moon garbage 

the moon pulls through
the kfc & i watch as she just orders
mashed potatoes & tosses the container 
in the parking lot for the rats.
you think there are 
coyotes everywhere. gods i wish
there were. i could use someone
to chase me into the underworld. 
instead we just get the neighborhood 
dogs who wish they were a pack.
on the right night they 
get together to pretend. one of them
is the leader & he gets really wild
with it. you tell me the coyotes 
would eat us & i explain that 
i have spent my life ready
to become part of something greater. 
i love cleaning up trash because 
it makes me feel less useless. 
the microplastics in my brain
tell me we should buy a boat
& ride it across the dark water 
until we reach the moon. there are
no supermarkets but there is 
a really sweet bodega which is
all anyone could ever need. 
a car loves there too & she is
the makeshift coyote. the divine 
is constant but always leaving. 
maybe i think that where i come from
cashing is holy. a language a lover.
you are always what is just out
of your reach. on tiktok late
at night someone dms me to ask,
“are you cleaning up after the moon?”
i lie & say, “of course not.”  

fire ants 

this week i have thought 
way too much about my 
high school boyfriend. he had 
long thin fingers & he was three years
older than me. we come upon 
a colony of fire ants & i remember 
how once he called me screaming—-
he begged for a water slide or else
a place to de-bone. he had stepped
on a fire ant hill beside his
grandparents pool in florida.
i didn’t know how to help him
& so i just screamed too. 
all of this makes me think
of the lives i am living 
right now in other peoples heads. 
if maybe when he sees a wild snake 
he thinks of me. i wanted 
to impress him. show him how
i was unafraid of venom or
scales. once i caught one
beneath the bridge by his house. 
the mushroom fields were cooking
near by & so the air smelled like
sweet manure & dark. the snake writhed
just like me. his parents weren’t home
that day. my body was a jungle gym
for the boy world. i think of him
not like a lover but like a species. 
i talked to him only once 
years after we broke up. it was 
over facebook. i deliberately do not
remember what we said. there are 
more ants than people by
a long shot. i stop to stare 
at one fire ant hill 
on a street corner in a town
i’ve never been before. all the ants
are screaming. i do not know
who i am on the phone with. 

walmart parking lot 

you told me to meet you 
in the walmart parking lot. 
the sky was holding a knife.
in the u.s. every highway goes
the same place. there is a gas station
without any eyes & 
a restaurant too good to be true.
in oklahoma the land lays down
like i’ve never seen. somehow
despite their hoard 
i find you in the walmart 
parking lot next to a faceless truck.
inside it’s like a portal. 
i am small again just looking
for a palm of sugar. i used to love
to run away from my mom 
in our walmart & now i just run away
from time. a blanket in the sky.
the hotel where the door opens
right to the kfc. i don’t want to
go home. i want to make a walmart 
rosary. find a well & drink deeply.
push a shopping cart until we find
each other or else a face that’s good 
enough for tonight. 
you want to get in & out. i could 
spend forever here. counting birds.
a tour bus lets out. it was full
of coyotes. they are looking 
for their teeth too. i suggest
we join them but you just furrow 
your brow. we drive through 
a hole in the sunset. collect pecans. 
start driving again. 

extinction

sometimes the gone animals
talk through the new ones.
i open my mouth & speak dodo
into a microphone at a rally
about trying not to die.
when people ask me,
"are you alive?" i respond in
the old calls of iguanodons
who carried their eggs like
footballs into the fire. when i was
small i became obsessed with
the death of the universe after hearing
a priest say, "it could come any day."
i learned the sun has a pretty long time
to go which i found unnerving.
how many more mistakes & hungers
will this little wedding ring hold?
i sometimes consider if there was
a universe before this one. if those creatures
had dreams of permanence.
if they wrote their histories in
some kind of stone. if when i open my mouth
there are fragments of their longing.
their poems & their catastrophes.
the last tasmanian tiger turned into
a rainstorm in a zoo with only
black & white photographs. i look at her
& i see my own teeth. i reach
into her mouth & pull out a star. 
she says, "do not leave me." i promise not to. 

virtual reality dad

a new experience to 
plug the drain at the bottom
of your longing. there are
several options. you can have
a supportive dad or a wayward dad 
or a dad who is furious
in the dark. the best experiences
are when you combine options
for a more lifelike experience.
he can teach you how to shave. he can
scold you when you are out too late
& the moon no longer has legs.
he can call you when he's drunk
& neither of you know what
to say to each other. in game mode
he can chase you & it can be playful
or a horror movie or 
desperate like, "please do not
leave me." there is a rumor that
the developer spent years collecting dads
in a little satchel. that he spun 
their veins like wool to make 
the virtual reality dad. i wonder 
if he managed to capture mine.
his particular melancholy. the last time
i was home i walked in on him
with his very on vr halmet on.
he was on a beach. he described it to me.
he said, "it's bermuda. it's just like
i remember it." a sweating beer
in his hand. ragged t-shirt. his
beige wrinkled feet & crooked 
toe nails. i love him & i want 
to join him. there is only one headset
so i just shut my eyes. turn on my
imagination machine & swear that
i feel the heat from a tropical sun. 

water pressure

on the night the pipes burst
there were geese in the field. 
the sound of 
a cut morning. water from
the well dungeon. our hands
soaked. our bones like oars
in water. i begged for the water
to stop. the gushing. i thought
the earth was going to flood
& we would have to become
amphibians again. my gills 
like skirt pleats. there is 
never enough time to 
stop a storm. a thumb on
the vein of a hose. sharks in the water.
ghosts in the sharks. i do not
remember which one of us
realized we could cut the power.
we stood there for a long time
just dripping, knee-deep 
in feathers. the geese did not flinch.
instead they laughed to each other.
i waited until you walked away
to weep. i remember why
it had been a long day but these last
few years have felt like rosaries
of long days. the night, always 
rushing to chew on my ear.
i cupped my hands & lifted 
this tiny pool of water. did not see
a warbling face like i hoped to.
just the dark. the earth's belly
meeting air. it is so strange the balance
between gather & burst. 
it took three days to get the water back.
by the time we did, the geese were gone. 

this wouldn't happen if i was a slug

i want a good wet place to feel sorry for myself.
give me the musty damp leaves & the handprint
of a late october rain. this time of year
the slugs around our house are feral.
they start writing prophecies all up the side
of the house. once i saw my name & i tried
to figure out which creature knew me. i never
located them. instead, i took my name off
& beat it in front of the house like a dusty rug.
i have a lot of regrets. my biggest one is probably
that i let myself return to this earth 
as a human. maybe when we were slugs
you were gentler to me. maybe i felt real
& whole & alive. i love you but sometimes
you make me crave being soft & limbless.
dragging myself across the world's hairy tongue.
i make so many bad choices for myself
that i'm not even sure which would make sense
to roll back at this point. the house. the yard.
the birds. sometimes i hear a voice 
from the trees the line the edge 
of the corn field. last night i almost followed it.
was convinced i would finally catch
the slugs talking. planning out their master pieces.
i could then maybe ask to join them.
lay my down sticky & wild. a life without
the pressure to be a little man. the slugs reject gender
& embrace the laughter of the stars at night. 

block city

the one-way street is always working
against me. our cities are full of accidents.
me being one of them. kids are trying to build a city 
from cardboard blocks at the library. they construct 
a police station & i am a stranger & so i cannot tell them
to please tear it down. when i was small
my favorite game was restaurant. 
paper money. a plastic hot dog. life is a series
of larger & larger pretend games that never
quite become real. sometimes i romanticize
the dirt times. i wonder if those might feel
more tangible & loud than whatever we're doing
right now. the city was here before me though & before
anyone in my bloodline. it opened 
& asked us how we were going to imagine
one another. when i walk down hamilton street
i like to see myself passing in the windows
as a faint ghost. inside, people are being warm
& drinking coffee & buying lottery tickets.
there are little police stations & big police stations
everywhere. sometimes i look & i see a city of 
police stations. that is my fault though. 
i do not want to look out & see only the fractures. instead,
i want to see the blocks. the places that can
be easily lifted & stacked & rolled & thrown.
the children probably built hospitals & bodegas 
& delis & pizza joints or at least that is
what i tell myself on my walk home through
a quilt of car radios all trying to sing loud enough
for the last rays of sun to hear them. 

butter tooth

when i try to catch 
the barbed wire, i spread
like hot butter in the mouth
of a dog. i want to keep
my sculpture when 
the ice time is over. 
never give in to the sun.
our genders used to be so long
& shiny. now they get neat.
family houses in an street lamp military. 
i am told there are still holy places
that we should just not speak about.
i discovered one as a child.
all my hair fell out & i lost
the names for my brothers. my gender
turn into butter & i ate hundreds
of loaves of bread with it all alone
in the attice with the window open
to welcome back any bats that wanted
to join me.
the thing about the self is that
it is nothing without a knife
& somewhere to lay down.
i used to call my aunts & then
i stopped. i wonder if they would
even recognize my voice with my
buttered vocal chords
& the sacrifices i have made
to the gods of the well. in the miracle
of the loaves & the fishes, did they eat
the bread dry or was it decadent?
did the witnesses, years later,
smack their lips & taste their holy meal? 
i feel that way about peanut butter crackers
eaten on the turnpike. always more
than you bargained for but never
quite enough. i keep a butter knife
in my purse just in case. 

car sleeping in the rain

did i ever tell you about my
rocket ship? it smelled like
cigarettes & it lived in a wendies parking lot
across from a redners & across from
a daycare where the children would scream
like confetti. i slept in the back seat
which was never quite enough room.
still, i liked to curl up. pretend i was
returning from a trip to the moon
or from my grandmother's. i loved
the long drives especially when
my mom was at the wheel. she was better
at radio spinning & opening windows
& games. i had a tiny moon roof
in my car. i cracked it halfway
when the rain came. made 
impressionist paintings of the neon store lights. 
i wanted so badly to be on my way somewhere.
instead, my car was still. lingered
even as the parking lot emptied. i was 
always afraid someone would come
& tell me to leave. where would i go?
this was the last stop on a journey
to the next star. no turning back. 
when i felt especially wild, i would crack 
the front window just to stick my hand out
& feel the rain. i acted as if i had never
witnessed the sky break open before.
all my senses were different when i lived
in the rocket ship. i lingered on the taste
of pink bubblegum when i bought a pack
& chewed the whole thing. rubbed my fingers
across the floor carpet to feel the softness. 
when it came time to get up & go,
i turned the engine on. sunlight sweeping away
the clouds. droplets on the windshield. 
each one with a little rainbow on its shoulders.