dragon

i used to pluck out my hair
to feed the dragons who came 
breathing fire on the ghost trees.
i grew up where the creek meets
a quilt's edge. i saw dragons everywhere
as a kid. they were on the roof. 
they were eating my parents. they were
sitting in the garage at night.
my father had me change the light bulbs
on the porch because i was the only one
with hands small enough to fit
inside the old glass fixtures. as i worked
the dragons watched & their shadows
stretched long & clear when the lamp lit again. 
once, a dragon chased me to the weis market.
it was night & he did not follow me home. 
a dragon is sometimes a belief & sometimes
a desire. both are forms of reaching.
i am more of a desire person. i have never
gotten to touch a dragon despite 
all of our interactions. i imagine they 
would feel like the surface of a just-lit 
light bulb in a dark mouth. 
the texture of a garter snake. i want someone
else to have seen them. it could not have 
just been me. i am convinced 
that maybe my brother did once.
it was snowing & the sky was bare.
we both stopped. no porch light,
just the glow of white snow lighting 
our faces. maybe he saw the creature
staring down at us. maybe he was looking
at something else. i could not make out
the beast's full body. eyes. claws. 
wing tips like mountains. 

check engine 

i drive a half-ghost to all the little fires.
we are waiting for a two-truck & the moon
has a flashlight in her hand. 
at this point in my life i am more surprised
when the check engine light
goes off. that hasn't happened for months.
something is definitely wrong
& at stoplights my car will often turn
into a pile of worms. the birds come to feast.
on a particularly bad day last week
i had to beg a flock of crows to carry me
to work. they laughed & obliged.
on the phone my brother & talk about buses.
he's never taken a bus & i think,
"must be nice." instead, he sleeps in the attic
of my parent's house in a town that 
seems to get smaller each year. once in college
i fell asleep on the bus & ended up 
at the outlet stores. i thought i might as well
get out & walk around. i saw a store of
check engine lights & i didn't even have a car.
it follows you. is hereditary in a country 
of bigger & bigger cars. the glow.
the harbinger. it says this life will be expensive
& you should figure out alternate routes.
in high school i used to be obsessed
with hitchhiking. i did it only once.
i got into a strange woman's car (i chose a woman
because i had a sliver of self preservation).
on her dashboard the check engine light
was one & i felt safer. i ended up in the city 
on a corner that smelled like prunes & gasoline.
i don't remember how i got home but
until then i thought i could get anywhere.
in the rain, my check engine light
get dimmer. i have, in my last car, 
pushed on the dashboard as if i could
snuff out the future. of course it never worked
but for a moment it made me feel
like maybe it was possible to will away
an emergency. i am always the one
to turn off all the lamps in the house
on the way to bed. once i saw
a check engine light looking back at me
from the shadows of the house.
i turned away from it. told no one.
i is maybe still there, burning. 

cornfield islands

far out in the corn field behind our house
is a patch of old trees & tall grass. 
crooked limbs. sometimes they look
like a chorus. other times, a butcher room. 
from a distance they form an island.
i've never seen anyone visit but once
i witnessed one of the old farm dogs, 
running across the freshly tilled field
to reach the island. i wonder what he finds there.
if the foxes gather beneath the trees
to worship. if there are stories etched 
in the soil. i tell my partner sometimes
about my desire to reach the corn field island.
he always begs me not to. i think i would
have to go by moonlight. a soft blueish glow
cast across the wintering crops. my shadow,
tripled by distant porch lights & ghosts.
my fear is that once i reached that land
that i would never want to leave. 
that slowly the corn island would drift farther
& farther away from our house. once day
there would be nothing but hills & corn
from as far as i could see. would you be able
to find me? would i maybe once day
meet the farm dog, a bell in his mouth
like an escaped acolyte. i see other corn field islands
when we drive through pennsylvania's shoulders. 
i wonder if they tempt other farmers
& their neighbors. if maybe they act liked
a string of beads leading to the mouth
of something eternal. i pulled over 
on the side of the road once just to stare
at one that looked particularly radiant 
& lush. the engine clinked behind me. 
i don't know how i managed to leave. 

harmonica 

cool metal to lips. my father's
hands ate the little museum.
neither of us knew how to play
but we took turns singing into
the glass hallways. lesson in sound:
if you have breath, then you have music. 
i need more harmonicas lately.
i confess to a friend, "i find myself
holding my breath." the underwater
life. i buy a box cutter & watch a tutorial
on how to give yourself gills. results
are not guaranteed. visit my parents
& scour for the old harmonica.
i look among the untuned guitars
& the penny whistles & the harmonica
isn't there. i imagine a ghost 
holding our tiny sanctuary
& practicing her old voice. a soft tune
in the night wind. i want to be a bright
voice in a thumb quite. often i will play 
the church & steeple game only there are
no people inside. which is to say 
i have no fingers. only a mouth 
& a latent harmonica. online, i see beloveds 
taking photographs of themselves 
at the feet of the empire. when i find one
i am going to spend a whole day with 
that harmonica in my mouth. 
running in a flourish of notes. screaming
on the front lawn of that landlord
in the city who owns everything 
& it is still not enough. harmonica 
with the word harmony buried inside.
i reach my hands in. everything is 
golden. my father is in the garage
singing in the first time in years.
he is small. fits inside one of the window
of our little holy instrument. 
i am breathing so i guess i am singing. 

invisible fence 

i talk to the border & ask what
it hungers for. it says, "a dog."
our neighbors used to have an invisible fence
& so did we only we didn't call it that.
we called it, "home." once a surveyor came 
& brought us collars. he said, "i'm sorry." 
humans are a species of cartographers
but so are deer & so are birds. 
in america though we are sold fences
which is the opposite of mapping. a refusal. 
today a survey i took in the hopes
of winning a gift card asked, "what are barriers
people face to reaching the american dream?"
i said, "there cannot be barriers 
to something that does not exist."
then i thought of fences. the fence my father build
from old billboards he found at the dump.
his callous hands. what was he making.
the fence says, "i want a dog" is ravenous. 
needs bodies to fuel it. asks for
here & there bodies & between bodies 
to chase after. i ask the border, "when do you think
you will rest?" it does not answer because
rest would mean its undoing. 
one afternoon the neighbor's dog 
escaped the invisible fence. he ran
all over town until someone caught him 
& brought him home. before his capture,
he knocked on doors. he said, 
"there is no fence. there is no fence!"
he pleaded with the window beings.
hoped they would follow him. they did not.
soon, the neighbors built a fence too.
plastic. white. in the summer they clean it.
their old dog is dead now. they grow 
tomatoes though & they sometimes 
talk to me through the fence when
i visit my parents. they asked me,
"do you see the dogs?" i tell them,
"no" even though i do. 

tornado watch

we talk about tornadoes at the strip mall.
it is summer & you are afraid of being eaten
by cars. i try to make you promises i cannot keep. 
you reject them & describe in detail 
the way the air feels moments before 
a tornado is born. the tightness of the grey.
birds inside the clouds swallowing one another. 
once when you were young
the wind came & pulled out all your hair.
you hide from the sky. duct tape the windows shut. 
terror has always been a family member to me,
maybe that is why i thought we were in love. 
my father liked to drive into the eyes of storms.
he brought me back bottle caps &
sometimes the leg of a doll. the year before
my grandfather died, the tornado came 
to lyons. followed railroad tracks & threw houses
into the sky. he thought death was coming for him.
today the tornado does not come
just rain & ugly clouds & a man who is driving
somehow without a face. i am realizing there are
parts of you i am afraid of. the knives
you talk to. the framed picture of a tornado 
on your dresser. for the first time, i do not
spend the night. i drive home & i keep thinking
i see tornadoes behind me. i call you twice
& you do not pick up. i am convinced we are
all going to be thrown houses. funny how fear
is a place of meeting or departure. the tornadoes
never catch me & neither do you. at home
at the apartment without doors, i sit
& watch the rain jump rope in the street. 

self-portrait as a drain

the drain in my parents' house is
always clogged. i haven't showered there
in years but the water tasted
like hair & fingernails. the fists in my throat
& the lake that i form. a waterfall from
the crown of a house. once our basement
flooded & i went down there, opened my mouth
& swallowed all the water & the bolts &
the terrors of floating away. my favorite drain
was in a hotel in tennessee. the water 
rushed away as if nothing had happened.
as if i was not trying to escape my life
through portals cut with box knives. 
i only showered at my ex's house once.
the drain was slow. good enough. i saw 
considered taking a bath. another ex 
lived with his parents still & they had
a claw foot tub. i felt useless. tried to use
my mouth like a doorbell. we drank hot tea
& they had something they called,
"second dinner." when i slept in the guest room
at my friend's house, their drain shined
as if someone was paid to clean it. my teeth
are dull & yellowish but i have long
relinquished all fixations on looks. instead,
i celebrate the drain as a site of angels & prophets.
the goodbye place. i invite everyone i know
to my drain & we all drop in a fragment
of someone we need to forget. i clip the tip
off my tongue as if it were a cockatoo wing. 
once i poured a whole carton of milk.
i did not know why. if i could change one thing
about myself it would probably be that i am
not at all a fountain or a well. how does it feel
to be necessary? i want to go back in time to when
the first house was built. cover the walls
with drains. there i am standing in a flock. 
get away, get away, get away. 

adult swim

give me the water. i want to turn
loaves into fishes. release them back
into a chlorine place where
gills become shovels. that summer
i let my skin wrinkle. bare feet on concrete.
the sun like a bowl of oranges.
our town was big enough to consume me.
now that i am older i seek out larger monsters
to devour me bone by bone but then
it was just the overpass & the red truck.
the old factory by the train station
without any windows. crawling inside
to collect coke bottles from the 80s.
we read their labels like prophecies.
during adult swim, i sometimes joined.
made my face stoic. swam alone as if 
i was an adult too. no one ever
said anything to me. i was maybe thirteen. 
my freckles bloomed. the wild onion roots i dug
from beneath the biggest oak tree.
i mimicked what i saw the other adults do.
back & forth. some walked. others swam laps.
my flesh, bright beneath the water.
i never wore goggles. instead, i opened 
my eyes underwater & found smudged 
sea monsters. all our toes. the stone bottom.
in the shallow end i could stand. water
up to my neck. life is full of all kinds
of little guillotines. when the adult swim was over
everyone else would leave & i would say.
a conduit. the children jumping
into the blue. the speakers playing 
the local radio station: some red-hot chili peppers song.
i laid on my back. saw my bones
in the clouds. a great soup. some days
i stayed until the place closed. 

yearbook club

i joined yearbook club
in fifth grade just so i could have time
with the oracle. the big computer monitors
were our conduits to all kinds
of colors. i seldom worked on the yearbook.
instead, i typed questions 
into the fresh god machine. nothing profound.
pictures of hedgehogs. where to buy
pet snakes. how many moons there where
in the whole galaxy. i know i am too nostalgic
for the old internet & so i remember it
better than it was. of course, there were days
when none of the screens would load
& all we did was spin in our office chairs &
gossip. still i crave the slow load 
of a perfect little gleaming island.
how old websites moved with animations
& pixelated music. i loved the search & dig.
i did not have a computer at home
& so this was the most unfettered internet
that i got. near the end of the year
we really had to get to work. i typed names
beneath my classmates' pictures.
dropped playground photographs 
onto pages. all of my work, haphazard.
the parent who helped run the club
would go back & fix all of our work
when we were done. in the last few minutes,
i reached for a tab. another illuminated question.
my fingers across the keys. where did 
all my wonder go? my face glowing 
from the light off the old monitor. 

mule

i used to have answers
to the question, "what are you?"
all of them were guesses.
like the sailors who found sea monsters
in the faces of giant squid,
i see craved language. i was reading
something yesterday about mules.
about how they are the end
of a bloodline, the horse & the donkey.
it is rare an ill-advised for a mule
to have offspring. instead, they become
the bookends of centuries.
these days i get asked "what are you?"
more often than ever before. 
i'd like to say "a mule" but i do not
live up to that. instead, i let the words
turn into centipedes. put my face
on a dinner plate & say nothing at all.
if i have learned anything it is
that you lose a thread every time
you try to make yourself edible.
i focus instead on my hooves
& my hands. i build as many towers
as i can. leave the doors open.
maybe i am a man today & maybe
for moment i am my mother.
i wonder what the mule's parents
think of their child. if they look 
at him & do not understand how
he arrived. if he feels the same,
gazing into creatures, none of them
who look like him. it is easy to believe
that you are alone. much harder to see
the world moves because it is carried.
i remember the first time i met
someone else like me. i will not tell you
what i mean by "like me." 
that is my little secret. but, i met them
& i saw sedimentary rock. lineage 
as horizonal & not just a vein. 
my father laughs at the moon.