billboard

if i had a billboard i'd fill it with teeth.
make it chomp down on all the little ant people.
we'd sleep inside a peapod & get angry 
at the light. i once saw a man who lives
inside a billboard. he came out to shake his fist
at a passing amazon truck. i do not know
what he eats but i also don't know what
i eat. there is a tiny door on the backside 
of the billboard where he goes inside.
becomes two-dimensional. dreams of having
a family live flat with him backstage of
the great shout. on really dark nights when
the stars go on vacation & every the trucks
are burrowed like cicadas, he dreams about
what he'd put on a billboard. he is not like me.
he wants nothing to do with teeth. instead he
considers fingers & then he considers eyes.
eyes are his favorite body part. he prefers them
shut because those are rarer. people are always staring
right into his guts. he buys a bulletproof vest
in the hopes of preventing that kind
of intrusion. someone asked me one day
when i was gathering a bag of teeth,
"what was your favorite thing about living
inside a billboard?" i do not remember my time
there at all. i suppose it is possible that we all
get time there. maybe we are grown
like pre-disciples. i do not know much about
who or what i worship but i know it has teeth.
i know it could bite my hands off. i pass an 
empty billboard & so i cover it just as i've always
dreamed. all the mouths moving like wing beats.
the ghost of the billboard man rises to beg me
to stop. i tell him, "what is done is done."
he weeps & i tell him we can get devoured together
if that makes him feel better. so we get mashed up.
the relief of being matter again. think that is
what the back layers of the signs feel. finally,
nothing else to say but flavor. a star, when ripe
tastes like sweet deer jerky. chewy sinew.
the ringing of a heavy bell down the throat. 

a thousand fractures

we have one chicken who cracks her own eggs.
i find them, not smashed but with tiny holes.
at first i thought they might be hatching
but i always found the eggs empty of creature.
runny gold yolk. the white, like a fresh halo. 
the more i care for animals, the more i am certain
they all write poetry. this is hers, a little fracture
in the dark of the coop. sometimes one of
the other hens tries to guard the eggs. tries to 
make them into chicks. thus far, they have
all given up. left the eggs to rot & spoil. 
when an egg goes bad, sometimes it dries up.
becomes a fist beneath the shell. the chickens roam
the yard all day. they egg bugs & talk to the ghosts.
every once in a while, one will not return to 
the coop when they're called. my partner & i 
like to tell stories about where they have gone.
maybe eating corn in the field or, if the season is right,
raspberries in the patch of trees. one of the chickens
hides from the others. they like to try to peck 
her clean. her bumpy flesh beneath. feathers grow back
even slower than hair. i do not touch the birds often.
they are dinosaur creatures who prefer to see me
at a distance. but, when they are sick or hurt
& i need to hold them. they always thrash. i try
to calm them but i know it is no use. we are such
strange bodies to one another. still, i think of 
the flesh beneath the feathers. the broken eggs
that the others read in horror. to create is the process
of gathering fractures. yolk in our hands. 
am i in her poem? is she in mine? this morning
i harvest the unbroken eggs from their bedding. 
one of them is still warm. 

lottery

beware of decoy hope. 
in high school there was a huge powerball jack pot.
on a billboard outside my boyfriend's house
i watched as workers added numbers 
to the winnings on the sign until it practically
stretched into the sky. offices bought tickets together
with a promise of splitting the prize.
my boyfriend, older than me, stopped every day
to pick a new number. held it between his fingers
like a ticket into a bright & shiny life. 
he had promised over & over that we were
going to get married. he bought me a ring 
with birds in the gem. at night i let them fly
so they could go feast on the stars. sometimes he would
take the numbers out just to look at them.
his parents' house was falling apart. mold on the wall.
a hole in the roof. his parents bought numbers too.
worshipped them. committed them to memory.
i asked him, "what if we don't win?" after an hour
of him counting our millions. he became furious
with me. his words have long turned into minnows
in my mind but i know he wanted me 
to believe in money as much as he did. i do not think
i was that much wiser than him i had just seen
how easily money came & left in my family. 
there were years when we had light-up shoes
& years when we shopped at the thrift store &
times the food ran out & all there was to eat was
the birds in the yard. still, i think of it more
like a wave than a god. after we all lost, we never
talked about it again. the numbers spilled 
into the night to become their unenchanted selves. 
it was a decoy. a false creature. i did not know where
to find hope back then. i thought i was going
to have to become this boy's perpetual watermelon.
i picked wild onions. the seasons walked all over us.
if you want to find hope you cannot look
just for a way out. when i left him i took the birds. 

bat specimen 

i go to the taxidermy forest to look
for a way to sleep. there are bats playing
banjos & bats in vampire clothes & bats 
so small they should be toys.
the head of a deer laughs at a joke
from three hundred years ago. it has
taken him this long to learn what is funny.
it will probably take me just as long. 
there are people who think birds are not real
but i know they are. have seen the needle man
placing them in the trees. i prefer the ones
mounted in flight. i want my dead living
& my living dead if you know what i mean.
i hope someone is brave enough to put me here
when i am gone. give me marble eyes 
& let me refuse my rot. the forest smells
like carpets & leather. meat scent
of a real shoe. there are hunters with
bulletless guns who point their barrels 
at us lingering creatures. i find a bed without
anyone in it. take that as an invitation
to try & sleep. behind my eyelids everything
is loud & terrifying. they say that dreams
are our way of working out the horrors.
mine get vivid. get bloody. i prefer
the stuffed museum version of my life
where we've all had more time to think.
without loud noises except for the occasional scream
of a bear who has just realized he is naked 
& it is to late to be a clothed creature. 

this won't (will) hurt

to my dismay i've gotten worse
at crying. i crave driving alone.
i know i have been tricked into thinking
that it is some kind of freedom
but sometimes you have to
turn your brain off & playlist yourself
as far away from your front door as 
possible. once i stopped at a yard sale
that was only purses. they were
all very ugly but i bought one & decided
it would be my lung. there i keep
all the things i can't say. for me,
to be loved is to be kept. i have lived
in a closet for years, letting a man 
slide plates of spaghetti beneath the door.
sometimes we'd eat by candlelight
& i'd believe things were going to change.
i buy a canoe & burry it in the yard
one day when it's just me & the dogs. 
it'll be there if i need it. i don't use
my lung to breathe. on the contrary,
i use it to wait. if you hold on to a truth
too long it becomes a knife. if you hold on
to a knife too long it becomes a door. 
a dream in which i run & you do not
chase me. once we argued & my mouth filled
with bees. i only have myself to blame.
once i poured water in my eyes in the hopes
it would make them remember 
how to be a fountain. instead, autumn 
came early. instead, you hear my eyes 
talking in all the words they're not supposed
to use. "help" & "love me." we took them out
& washed them together like potatoes
in the big kitchen sink. 
i apologized for being terrible 
& you told me, "do not do this again." 
i held the lung like a baby bat that night.
put it away before you saw. felt the canoe
turning in the dirt like a zombie. 

body teeth

sometimes i grow teeth between
the folds of my skin. the kind of hunger
our people are feeling has nowhere to go.
we bloom second heads. we dig holes
in the walls with our bare hands. 
the last apartment i lived in, everyone
threw themselves out the window
at least once a month. i saw my neighbors 
flying like bats in the dark. to become
a monster is to stay alive with lungs
in a world that steals your air.
i stand in the dark bathroom & see
my eyes glowing red. i consider scaling
a skyscraper & reaching to take a bite
out of the moon. lurking between 
the wayward trees, half of which
do not know where they are. i keep the teeth
i shed because i am convinced there is
a stronger version of me coming. one that
chews holes in cop car tires & breaks windows
of billionaire houses. i believe there is hope
because there are still monsters. as long as
we keep the teeth. keep the coals 
of velvet dark fear, they, just like us, 
do not get to escape. my favorite teeth
are the tiny ones. the ones for a baby monster.
i used to climb trees & sleep in them. 
once i fell out & struck my head so hard
that it rung like a bell. i woke up 
some beasts who long slept. they came
just for me. fed me flowers that tasted
like black licorice. when they smiled
we had the same mouths. not vengeful 
exactly but ready to return. 

drink stirrer 

i haven't been to the aunts' house 
in years but when it floods, i plan
to go there. i want to see it underwater.
all the rooms like terrariums.
the portrait of my father & his brother
& their cousins drowning in matching clothes.
a dream photo. the bar where we used
to drink as many sprites as we could
while the adults drank amber & fire. i used to put
the little plastic drink stirrers in my mouth.
they always tasted slightly sweet. my teeth
rung like bells from all the sugar. 
i'll use the stirrers as terrible oars. i am not
a survivor child. instead, i am a creature 
of tableaus. give me a good image 
that i can sink with. we'll open the windows
to swim out. everyone has their own
titanics. the places you watched sink. 
my father tells me that the floor 
in the bathroom & the kitchen of the aunts' house
are coming up like reptile skin.
i feel like it's rained every day this year. i imagine it
as the sky searching for rebirth where
there is none. i buy a disposable underwater camera.
snap pictures in the dark. a photo of a wedding photo
on the wall. is the water salt or sugar?
i think this storm is sweet. nectar & blood.
a flood is when the water asks for us back.
remember when it owned all the creatures.
my aunts' lipstick prints on the side of
glasses of manhattans. i row through the night
using nothing but my fingers. 

touch screen

we got trapping angels to use their teeth.
they're sharp & rigid. i found a touch screen
at the far end of the forest where 
none of the birds go. there, i visit
to offer my eyelashes. when i was a girl
i used to think, "it is a better gamble to believe
in god than to not." i would notice his eyes
peering through my window at night.
i prayed like a watched pot. sometimes
when my father got home late my brother
& i would eat dry pasta on the kitchen floor. 
the screen was loud & urgent. demanded a taste
of our fingers. i gave it whatever it wanted.
it is always about balance. don't give too much.
don't give too little or you will wake up
with a mirror filled with birds. my face is fickle.
i go weeks without it. sometimes it only returns when
i arrive at the touch screen & it uses my eyes
to open. often my body feels like the colorful 
rock-climbing rocks on walls in those gyms 
for people who need their mountains contained.
i don't want anything new. i like my clothes 
with holes already in them. places for the screen
to touch me & make us real. did you ever 
consider that a story is not just a story
it is the receiving of it? thank you for 
writing this poem. i am not sure who else
would have understood what i meant when i said,
"don't give too much." the screen gets bigger
& i am worried that one day everyone will see it
& then they'll know what i've spent. what i've taken. 
the future is a good place to push an emergency.
i practice the moon. i turn god into a verb meaning,
"to give everything away." 

flute case

i play instruments poorly.
as a kid, i did not practice. 
the oboe whose sound came out like a 
a lost loon & the drums in the attic 
whose rhythm did not keep me. 
then the guitar who would walk into my bedroom 
on all fours. i had pictures of my father
playing his electric on little bar stages, his hair
wet with sweat. my fingers are strolling things.
could never press down hard enough.
the callouses that came & went like
door side slippers. instead of music 
i have learned to collect sound.
when my brother wasn't home i would
play his violin. scattered notes. wire birds.
the trumpet without a bell. the piano
with teeth like a whale. there are symphonies 
i can give one note to. i see them lighting up
across the town at night. a note sung
into a bathroom fan. i do not know still
the difference between noise & music.
my mother played the flute before i was born
but never after. i found her flute case 
in the attic. assembled that little creature.
pressed my lips to its face & let it hold seance.
a sound is a voice which we share only in the moment. 
i played with the keys & put the flute back 
where i found it. traced the smilie face sticker
on the outside. stuck there by my mother 
when she was young. i hear the song 
the corn sings when it is almost ready to be taken. 
as my hair grows back i think of horsehair & 
the long bow of my brother's bass.
i am okay with being a sound collector 
& not a musician which might be another way
of saying that i am a poet. 
 

fishing lure

i was told in a dream,
"be careful of that which calls you."
in a museum of fishing lures,
i am an eel. a ribbon of wanting
in a pond of fists. the undesirable catch.
o all the razor blade apple at midnight. 
i put hooks through my lips so that
the gods will know that i am already taken
in so many directions. i have been pulled
into pieces. i have lost jaws & eyes.
lived two lives at once & then three
& then five. a group of eels is called
a "knot." i made that up but in doing so
it was true at least for a moment.
i find lures hanging from a tree
outside the house. i do everything i can
to not make eye contact. once i bought
a boatload of deaths i didn't need.
the plastic smelled like sex toys & ghosts. 
my favorite lures are the soft ones.
the ones that squish between your fingers
like fruit snacks or rubber chickens. 
i had a friend who let me play with
his father's lures until my fingers smelled
like shrimp. glitter bugs. feathered fish. 
i stole one. took it home. slept with it
beneath my pillow. woke up in a frying pan
where my eyes turned into balloons.
i do not trust any beautiful something
but every once in a while i give in.
let the taste yank me to the moon. 
i never come back. i never come back.