unscathed 

i used to have a friend who kept her tail.
i asked to see it but she declined. it was
rude of me to have asked. i only have
six fingers, the rest were bartered
to a police station in the new york
where i tried to explain i was just trying
to get home. sometimes when i ask
my gps to take me home it brings me to the cemetery
on the big hill in my hometown. 
i do not try to stop it. we used to watch
the gnarled finger tree hole up the moon
like a communion wafer. beneath us
the dead held each other all the same.
i am trying not to think of everything in terms
of loss. what limb you kept to paddle 
the boat up the creek. i of course have
fragments of you. a window in the house
that turns stained glass despite my protestations.
my left shoe always untied. that article 
is going around again that says children leave cell
inside their mothers & mothers inside their children.
we are either rosary beads for the thumbs
of trees or we are skipped stones. i try to feed
our sick animal. she will not accept the food
even from my hand. as a child my father
used to have a rock tumbler that he would use
to process river stones & sell them. they were
smooth as whales. the evidence of loss. contours
in the world belly. i do not want to be 
smooth but i do want to sleep in someone's pocket.
i wish i could lay the losses out on
a little blanket like a street vendor. then when
the night comes, curl up in them. roll myself. 
a reverse carpet man. open me. see what you find. 

canceled plans

the moon texts me to say, 
"i can't do it tonight." there are 
secret police. there was a siren 
in the sky & i wasn't sure to what kind
of emergency sought to warn us of.
i tell the moon,
"it is probably better you stay home."
i am worried about when & if i will
see the street like it was the summer 
before my teeth fell out. i have to say
i love canceled plans. i hold them
like dream terrariums. there we are
as painted turtles. 
there we are watching the stars
buzz above the sink. my partner & i joke
about being opposites. he wants to 
always be out in the world 
i wants to stay inside. plant tomatoes 
in the floorboards & see what grows.
when the sun texts me too, i start
to worry. someone has to plant their feet
in the sky. i once climbed a lighthouse
with my whole family. i imagined 
living up there until i learned 
where wings come from. i break more promises
than i ever have. tomorrow. tomorrow.
i need to stop pretending like 
there are not cameras in the shape 
of men. that there are not laws that come
like parasite babies. a body to hold.
a body to hollow. yes let's try again
tomorrow when the moon is here & the sun
is making tea again. i don't know
if that will stick. if i do not see you
pretend i have seen you. we can sit in separate
horrors & draw pictures on the ceiling
of our garden. the moon is running.
i found her shoes in the yard. scuffed white sneakers.
i look up methods to distract a god.
my purse fills with cell phones. an empty car 
parked by the forest opening where
the hunters go to track down a buck.
i call you in the middle of an ice storm.
i say, "please be with me." 

rock climbing gym at night

in the dark, we reach for teeth.
i am trying & trying not to panic.
lately i have been feeling like a ten-year-old. 
reality bleeds. where does the blood
come from? i am in fifth grade & my stomach
is softer than it'll ever be again.
we eat windows. girls without genders.
i see a picture of friends from high school together.
wonder who i was then & if i was there at all. 
the rocks, still bright in the dark.
i put time in a blender. housing crisis.
recession. i was born into a wound
that never closes. the wall that gets taller 
& the spotter who leaves. no more legs
just the side of an animal. without
light you can pretend that you are
on the side of a great mountain. that they
will write legends about your hands.
reaching & reaching. one rock, a fist,
another a mouth, still wet from
chewing blue gum. i remember loving
the climbing. i felt like i could almost
touch the ceiling. in a dream, there is a tarot spread
on a table in a coffee shop that reminds me
of an ex. we ate afterwards. cake. it was
all of our birthdays. we were turning eleven 
or eleven was turning us. a garden spade
in the back, twisted. the soil coming 
to the surface. walls full of
all the colorful rocks. it was a sleepover. 
we lay on the floor. her house smelled gingham
or was it dull pink? i scaled the bathroom 
like it had rocks. we ended up on the roof.
i end up on the roof. i look up to see the sky is
dotted with orphaned teeth. some of them
must be mine. 

pour over

we were breaking up when
i started to get into coffee brewing methods.
the keurig had died. i thought maybe
we could be free. i tried
the french press & i tried the moka pot.
i ultimately settled on the pour-over
because the internet god told me
it was the strongest. god i loved 
how bitter i could make it. i was always awake
even when i was asleep. i once sat up to see i was
without any hands & i wept & you were
not there at all. 
we shared a room & i pictured
cutting everything in half. the bed
& the window & the desk which was mine
& became yours. i have never
been good at uncoupling. i draw things out.
try to make it work. try to make it work.
which is less about love & more about
bills & apartments & shoes by the door.
on my worst days i would stand & 
let the hot water's steam fog my glasses.
pretend  i was driving a car into a lake.
the smell of coffee blooming. the sound
of an ambient siren. police or ambulance?
i ask myself the same question. when we first came 
to the apartment we had no curtains. 
the light at everything. you watched me
make coffee once. you asked,
"doesn't that take longer?" i wanted to say,
"i need more time." ending do not 
wait for us. instead i explained,
"it's my favorite way to make it." 
 

cold brew

i soak my bones in your throat.
it does not make soup. 
we take the train into the beast's
little knee. kneel in the museum,
notebooks in our hands like all prophets do.
the sky has earbuds in. the train 
is only as long as we need. or maybe
it is not enough & we are pulling
our lives like field ox. a stretched arm.
a candle lit behind each eye. i want
to be swallowed & turned into 
a mosquito. i want to pierce my tongue
into the moon. my hands are cold
& this winter is thick. do i fall asleep
in the puddle? does the straw led
to a carousel or is this the kind of journey
that takes a tooth away? i park the car
on the wrong side of the war. the police
do not know what we do behind
the laundry mat right beneath the 
"no weeping" sign. we buy gas ten dollars
at a time. drink cold brew at the little shop
that rattles when the train comes. 
cheeks flushed. our one friend just started
experimenting with eyelash extensions. 
i stay awake all night. spit hummingbirds
into the sink. jars of sticky old spices buzzing
above the stove. you sleep on the window
where the trees should be. 

pocket bible

what a relief
my god gets smaller every year.
at the august fair there was a man
handing out bibles the size
of my palm. i asked for five.
the man was ecstatic. did i take them
in earnest? belief memory is the hardest
to track. it's hard for me to know
what the faith suit felt like. 
i was fifteen. i bought a magnifying glass
to read the bibles. 
put one in my purse. i never really
got past genesis. the bible is a slow burn.
it only really gets good when
you reach jesus. each year at the fair
i would see the man again & the bibles
would get smaller & smaller. a thumb's height
& then a strawberry hard candy.  
i accepted them. sucked on the bibles 
all night in the hopes
that something miracle might transfer to me. 
in college i listened to an audiobook 
of the bible. some of the stories 
were familiar from having gone to church.
other ones felt outer space. i know i was
looking for something in the pocket bible
that i never found. i dated a boy once
who loved jesus & god that was awful. 
he wanted me to love jesus too & so 
i stared into the dead little books until
they became moths. until they became
horrible albatrosses. i didn't see the bible man
at the fair after that. i wonder if he started
to get smaller too. if now his bibles 
are the size of sand grains. if maybe only he
can read them. i am glad my pocket bibles
managed to escape. eyelash-winged little breaths.
even the source can get away. 
my beliefs have turned crepuscular. a great darkness
always comes with tiny points of light. the stars, each 
a bible turned inside out. the light waiting
to swallow the sky. the bible man still at the fair ground
in the middle of winter. his book, a fleck of salt
dissolving on his tongue. 

our whole house used to fit in the dishwasher

who taught you how to be clean?
i have had to cough up a skeleton key
to climb out of my body.
the roof could use some tender love
& care. my dogs sometimes argue.
my old one, left hovering in the living room
without a place to lay down. once,
a hole opened in the ceiling & poured dust
all over my room. i did not clean it.
instead, i wrote my name. left paw prints
as if i were one of the mice in the basement.
the dishwasher died years ago & now 
it is used for doorknobs & other ways out.
i keep dreaming of gutting it to make
a proper portal. sometimes cleaning can be 
a form of blessing. i have tried to bless
all the wall that've held me (some better
than others). i have not always been
a good keeper. some spaces beg to be dirty.
the apartment on union held a mouthful 
of the old tenants. their light scent never fully gone. 
the house here has halos from the its markers. their
mismatched screws. their ugly carpet. 
i hate the warmth after the washing. 
how the machine knows just how to burn
a thumb out of the sky. in a dream my father
is on fire & i have to put him out. i put him
in the dishwasher. in a dream
we are hurricane children again & the town
is blinking on & off. i am an expert 
at making megaliths smaller & smaller
until they can be held & lulled to sleep.
i wash the windows. i wash the doors. i wash
my face until it shines. there is a peephole
on the dishwasher for everyone to look out
& see me with my shoes still on in the house. 
when i open it i know they will scold me. 

threadbare

my dad is the other side 
of a loom. he wears shirts until
they are windows. holes that stretch 
beneath the arms. i have boarded up
whole bodies. i have burned 
the evidence. my father still wears
shirts i gave him when i was a teenager.
i used to get him one every christmas.
a penguin. nirvana. a caged rat
after the smashing pumpkins song.
i am trying to follow in his tradition
of holding my body like a portal 
to the next world. my father keeps
few objects. a book spatchcocked 
at the end of the bed. a pair of shoes 
with the soles worn to the asphalt.
once when he was in the shower
i found a shirt balled up on the ground.
i had come home in the early pandemic
when i still believed a rebirth was coming.
i picked the shirt up. it was still warm.
the shirt, once coarse, was softened by time.
his flesh moving across the fabric.
he brings a new meaning to the phrase
"breaking in." i put my hand on one side
& held the shirt up to the hall light.
saw my hand. heard the shower shut off
& dropped the shirt back onto the ground.
i have a shirt i have had since i was nineteen.
to only myself i call it my "father" shirt. 
i sleep in it. let my body weather the threads.
he seldom retires a shirt even when 
they're threadbare. i imagine a burial 
for one of the older shirts. he would 
never allow it. instead, the shirt became
workshop rags. footprints in the sawdust. 
the door to the basement cracked so that
in the living room we can hear him work. 

how to clean up broken glass

i get on my knees. is this too
a kind of worship? it was my mother
who first taught me how to clean up
broken glass. i forget who knocked
over the dish, me or her. we are a family
of accidents. a father in another city.
a rocking chair on mars & the telescopes
we use to find one another. dinner plate moons
gone fracture. she would wet two towels.
one for me & one for her. then we worked,
lifting as many slivers as we could from the floor. 
daggers or jack knives stuck in the cloth.
i have always been too bold. i pick up
the big pieces with my bare fingers
even when all my loved ones tell me not to.
sharks' teeth or waxing gibbous. there is
no good place to take a fragment. i would know
because i am made of them. an unlocked door.
a car crash at midday. your laughter 
without me on a phone call with god. 
i imagine a magnificent plate knit together
from all the broken ones. monstrously 
mismatched. nothing like kintsugi.
this is the making of a vessel that leaks
everything i hold slowly escapes. the trick is
that there is not trick. you will always find
another chip from the plate or the glass
weeks or even years later. every once i awhile
they will cut you. sitting on the lip
of the tub, staring at my heel. i pinch.
remove the freckle of glass. hold it in
my own palm like a compass wing. i wish
i broke them on purpose. that i was 
a bull animal in a mirror house. but for us
shattering is always an accident. 
something lost. our we always to blame
for how we break? i keep what i can
of the whole. this, a vocation. 

exile to the island of stones

i wait on the tip of your tongue.
gods i need a place to bury my heart.
i am a maker of time capsules.
the island in the middle of the creek grows.
maybe another girl boy creature
comes to move the rocks. i name my 
new country "whispered." 
a headline crosses the moon 
like an airplane. i am waiting for 
so many answers. where i will end up?
what will i do if i fail the next trial
that this horrible country gives me?
the island of stones is not safe it is just
a secret for now. secrets do not last long
in a land of cameras. i keep a stoplight
for a necklace. call my mother 
on the drive home. make fairy boats
out of my shoes. a candle in each. it is winter
but i am ready to feel the earth.
on my college campus years ago
there was a boy who refused to wear shoes.
one day was so so bitter cold & yet still
there he was, wind blowing the hairs
on the tops of his feet. i would invite him 
to the stone island along with
all my beloveds. folding chairs.
an airplane across the moon. 
we could make a pinata out of 
the terrible newspapers. invite everyone
we can find with a strange heart. never break 
the pinata. we love to invert a purpose.   
instead hang it from a tree. a symbol 
of transmutation. make the time last
for as long as we have it. is this what
it means to laugh at the end of 
the world? the island is small. we will fit
as many people as we can. wash our faces
in the creek water. sleep facing the stars.
one of us, a watchman, will take 
a fish net & scoop the airplane off the moon.