not even know you're there.
i know this is not true though.
disaster is a process of becoming
everyone's kindling. the television 
plays a commercial for the pizza
we are eating. this feels like
the snake swallowing her tail. 
boas in the crawl space. cats,
still growing, perched now
in the cedar tree. they feast on the birds
& then sing for them. 

the last man

a month ago all the men
turned into poplar trees.
i knew so little about poplar trees
until then. i grew one on my head
which i at first mistook for antlers.
i have often been mistaken
about my own gender. caught a glimpse
of myself in a shop window 
& thought "cottonwood" or worse
"traitor." i have been betrayed
by my own desire to be a graveyard.
did you know cottonwood 
is just another way of saying "poplar"
& sometimes i think "graveyard"
is just another way of saying "gender."
to be a place people come
to amble & remember that which is
no longer breathing. that which
is all but a ghost & a string of recollections.
cardboard boxes of photographs.
mourners & girl scouts playing man hunt 
& teenagers desperate for a place
to make their gender visible. 
i never meant to be a person 
who tends poplar trees if you know
what i mean. but that is the thing.
most of the time your gender
arrives like this. like unexpected white flowers.
like the way the poplar trees
still wear their human man shadows.
the one in the yard, my father, 
hands by his side, turning 
to drink his fill of the sun. 

party hats for absences 

are you going to the hole in the ozone?
i heard everyone is going to not be there tonight
& we are going to spend all our time asking,
"where is so and so?" i have sometimes 
removed my self from the world
like a smudge. other times, like a parasite.
what do you love to take? what do you love
to not be there for? i don't want to be there
when the fire finally reaches us. 
i want to be a skeleton in a museum of 
frogs by that point. i sometimes celebrate
all the ways i am already gone. i dig graves 
everywhere i sleep. crawl into the dirt 
& listen to the prophecies of worms.
they say we are all making good tv. 
has a hole ever opened in the ceiling for you
just like an old mouth? i feed it gummy sharks.
fire extinguishers need to be handy & so
do pocket knives. gut the fish they said.
it will be a meal they said. instead 
all i get from the fish are shoes. the celebrations
of missed gatherings are my favortie.
when someone apologizes & says,
"actually my face is full of gills tonight"
i rejoice. i say, "mine is too" even if 
it is not. a lie is sometimes actually 
both of its meanings at once. lie down. 
lie to yourself. a leak in the moon means 
by next year there will be no more milk.
we have to make the most of what we have.
no one else shows up. i sigh & leave
my telephone number on the wall
of the bathroom with a note that reads,
"will you call me even though 
i cannot promise anything?" 

several scheduled catastrophes

i knew this was going to be bad
when we walked on back of the heron
& you fed me fiddle heads. 
i tasted the songs you used to sing
to the dead snakes by the highway.
i have blocked off time on my calendar 
to cry. i have scheduled an email
to myself that reads, "forget."
you can tell the body to do an action
but that doesn't mean the feeling
won't have a life of it's own.
i still have the feeling that i missed out
on kissing a body made of fire
in high school. he played bass & sometimes
we would message into the night
about jupiter. he said, "i am so hungry."
i said, "i know where we can sneak
into the vineyard to eat grapes."
we never did but i went alone
& swallowed each fruit thinking
of his eyes. thinking of the heron & 
imagining a boy just like you. 
i knew i was going to have to throw out
all of my clothes. i knew there would be
no time for sleep. instead, i had funerals
for everyone i ever wanted. 
made room to be consumed. 
shaved my head in a black mirror.
in college i often took naps 
for strange amounts of time like
twenty-seven minutes or twelve minutes.
every rest counted. i do that same 
but with mania. "i am allowed to be
a colony of ants for the next 
eighty seconds," i tell myself. 
then it is an hour. then it is a life time.
the truth is there is no vineyard. 
it is just your face. these were just
your eyes. you said, "go ahead"
& i knew you meant, 
"i only have thirty more seconds
before we're both smoke." 

chainsaw carving

give me the history knife
alive with the scent of pine 
& bruises. i take a chunk of my liver
to all the artists that i know
hoping one will have a chainsaw 
lying around. hoping one
is a man with a pile of teeth beneath
his bed. the question of 
"who has shaped you?"
is both abundant & terrifying.
i think of becoming a closet
of sock puppets. here are all
the animals i have eaten 
in a jury to decide what kind of creature
is going to be carved out of my wood. 
they chant "ant hill" & i decide
a colony could suite me. it sounds
like a relief to be so many pieces
to blame. a buck stands on the ceiling.
a brother in the garbage disposal.
i have jars full of noises i no longer
allow to escape my throat. 
bird call. yell. scream. cough.
once i screamed & my dad became
a chainsaw. i saw him spin.
who has shaped you? who has
carved you with an audience?
who has said, "i'm so sorry"
as if the machine were not in his hand?
i want to tell you something different though.
once i was dead & so were all
the magnolia trees. then, there was
a mourning dove. he held a pairing knife.
cut my eyelids off & said,
"look at all the pink." i did.
i stared into the pink & the pink
stared back. i said, "i am not sorry."
the bird said, "i do not want you to be."

insecticide 

you have to reach the nest
if you want it to stop.
last spring i was plagued 
with ants. they crawled on all the walls
of my bedroom. they sang songs
about the sweetness they wanted
to devour from my irises:
little black berries. they carried 
pieces of my childhood & dropped them
onto the floor. a guitar pick.
a watermelon rind. you have to feed them
by hand. lie to them. say,
"let's eat together." sugar & poison.
at night i would spray all the corners
with insecticide. it smelled vaguely
like lemons. still, pulled by some
other worldly force, the ants
would march & march. they'd follow
the one before them right into 
pools of death. chemicals that 
turned them inside out. they'd writhe 
& i'd tell them, "i am sorry."
but it was an empty "i am sorry"
because i did not stop. instead,
i did more. i left traps outside.
by the growing crack in the house's spine.
then, as they still came, i'd plead,
"please. i have nothing for you here.
i have barely enough for my self."
i felt my life unraveling in every possible way.
my partner turning into 
a closet & then saying, "let's be
obelisks instead." the crack 
in the house's foundation leaking
during the season's first heavy rain.
in so many ways i lived just like the ants.
i walked through poison
in search of one little bite of sugar.
"how do we stop ourselves?"
i asked them. to which they did not reply. 

dog night

i wrestle a planet from his mouth.
slobber & all. i say, "i too want to eat
the light from the sky."
the bible is wrong about everything
but mostly creation.
in the first days of the world
there was nothing but dogs. the dogs ran
& the dogs swam. the dogs sought
love poems in the fields &
thus they created all the animals 
they could not capture. birds 
& rodents & even moths. that is
what they determined love meant.
to chase & almost swallow. my dog 
is like me. he craves the darkness
the world used to swell with.
he broke out the window
on the second floor. used tree branches
to ascend into the sky. i followed. i remembered 
doing the same when i was a teenager
& spent all my nights on all fours 
trying to run the static
out of my bones. i hold him close.
he writhes. hunger is a process
of losing yourself to a need. 
he begs. "i need to chew 
on a god." i tell him what he already knows.
"that is us, you know there is 
only us." 

my neighbor is making a fish in his yard

he owns a little plot of heaven land.
the other ghosts who smoke
on their windowsills & tether clotheslines 
to the walls of their apartments. 
the house with a half in its number 
was a place of angels & genesis. 
i watched fish crawl from the basement 
with their first legs. frogs whose eyes
blinked from the sink. it was worst
when we were snowed in for two weeks.
i saw my neighbor in his tiny sky yard.
he hunched over & brought bucket
after bucket of grease from his house.
formed the fish from feathers & wire.
it breathed like a thunder storm. 
i watched as it stalked the edges of his fence.
white pouring from the slit-throat sky.
i was terrified of his creation just like i was
terrified of the couple who fought long
into the night & the man who sold guns
off the front porch. once i cut his hair
& in the process i saw all kinds of fish
in his scalp. he asked, "what is wrong?"
& i said, "nothing." people react
in all different kinds of ways
when they are discovered. i always wanted
to be discovered but not like a hostage.
i wanted the fish to see me. 
swallow me like jonah. listen 
to my prophecies. when the snow melted 
all that was left were the bones.
damp cigarette butts on the sidewalk. 
a dead man on the roof or 
was he a fish? 

profile pics

the room we made where no one
had a tongue. i page through 
my window as if it were a book.
give your selfhood a name. a hopscotch.
kiss the frogs you keep in your sink.
when i look at how the shape of my face
turns from a cantaloupe into 
a pomegranate over time i am frightened. 
did you know people have funerals
for themselves? gather their friends
& bury everything in the yard.
i watch a video about assisted death.
take a shovel to the wall & go at it until
you stop me. tie me up into a knot of pears. 
we are all the longest stop motion films.
pose & move & pose & move. i have 
cut off all my hair & watched
as each strand slithered away. became 
centipedes & bows. i page all the way back
until i was thirteen. my hair in front
of my face. my fat like mountains.
come & get me, is what my face says.
living inside the space where a story
used to be. do you remember when
you were on a postage stamp? 
all the rooms you traveled to? 
loose teeth. uneven black winged liner. 
measuring steps between each picture.
miles between my town & the town
where i was born & the planet 
where everyone has birds living 
in their eye sockets. don't get me wrong.
i love to turn back time. just not 
when it's me. just not when each 
little ghost is still there in a room
too small for her teeth. chewing 
on the sentence she said before 
she was a footprint & the blue mud. 

juniper

there is nothing really left to burn.
in my dream a juniper tree grows
inside the closet. i do not tell you
about my secret ghost. i arrive there
only when you are in the yard or
when you are washing your face
in the bathroom. i tell the tree
everything i am too afraid to tell you.
once, a teacher told me that 
when you write a story no two characters
should love each other the same.
one should always love the other more.
i have never been able to make peace
with this reality. i find branches
to burn. i pluck an eyelash out 
& use it as the wick in a candle.
i am unsure what is the dream
& what are my night worlds.
the juniper tree talks in the baby voice
of a kite. air beneath her tongue.
she says that if i leave the closet door open
she would be happy to take over our bedroom.
fill the floor with berries & needles.
so much smoke to be made. so much ash.
i know very little about cleansing
though once i spit up a dove
after eating the largest meal 
of my life. i am always trying 
to rid myself of something. does anyone
live whole? when i see a stained glass window
i always want to live there. fragments
glued in place & legible. 
i burn the juniper in the morning
when no one else is awake but the cats.
they asked me if my tongue
is also made of wood. they laugh.
it is a joke i do not understand. 
the dream ends & there is nothing 
left to burn. i chop off my tongue
& find it is true. it is made of wood.
you return. you ask me where 
i have been. i pull my eyes out like drain stoppers.
spill onto the floor. you say,
"where are you?" but i am right here. 

leather jacket

i open the closet to find a cow standing there.
she has eyes like stop lights. chews on the red leather jacket
we got from the family thrift on mcauthur road. 
she doesn't like excuses. she asks,
"have you ever been a drum?"
i often think about the lives my clothes lived
before i've worn them. there are the three sweaters
from a dead man. the dress worn by
a girl now on fire. the teeth from a squirrel 
who is now nothing but ribs. i love 
to be my own little frankenstein. the resurrection
of everyone's gender trouble.  
i take a walk with the cow. she talks about 
wanting so badly to wear a suit & look dapper.
i tell her we all want to wear a suit 
but none of them fit. she remembers 
the cow the leather was made from. the days
he would spend eating dandelions 
& learning their stories of the times
of glass & green. the leather jacket is your favorite.
i try to think of how when i get home
i will explain to you, my lover, where
your jacket went & how it is not my fault.
sometimes you wear my clothes & 
at first i felt a twinge of greed. "that is mine."
now, i think of it like sharing skin. like stepping
into each other's breath. once
i saw someone walking around in a dress
i used to own. i had dropped it off
at the goodwill just one day before.
i thought "that is me." i'm not sure
if i was talking about the dress or the girl.
the cow disappears back into the closet.
there's no more jacket. just a zipper. 
i hang the zipper on its coat hanger. 
the closet smells like damp grass. 
i take off all my clothes. including my skin.
become a cow in the shower. 
then, feeling daring or lonely, i put on one of 
your dresses only for a minute before changing. 

motion sickness

i want to be a body in motion. 
as a child i would turn inside out
each year on the way to the photo album. 
my parents would try & try
to turn me right-ways. some years they left me
in the dark on the side of the road.
frustrated, they said, "find your own way
to the button jar." i did. i always did.
hitchhiking with vampires & sometimes 
scooped up by a red tail hawk.
once i was there, i would put on my 
opera glasses to try to see everyone 
from as far away as i was. distance is 
sometimes not a matter of physical bodies
but how far your words are from one another.
i still keep a megaphone in case
i want to tell them "i love you." i always
prefer to drive the car if there is a choice.
if not, i am likely to become a potted violet
by the time we arrive to the shovel 
in the earth. the only real way to calm it
is to stare out the window. leave it
open a crack. i picture myself
like jonah in the mouth of the whale
except i don't let my self be swallowed.
take pride in the ways i am not a man
& fear in all the ways i am. bent over
as cars rush by on the highway.
i spit up every moon i've ever seen.
"we should leave you at home," my dad
or my mom or maybe just a wandering
cruel angel say to me. even at home though
there are days i get sick. i imagine stillness
as a state in which nothing gets set on fire.
i want to be still like bread 
or like bone. tell me though, what do you do
with your inside skin? i like to feel
the water. lay down in a creek. it is always
christmas eve in my stomach. 
tomorrow everyone's tongues 
come with a bow. 

stray melon moon

one summer we tried to grow planets
in the yard behind the garage.
they all got sick with cow spots.
i would wake up to the sounds
of them moo-ing long into the night.
their calls would shift & begin
to sound like men. i had a trowel 
& a pair of gardening gloves.
i went out to stroke them. tell them
to go to sleep. they never listened
& we stayed up together.
told stories of our old bodies.
there, sleepless, i could feel a life
when i once had feathers & another
where i walked with heavy hooves.
only one planet survived & i was small.
just the size of my fist. a melon moon.
green & full of humming birds.
i told no one about it. i let my family think
all the crops had died. cradled 
the little secret. it pleaded with me.
"let me go sit with the stars." i was selfish.
i didn't want to be alone. so, instead,
i took a cleaver & severed the moon in half.
let the nectar spill. inside there stood
a tiny cow. one with rubies for eyes.
i panicked at such a discovery. no one
else could know. i licked my fingers.
the juice had tasted sweet & floral. 
i buried the cow beneath a crooked field tree
between rows of stitched corn. 
i am still afraid to go out at night. i'm afriad
the cow has grown old & vengeful.
i am afraid i will look up in the sky
& see the melon anyway. i would be
so jealous. i would want to climb up there,
knife in my mouth, searching for 
just one more taste. 

straw into gold

in the back seat of my car i kept a sheep.
she would ask, "are you proud of me?"
i held her & said, "i am so proud of you."
when it rained i went to wendies 
without her & bought a cup of coffee
using whatever parking lot change
i could find. that summer was 
full of bugs. the carpet beetles 
on the floor of the car & the bugs 
that landed on the windshield 
& heckled us. "let me taste your blood."
i did not believe in god but
i used to pray. i think maybe praying came
before god. a need to turn elsewhere
& ask, "what have i done wrong?" & for
the space spoken to answer back
"the world is a sea of beautiful hungers."
sometimes, when the weather was right
i would walk with the sheep 
at the memorial park. it was a memorial
for dead soldiers. we read names 
& knew not what to do with them. 
we would talk about gold because i believed 
i would one day wake up & be able 
to shear her & spin her wool into gold.
in several fairy tales the captured princess
is told to turn straw into gold. 
i sometimes harvested grass as makeshift straw.
it never took. never gleamed. instead,
we lived from soda can to soda can.
on the day i got an apartment again
i woke up to find her gone. i wept.
i searched the streets for her.
i told her, "i will stay here if it means
i can keep you." she did not return. 
maybe she was god or maybe she was just 
another sheep with too much wool.
when i could not sleep in the new place
i would count the window. one 
through eight. eight whole windows. 
it was like they grew tomato-like & wild. 
what i don't tell people is i still try
in the late candle wax night
to turn fibers to gold. my hair. my eye lashes.
fingernails. i am trying to understand
how & why i survived. a sheep stands 
on the ceiling. i reach for her & then she is gone. 

a heart is a lonely canister 

let's be canopic if we must.
save the liver for a trip through
the mulberry woods.
place the stomach in a ziploc bag
& run as far away as you can.
i want to get as much use as i can
out of the sun while it's still
batting its eyes. i used to wake my mother up
in the middle of the night
& ask, "how long until the sun goes 
super nova." back then my heart
was a tadpole that lived off of
breadcrumbs & television. 
i had heard a priest say in his homily,
"we never know if we will wake up
the next day." instead of my own death
i took that to mean the end of the world.
filling pillow cases with stones
for safe keeping. what do you keep
from even those you love most?
i like to think i am an open jar
that once housed butterflies 
but i know i keep my lungs 
as far away from the window as possible.
they are prone to turning into wings
of a great swan that wants to confess
just how much she would love 
to have a baby made of light.
o my little alphabet. how i have purchased
every vessel to carry my heart
& none of them have contained 
that fury & that hunger. i wake up
to the sound of it thrashing in the attic,
teeth-bared. the sun has not even begun
to rise. i tell the animal. "you are not
supposed to be the water
you are supposed to be
the gun powder." a body 
can also be defined as a terrain
of rebellion. i trace the distance between
what i want to be & what i am.
name the canyon "heart." 
now how am i supposed to fill this? 

everything bagels are why i'm trans like this

my mom & used to go to the coffee shop
at the end of the world where only 
angels & college students ate each other's faces.
i would point to the wall & ask 
"what is that?" a crucifix made of hair.
she drank coffee the color of muted bark.
i ate an everything bagel with veggie cream cheese.
licked my fingers. a lesson in the perfect kind
of excess. poppy seeds under my nails.
the gardens that grew there in the days 
that followed. how i would taste the windows
each time a new little crimson face bloomed
my marrow. the urge to sleep every night
in a fresh layer of onion. my favorite part though
was the hansel & gretel of the afterward. the trail
of seed in the wild haunted wood. 
how i could always find my way back
to that brief communion. a plate. a mug of coffee.
the gossip of monsters & children. sesame seeds 
were once a currency in heaven you know?
an angel would come & tell me, "keep those
in case they're ever worth something"
gesturing to the stray ones on the glass table.
the thing is that being trans for me
has just about nothing to do with gender
& everything to do with everything bagels.
about what choices should be made
& which ones should be answered with,
"give us more." i knew even as a child
at the coffee shop with my mother
that I wanted to dust the stray seeds
from my palms each day. i wanted a trail
of flowers to burst in my wake. 

planet fitness @ 5am

out the tinted windows
i watch a crow eat a hot dog off the side walk.
all around people are
pretending to be little genders. lift the ghost
of a dead father. break faces
into fragments of breath. i have always
been a disciple of punishment.
call me a chronic catholic. i tell myself
i like it here. i wipe sweat from a machine
meant to teach men how to fly. 
move my arms like they are lead wings.
i dream of a day i walk into this place
& the ceiling bursts open from all the longing.
i cannot help but people watch. i want
to ask everyone "what do you crave 
in a body?" cis people are so fixated on 
transgender transformation but i think it is because
they are also yearners. they are also 
emptying themselves into mirrors 
& asking, "how can this be really my flesh?"
here we share a secret of discomfort.
the reality that the fact of becoming
suggests there could always be an unbecoming.
i do not believe in gender
in the same way i don't believe in muscles.
a man tenses his face
as he lifts a weight to his chin. a woman
sprints over & over on the treadmill next to me.
the crows feast on the guts
of the giant green parking lot dumpster.

side effects may include:

buying a trampoline 
& singing to a pond of dead goldfish. 
calling your father & expecting him
to be a doctor.
calling your doctor & expecting him
to be a father.
a desire to see the world burn.
what they took from me was glass
& i do not have a name for that organ.
an apparatus to filter out the grief.
seeing the ugly truth. 
kissing the ugly truth 
& calling it a future.
let's not pretend we have not
been fantastical. let's not pretend 
we've never bought a lottery ticker
& held it like a dog leash. pull me
onto my hands & knees. i used 
to pray in the pews. i used to carve
a statue of my arms from dead trees.
dancing without a partner.
wasting a night on trying
to reason with the news.
driving a car through
the window of a deli. 
i make a shrine for every catastrophe
& filling an offering bowl with eyelashes 
& empty lightning bugs.
i understand why people have
for centuries thought that the body
is a vessel. the desire to pour out.
knowing how breath becomes
dragonflies.
listening to your father's music.
mistaking someone else's music
for your fathers.
trying to salvage a sunken ship
from the bottom of a lake of fire.
getting your hands burnt.
calling your lover.
your lover saying, "i am not 
your lover."
memory loss. fatal mimicry.
telling a story that didn't happen
just to have it come true. 
becoming a prophet to dogs.
knowing all that you know
& still getting up & taking the pairing knife
to the sun's grapefruit sting.
spitting the seeds out into the sea. 

who we were in september

when i say "before times" i mean
when i still loved you in a way
that burned down train stations. 
i mean in the 3am friday night 
& aimless summer kind of way.
catching pigeons & pretending they were
our children. i named them
after moons. callisto & adrastea.
i mean as if there were a great fish net
cast over us to reap us from
our wild coral. the kinds of pink
i knew with you. the ardent fuchsia 
of every single sunday. i told you
we were going to wrestle a goose
to the ground. load all our urges
on her back & fly to the nearest mountain.
your car rattled awake. you kept
a pack of cigarettes you promised
not to smoke. watching halves 
of movies & finishing them inside 
a pillow case. i swear i have never lit
so many matches just to snuff them out
on the wall. my room had no window.
if the building is still there,
my room still has no window. 
once in the end times
you came in with a kitchen knife.
you hacked at the wall & said,
"i just want to give you your piece
of the sky." i begged you to stop.
this is how the world comes apart.
in little chambers of a horse heart. 
i was always terrified of you
though the reasons changed. 

chewing sound

why is everyone mouth? my brother asks
& it is a holiday where everyone has
a full of sky meat. don't worry about me
i say without any truth to the statement at all.
i have nothing to eat & i have resorted 
to turning each tooth into a tombstone.
underneath are buried goldfish or grandfather.
one in the same for the way they stare
& never speak enough. my brother is standing
on the roof & trying to grow gills. a species
of mixed metaphors. aren't you starving?
they ask & i shake my head. put a glove
in my mouth. the holiday is one about
killing because in the end aren't most holidays?
land turned into ice cream. i tell my brother
the best thing to do when you can't stand
the sound is to fill your ears with 
something brilliant. i show him how i do this
with a spool of indigo thread. he goes to town
using slinkies. the mouths form together
into one big mouth saying contradictory things.
we love you & don't breathe & hold still
& delicious delicious little wing. 
you can get to a point where you don't
trust yourself with noise. instead, move
as feather-like as possible until everyone 
else is so full they turn into piles of shoes.
i don't want to leave him there. i don't want
to pretend like there is not such thing 
as a hunger so deep you could not grow a mouth
that could ever hold it. but i do. i grin.
i kick down doors. i let the wasps' nests 
flourish on the throat of the pine tree outside.
he asks me if it's loud to me too. i am sorry
to say that i lie to him. i say that
if i keep moving it's almost like 
i don't hear the chewing at all.