vigil

i was the first one to reject sleep
in favor of knowing. cut a hole in the middle
of my mattress to remind myself of sink holes 
& impending plummets. it was indigo at first.
then just purple. then pastel. lavendar.
i smelled pine needles & cirtus moons.
my irises turned into melons. i was so so sweet.
delectable. had to resist the urge
to wake all my loved ones up to say
"you are missing so much. the night is full
of diamonds." i harvested parables. 
invented seeds. listened to all my neighbors
as they poured sleep from chimneys & windows.
if you knew where the spiders go at night
you would wear a plastic bag over your head too.
i've learned to breathe this way-- through 
all kinds of membranes: glass & burlap & plastic.
the ghosts these days are metallic anyway.
all the wooden ones degraded & turned to dust.
taken care of by the street cleaner.
from my kitchen i saw a mailbox spit.
witnessed two rabbits trading vehicles.
if no one is watching, nothing is happening.
i don't do this selfishly. this is in case
no one else's eyes are open. we wouldn't want
the world to stop. it will roll up like a rug 
if we aren't careful. you have to scour. 
you have to light candles. when i feel myself getting tired. 
i spin a top in each of my eyes. i tell the night insects
"please talk to me." they tell me pre-human stories
all in sound & color. the vermilion one is my favorite. 
standing out in the street, even the cars are dead.
burrowed next to the ground hogs. a phantom snow
is always waiting for the right season.
i open my palm & catch a baby shoe 
as if fals from a morning cloud. 

bat boxes

i tell you i want to stay the night
& you permit me. fasten a home from
paperclips & an old shoe box.
i use our evening to make a dragon
of your television. have you not noticed
there are arms hidden in every animal?
whale's phantom hand. snake's soldier stance. 
bat's meager palms. i ate gnats from around
your bananas waiting for you to wake. humans are
prone to wasting the best parts of darkness. 
sleeping bags hung from the ceiling
on meat hooks. were you not ravenous?
scraping jewels from the belly of the beast.
you think this is symbiosis. really, 
i am using you for your lamps & 
your canned beans. a bunker emerges 
in the periphery. space enough just for us.
i will tell you stories about gliding
from tree to tree in search 
of a syllable. i will tell you about 
all the lovers who turned into rabbits.
our shadows spend midnight standing up straight.
i wave to mine before he runs away, crumpled
like an old castle. i'm going to 
teach you your upside down. your inverted heart. 
take your shoes off. i'll float them
down river. finger to lips. we have to be
quiet. we have to not wake up the sun.
i used to dance endlessly until my limbs
turned to twigs. i'm going to stay 
as long as you'll have me. now, look,
above. the sky is full of ripe plums. 

tree stump

the labrinth was your body making itself.
most of the time i don't want escape.
i want exoskeleton in the washing machine
& then hours waiting to dry. i walked to school
shipwrecked. hair tangled with hay.
sometimes a head rolls off it's neck. 
sitting on the stump, we talked about 
doing drugs that none of us had. a hawk
nested in the trees above. shouted at us
to get a life. it seemed like everywhere i turned
another torso abandoned its branches.
a boys took their skin down to the butcher
to ask to be processed. we knit a quilt
for everyone who left. i sympathize though. 
sometimes the whole thing is rotted 
& all you can do is hope a seed took root. 
one day i went out to where the forest
used to tell me "take off your shoes."
i found only stumps. i stepped on them
like garden stones. i asked, "where did you go?"
the trees, of course, had been turned 
into stepping stools. after all, the world is
always just out of reach. sometimes i'll open 
the medicine cabinet & find a forest staring at me.
i'll explain, "you should be out of here."
forest doesn't listen of course. i cry
& thank the foliage & the doe & even
the ground bees hungry for ankles. 
in the dark of my bedroom i put 
my hand to my face. feel the splinter.
headbands of years. one after another.
i used to be a rolled tongue 
in the onion grass. forest brims 
underneath the covers. says, 
"it's time to worry."

popcorn

sometimes all i can do is open.
we look up at your ceiling as it turns
to snow. up the road is a field of dead tires.
rats live sequestered in their rubber.
a leg becomes a downhill story. 
out-running a whole night, we laughed wild
in the long long daylight. 
i want a birth control strong enough
to keep gravity working for me. i bloom 
less like an orchid & more like popcorn.
like i-can't-take-this-anymore. 
there is a machine for that. there is 
a doctor who knows just what to do even with
bodies like mine. i walk all the way 
to the ocean just to find it dry. i tell 
my lover we are not dying, we are just maybe
in the process of becoming a new species.
i'm hoping for scales if not feathers.
ow there is a bag of popcorn holding a ballet
in the microwave. each one of my heads
will soon be busted open. petals in the oven.
kernels where my eyes used to lay
like two purple beets. i trust nothing
about the coming autumn. there will be
corn husks & dresses made of silt.
letting the river go cold. when a seed
is past due there is nothing else 
that can be done-- it must be given back over
to the gods of the harvest. i do not know
how to grow anything but tomatos. i've decided
that's good enough though. i can live
round & red if i have to. wash my hair
in the heat of an old star. take my shoes off
& go to put them back on just to find them
full of stale popcorn. 

telephone wires for the dead

we were digging in the yard when we found the voice.
had been looking for bottle caps & coins. dirt 
in our knuckles & under nails. brothers are a framework
for unearthing. i knew duality from the way 
his arm raised as mine would fall. static & full
of juniper, the voice asked, "operator?"
& both of us shook our heads. none of us was skilled
at directing voices towards their destinations.
in fact, we didn't talk much to each other even.
the voice begged & said, "i have been calling 
for decades. every single day." the dead have phones.
i didn't ask questions. if you learn too much 
about the dead you will become one. i plugged my ears.
imagined a field of phone booths. all the dead
sitting there with a lap full of coins. calling & calling
on through their nights & days. i see my brother & i.
would he call me? would he call me as endlessly 
as i would call him? i feel the weight of a telephone
in my chest. a chord tethering me to a channel of tongues
tangled in the dirt. "hang up," my brother said.
unsure how to, we start filling in the hole we dug.
the voice became more and more static until there was
tree-rustling quiet. i should have asked their name.
i should have tried to help them. 
my brother crossed the yard alone. started digging again
without me this time. i went up to my bedroom.
put my ear to the wall as if i might hear 
the voice again. then, at the same time, in a future,
removing the phone from between my ribs
& calling my brother. he doesn't pick up.
night fell & my brother brought in a handful
of bottlecaps. left me a few outside 
my bedroom door. still covered with soil. 

heat sensor

a love poem has been detected on the paremeter.
orange like the old planets & ambling on
its six legs. i used to put my hand to your forehead
& say, "you're burning up." you were like touching
a stove top what with all your atmosphere gazing 
& your need to wear sweaters even in the heart of summer.
a good friend is someone who always wants 
to be more. imagines the two of you
flying helicopter into sunset. hungry, 
a love poem will take whatever it can get--
rain boots & ice cream cones & even sometimes 
front doors. what is a memory but a love poem
waiting to happen? latent heat. i tried so so hard
not to think too much about you. filled a tub
with ice & laid down. felt all my goose-flesh.
tried to remember how old we are now & were then.
the love poem decapitates the mailbox.
snarls. roots in the garage for bicycles.
demands a conclusion. pearl necklace. melon rind.
i keep the front door locked. dead bolt. chain.
windows shut. love poem on the porch weeping 
with a shadow of your voice. saying, 
"don't you want this?" i don't fall for its trap
but i let myself picture you with your long straight hair
& you sandaled feet. arms hugging yourself tight.
i would let you take me anywhere in the world.
sunburn me in the river of rocks. become coals
dazzling in the red we bring out only for each other.
to get the love poem to leave, i make promises 
i can't keep. i say, "come back tomorrow 
& i'll be ready." i say, "i can't escape tonight." 
the love poem, distraught, will follow
my thumb's worth of hope. tumble back into the brush
& return when it remembers again what it was like
to kiss in the november night's cold. two girls.
only the heat of our bodies & the promise 
of another sun to turn the world tangerine. 

sleep potions for feathered boys

the angels were playing crochet 
in the front lawn all night. 
everytime i'd close my eyes i'd hear
another wack or their tinsel laughter. 
stood on my bed & prayed it would become 
a life boat. orange with danger. instead
it became the shoulders of a ragged beast.
i told my imagination "no not now"
but the machine wouldn't stop.
greased motor. my heart is not solar-paneled. 
instead, it waits for the moon. craves 
persistent dark like towns where
at certain times of the year there is
no sun at all. blue-wild tumbling dark.
the sun self left to wander as if it were
a shadow. sometimes my hallucinations give me
new names. they'll say, "today you are
nothing but a birch tree" or 
"i'm going to call you daffodil."
i find a blossom under my tongue.
night grows an extra toe. i begin
to barter with the darkness. offering 
a piece of amethyst & a stray sock
in exchange for sleep. not just any sleep.
i want a sleep that turns me into a raven
or at least an angel. i yearn to be
less useful. sleep so thick it flatens
the old mountains & leaves only 
ancient roots. my eyes are paperweights.
door stops. i keep myself open,
for what i cannot be sure. the heart knows
what nothing else can. says, "awake awake awake."
neon letters whining just beneath skin.
i am making a potion though. a potion so strong
feathers will burst all across my body. 
down & flight feathers. ready for the longest
necklace of planets. for a sleep 
so thick it coats the world in glass. 

carrying

on trips like this i don't check the cargo.
follow other trucker's headlights like hard candy.
feel the road under my tongue. push onward.
statelines like jump rope. when i was a baby 
my mom carried me like this. we slept 
in park pavillions & grandmother's garage
& then in the backseat of the station wagon
with night rapping on windows. i loved it. 
craved the smell of gas station hot dogs
& stream of air from from the highway's urgency.
sometimes i dream the back is full of something truely valuable.
maybe secret museum artifacts only i have been trusted with.
of course, i know what it is. i keep a sheet on a clipboard 
in the front seat that details every mundane bundle.
when i arrive, i will checkto ensure all arrived safely.
i can count on one hand the number of times
i've kissed someone. the last, a skinny guy in nebraska,
asked if i was delivering dinosaur bones
to a museum. we opened up the back together.
i imagined seeing a full t-rex skeleton. 
something--anything to marvel at. then, i imagined
showing my mother. her willow-like frame. me, standing 
only up to her hip again. all of us staring 
at some great prehistoric creature. i should
try to go to a museum when i stop to rest one of these days.
i know i probably won't. this is the kind of thing 
i'll say but never do. there was no dinosaur, just rows
of boxes. the man joked, "they got the bones
packed up is all." when he left he gave me his number
& i lost it on purpose. in my head, i call him 
"dinosaur bones." if mom were still around
i might call her & find a way to tell that story.
slide between the knees of a mountain. machine around me.
maybe it's me. maybe i am the dinosaur. metal &
monsterous. six-teen wheels. darkness spills
across the horizon. i am driving. 

manic poem

the kitchen is a noise. all the forks whirlpool.
spoons kissing wildly. frantically,
i try to hold them all still. 
tornado watch for this area. a storm drill
where we all line up in the hallways. never sit
near windows. they might becomes shark mouths.
i found a dead great white in the creek. 
herons ate away at his face. i asked my father
how a beast so large could have swam our tiny creek
& he explained, "fear can drive an animal
past physical boundaries." our goldfish once flew
like a sparrow. i punch a hole through the wall 
with my phantom hand. do other creatures
feel ashamed for their needs. a gnats buzzing
& thinking, "dear god why do i need so many comforts."
taking each cherrio out one by one to peer through
their peepholes. nothing new nothing new but
the next one could be exactly what i'm looking for.
air conditioning in the morgue. a potted violet
growing roots thick as carrots. i'm ordering 
a back up set of teeth in case mine run out.
i don't know if i should be excited or afraid
of the way my neighbor stares at me. behind his door
i picture a stack of ceramic plates
stacked too high for comfort. anything at all
could knock them down. i try to breath less
to keep them intact. i alone hold the secrets 
to how the world can stay in one piece 
from second to second. it's as easy as
chewing three times before swallowing a doorknob.
i used to stay out past midnight. i used to sleep in
till ten am. put a lid on the sun. now, i say,
"don't worry i am coming." at the first sign of light.
soon it will be winter & i will lay out my tricks
for staving off blizzards. the shark bones 
once floating in the river now in my utensil drawer.
eating with a rib. taste of salt water &
motor boats. i'm out at sea by which i mean
i am trying to navigate while the cardinal directions
vibrate & pull out their pocket knives. 

Tracing Your Mouth with Purple Lipstick  

Holding my hand steady,
I ask each wheel of your face 
Where we want to arrive. Smooth
Foundation around your eyes.
Mouth circled wider & wider. 
Purple as a carrot. Your porcelain bone.
I tell you I love doing other people’s
Makeup because I get to marvel at how 
Individual our features are. On my own
Face, my eyes whirl off into their own 
Biomes—- sprout roots. Become each 
A different animal. My dark eyebrows.
Now, the light hairs of your lashes.
Smooth chin where a crabapple tree
Once grew wild & sweet. What a pleasure
To be a visitor in my lover’s face. 
Running the doe foot across your lips,
I want to ask you to kiss me. Leave 
Footprints where I once had freckles.
Climb my nose like a cliff side. 
Watch the trees starting to turn
Septemberly gold. There are caves 
Deep as the worlds chest
Without as much to gather from
as your face. I leave each glance with
amethyst in my lungs. 
Run my thumb across your 
Soft skin as I tell you I’m finished.
We look in the mirror together. 
Our faces are round planets meeting
Where the universe puts on only dresses.