stealing saturn's rings for you

in another life, i was a humming bird & you were a bee.
we drank from the same soda can. maybe i'm wrong.
maybe we were mosquitos with legs like eyelashes.
all i know is we were hungry. climbing a ragged rope, 
i finally reach the planet. breathe her atmosphere's 
pale yellow crystals. she is guarding a core.  
she says, "this one piece is mine." i recall how i must climb 
into my body each night. my celestial machine. i perch 
& look out at the rings. how far my rings stray. i pry off 
just one ring of saturn. teach it to orbit you as you sleep. 
i say, "you can open your eyes." we are surrounded 
by golden snakes. you say, "it's everything i wanted." 

gold dusting

the flood waters come with lightning in their stomachs. 
they ask "do you have enough to get by?" "yes," i lie.
i put clouds in jars. look for gold dust on the sidewalk.
a museum of magnifying glasses arrives on two chicken legs.
i am looking for angels. then, today, the sofa gains
a heart beat & we become too sheepish to sit anymore.
i stand in hallways & corners. brush shoulders with demons. 
some say that gold once was the bones of gods. 
i find a grinder dangling above. my gods go willingly to dust. 
close their eyes the same way rabbits die: 
quick & full of relief. to be prey in your own parable 
is to always look up as if it might rain gold.

i lie to you & pretend i have a daughter

this is the ziploc bag i usually keep her in.
toys strewn across the lava pit. she is the one
who tore the hole in the wall. the one that leads
right into bee hive burning. i bake a cake because
it is her birthday or mine. we live on a dwindling. 
i tell her stories about how when i was small 
daughters were everywhere. i had a closet of daughters. 
then, they all went to war or turned into glaciers 
just to melt a year later. a monster is gathering sticks 
at the soy bean fields' edge. i sent my daughter there 
with a pocket knife & she didn't come back.
i call out like crow to her. the mountain's echo back. 

rust

on the railroad tracks that latticed town, 
there grew rust from lack of use. 
the ghost trains carrying left shoes & wedding veils
did nothing to mark the tracks. a train in use
shines the rails silver from motion. sometimes
a train rushes my spine & i rattle like an urgency.
there is not enough time. there are midnights coming. 
i try so hard to balance between despair & craving;
walking with my arms airplane as i went. 
my friends & i would take each other's pictures there
on the old tracks. teasing, we told one another 
"move there's a train coming!" 

the birds &/or people outside my window.

they say, "tomorrow we'll bicycle
until the world is flat." then, they turn into birds
& those birds fall like basketballs.
i picture every wall in the city petaling open.
here is the tulip i sleep inside. pink sound.
red sound. our sneakers with desires of their own.
the outside people jump rope & then i am chaining myself
to the bed to listen. i wonder if i am 
part of their conversation even if they don't know  
i'm only feet away. the sidewalk is always a temple.
children litter the street with their old feathers.
referring to me, they say, "goodbye miniature man." 

glass balloons

i fill my fragile with a shout & a knife.
come see my rooms of electronic vases. the orchids
you bought for me to kill. every color takes a brief case 
& runs & i am left with a birthday cake & a pair
of binoculars. the circus burned to the ground
years ago, i am looking at a landfill. riding the train 
with a window seat, i watch as even the trees
put on skirts. being beautiful is the most 
contagious gender. i sometimes buy marbles 
just to swallow. third fourth & fifth eyes.
the world blinks back tears. i am tying a string
to a salamander. i am walking in the orange night. 

minimalism

on friday i lived by the radio signals
of a red grape. one button at a time.
we stripped the walls of all their vines 
& left only the glass. i was being watched 
so i became the room's ornament. in the white hallway 
i walked & walked to find the next bean.
alone on a pedastal. tell me what is "enough"?
my hunger could fill every doorway with balloons.
silver house plants & a basket of brass instruments.
in my old apartment i lasted months without a table 
or a bed frame or a fork or a god. i told myself,
in the light of a single window, not to eat my own tongue.

 

does your body come apart like this? 

at first i thought it was hail
pinging off roof tops & car hoods.
i wear my bike helmet to walk out 
to the pine tree to ask the tree what we should do.
my life is a thinning glass window. i open my hand
to catch a fragment & find the sky is shedding teeth:
shark teeth & human teeth & rat teeth &
monster teeth. i open my own mouth in fear.
i count to check my teeth are all still there. 
lately, every moment i feel like i am losing
another part of my body. i gather as many teeth as i can
in a metal bowl in case one day i need them.  

rattlesnakes singing all night

lately, i try to befriend my catastrophes. 
this is not so bad. this is not so bad. 
microwave full of bees. the rattlesnakes beneath the bed 
asking for "just one ankle." i say, "i am asleep." 
our moon cracks her skull slipping on the top stair. 
every attic has a dead man's coat. tell me you still feel
some joy when, in the morning, you ask your body 
to become the person again. a goldfinch is on the news preaching
about the end times. he eats worms like each is his last.
i say he is a doomsdayer but then, at night, i stare
into my phone looking on amazon for a portable water purifier.
add to cart the backpack i will escape with as rattlesnakes sing. 

nightstand

on horse legs, the street lamps arrive.
basket ball tree. everything swells
inside a july night. i wanted so badly to be
the plum in your mouth. smudged water glasses.
phone charger cords tangled. i crave saplings:
one to grow right above our bed. your laptop blinks. 
i wish my eyes were marbles so i could roll them under the bed 
with the dust & the dog fur & then i would ask you to kneel 
& find them for me. love is often about retrieval. 
bring me back bring me back. you leave everything 
(car keys, wallet, ghosts, spare moons) between my shoulders.
i wait on hands & knees for you to reach for them, for me.