pokemon center

my pink new york. grime window
& police horse bridle. my parents 
in their smudged white sneakers. 
we to the bieber bus
from kutztown to the city to see
the pokemon center. i dreamed
of real pokemon. animals i could use
to live a life without desks & fire drills.
packing myself up at the age of ten
to set off alone.
what kind of magick are we trying
to enact on children when we conjure 
stories into being?
mascot suites & princess illusions.
here, the pokemon center flourished.
i could almost believe it was real,
a place where I could stay long enough
that once i stepped outside, 
i would be in the kanto region.
i would have a pokeball in my pocket 
& trainers would approach me to fight.
instead, i wept when it was time to leave.
held tightly too the stuffed creature
my parents had gotten. even all these years later
i remember the sliver of me
that knew none of it was real. that hoped
i could make it real if i just remained 
a few hours longer. outside the windows,
the pigeons took flight. a hotdog vendor
wiped sweat from his forehead. 
a liminal space of fantasy breathing
that never tips into fullness. i thought,
give me the world. give me the pokemon world.
we ate ice cream on the sidewalk 
when we were done. sticky sweet fingers.
the late spring sun. "can we come back
tomorrow again?" i asked my father,
already knowing the answer. 
the bus arrived like a broken window. 

home song

for the year i lived in the rabbit burrow
everything was soft. above i heard my family
making funeral arrangements.
we were burying my grandmother
over & over again. she would claw her way up
from the dirt just to stand in the kitchen 
& weep. my gender divided & multiplied.
the rabbits saw me as one of them.
they taught me how to be smaller. they said,
"here is how to die when the dogs come"
& "here is how to die when the lawn mower comes."
it is an art to know exactly where you belong
or else it is the inverse of art. i have never
found a pair of socks that fit. instead 
i fill them with bones to make them organs.
calling my mother in the middle of the night
to say, "can you believe it?" the phone was
under the soil too. frozen in late february.
maybe we are all too romantic about home.
instead, i have loved deepest when it has shifted.
when i've found myself among rabbits.  when
my brother breaks one of my windows 
with a rock with a note taped to it.
the note read, "come back." i still pretend
i never saw it when i speak to him. for me
home is what is left behind. we are a history
of covering the footprints. of burning the bedroom
& saying, "i do not know what you mean
about the girl with the blue hair who lived
on noble street." she is a rabbit now.
he is a rabbit now. i find myself in a living room
where no one has been living for 
a very long time. my grandmother argues,
"and you think you're special."
i shake my head. reply, "i think i am home." 

earring garden

i pierced my own ears with a sewing needle
in the bedroom dark. we were girls,
my mirror & i. either that or we were gardeners. 
we were familiar with blood. dotting
each other's lobes with a sharpie 
& saying, "breathe out." they were pierced before.
a gun in a shopping mall. neon rapture.
my aunt saying, "don't touch them."
to search for where the body is penetrable.
i am always impatient. i craved pineapples 
from my ears. you, my mirror, you craved 
a diamond tooth & lips pressed to your listening. 
i'll tell you a story about trying to have a body. 
being trans is less about gender & more about
longing. what do you long to be? trace your yearning
to the skin & then press the needle. come out
on the other side. dab away the blood.
find the garden of earrings & do not pick
just one. grab studs & hoops & beads.
taste metal. tell everyone, "it didn't hurt at all."
of course it did though. my whole head throbbing.
pillow stained with red blotches 
in the morning. i washed it in the bath,
embarrassed by the gore. still i beamed at myself 
when i gazed in the mirror again in the morning.
there was the ivy. there were the orchids. 

bird watching w/o birds

i cut off my foot & watch it turn
into a crow so that i have
something to chase.
we bought the binoculars 
from a yard sale man
with row-house-crammed teeth.
in my neighborhood a light on
is a dove. feathered dead fathers.
an ambulance made of geese.
the question is always
what do you conjure in absence?
i scatter. i say, "here is the fig tree"
& "here are the wren to form it."
in another life i was a bird
who watched humans.
i kept a little guide in my spirit 
to categorize the species.
stone skippers & bicycle skins. 
horror fathers & turn-coat walkers.
i ask the sky what my common name
would but & it replies,
"song chewer." they are correct.
i put a word in my beak & wait
until it turns into bubblegum.
i spend all afternoon searching
& i do not find the crow or any other birds.
they know i am looking
& so they hide. i cannot blame them.
i would do the same. 
with scissors i cut little holes
in the sky of where i with i could 
witness them. standing back 
from my work, the holes look
like little crescent moons. 

apple pie burial

goodbye to my horse drawn sadness. goodbye
to the pictures of men on my money.
now, i only barter with pigs. 
in the yard we dig a hole the size
of my heart. all the promises if was made
about hunger. "you will always 
be full of flies." pulling up the lid of a can
& finding the eyes of children. in ghost land, 
delicious is a moon with two sides:
shadow & white. i go to the shadow 
with a table spoon. ask if i can measure enough
to make a feast. they moon says,
"to who do you owe your strawberries?"
i walk through a hall of hands. the hands 
turn to carrier pigeons. the carrier pigeons 
turn into tenement windows. my family
spitting their teeth out into a shared bucket.
money is worthless in the world 
of skin & lawns. my mailbox says,
"i thought it was a bank holiday."
i install a zipper where there once
was a door. i call a friend in the dead of night.
hear my observer breathing on the line
behind our chatter about balloons
& escape. i pause my friend to tell the man,
"it is alright, my treason is sadly legal."
i keep a room at the back of my throat 
where there is a single ear of corn.
there i go & consider eating it raw. 
that sweetness in the summer's ragged hair.
tell me, mom, where are we going?
father, the time is running out. 
the moon always swallows itself.
one day, i will dig up the pie 
& we will eat without you.

pursuing zoo

"get out of my water bottle,"
i tell a shark. he is just looking for a place
to take off the weight of searching.
i am too. i go to the zoo & talk to the animals.
one, a wild horse, is the last 
of a pack of horses the zoo once purchased
in the hopes of making them run back & forth.
i buy a hamster wheel & use it 
as a makeshift gut. follow my gut in circles.
my life has taught me, if nothing else,
i am not to be trusted. i once carved
a hole in the wall of my apartment
so i could have a direct line to the angels.
they clip birds wings for their own good.
or so i am told. a hawk without a wild
spends the day doing sudoku & dreaming
of pizza. i consider scaling the fence
of several enclosures. most of all
i think i would like to be an otter. i ask
for their relationship advice & they tell me
i should cut out my tongue & sell it
as a talisman.  this is not the worst suggestion
i have ever heard. the snakes had promised,
"you will lose your limbs one by one."
i look at my hand & find the head
of a zebra. i open my mouth & flamingos 
stand there pinkening. i make a telephone call
to an elephant. i say, "do you think i should?"
he says, "always." how does one acquire an instinct
once it is gone? once it is turned into 
jars of plum jam? i am sweet in the same way 
that microwave pancakes are. enough 
to earn my sugar. not enough to be a species.
i do not know if the zoo is a good place
or a bad one. binaries will always fail us. likewise
i don't know if i live in the zoo or in the wild
or if the wild is also a zoo. i've built
so many cages trying to be your afternoon
& your corndog. you grab me by the taxonomy.
tell me, "i want to see you without bones."

tin fish dinner

here is a video of me when i wasn't hungry.
together we watch the school of fish
as they thrum in my iphone as if they will
never become a bite of salt & olive oil. 
lately, we talk a lot about whether or not
people are good. you watch too much true crime
& i harvest too many inspirational quotes.
once though, when i was sixteen i was alone
in new york city. no one knew where i was 
& i was wearing a blue knit hat & blue lipstick.
a man on the subway stayed with me
until i reached the station. he told me,
"there are more flies than gardens" & i still
have never known what it means. then, of course,
the man who lived above in the mountains.
how, when he made dinner, he would knock
& ask if we were hungry. i was starving. i was 
a single fish remembering what it felt like
to hum in my stewing manhattan august.
i never accepted his food. he smelled like mushrooms
& gasoline. used a walking stick he carved himself.
i am scrolling in the internet's guts
& i start watching videos of tin fish dinners.
a husband & a wife who pry open 
these little gasps of flesh. capers & vinegar.
sun dried tomato. the smallest forks
i've ever seen. we are living in a time of canoes. 
in the kitchen i taste a spoonful of the cabbage 
in gochujang sauce you've made. there are so many kinds
of tin fish dinners. what i loved most about the video
& why i kept returning to it was that
each bite was celebration. i do not want to ever
mistake smallness for emptiness. i don't believe
in good or evil but i do believe in sardines
& anchovies. i believe in the crooked smile
of a tin can. i can measure how far 
the ocean is from us in teeth. 

carry out / carry on

we were eating our portion of the snap pea supply.
cats in the clouds playing their lutes. in the summer
the graveyard was a bed frame. laying down with you
i tried to imagine how we might be possible.
a singular answer always returned in the form of 
stray lighters. we filled our pockets. later, in my next
iteration the same exact scene in which 
outside a restaurant, my mother circled the block
looking for me. i lead a runaway's life. goodbye goodbye.
or else we are just chicken drums. or else i am just
the boy who kisses the bridge before he turns it
into a wrack of ribs. release me from my fork.
release me from my shoe laces. i tie everything 
too tight so they fray quickly. have you ever tried
to relace a disaster? you'll be dizzy & weeping & she
will be asking you, "what do you mean you died?"
we drove home with you still inside a chestnut.
i said, "it hurts when i bite into you." you said,
"well don't bite into me." you don't understand.
i have to lick the plate. i have to walk to the 7/11
& try to feel like a real person. i am told that
if you're extra good in this life there will be laundry machines
in your heaven. if you're like me though, 
you have to walk up the street & kiss someone
who you don't really want to kiss anymore
to be allowed to use a machine. i have spent
too much of my life waiting for water to return.
you point your fork at me. a bird kills another bird
on the roof of our life. "i want to go home," i admit.
you say, "but you haven't finished your snap peas." 

forever or else for good 

you tell me i am a pear tree.
my love i am the rat.
give me enough turtles 
to last this moon. all i want
is to be your metal bowl
of blueberry farewell. before 
i met you i believed i was 
an obelisk. now i know
i am a toothpick in the mouth
of whatever forest births me.
if i would have know 
i would be gutted as a shrimp
we could have skipped the breakfast talk
& the fire tunnel & just been 
your mail men. fingers on a package.
my tongue, a little slug.
let's not pretend you didn't know
i was a ghoul. let's not pretend
neither of us have stop watches.
the pears are full of worms. the worms
are full of songs neither of us
can sing. darling there are ears of corn
in the basement growing where
they shouldn't be able to grow.
i tried to keep the dog alive. i tried
to kill rabbits. i could not.
they stared at me with eyes 
made of blue potatoes & credit cards.
i would give you my teeth 
if it meant being loved again
in the way only brine can love
the body. if you will not make me eternal 
i will do it for myself. i will go
& kiss stones. i will go 
putting bees in my mouth.
let them build whatever comb
they crave. do you want 
to still watch a movie. i replaced
my soul with a television. 

chimney dwelling

when i stay at the house i grew up in
i always sleep in the chimney's throat.
there, dead birds & fire ghosts 
tell me "we saw everything."
mice in the walls. laughter the color
of bruised mountains. what do you do
with your child self to keep it
from kicking? i feed mine jupiter beetles 
& tell it to go & look for crows.
do not worry about the static moon
or the television's glass eye. 
sometimes the chimney is the only place
if can sleep. i will get up in the middle of the night
& start building. cut a hole in the roof
of a stranger's home, saying, "i need
to touch the galaxy." outside stars buzz
like gnats over a carcass. you come & tell me
that you made a video of us. it is playing
in the living room inside a bowl of noodles.
all our friends are quails. 
i tell you, "i do not want to be
a screen door." bolts. blood. the chimney 
howls. the only perfect limb.
tell me i will rise like smoke. tell me 
that you love in a way that won't require me
to hollow my bones. that won't ask 
for a remote control to the dead end.
can you read lips? i'll mouth it to you,
"i am just a plantain in a potter's field."
in the chimney though i am holy. no one even
has to know that i'm there.