to-do list for a true sparrow

1. worry about the scent of a dead rainbow
2. sit in another garden 
& dream myself ancient 3. talk to the ghosts
who stand at the bus stop but never board
4. eat the latter half of a granola bar 
& consider trying to become a sixteen-wheeler
to drive wildly through the night 
5. tell a story to someone who is not listening
6. pretend they are listening 7. stop & talk
to the crows who fight invisible knights 
in the field by the high school 8. crave a glimpse
at what they say 9. envy their feathers
10. try to love myself 11. find a puddle
for grazing 12. yes this is my body 
& my face 13. yes this is what the world sees
when it comes to me & says, "here is some seed"
14. when the morning comes again do not weep
15. only the dead birds & dead deer should weep 16.
you are alive so you should find a leaf to dance with
17. dance beneath the willow 18. pretend no one
has ever seen you 19. try to be the first 
to glimpse the moon when she comes 20. tell no one
as her face rolls over the hills before
taking its place in the sky 21. remember
a past life when you were a sea shell 22. do not 
worry about the scent of a dead rainbow 
or a dead planet or a dead garden 23. trust
every green you know 24. sing in morsels
25. nest in the hair of a sleeping girl 

catalog of punishments 

i thought lightning would strike me down
for everything that put on shoes
inside my head
when i sat in church-quiet.
i contemplated my wooden life.
welcomed my little 
stained glass thought experiments
that took me into boy mouths.
i want to try to unlearn 
my impulse towards punishment
but i'm unsure what will
be left of myself. i saw a car
being towed away & i thought
"now we are safe." we stood outside
wreckage of homes newly burned down.
i understand why we interpret entropy 
as castigation. deeply i want
there to be a reason why i crashed my car.
sitting on the side of the road
head newly bursting with roses. 
i thought, "please please
please." god of lamp posts.
god of windowsills. i step into my life
& ask for a catalog of everything
i will do wrong & what will follow.
no such sipher exists. there is just me
& the lightning. me & the stoplight.
standing in the sacristy 
as an altar child helping a priest
put on his vestments. my body 
is a peach. a clementine. then, a knife. 

driver's license photo

i put my head inside an official document.
gender is not just what you are but how
you are processed. i scan my gender
& buy a steering wheel from a corner store.
i learned to drive in the church parking lot
where even the rose bushes were disciplines.
have you ever thought of the distance between
disciple & discipline? i don't know how 
to live with this many questions. i am a real
& photographed person. this is proof
i am not a vampire or at least that i was not
when i entered into another system.
then there is the memory. the machine was 
a one-way mirror but i know on the other side
was someone who also carried a little proof
of themselves inside a cave. i want to give
less of my teeth to the internet. consider deleting
part of my life thus far. they say it is perminent
but one day won't i be ozymandias-ing like 
the rest of us? i select my gender as
"bird" & accept any consequence that might come.
flight risk. flower risk. information risk.
here is my advice. give yourself a secret name
only you know. hold that name like a knife
& then you can say, "you do not have all of me"
knowing full well that one day they will have
a device that can reach into anyone's past thoughts
to pluck out whatever quail egg they had tried to save. 
i do not know if i really need to be secret
but it is what i crave. to drive through the night
without a thumb print or a trail of alphabet.
just a body & a shovel & a gender still 
wet from hatching. beating my moth wings. 
stealing the eyes out of every stoplight. 

third grade autopsy 

i liked to take apart hallways. paper clips
& as ragged worm garden. lips were
a secret talismen. we talked
to bathroom ghosts & in the mirrors 
found versions of our oldest selves.
to be close to the linoleum is to be
close to god. holding communion wafers.
lighting candles. my fingers often
turned into chimney swifts,
flying off to find their consecrated towers.
in the dark, i summoned demons 
& named them after myself.
taking the dull kitchen steak knife 
& severing the day open as wide
as if could go just to look at its organs.
soft planets in the galactic water.
a pear. an apple. boyfriends with buttercups 
in their hair. the tree that fell.
branches were strewn in the grass. we looked for
our long lost limbs. to be alive was 
to break open every single tooth.
bloodied little veins. a boy liked to follow me
into my caves at night & say,
"pilot pilot pilot." i cried. the boy
was not there but his tongue was,
lapping water from a dripping faucet.
i never meant to grow older. i never meant
to become so much less wise. it is like
that gift disapated day after day.
nesting my hands. kissing a boy 
with curly hair & watching as he turned
into a dead deer. side of the road.
headlights like thrown dinner plates.
a father in the basement with the boiler, 
knocking on the pipes
all through the night. 

subtweet

some people just have to set the television on fire. 
it's almost like they have no idea 
that's where i live. once, when i was a teenager, 
i tried to grow a sunflower inside the skull of our old set. 
some people drug me by my ears 
out to the chicken coop. some people 
took a knife & carved "daughter" into the firewood.
i will tell myself, they didn't know better but
of course they did. i think we almost always do.
why do we keep pushing the stone when we know 
it's going to roll down? some people have livers 
made of gold. some people do not even remember what they do. 

do you want to hold him?

i'm taking care of our pet shop terrarium ghosts.
i talk to the heat lamp & start calling it "god."
wash your hands before you do. there is a train station
full of pigeons waiting for us. do you remember
the fruit in the city? how it begged to be cradled?
i used to rest my head on your shoulder while
we turned into snakes. all of a sudden it was 
just me holding a rat. in the parking lot everyone was terrified. 
race cars with race car dreams. i want to know if you miss me.
on that island, everyone was starving no matter
how much we ate. there was no such thing as bare feet.
drinking a silver diet. our bullet hole window pet shop.

blocked number(s)

he is trying to be a walnut in my head again.
i see him in diner menus & take out boxes 
& headless trees. once, i met someone who wasn't haunted.
that was how i knew i was still living in a maze.
i look at my blocked numbers & i see he has tried
to embed a message in the numbers. numerology says,
"there was a before & then there was an after."
i wish i was talking about just one boy. it could be
any of them or the one that nests instead of me. 
i think gender is really just about who swallowed who 
inside your chest. i have a snake with a belly full of men. 
sometimes i unblock his number. stay up all night to look at it.

dress pattern

in the womanhood store i was trying to sell psychology.
here is a diagram of everything you told yourself
you weren't allowed to want. fiberglass beds for staying vigilant.
in many ways, what a dress means is the only litmus test
for what a gender is. is the dress dangerous or not?
i cut my dress from fish scales & fire. it is the same pattern
my grandmother used to make a wedding. 
nightmares come prepackaged. i buy the ones that involve 
failing at having a body. my hair falls out like leaves.
in my gender, it is always autumn. i am always the dressmaker.
the pattern, incomplete. guard towers. a needle in my mouth.
other women saying, "almost." other men steering clear.

mouse symphony 

we shrank the kitchen to the size of a plum.
it was no use anymore. we weren't going to cook.
all the birds outside were talking about sitcoms 
& plucking children from the sidewalk to take as their own. 
i crouched down to peer into a hole in the wall 
to see if i could spy on the mice that morning. 
they wore t-shirts that said, "no more gods." 
they were organizing a strike. i asked them what they're striking 
& they said "that is for us to know." i sat & thought about
how i would be a fairly good mouse. 
i wished i could join their efforts. felt desperately alone.
still, most days, i want to be those bodies & not my own.

my brother's bass case

we put the body away with the bow. bow of
a boneless ship. let's take turns guarding
the portal. zippers that ask too many questions.
he would come to the mirror & call as many bodies
as he could. cradling the monster until it was
ready to sing. i have always failed at my instruments.
i am too much like a father. i come to each string 
& say, "trapeze." trip over the beast dreams around me.
instead, he comes made of walnut shells. he comes
& sleeps inside the skeleton alongside it's slanted mouth.
with bodies, there is always a smaller truth inside.
nesting doll. nesting flute. i hear them fighting all night.