hamburger praying

as far as take out goes i am the grease
on the bag. on the stoop a diamond of meat
asks to be fathered on into a taste.
at the snack shack we dipped our fingers
in honey mustard & dropped single fries
to watch the scent summon the sturdiest ants
we'd ever seen. at church everything is void
of hamburger. when you think about it,
all meat was once running away. all the cows 
attend a separate sunday school to learn
how to have useful deaths. i want to have
a useful death. once we bought half a cow
& piled her in the freezer. opened the lid
to see her singing hymns in foggy fragments.
does everyone deserve a god? only humans believe
in purpose like this. the cows, they think only
of their huge hearts & the wild sun &
the possiblity of rain. all those corn field roads
i won't be taking again now that i let 
the city drink my star light. there's always
tension between the here & the almost here.
if i eat just this one chapel, do i swallow
the mass too? all the shuffle of hooves.
once we stood on all fours & prayed 
for lettuce. my mother takes her spatual 
& waves at a passing biplane. no one knows
how to begin devouring. we put pickles
over our eyes & take a family portrait.
i haven't eaten meat in years but often
the taste will arrive to me phantom like 
& needy. it says, "you were blood too."
my muscles all want to be ground & edible. 
sweating in the sink. washing my forehead.
i'm the ripe tomato & the holy ghost. 

yearbook

i used to draw arrows to my soul
in perminant marker. the school yard 
turned into a shield of film. children 
wearing each other's winter coats. i used to
go to the nurse's office for her to brush
the knots out of my hair. she had porceline hands
& a diving board face. when i was captured
it was delightful. held still & printed 
& distributed amoung the sticky hands 
of fellow brambles. we ate fruit roll ups
on the jungle gym. hung upside down
& felt the blood in our skulls. in one photo
my eyes are wide as a night monkey. 
in another my hair is so short & boyish.
i want permission to say "when i was 
a little boy" but i won't give it to myself.
instead i say, "when i was a yearbook photo."
or "when i was believable." laid down
in the empty soccer field's goal & considered
climbing the structure while other boys
punched their pictures from a cornfield backdrop. 
it's so so easy to become a masculinity.
the edges of the yearbooks hardened with age,
once malleable & now & now & now just
blocks of shoulders. us, standing up against
the brick wall for our punishment. bad body.
bad boy. a cold day in february. fingers
red from the breeze. sound of 
a red rubber ball smacking the pavement. 

front zipper

no one asked how i wanted.
never in the hourglass & inkwell onward.
in the mood ripe-tide i took a needle
to the glass jar. siphone a single hair
& named it "look." on the porch 
a proud ironing board. tomb stones
playing crochet. grandmother trees
knitting sleep-hats for babies.
i used to tell the boy to use
his pocket knife & whittle me a house
at the edge of my own sadness. sleep with me
there where dead birds became pocketbooks.
stealing money from the collection basket,
i have been to hell for vacation. heat humid
body floating funeral down stream. 
basket ball courts with cigarettes 
hanging from their lips. i'm often tempted 
to ask god for a rose in my hair while i sleep
but i know he doesn't respond to challenges.
the proof is in the parade. a bass thrumming
in my left thigh. at the subway station
you & i were almost beautiful. took me
by the lip & yanked downward. how you remember me
& how i remember you are two separate animals.
don't tell me it was good. a soup
of headline & highline. shoes crumped 
by the door like crab shells. several months 
cracked open coconut. everything is tropical 
on the trembling yellow side of depression.
my loneliness used to have a same
but now it waits in the sink 
to be washed & put to use. 

countdown 

it was sooner than we thought--
the red number in the drain. the shoe
hovering just above a slam. all the tea leaves
had promised at least a decade but then
oceans turned inside out. slugs fell
like tears. barefoot, i went out to the garage
where my father knit his coffin 
from steel wool & ice. told him
not to worry anymore. what comes to pass
will come to pass. the cloud of noise
floating just over the highway. he stared
like a pin cushion's face. i packed all my love
into jelly jars. watched it buzz & limp.
ate false strawberries with bare hands
& wiped the stain off on any availible lampost.
up the street, a home was being auctioned off
to a hedge fund or a ghost. i'm rooting
for the ghost. in the crawl space
cats were telling their children the truth.
i wish someone would have done so to me
when i was small & pink-handed. instead,
bibles rung like bells. i washed my face
in the occasional river. then the time 
rushing like a slit throat. everything outward
even the orange heart. even the woven basket.
even the new blanket. even the 
school of minnows. even the elsewhere
& the maybe maybe somewhere. all that gone.
silk like & blue. kneeling on a tongue.
my father worked & worked 
& it was still not here & i still
was the only one watching as the numbers
shed themselves--as the sun shrank & swallowed--
as the coffin became a slipper-- as a moment 
became a bookshelf thing. a paperweight
arriving tethered to a white balloon. 

welcome mat

the entrance was a wasp under a mason jar.
you & me other other side telling the wasp
to consider the positives. pollination is at
an all time high. so much pollen & 
way too much nation. at his front door
i pretended to be reading something on my phone
but really i was checking the weather 
in san antonio (a place i've never been).
i am sadly not a vampire but i do have to be
invited inside. i need two doors worth 
of space. we brought the furniture in
through the window of the new apartment 
so no one would see exactly what we 
were carrying. sometimes, i dream of babies.
no having one or being one, just trying to imagine
what their thoughts are like. i am trying 
to return to my own bliss. i want to be cared for
in the most drastic of ways. food brought
to my skull. a carridge to deliver me.
i remember the afternoon my father installed
the doorbell in my parent's house. he tried
three sounds: sharp bing, church bells,
& a soft chime. we pleaded for him
to keep the church bells. no one rings 
the doorbell. no one wipes their feet either
so we track the world all over the house.
at your house, i always forgot to take off my shoes
& i say, "i'm sorry i forgot." i am sorry 
even if only in a minute way. on the "sorry" spectrum
i am hovering close to the middle at all times.
we built the house. all but the door
& gazed at the hole where it should be.
i told you i was scared to build. you carried
a bucket of nails & slung the hammer over your shoulder.
told me not to worry. no to worry at all. 

pineapple august

we ate nothing but vertebra. sour & sharp.
slept tangled in our bareness, freshly quartered
by our father's adolescence where he was 
a produce boy. sheltered melon. paring knife
through the bone. nothing was bruisable then,
we were so sugar & so hurry. everything yellow
in the early evening. finger thumb. finger thumb.
turning on our walkie talkies & standing 
at the end of driveways to talk to the moon.
she would say, "bed time is soon" & we would reply
"i love you too much to sleep." i could have had
any kind of future, or, so a pigeon once sung
on an electrical wire. everywhere is a city
& everywhere isn't. cutting the lawn
for god. a silver bowl sweating like a stomach.
hair on my arms. hair on my neck. cicadas 
trying to go back to sleep & wailing because
they cannot. this is the awake awake. there is
nothing wider. place marrow in my mouth
& wait for the kindling fires. place a stick of incense 
in my mouth & pace the house until it feels vascular.
i'm hungry for nothing but fruit. 

familial dentistry 

we have crowded mouths. once, i opened mine
& a swarm of cicadas flew out & into a nearby tree.
how long ago was seventeen years? i have been
stealing teeth since i was two when i reached,
fecklessly into my uncle's throat where rested a tooth &
a bundle of sticks. you know what they call a bundle of sticks?
the tooth was made of jade stone. the tooth shape-shifted 
into a lighter. watching him smoke a cigar on the porch.
sweet leaf smell. rolling myself in a leaf for safety.
i have so many crooked teeth. i look in a mirror & i see
gravestones jutting from dirt. often, widows will come
& leave flowers on my tongue. my mother, 
stirring a pot of promises, has lemon rinds for gums. 
unlik her i'm not prone to citrus. nothing sharp
about my talking. everything is air pilot & 
pizza kitchen. throwing a handful of teeth into the air.
a spoon for craddling teeth into the garden.
planting & hoping for more to grow. sharks, as you know,
they keep yielding teeth their whole lifetime.
no shortage there. my body makes me feel 
so deeply un prepared for my own life. who decided
on the tongue? the lips? two row boats. paddling harder.
in the dentist chair, my father clasped his hands together
like an acolyte. asked for the procedure to be over
as the dentist pried a carrot from his soil.
roots down all the way into the ocean. he cried
i held his hand. when the tooth was out i pocketed it
& i said, "what tooth? where?" i have it still.
yellowed along one side & prone to minnow swimming.
someday, when i need it, i'll fix his tooth in my own mouth 
root & all

cow heart garden

in the first chamber we were 
burger-hungry & ready to grind. 
pushed meat through a hole the size
of a penny & waited on the other side
for a process to begin. often, the flowers
bloomed like severe hearts. pink blood
in our faces. the oxygen blue 
of early july. then, in the second 
we asked each other's middle names.
held them like quarters for a future
machine. made all the wonderful 
unkeepable promises. your nose against
my neck. your body a school of rings.
all the while the cows crouched
on their hind legs trying to be teenagers.
we snacked on onion grass & drank 
milk from the stream. wiped our lips
with leaves. in the garden, the sky 
lilted towards sherbet but we didn't bring
any spoons. alas a missed opportunity 
for a headache. our shoes floating
like viking funerals down the creek.
a snake in the grass asking for 
our vascular systems. i wanted so badly
to make a life out of you. carve your face
into a foyer or a vestibule & likewise
you hung your leopard print coat
on my back. in the third chamber
the drought arrive & made all the life
clench. field of fists. the heart itself,
tired from its own animalness.
turned butterfly with waiting. flew
down my throat & then you were gone. 

grenade crates

my father puts the weaponry to sleep.
cradles each bomb & each detonation.
in the basement, he collects war 
like flowers. waters a machine gun 
& stroke the forehead of a missile.
drinks amber beer from a thermos & 
reminisces about never happened. everyone 
is a son every so often. when i stand 
in doorways i am one. i belong
to my father & his beloved destructions.
a hole in the stairwell wall where
he became a puncture. anger is syrupy.
sticks shoes to the kitchen floor.
attracts ants & cockroaches. once,
i bought a single bullet. a secret.
carried it under my tongue safe to my bedroom.
sat it on the windowsill & listened 
to silver hum. my little child waiting 
for me to show him my own threats. 
i couldn't do it. fired him into the ceiling
where he escaped & is now a hot air balloon.
yet still i miss his danger when he
could have inhabited a barrel. when he could have
thrown himself straight ahead. i tell my father
i love him more than anyone else in my family.
he digs the basement wider to have more room
for the weaponry. have you ever been
an arsenal? i fear i will wake up as one.
will see him standing over me, ready 
to make use of my design. when i'm not a son
i shake boyhood off like a dandelion 
losing her face. i crouch in the grass
& converse with the machinery of cicadas.
listen to my father's bones
as he builds another basinett 
for a grenade to sleep in.

canines

our teeth barked all night. spoke to us
of future fires & a need to tie our shoelaces 
to god. mouths closed, we huddled in the closet
hoping to not be discovered. the stars were all teeth
& so were the lamplights. glowing enamel. 
sleeping on the tongue, i dissolved & was 
born again as a toad. toothless, i was briefly
liberated from all thoughts of destruction.
once, we had a t-rex tooth displayed in the living room.
it would growl whenever anyone ate meat. we promised
we would share but the tooth was greedy. 
the first time i kissed a boy our teeth clacked 
like tap shoes. then, he bit my lip & i became
the trout who wants the hook. often, i would
dangle myself from the ceiling by the cheek
or the tongue. even caught myself
generating gills whenever i showered. 
the boy then became nothing more than a diagram 
& i likewise became an example. leaned into 
every reflective surface to check my teeth.
used to crave sharper canines. crawled on all fours
in the hopes it would unhoax my feral. nothing.
nothing at all. rounded gumdrop teeth. 
spitting the sugar out. spitting the sea weed out.
told the teeth to hush. nothing was on fire.
not quit yet. in a decade or so maybe 
but by then we could be so gone. could be
in another planet or solar system. the sun
could have gone home, leaving us 
in the last beautiful dark. it is always worth 
agonizing over the future. by doing so 
we keep it shiny & alive. my teeth knew exactly
what they were doing. barking, yelling, pushing
the inevitable farther away. tonight in my world
there are no fires only a glass door knob
& rows of teeth: patient & eager.