shag rug

i took my purple & made a forest
for the house to grow from.
buying seeds at the grocery download.
a fork in the garbage disposal
which is better than in the outlet.
did you know there is a device
they will install in your closet now
that can take a vacation for you?
i buy the newest model of spaceship 
& try to essemble it myself.
a missing button. i stay grounded 
on the planet of the pull-tabs.
my screw driver is a father. my father 
is sleeping on the rug. is petting
the rug & saying when he was a boy
he dreamed of being american enough
to paint the grass whatever color 
his mother wanted. his mother is
a spatula or else maybe hiding
in the salt shaker. our salt shakers
are shaped like watermelon slices.
i bit into your shoulder like
it was a melon. i wish i had
a rind to lean on when everything
is aspirational like this. coffee pours
from the sink. we forgot we had this installed
& i am thirtsy. my wife asks me, "i thought you
were going to finish the spaceship today?"
i don't hear her finish her sentence.
i am already staring at the grill
& wondering how hot the sun can get & if
the sun has plans to die.
my wife is a blow dryer. 
i find a lucky outlet. pet the carpet too.
the back of a god or a brother.
we break bread like knuckles.
get to work in the shadow 
of a future purchase. i would like
one of everything, please. 

ornithophobia or fear of being carried away by birds 

i am walking on a length of floss.
yesterday, i took my shoes off
& stored them in my head.
believed my crazy was becoming
a new person. the outlines of strangers
always have wings & in my conversations 
with the hat man he says i have nothing
to worry about except for birds.
birds do not run in my family 
but once i saw my youngest brother
standing on a ledge & trying to fly.
when some people leap they become doves
& others become asterisks on the ground.
i am alarmed by my body 
& what it asks for. necklace of teeth.
grubs with their windowed organs.
i am less afraid of where they'll take me
as i am of the leaving. i imagine 
the world beneath my like a beach ball.
swallowing helium, i could just
become my own balloon. one of my friends says
birds were designed by the government 
to watch us. my fear is not contingent 
on whether or not a bird is natural.
if i'm honest though there is
a sliver of desire. i want to see
my life in minitature. i want to sell
all my clothes & wear a lovely uniform
given to me by the bird president.
who can i go to for permission
not to think at all today?
i am least worried about ducks
because i have seen their wood hearts.
watched as my mother carved them 
by the side of a mucky river.
song birds on the other hand.
they have a library of voices.
once a blue jay opened his mouth
to tell me i didn't love him
in the voice of my abuser. i covered my ears
& hurried briskly into a bathroom.
bathrooms are of course
the only place i am safe.
that's where the hat man 
keeps his wisdom. where the mirror
is also a watering hole.
elephants come. i dip my face.
drink as deep as i can. make promises
to myself that i will not & cannot keep.
"you will nail your feet to the dirt"
"you will not cover your head
as you run into the ivy" " you will
stop collecting feathers as evidence." 

footnotes

if i forget to tuck my feet
underneath the covers
in the morning the toads come
to mark me with their marginalia.
they right "we should go back
to the water." i lurk about each day
as if i'm not a conduit
for prophecies. i shave my head 
& watch the follicles fall
like stickmen. today i am also 
a stickman & i put my shoes on
to conceal the words of 
passing angels. i attract graffiti
&, along with it, all the angst 
of the world. sometimes i wake up
with a jar of eels sitting 
on a shelf in my chest. 
i lay still so i don't make fight.
there is also a beta fish beautiful
in my brain. i feed her gold flakes.
did you know there are fish 
in fish flakes? then again
we are all a little cannibal, right?
once i put my youngest brother 
in the oven & told him it was 
a play pen. don't worry. i took him out.
i take a shovel & go to 
where the words live like worms.
dig & dig. this place is my feet.
i am digging in my own walking
looking for a word that might mean 
"apology" but tastes like
a golden delicious apple. instead,
i find more amphibian writing.
"i am through with
my lungs" & "i just want to eat
a blue berry." our mouths are 
maybe our greatest limits.
i can't unhinge my jaw so instead 
i just have to hope when i tell you
what i need it isn't 
the size of a sofa. i wash my feet
twelve times because there is
no god & no apostoles
to do it for me. a flock 
of pigeons come to watch. i tell them
to save their stories for stone.
it lasts longer. they laugh
& happily eat as much crumbles 
as they can carry. every crumb
was once a stone. the lifetimes 
of atoms are like carousels.
i'm headed back to the deep.
a frog in need of water 
tells me, "i am through."
i wet my fingers 
& carry him to the lake.
he breathes & does not thank me.
i wasn't expecting him to. 
looking down i see the note he left
on my feet. it reads,
"it is time to stop." 
i close my eyes & pretend
i myself am just an alphabet
until the sun inverts 
into the moon. a quiet sliver.
my feather-cluttered night.
the world is cool. 
the beta fish thinks he's royalty.

pokemon card bible

i did not know how
to play the pokemon card game 
& i wouldn't have had anyone to battle with 
if i did. instead, we kept them in binders 
in the attic. dust on the shelves.
my pilgrimages up 
soft green carpet stairs.
i would sit & lay the cards out in rows
pretending we were standing
in a desert together.
then, later, inside a flea market 
& i would go talk to the bin 
of card board monsters. i didn't have
many friends. the ones i did 
had hair ties & knew how
to wear perfume already. i always felt like
i was in a play where everyone else had the script 
but me. i wanted to be told to run away 
like the characters in pokemon.
cracks formed in the asphalt 
& from them grew all my favorite weeds:
dandelions & ragged hands.
i asked myself if i
could be trained. 
as a ten year old
i was prone to fire-types.
whatever could set our dead dry lawn a blaze.
but i didn't want my pokemon to evolve.
preferred charmander to charizard.
i wanted to monsters small 
& managable. 
counting my cards at night.
savoring holographic edges 
& shimmering frames. i was convinced
i could stare long enough
to coax the creatures 
from their world into ours.
could wake up the next morning
& pack a bag & walk into 
a sherbert horizon. butterflies
drank greedily from our windows.
i was not a pokemon trainer
but i did have the cards
to return to. opening the binders
& deciding which i wanted 
to pull free from their 
plastic sheaths.

fishing line basinet

i remember being a trout.
how my mother wrapped me 
in newspaper. headlines screaming
"today is the last day."
once, inside my planetary egg,
i was just a diarama. miniature 
chairs & tables. bones the size
of ice skating rinks. children laughed
inside my walls. a tiny house 
is built on the outskirts of town
underneath the waters of the susquehanna.
fish gather. my family gathers.
fresh eggs blink. there is a moment
where an eye ball can hatch into 
a child. i cradled on all fours
to the surface. feathers in my throat.
writhing. the fisherman knitting cradles
for fish. the box of hooks.
he tests them on his own lip
& then does not know how to take them out.
i always wanted to be babied.
fed water as if i were truly
a gilled little girl. i had 
so much trouble training my lungs.
now they still fill with moths
if i'm not careful. wearing a door
as a necklace. the fisherman is not
my father or my mother. he is a neighbor man
with hands the size of hamburgers.
i tell myself i love him 
in order to make it to water again.
standing over me he becomes
tall & thin as a matchstick. 
the word "guardian" wavering until
it is just a tin roof. what i am trying to say
is i was hoisted from the water 
& asked to thank the hands that caught me. 
knuckles & gardens of fish tails.
a nursery with a resident box of lures.
i could never just lay in the field
because a red mouth was always
dangling just out of reach. 
come join me in my translucent cradle.
i am here to catch someone else.
wrap them in newsprint & tell them
exactly who i am. 

teeth-making angels 

once my skull was a venetian vase.
i held lilies in the before-life 
where everything was pooling with cream.
the sun was sugar & gummy-red.
great insects drank & the angels 
sat at sewing machine desks 
to make my teeth. sometimes i will
open my mouth to remember their craftsmenship.
i tell myself often i was constructed.
the thinnest nails. handfuls of clay.
a flock of ancient beings gathered 
to shape my spirit into another body.
they picked me up like a bed sheet.
all the while, fishers of men 
sat with their buckets on the edges
of clouds. i sometimes want to see
all the roots of my teeth. 
hold them in my palm & walk 
all around town. a ritual to summon
the before world again. everyone 
is always talking about afterlife
but i want to take a shovel 
& dig a way back. show me 
the origins of my crooked
dreaming the field of root vegetables.
wishing the carrots were golden. leading back
into a cavefish grotto. sight falling
like lemons. i do not want to be
this tethered to my skull. 
i want to open my mouth
& gather lilies like i once did
in the palace of a feathered god.
they work long into the darkness. 
etching each tooth crevasse & fold.
it is not a toil to them 
but a passion. some work on boar skulls
others snakes & other humans.
when a set is complete they whistle & stand.
a team circles them to inspect.
sometimes i still feel them
staring into my almost head.
that is when i spill. all the stem.
filling me with mouth. their instructions.
"bite down." hard enough to press teeth
into gums. hide them like headstones.
me, a soft little peach. 
the vase full of roots.

taranula chapel

i wanted a place to worship.
became a cricket to sit inside
the spider's hunger.
rubbing my legs together 
& singing about the oldest shade of green.
once, i had a pearl necklace
i wore to every single rendezvous
not knowing it was really a string
of eggs. spiders hatched at once
& consumed me. i was divided betweeen them.
perched in the corner of the room
& waited from memories to come
like flies. sitting alone with a television
& asking it to give me penance.
i buy a gold chalice to fill 
with sugar. instead of sleep,
i prayed until the ceiling opens
like an eyelid. i want to have
a family as myriad as these legs.
i go beneath her. eight pillars of salt.
her thick abdomen as cathedral.
angels that buzz & look for rott. 
holding a candle in my mouth.
the flame, a pair of wings. i learned
how to fly from jumping off rooves.
hearing my bones snap like
stained glass pitchers. sitting still,
the landscape becomes a pop-up book.
not real on top of not real.
god eats plain bread at a table
in the darkest pantry. the pillars move
& are now her legs. her eyes, a bowl
of washed plums. i bite into one
& still cannot sleep. behind my own eyes 
are visions of her lineage. 
church after church, 
filling my bedroom with legs.
i plead with her to show me how to beg 
because what is devotion
but a catelog of bending? 

the moon is talking on tv

we already put our fingers in the honey
haven't we? some days i repeat the phrase
"left to lose" without the "nothing."
pairing my socks & pretending they are
truly lovers. i do not want to take a walk
or pretend a painting on the wall is beautiful.
i have plenty of friends who are planets.
in my chest, i make a patio & then add
a table & chairs. we are drinking
lemonade made from powder. 
we are eating fruit snacks. the planets say,
"let's buy a shiny new." don't tell me 
you don't love a sentence fragment.
i prefer to speak with broken glass
in my teeth. it's more natural that way.
on the television, the moon speaks of 
foot steps & dreams. desires to be 
a field of legs. i tell the moon
even though she can't hear me,
"me too. me too." promising to never take
a skunk cabbage for granted. 
the planets want smaller lives
just like i do. i buy a bird to put
inside a cage. i can't stand it though
& i release him. he flies around the room.
starts bringing letters from dead stars.
they are bitter & angry & say things like,
"it is all over." i crumple them up
& light them on fire. there is too much &
not enough burning. no one asks to be
a star. the tumbling heat. 
everyone gazing. plants hungry
at your ankles. wearing a collar & leash
held by a gravity god. i want to be
the size of a marble. to be in your palm
while you walk down to the river.
wade in & become a dragon. the moon
makes promises she can't keep.
then, pulls the clouds over her face.
the television goes static along with
the sky. my friends set to work 
holding their breaths. i try 
to make a life without enough. 

video game song

the birds spoke dial tones 
all through the morning
& i thought "i should call you."
instead, i put on my headphones 
& pretended the world wasn't
turning to pudding. i took a walk
& ambling along a dog opened 
it's mouth to talk to me even though
clearly i was trying to be alone.
sometimes i walk around with a shovel
in case i need to dig myself
a burrow of aloneness. not yet, robin, not yet.
instead, i listened to the dog who said
"it looks like rain" over and over.
i find only my own repetition tolerable.
the cats were barking. the children 
chattered like squirrels. i never trusted
our parallel nature. how my house
had gone so many years without 
shrieking. who doesn't have a scream
waiting in them after all these years?
i decided my voice was now
a purse. i filled it with coins & phone calls
i could no longer make. a duck call.
a deer whisper. i wanted you here
so that i could apologize in a language
neither of us could understand.
it is probably best done like that.
at a certain point all words are just
kinds of water. frost on the window.
dew on the grass. i went up the mountain
insearch of a lion. needed to hear
what she might sound like.
reached her lair, stepping over the bones.
she had your voice. just like
i thought she would. i said, "i should
call you." she said, like you did,
"i just can't do this. i can't."

nesting

i wanted to build a mobile
to live over my head like afterlife.
a lady who falls from the top
of the building each night
is trying to be a swallow.
i fill my pockets with garbage 
& glass shards from the sidewalk.
sometimes i fantasize about 
going out every morning
& collecting trash. what makes 
a neighborhood beautiful?
the trash cans fill with scissors.
i buy another lighter & flick it
as if i might be able to make
a sun all on my own.
my lover tells me every night
that the world will be over
in thirty years. i turn off 
my listening. i walk out to
the nearest swing set & pretend
i am a lost girl. more garbage.
i'm collecting for a future nest.
that's how the birds are coping.
they stuff doritos bags 
between twigs. they gnaw on
fractured chicken bones.
raise their young within 
a torrent of brevity. tell them
"tomorrow we will be air." 
a good breeze is full of centuries
of birds. i wish i had that lineage.
hollow wishes & a grandmother 
who didn't live like an obelisk.
instead, i am human & making a nest
isn't in my blood. i watch the birds
to learn. pick up a shattered cell phone
that keeps ringing. i just want
to answer. on the other end
i picture of a room full of pigeons.
lets never go for a walk alone.
at night, the park is full of sneakers.
you sleep cradling a pillow
as if it were a baby. you do not know
you are doing this. sense memory
or something else. i toss rocks
in the creek. i will come home soon
with what i found.