homily for the hard candies 

window sugar to be spyglassed.
we looked through each other
& became the saints on the other side
of the stained glass forest.
preaching to the birds,
saint francis said,
"i do not believe 
in any of this." faith is 
a jump rope game. the question is
are you playing double-dutch
or going it alone? i sometimes think
of attending a mass again. 
seeing the old priest
saunter up to the microphone
& make a desert with his mouth.
a bowl of candy hovers 
like a mothership. i unwrap myself
& toss my dresses into a trash can.
my skin, sweet as shoelaces.
this is how to live your
sweet dwindling life. 
a holiday is coming with 
dozens of new doors to worship.
the exit signs held up be cherubs.
he tells us he is hungry for
a fruit tree. for miles
all the apples & the peaches 
turn to sundials. the congregation too
lay shoulder to shoulder 
in a glass bowl. they say 
here is what you asked for lord.
outside i become a dragonfly.
drink nectar from 
a teacupped flower. whisper
to the humming birds, asking 
"how do you live your lives?"
they say, "without guilt."

my mother writes fake obituaries 

from her bedroom of mirrors.
i hear the sound of sirens
turning themselves into apples.
foreheads falling from their shelves.
red is the color of emergency
& i wake up one morning to 
a room of nothing but red. 
childhood made headlines of me.
breaking breaking breaking.
once i cut my finger & nothing but
confetti came out. our neighbor died 
& they held a viking funeral.
flooded the town. loud speakers bloomed
from flag poles to announce 
the world was briefly ending 
but would resume in the morning.
lately, i talk to death 
like a protagonist. i say,
"did i know this man who turned to dirt?"
my mother loves to invent names.
she asks if i know the oldest color 
& i say i don't when i really do.
blue goes to sleep some nights 
& everything is deeper. i dig a grave
to bury my telephone. the newspaper arrives.
we read a mixture of tall tales
& elegies. for years now every day 
opens with elegy. i have said
enough farewells to fill a bathtub.
i ask my mother if she remember
when i died. she hold up 
the newsprint square that describes 
how i died of unnatural causes.
hit in the head with a fallen planet
to be exact. i fold the paper up
& let it melt on my tongue
like a communion wafer. no more god.
no more typewriter. it's just
my mother & i & staircases
to the grey-cloud afternoon.
"no one at all can die today,"
i inform my mother. our bodies
are quadropled by the mirrors 
all around. she accepts this. writes 
fake birth announcements instead.

a bees nest

talking where my lungs could be
i was a dancer in another life 
& i talk to every stripe of myself.
the ribbons falling from branches.
the hive's language becoming one.
i want a cluster but not a chorus.
sometimes i take apart my heart
just to remember how it works.
the bicycle victim to this same practice
lays with its chain strewn.
i often fail to put back together.
laughing a swarm & apologizing
despite the fact that no one else
is even in the room. can i open
the door yet? is there anything 
going on this sunday? not a wing
in sight, we learned to hover 
like only late-stage balloons.
i am wearing pedals for legs.
here is how i move to the next world
& the next. i don't remember
how the nest grew only the after.
isn't that how things always go?
there is a huge looming waterfall
& then there is breathless night.
i can't remember what it was like
to not walk tightropes toward
every single doorway.
help me help me, i say to no one 
but the bees. they are gentle.
all of them say, we are here.
line the walls like inverted stars.
where is the honey i was told 
was coming? i am missing pieces
from my own frantic openings.
the screw driver bites
a portal. i cover my eyes
& spit out abdomens. sixteen.
the bees have no genders
or at least none that they
are willing to tell me. i learn
to breathe over & over like a windmill. 

fried water

i crave the kind of frills
only oil can know. i used to 
measure a cup of frozen french fries 
into their basinette,
lowering them down into 
toiling gold.
summer was hungry for all our fingers.
the burns like deep kisses 
on my hands & wrists.
i worked at the malt shoppe
most weekends. around me
checker boards blinked
& turned. my face, full of moons,
reflected back at me 
in the glass store front windows.
lines of bodies. all their grasping.
eager for extremes. the burning heat
of french fries & corn dogs.
luscious cool of a strawberry cone.
then there was me, ever in transit.
making a life in mouthfuls.
i remember one night 
standing in our small bathroom,
looking in the square mirror
that was just about the size of my face.
i wanted another minute alone
but the people kept coming
escapees from the humid night.
sixteen, i dreamed of slipping
into oil & becoming succulent
& needed. saw oceans of gold flickering.
all of us laying bellies 
to the stars. went back out
& finished the orders. 
smiling with my sidewalk square teeth
until closing.

haunting subscription

for a small monthly fee 
you too can experience the otherworldly.
i hold my credit card up 
to the wild full moon & exclaim
that i would like to sign up
for a haunting. people try
to be specific. ask for grandmothers
or famous artists but 
you cannot tell a haunting what you want.
it is about giving yourself up. i sat 
waiting with my back to the wall.
doesn't it always feel like
someone else is standing right behind you?
that is only the beginning.
the haunting tracing its fingers
across all the surfaces in the house.
it wonders what it would like
to show you. before the haunting 
i believed in being alone. i sulked,
stared up at the ceiling like
it might lift away & give me stars.
now i know i am surrounded. ghost heart beat
in every lightbulb & end table.
my haunting laughs like waving curtains.
drop forks on the floor 
in the middle of the night.
when i go to pick them up
sometimes there's my name
carved into a wall or, just yesterday,
the dining room table. of course there is
the thrilling fear but then 
something else. a comfort. knowing that
nothing is ever complete. 
my haunting once told me 
she milked cows when she was a girl.
told me this in a whisper
when i was in a thought tunnel
about feeling less-than real.
i picture her hands & then they arrive
to turn fresh apples to rot. 
my life is so much more tangible
& yours can be too. there is no reason
to live unhaunted. in fact,
i start to wonder how people do it.
i look around & see their empty windows
& wonder what keeps their inhabitants
stay alive. i am followed 
by so many bare feet. i now sleep in
crowded rooms. all thanks to
the service of the spectral.
i wouldn't want to live any other way.
you can live like this too.
imagine this: cool air on the back
of your neck. goosebumps vine 
up your arms & legs. you see 
an appartition standing in the dining room.
she drops a glass. it shatters
& wakes a coiled piece of your soul
you didn't know you still had. 

bee speaking / bee keeping

to hold the nest is to 
talk like the nest. we would play
whisper down the alley 
& i loved to be the one
to turn the word into a shrapnel.
there are all kinds of children.
i was one who gathered pollen
& fed it to the jaws of flowers.
language is always both creation 
& endings. sealing all the tangibles
into the glass display cases.
i want to be something unworded.
bees knit their catacombs
into the roof. my father wears
a parable to try to dislodge them
with his bare hands. i practice
saying "i love you" in swarm.
googling "why do people throw
their sneakers over the telephone wires?"
i am not the bee keeper or 
the bees but i am something in between.
this is how i teach my eyes to feast.
swallowing honey by the hexagon.
tethering my coffin to the arm
of an oak tree, i live like 
a whole colony. sending paper airplanes 
to deliver questions to god. 
why do i still wish i was
allowed to open my tongue like blossom?
i am an excavator of limits. i cannot
explain to the bees that they will
live very short lives. of course
they are aware of this but in 
a bodily way. i want them to understand
that they only have months
to learn about cartography &
musical instruments. a violin
small enough for a worker bee to play.
at the end of the day i can't save them
but i can burn myself trying.
i put the hive in a baby carridge
& walk down by the river.
a lullaby grows wings & leaves me.
the bees turn into finger bones
when this is all said & done.
i go back to trying to summon gold
with only my beard covered in pollen. 

all fours

you never told me you had 
a leather garden. i learned
from the best museums
how to steal statues.
in the water we find 
so many arms. all of them
are looking for their former gods.
in the living room we get 
archeological with the potraits.
uproot the yew looking for 'you.'
i am more afraid of my tethers
to whales than than anything else. 
if i turn over in bed
one too many times i will end up
in the dark blue ocean 
coping with the prescense of lungs.
i fit you inside my mouth. i call you
little frog. we wet our fingers
to touch the amphibians 
who have started to arrive
for a party we are not throwing. 
i explain, "it is no one's birthday"
to which they reply. "it is everyones'."
the mushrooms send a text message
to the trees that humans need to
get back to their knees.
i agree for the most part.
giving it a try, i notice
most of my problems come from 
hearing the clouds so loud.
laying in the grass i am
a whole boyhood again. a swing set 
hangs from my ribs where 
birds come to whimsy. 
we don't replant. we keep
the yard barren & i suggest,
"what if we grew obelisks."
they arrive like fingertips.
we lay with our backs up against them
& sigh. it is a shame to not
be insects. gather around
the salt lick & take turns
watching out for deer or hunters.
this lifetime is one for 
regressions. i want to be 
a hundred thousand years younger.
we uncover fern fossils
who laugh like dead trumpets.
they say, "you think you know 
what you want. you have no clue
just how loud the sun was."

intergalactic phone call regret

i cast the line out farther 
than a shoelace of light can reach.
i'm asking, "does your body ever feel
like a sand castle?" i take a shovel
& scoop water senselessly 
from the basement. give me 
a lizared heart. give me the gravity
of a trailing moon. the phone 
is covered in pins. the phone is
tangled in ivy. i ask a street lamp 
for help & it coils & says, "hello?
hello?" wrong phone calls. red planets
push everything to voicemail. 
celestial clouds like soap. 
i thought by now i would know better
not to spend all my money 
calling outlines in the night.
do you remember being 
unfettered? no, i do not at all.
i plug a space heater in.
put my feet infront of the glow.
wait for novas to respond with their
wine glass speaches. my thumb
around my own lips. how did i use
to speak so easily? my life
poured from between teeth.
still ringing, i walk out past
the mail boxes to get a better signal.
stars in murmmuration. the telephone wires
playing cats cradle without fingers.
no one has ever picked up 
but that does not mean
it will not be tonight. i light a candle
only i can see. blood making
race tracks toward a violent november.
the ringing ends. a creature
without an answering machine 
does not know they were wanted.
my voice becomes a glow worm
that i must put in a terrarium.
prepare for the death of. 
of course, there will be more.
pulling the sun from a compact
& standing by the morning-bruised window.
the telephone is not--
was not a telephone. 

disappearing spell

as a boy-girl i talked to dragons.
alone in my bedroom i watched
as they spilled gems from their chests.
circled the ceiling & became 
golden rings that fell around me. 
i stepped into my own skull like a lair. 
there, found the skeletons of children past.
hoped to stay there
where no one else could find me.
at school most days i spent recess by myself.
sat under the dying oak tree
& looked for worms to witness.
other kids would practice their knives on me. 
i stood still as if i could
make myself vanish. but now i had a spell.
on the floor i worked to decode
the scripture from my dragonology book.
a big red picture book that everyone like me
treated as bible. page after page
of dragon diagrams & maps. this page
was titled "disappearing spell."
i thought of this as a departure.
wrote a letter to my parents 
that began, "i loved you very much."
dreamed of days of being nothing at all.
moving like air. no body at all
to capture me. the instructions explained
to complete the spell, all you had to do
was spill an included packet of fine purple glitter 
all over your body. i braced myself.
recited the incantation as i spread
the flecks of glitter. i waited.
found my body unchanged. said the words
over & over. it was like the reverse
was happening. i was becoming more 
& more perminant. i cried. brushed glitter
from my face & my arms. went to a mirror
to be sure. yes. there i was.
there i was with all my freckles 
& my round face. streets away
the dead oak tree's arms plucked stars
from the nightsky like strawberries for me.
i lay in bed that night. told the dragons
what had happened. they closed their eyes
& said, "look, no we cannot see you.
now you can be disappeared." 

this building is not empty it is full of bats

pleading with the lemon juicer,
"i need a minute but i'm almost ready."
you tell me to not be so hard 
on myself. i find the tornado 
exactly where i knew i shouldn't go.
often i enter the mansion of my head
holding a lantern. ferris wheels
take their lunch breaks & 
i place my childhood in front
of the tv where it will do less harm.
our attic was once full of warm bodies.
opened the window & watched them
become a new color. still, my shoes light up
if i stomp hard enough on the sidewalk.
the dead are all of our downstairs neighbors.
a can opener for beet-purple planets.
am i bleeding or just loosing.
i tried double-dutch but turned out
to be too gay for repetition. the coach nods.
asks for me to show him 
how i make a fist. taking the window
off the house. letting the breeze
do whatever it wants. curtains
blown open like lips. i get 
really close with guys on dating apps.
we are wound like rockets. 
then i leave. the house grows 
so many weeds that i take to calling them
flowers. all my flowers have child-names.
keeping the lights off so as
to not distrub the colony. shoulder 
to shoulder. how do you talk to
your ceilings? i cover my eyes.
rush out of the mansion & out
of my body. call me a helicopter.
a paper airplane aimed at a question.
home is where you put your teeth away.
i don't have a place like that.
careful so as to not awaken a swell.
wings on every banister. holding my breath.
escaped to the front lawn.
a mailman delivers an extension cord.
i charge my iphone from the porch.
all the hairs on my arms stand up.
the bats are taking turns asking,
"who is he?" "who are they?" 
"who is she?"