telephone wire shoes 

i have seen telephone wire shoes
kicking at the moon. their knots
like hands clasped in the dark.
an orpheus kind of tether. 
it is best never to ask the pocket oracle
about what a symbol means.
the truth will get collapsed.
there is an epidemic of losing the ability
to read omens. most of the time
telephone wire shoes are placed
by a divine power who harbors 
the shoes of the dead. she will saunter
to the shed & pick out a pair before
taking the journey to the wire.
inside, voices spiral. merry-go-rounds.
a boy crouched inside his father's rushed mouth.
the shoes feel all of it. that is why
they still crave to run. dream themselves
on the surface of other planets. a new life
with fresh meanings. journeys not
yet spent. sometimes a memorial 
is not a place but a motion. there was
a boy who was killed by another 
on my block. for weeks, people hung shoes.
the divine let them. welcomed them
to the spirit seam. like walking on
a railroad tracks between clementine noon 
& honey fig midnight. the placed
so many shoes that the poles came down
& the street went all spiderweb. i cried even though
i did not know the boy. found his shoes
in my shoe pile by the door. took them.
tied them together tight. never let go.
threw them over the wire with the others. 

tv dinner redux 

i come home from a bullet hole. 
don't tell me what to say. there are
self-driving cars taking children 
to the moon. i am told that on the next planet
there will be days where we all lay down
& stare at the sky. point & say,
"that is where we came from." the earth
a marble in the soup. a bean in the water.
i cannot help but love tv dinners. their poetry
is a family apparatus. here we are smiling.
here we are camering. there is something
wrong with me because when i lose my phone
it feels like losing a limb. where is my tongue?
where is the little god telling me
how & what i should want to taste?
a brownie to sleep on. mac & cheese. 
one square reserved for the ancestors.
my grandfather sets his cane down 
against the plastic wall of our cell.
the bocks of the tv dinner could be 
playpens or they could be kennels 
or they could be prisons. in this country
we are all different levels of prison nesting dolls.
i tell my friend "we are in a crisis of dreaming"
& then here i am dreaming about
a microwave thanksgiving dinner.
when i was anorexic in high school i used
to look at the turkey on the cover
of this one tv dinner & imagine them
as waves ready to engulf me. hunger is 
horrible. hunger is beautiful. 
if you cage a hunger that is how you get
a disciple. i do not want to be a disciple. 
i open the microwave like a sacristy. 
a world of altars. what is & isn't witchcraft
really just depends on who is holding
the mirror. as a child i did plenty 
of microwave sorcery. once summoned 
a mouth that craved nothing.
buried it beneath the pine tree. put my 
ear sometimes to the earth & it would
talk to me. it would say, "puncture 
the plastic seal." 

brief beautiful internet

we used to reach our hands into
the mouths of strangers. crocodile glow.
there were windows without gods.
gardens in the dark. i am getting to the age
where "i remember when" starts
to feel thick & impossible. i loved
the old internet that i would crawl into
at a library computer. the way the internet
had edges & unfurled slowly. my fingers 
still learning how to walk a keyboard.
ads were strange & few. glittering billboards.
a chain email i sent to all my friends.
curses lifted. i let my face shrink 
to the size of a postage stamp. fell in love
with other girls pretending to be boys
pretending to be girls. characters who
could disappear between a tongue
& the roof of the mouth. i craved to be
closer. to sleep inside the old internet.
i think it would feel like crushed velvet. 
like licorice without the root. i saw my reflection
in the spaceship screen. my face was round.
my eyes, sockets. the machine drinking
a world too big to hold me. i slipped through
the mesh. a fish through a net. 
my favorite websites were the ones
where i could talk to other ghosts like me.
once, i had an online boyfriend. i do not know
who he is really. maybe he is horrible &
he once ate someone whole or maybe
he is a girl like me without any hair. 
a mirror hung on the ceiling. maybe he
daydreams about the old internet too.
remembers me briefly as a gap between teeth. 

gun dinner

all rich people's houses are confessions.
i am empty. i am hungry. i am searching. 
i saw a picture weeks ago of dr. phil's house.
he has a case of guns watching over
his dining room table. they are his children
or is it his children in a glass case & guns
sitting at the table. big guns & little guns.
guns to kill lovers & guns to kill enemies.
the myth of the intruder like a halo 
in the communion place. the truth is that
rich people cannot eat dinner. cannot break 
bread. instead they participate in mimicry 
on a large scale. the double doll house.
invite people over. talk to money. talk to guns.
i like to picture dr. phil sitting alone
at the end of his huge table. does he sit 
looking at the guns or with the guns behind him?
i imagine he asks himself the same question.
maybe he tries to consider where a stronger 
man than him might sit. the confession 
comes in medallions. my enemies are symbols
to me just like my weapons just like
my staircases just like my love. in my house
our table has only one chair because 
the other broke. it sits in the corner next
to the furnace. the windows soak us 
in night. none of my lovers are guns. 
we do not have to erect monuments to 
our emptiness. i keep nothing in a glass case. 
the dust, a blessing. our skin & hair & breath. 
the chairs made of guns. the chairs behind
glass. curtains drawn. night keeps them
at an arm's length. sleepless in a bed
of guns. may they never rest. 

amaranth 

stuck in your song teeth,
we invented red with our necks.
i watched the pearls shrink
in my mouth like throat lozenges. 
the summer did not
hold us like we hoped it would.
a porch light turned into a ship.
i sailed as far away from language
as i could. when i don't wake up in time
i pretend i am a toad in the wet 
soft earth surviving winter.
i call my father & leave a message.
he does not call me back. the jevoha's witnesses
send us recruitment letters 
& i whisper to the paper 
until they become birds.
every deserves a chance at the elsewhere.
i love shirking my duties. i love 
the rare moments when i am
not a tool of some monster machine.
when i bead a plant & the plant talks
about how she stumbled upon her color. 
the amaranth grows in my sleep world.
i wake up counting seeds, messing up
& starting again. they are even smaller than
a mustard seed. i dream of horses
fitting inside the grain. i see my reflection
the size of a blink. the size of short breath.
i give up on counting & just start
filling the bath with the tiny seeds.
on the skin they feel like snakes rolled
into pockets of night. i have never known
the sky to stay put. i have a friend
who is three feet in the spirit world.
they call me & tell me their house burned down
& i believe them. who will believe us?
ask them if they have spoken yet
to the plants in their yard. they realize
they have not. not for a long time.
sage & yarrow. they are alright for now
just like i am alright for now. for now.
the amaranth makes a promise that one day
i will be as small as one of the seeds.
relief floods my bones. i spend the rest
of the night sleep-walking in the garden.
when the plants die, they always sing. 

an ark

i call my father & ask him
to build me an ark. he is a man
of wood chips & splinters.
he does not ask where & what for.
instead he asks, "how big?"
i drive to my childhood home
where he is painting birds
into the sky. i lay down in the grass
& tell him to measure me. 
the ark just needs to be big enough
for me to lay down. what i love
about my father is that he does not
question me anymore. understands
that we are both glass ships
in a sea of teeth. moves the wood
across the saw blade. shapes the plants
& the bow. shapes the mast & the rutters.
i have never asked him about the flood.
about how our mouths filled with water
& drown out the languages there.
we speak in a wayward tongue. clips
of mountains & a drawer full of acid-burn socks.
when he is finish he will arrive an hour
early to my house. the ark, bigger
than it needs to be but, as a father,
he is always worrying i do not have enough.
together we walk through the ark.
touch the wood. marvel at it. i remind him
that once we hung a back door
to my house. it took all afternoon
with the goats laughing at our follies.
i consider briefly telling him to stay. asking if
he would live in the land-locked ark. 
neither of us are a prophet. instead, we are
survivors of a dammed river. the lamprey
that knot themselves in our lungs.
an ocean, thick as broth, rising
as the rain starts. 

blue suitcase 

i start a runaway inspiration folder.
street signs & shoes & a house 
in an unknown countryside. 
on tiktok i keep seeing videos of people
who never stop traveling. a month in each country.
i do not want this for myself but maybe i do. 
you can get wrapped up in remedy-thinking.
this is what i need then this then this. 
the wind keeps making birds each morning. 
i see a video of one white girl
in thailand who says, "i was never home
until i came here." i feel confused about
what home means to me & what home means
to her & what the distance is there.
being a poet is maybe less about charting gaps
as it is about surfacing them. the more i talk
the less i understand language. i used to have
a blue suitcase. i packed it when i wanted
to leave home but i had no where to go.
as a little girl i would fill it with stuff animals
& sunflower seeds. i would carry it to the park.
open the suitcase beneath my favorite tree
& welcome the bug neighbors. the suitcase used
to belong to my aunts. i like to imagine what
& how they filled it. did they fold their dresses
or toss them in like i usually do with my own clothes.
they seem like fold-dress people. my favorite part
about the suitcase was its hard shell the color
of a really picture-book blue sky. if you weren't careful
it would try to return to the heavens,
socks & all. the last time i packed it i think i was
coming back from a break between semesters
of college. i wondered if i could fit my whole body
into the suitcase. if then i could beg
someone else to carry me. the girl's video is short.
i wonder if she sleeps with a fan or if
she's one of those people who like to let
the dark feast on their bones. i am the former 
though sometimes my nights are full of 
blue suitcases. i have gone our to the car & started
the engine with nowhere to go. where it is, 
i hope the suitcase is full. 

pig

i beg you to take me to the fair.
i want to look at the pigs. i want to
make my petition to join them.
i am not concerned about whether 
or not they are meat pigs. i have been meat
for most of my life & i am unafraid 
of ending things like that. i just hope
i'm a dumpling or something & not
those dry pork chops mom used to make.
the pigs are all catholic which is ironic for reasons
i don't completely remember. when my family
still did church we were all in. we went
from house to house with a group of families
& talked about bible stuff, most of which
i do not remember. most of their houses
were huge. i loved the one with hot tubs best.
i remember thinking that they must
be extra holy. i always thought my family
was missing something. 
what does this have to do with pigs 
you might be wondering? nothing at all 
except for the fact that i find them
to be holy. when i say
i want to be a pig i don't just mean
because of their size & certainly not because
they are intelligent. i mean i want to be
the cathedral when i walk down the street.
i mean just one blue ribbon could save me.
heat turns us into fried eggs. we don't 
make it to the fair. all the pigs grow wings
& roost on the power lines, which makes me question
whether or not i am in a sticker book.
i hope for more opportunities to be heretical
in the coming months. when i am a pig
i will come visit on holidays & you can
feed me your hands one at a time. 
then, i'll know how to play piano. then,
all those catholic families will tithe 
in eyelashes. did you know that pigs have
their own churches? i am ready to be all in. 
don't eat me, it's friday. don't eat me
it's lent. there is still time. the sun has arms.
you could be a pig too. 

vacancy 

we were in oklahoma when 
my ids started to vacant themselves.
i opened my wallet to find
my little portrait had escaped from my license
& then, worse, my passport. i don't 
even think i can get one of those anymore
on account of the fascism. 
the land was flat there & you could see
someone winking from miles away.
i stared out & could not find where
that small body had run to. i searched 
in the fields & beneath a pecan tree 
& in the guts of a ripe persimmon (so sweet).
i missed the abundance of trees
where i'm from in pennsylvania's 
brushy brows. next came my credit cards.
they vacated my name. became nothing
but plastic & hunger. i chewed them
as we drove & laughed. i tried writing
my name back but it would not stick.
i even lost the image of me from the 
expired license & the id from my old school
where i am not smiling & my dead name
was printed like a threat
in horrible letters. i did not tell my partner. 
i wanted to figure this out myself. 
i bought a neon sign that said, "vacancy"
in the hopes that someone, anyone 
would come & take up residence,
no matter how brief, in my cards.
there are rooms the size of refrigerators 
& rooms the size of tongues. 
i eventually found my parts. they were
on the shore of a man-dug lake
that smelled like rotten apples. i picked 
myselves up. considered leaving them there.
what if i escaped my own faces? where would
the rest of me go? i washed my forms off
in the questionable water & pressed 
my teeth & eyes back into the cards. 
birds haloed in the air as if to suggest,
"maybe there is someone dying."
once back in the hotel, i went into 
the bathroom & laid all the ids & credit cards
out on the floor & stared at them
to make sure they were really back.
people still call me about the vacancy sign.
once in while, one will arrive at my door
& i will let them sleep in my portrait 
for the night. we should make room
when one another are lost. i wonder 
sometimes if my likeness slept elsewhere
while they were lost. regardless,
they are not willing to tell me. 

vortex

during our semi-annual
armageddon, i bought a machine
to suck the house flies from the air.
a tiny vortex that sang 
old show tunes (which i hate).
it did not catch as many flies
as i would have hoped it could.
instead, i woke up many mornings
tangled in the light. myself, a sort
of housefly with my eyes 
like shiny snow globes & the windows 
bleating for the moon. i am prone 
to traps. once, as a girl, i tried to free
a mouse from a glue trap & ended up
getting stuck too. i made it out
alive & they did not. the vortex lives
beneath the house sometimes 
& other days it lives in my ribs &
other days, when i am particularly anxious,
it lives right behind my teeth. 
i find myself the fly catch. the piles
of shiny celophane wings. the hunger
for just a needle-prick's worth
of blood. dear god the vortex is 
beautiful when you let it get big.
i imagined myself opening
all the windows & letting the plague in.
the end times like a flock of 
horrors. i never did. i hung on. 
we brushed the vortex until 
it could fit again into the palm of
my hand. the tax man has a ray gun
& he is standing at the end 
of the driveway. i do not want to be
so close to so many vortexes & yet
i also want to be inside them. 
deep in the wild guts. a turning 
not so much like a drain but more
like a microwave show. call me a hot pocket
or a house fly. i have a heart
the size of a clicked tongue
& i am terrified.