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. 

frost/bites

each finger has a cathedral empty of birds.
i climbed a pinnacle just to find it littered with
chalices. they are worshipping in the crawl space again.
i would sever my own tongue & use it as fire wood
if it would mean summer again. the flowers die 
as closed fists. a shiver moves, vole-like 
through the pipes of my apartmeny building.
we dance to tell our blood, "this is a bath house."
only it is not a bath house. it is an ice cube tray.
i pull my teeth out to look for gold. a match says,
"at least it isn't" but doesn't finish the sentence.
false apples. a laughing oven. my toes twist like stop signs.

brushing my imaginary hair

i don't think i want to conjure my hair again
but she was a good family to me when the world 
lived only on a screen. i call that year the great plug.
i saw a ghost go in & out of a power outlet each night.
is it common for curtains to catch on fire? we have gas heat.
a boiler. i wake up in the night to make sure nothing is on fire.
my hair used to tell stories. my hair used to
pick out dresses & try to eat them. for a month
in the hurried summer, i let a bird nest in my hair.
she had to find a new home. i try to soothe. hush follicles. 
restless ball point pens. endless noctural neighbors.
here we are, lush & unseeable. here i am, the ghost. 

self portrait as dead nestling

we were almost there. "almost" is a word 
for mountains though & all i have 
is the ghost of a spoon. my coin-glossy hunger.
the wind used to give me each of my feathers.
to me, trust came naturally. i trusted
the arms of the oak tree & mother with her
wedding ring flights. to see another beak is 
to watch the self rip open. sometimes i felt
like i was just another tongue. downy static.
ladeled rain. lollipop sun. i blame myself. i say, 
"i asked the wind for too much." or, maybe, i am 
the earth's thumb print. not a martyr. just a haunting. 

pendulum

tell me where the hereafters live.
i don't want a future in telephones. i want
jaws & lips. i want to bite down through soil
& hear all the trees swinging. you hold out 
your hand & i trace a trail through the thick wood.
a path without a name that deer have followed
for centuries down into the forests' stomachs. 
there, hearts grow like dandelions. shovel yellow & then 
so easily blown to eyelashes. that is where i go
to dig for the question i haven't found yet.
the one that might exist at the end of a tooth,
swaying beneath "yes" & "no." 

audience

in the theater we were cat-walkers,
not actors or ghosts. the audience had cell phone eyes
& keyboard teeth. we kissed until we were
on the megatron. i didn't know about the cameras 
but there is always a camera. sometimes a lover
is a camera & then you end up on the news 
for promising too much. often i take a walk 
& everyone can hear i'm thinking about different ways
my friends have died. i do not want to be such a downer.
i kill flowers (mostly by accident). the audience 
switches to another channel & says, "nothing good anymore."
from the catwalk i sing. the theater is a pie pan. is empty. 

vocal warmups 

is it vegan if you swallow the bird whole?
open your lips & pretend to be the mourning dove?
i ate chocolate until my mouth was a pie crust.
circles of birds & bells. i was trying to make
a playground slide of a speculum. o my silver hungers.
kissing a boy in a practice room, he started calling me,
"trumpet." a bowl of mouth pieces. you can teach yourself
to be so hollow that anything can pass through. fists 
& legs & briefcases. i was not a good singer. i did try though.
i walked around with a handful of glass eyes. 
popped them in my mouth. cavern. catacomb. he said
this was all just a warmup. "for what?" i thought. for what. 

embedded 

we must tell the pillows where we took each bone.
i put a fish net around a god & call him father
as opposed to "daddy." i was a little girl
in the playground of my daddy's mouth. this was
last week. this was last year. this was me 
hogging all the blankets & pretending to be
a moth in a cocoon. see, i said "moth" because
butterflies are (sadly) over-used. i want a goat.
i want a chicken coop without the chickens. i want
to go to sleep & not think about all the gods i've had to bury. 
i did a bad job though. he's always saying, "come here."

butterfly memorial

when i say "memorial" i mean 
"here is where the apology lays to rest."
we bring flowers & nectar to the abstraction.
they had bodies like parenthesis & silk scarves.
there was no need to take so many. torn apart. dismembered.
once a man called me "specimen" & i think i knew
how they felt. a migration lives in my bones
like a shovel. deeper & deeper. the memorial 
is closed at dusk. then, the insects return.
beat their wings. taste the air again. 
we live in a world of hallowed destructions. mostly,
i do not want to remember. the stones say, "you must."

train station

i make my home at crossroads. a bottle
of whiskey. here, it is always midnight &
i am always needing to find a new way home. tell me,
what has been following you into the cellars 
of your language? recently i discovered that
all trains must pass through my heart
to reach their destinations. i am all rush & rails.
i catelog faces, as they peer out car windows at my wild organs.
do you remember sitting, facing one another?
you moving backwards & me forwards? a bottle 
of gin. an offering is not just a gift but a pathway.
i say, "i have been waiting for you."