amber

through his beer bottles
everyone is amber. i use them 
like binoculars standing beneath
the ghost tree. my father cuts off his limbs
& i watch them grow back like
a harvestman. i know the sound
of the bottles kissing in a plastic tub.
we carry them out to the curb 
so that they can be melted down 
& used to make more dusk & more fathers.
on our street you can tell a lot about the fathers
by their recycling buckets. cans & green bottles
& cans & wine bottles. the man who rides 
a scooter takes his cans somewhere
to make a few extra dollars. when it rains 
i steal a few bottles. undress them 
like dolls. their glass so smooth 
in the grey overcast light. i crouch down.
fit myself inside. wait for a father
to swallow me whole. every father 
is zeus or whoever it was in that myth who ate
his kids. in the heat the bottles smell
like warm bread. in the dark, i find dinosaurs
waiting, caged in the bottles. i let them out
& show them where we buried the chicken &
where the mosquitoes swarm this time
of year. they ask if my father
is home. i lie to them & tell them no one is home.
"it's only me." the dinosaurs tell me,
"then you are your father." i put on my
binoculars & there he is with his little t-rex arms.
& his mouth askew. the sun turns into
a spider. i remember it is unkind to smash them
& so i just watch it scurry slowly away
until it is dark & all the bottles look black
even in the porch light.  

the cows come home

the cows come home 
& we are not ready. you push a chair 
against the front door & nail the windows shut.
i tell you i want it to happen. for everything
to happen. for the cows to come
& fill the house. push the walls apart
like flesh in too-tight pants. 
i am so sick of living without cows.
so tired of the internet talking every day
about fires & dictators. i crave a cow in the bath
& a cow in the living room & a cow
chewing all my old binders of taxes.
records of what the government has 
used to feed it war police face. the cows
hate the government. the cows 
want to eat until they are round & wild.
for there to be no fences & no cars.
i share their hunger but not yet their urgency.
how do you make room for your
cow self when the walls are thin & the grass
is dry & thunderless? you tell me we can
survive. that we can grow tomatoes in the window 
from one of your eyelashes. that there
are flowers that taste like meat. i do not 
hold strong. god i want the comes to come home.
i want them to come home so bad. 
i remove the chair from the door 
to your protestations. i throw the windows
open wide & wait but they do not come.
the cows, are not home yet. they are
somewhere else. standing outside
a war machine. standing on the moon
as a new colony considers fresh forms 
of subjugation. the cows are angry at me
& us. they said, "all of this flesh &
still you cannot sleep." i cannot blame them.
my people too have been ground 
into mouthfuls & corralled into smaller
& smaller worlds. i hang bells from the branches
of every tree i can find so that when they come
i will hear them & be ready. 

stair climber machine

i used to pry the dark wide.
cut headlight holes in the morning.
a handful of grapes
& the mineola neon planet fitness. 
my car had no lungs & neither did 
the sky. parking lot sea gulls cast lots
for our engines. there were all kinds of hunger
in that place. purple purple purple. 
most people train & get stronger.
instead, i witnessed my body falling apart.
started off with the treadmills & moved 
to the elliptical. my knees like jam jar lids.
broken glass in between toes. 
i break easy which is to say i seldom 
have skin & sometimes have bones.
i have always been taught a body
is not something to be trusted & so
the machines hummed. pressed me
beneath their tongues. there were two
stair climbers at the end of the line. 
how strange a device built
to dangle heaven at a distance.
reaching & reaching. then too, the roads
of the treadmills, ghost town beneath
our feet. some of the fancy new machines
even showed a fake little town on the screen
you could pretend to run through.
once i got angry at my ankles. everything hurt.
i wanted a body that would take 
all my anger. instead, i have one
that buckles. turns into a bedsheet. 
tears open. i would not give in though.
i came & went right to the stair climber.
decided i was going to reach the top
of some unknown building. look out
at a glass circus & dance. i did not make it long
before my body told me,
"you are not climbing at all."
spent the next half hour in a massage chair
in the dark room no one ever used at the gym.
the fake leather was slick from 
other people's sweat or maybe cleaning fluid
or maybe both. i closed my eyes.
tried to hide my limp as i left. in the car
i watched the orange sun rise like 
a communion wafer leaving a mouth. 
my body too, not surrounding me
but deep within me, fucked knees & all. 

body count

i used to have a jar for boys.
the opposite of a gender is 
a mouth. what comes in must 
become a beet leaf. we get out
a slice of paper & write out
all the people we've shared
a window with. you tell me i'm
a slut which i do not think
is a title i have earned. i could have
drive farther. in the mountain once
i ghosted a boy who was really desperate.
he was begging not for me but for
a gender which is to say he was lonely
in the way that hollows you out.
i have taken a spoon to my guts 
just so i can have a gourd night.
a man is sadly sometimes
exactly what you need. 
the government has never counted
how many people it eats. maybe
the opposite of a mouth is a government.
i do not want the government's 
body count. i want there to be
no government or at least for it to 
have never killed anyone. i find numbers
where there shouldn't be. in the canal
& in the dirt behind a boarding school & 
sometimes headlights. a police car 
counts down from ten. at one either
we run or we surrender. i am sorry that
my gut impulse is surrender. 
or is it to gender or is there a difference?
i stopped counting a long time ago.
now, i count birds who i know. now,
i count pots i could fill with water
in case of a terrible storm. 
you open my mouth & crawl inside.
i will call you jonah if you agree i can
be the whale. we are hiding from the government.
my gender is still soft despite it all.
they can see us on the radar. genders,
like ghosts. thin, veil-like & then gone. 

tadpoles in the radio

every comma is just a tadpole 
waiting for legs. all the railroads
have turned into snakes. i ignore 
a calendar reminder on my phone
& instead call my aunt who is dead.
she used to sing me happy birthday 
with her sister over the phone.
she still does only i don't show
anyone else or i think they would 
get too worried. the tadpoles would 
keep me company in the bath
when i didn't have a spoon. they pestered
me for my legs. i said, "they are not
as great as they seem." i met a boy inside
a crystal ball. we talked about
running away to the other side
of the moon where darkness makes
anyone soft. i loved his dog.
i loved his parking lot in winter.
i even loved his bathroom. there were
not enough tadpoles. i once had a frog 
who escaped. he got a job as a mailman
& brings me real estate people's goofy flyers now.
we all could use a hole in the sky. we all
could use another pair of legs i guess.
instead, i consider what it would
have been like if i handed them over.
get me round & in the pipes. all my 
eyelashes like tadpoles. we finally get
to the creek & it's dried up. 
we are in desperate need of rain.
i bend over the rocks & try weeping
as much as i can. i don't even get enough
to wet all the mud. flies come. 
i chase them away. i hate punctuation. 
i would prefer to just keep talking
& let the reader pluck out what
they want to hear. call me a word search
or worse, a crossword. i hand out
guppy nets. open my mouth wide.
call my father until he remembers he's 
a father. until the transformation begins.
legs & lungs. the gills, gone like pleats
in a skirt. the trains run all night even though
the tracks are made of snakes. 

pipe tree

there are flowers in cages at the zoo.
i ask "why?" too often. because they bite.
i bite. am i in a zoo still? i hear a bell.
there are pipe trees growing where
i wanted a tomato bush. my father is
singing in his sleep. he is sleeping
in a battery. a professor told me once
my poems sound good but are not about anything.
i wanted to tell him, "does this country
not do to you what it does to me?"
i walk outside & accept the blender. 
the beautiful beautiful & the neighbor 
who kisses his shotgun. who breaks flag code.
i was a terrible girl scout. nothing to do 
with the gender & more to do with
my inability to complete an instruction.
i call for help. the help kills my dog. the help
burns down my mailbox & says,
"you no longer quality." i stop myself
before i ask, "for what?" there must have been
some program that could have saved me once.
i break the flower out of the zoo. they eat
all the houses on my street. violence starts
to feel like "well it was a matter of time."
i am driving worse with age. the road like
a jump rope. i want friends to make me
some popcorn & feed it to me once piece 
at a time. i miss my hometown. not what it is now
but what it was when i grew up there.
my partner says, "everything changes"
which is both very true & very not true.
the cemetery spreads. a deer stands on the roof
& will not explain to me how or why she is there.
it is best not to ask questions of the divine.
instead, write them poems. i throw 
as many paper airplanes as i came, hoping
my sibling will hear me & drive to where i am.
fold them for me. point them directly
so that they land in the open mouth of the sun. 

strangling house

there was a house in the mountain
with long hairy legs. i slept in there
when i didn't want to breathe.
sometimes you were on the ceiling
& sometimes my gender was a wormy apple.
i tried cheap witchcraft. crystals &
a lady in the attic. summoned demons
who looked at their watch like,
"when can i go home?" the house would
tighten. once huge, then smaller & smaller.
i brought you there & as the place shrunk
you asked me, "why do you want me?"
i used to want dolls so bad. a place to grieve 
a poppet. this is not just a once house problem
i seem to make structures collapse in.
in my parent's house sometimes i lay
like a matchstick, everyone a second
from lighting each other. i do not know
what a lung is for if not for holding breath.
on the television a man is trying to set
a new world record for not breathing.
the live stream is coming from my house.
i open the spare room & there he is, lips shut
& eyes in an ash tray. driving with my grandmother,
she lit her cigarettes with the lighter
in the car. a little red halo pressed into 
the tip. smoke curling its cat tail 
on the car ceiling. she drove me to 
the house with long legs. she said,
"don't tell your mother anything." i think it was her
to taught me to fit in small places. i do not 
want to crush my bones anymore.
i do not want to feel the house running 
away from wolves. instead i want to lay
on the floor in the bedroom & have to float above me
until your hair grows long enough 
to touch me. then, i will pull you down, my beautiful
little balloon. i'll hold you tight. all the witches
will swallow their crystals. feel the guts shine
in the moon's wonky flashlight. 
i knock on all the neighbors doors tonight.
run away before they can answer. someone 
must have a house that gets bigger instead
of closing in on them. 

changing the locks

the man with a balloon for a head
would bang on our windows all night.
you were driving the car
into a cloud of fire. i have maybe
never known what i wanted.
i didn't want you i wanted 
a place to sleep. i wanted a pile
of fingers in the ripe dark. maybe
you felt the same or maybe i am 
sick & it is too late. rice on the stove.
a mirror in the blue bathroom. 
this country gives us 
the wrong questions. what 
do you want out of life? as if a body
& the land were a vending machine. 
once though i was standing in the vestibule
as the rain pelted the earth & 
a man taking there too asked someone 
on the phone what do you want to feel?
i found small joys in that apartment.
the potato i grew in the window
until it got mites. the curtains that
finally replaced flags i had taped
into the glass to hide our flesh. 
there was another man who came 
in the morning & jiggled 
all the doorknobs, hoping to find one open.
he had nails for eyes. i imagined his hands
were somehow soft. 
the next day the building gutter came.
he had doorknobs in a shopping bag.
dropped our old handle to the floor.
some guy across the street with
a pet tiger was weeping. i wept too.
there was a portal into our little home.
i stared through it & imagined putting 
my fist there. holding out my hand
all day in anticipation of the doorknob tester.
maybe he would use me as 
a doorknob. pull me until he got inside. 
glory hole in the reverse. leave me restless. 
he would come five more times
to change the locks. once in the middle
of the night on a phone call with
his ex. i pretended i was her.
the balloon head man asked from
the sidewalk can't we just turn off the lights?
i listened to him. turned off every light
in the apartment. sat in the dark. he stopped banging.
no one else was in the apartment but me.
someone stole all the tires off your car 
but somehow you drove it anyway. 

trumpet practice

i played trumpet only for a year.
it was like holding a monster 
by the lips. there was never any where safe
to practice. angels were always listening
& pleading with me to get better.
the notes thrummed through our house's walls.
on occasion i would play outside. 
& it always brought storm clouds. 
i would have to cover my eyes to get them
to go away again. i was in sixth grade. i was 
so sick of having a throat. i stopped saying
aloud what i was thinking. the big question,
"will i ever feel at home in my body?"
some kids played soccer. some kids wore 
eyeliner perfectly. i bought a dollar store 
dark green & smudged it around the corners
of my eyes. lopsided. the trumpet voice came
like a metal shout. i don't know what i thought
i would ever be able to play it. maybe it was
wishful thinking. like "if i choose a loud instrument
maybe i will be as loud as i feel."
years before i had played the oboe.
which i made sound like a sick trout.
still, it seems now like an instrument 
much more suitable to me. the trumpet always felt
like trying to hold someone else's tongue
in my own mouth. in band, most of
the other trumpet players were boys. 
they played with their mutes. pretended i was 
not at the end of the row with them.
i imagined myself inside their bells,
the rush of sound & air blowing across my skin.
everyone once in awhile when no one else
was home though, i would have
a chance to play a few notes that felt
like my own. a brash call to the orange sun.
my body, a corridor of mouthpieces.
eventually, i laid the instrument to rest. 
practiced for the last time. still, worried about
my bones & their spit valves. 
the boys kept playing as if i were never there. 

other underworlds 

i dig my own underworlds 
wherever i go. a place to keep the truth
to dry like bouquets hung by
their toes. when i was a girl 
a boy was trying to eat me. he handed me
a shovel & took me out by the apricot tree.
i do not have good judgement. i dug.
earth & stones & alphabets until
we reached his underworld. 
it was where he stored his desire 
to be a ruler. i crawled inside because
he told me i looked nice there. i waited.
the moon died over & over leaving 
her exoskeleton. his underworld
had holes in the walls. it smelled
of black licorice & mildew. he talked 
to me like a fortune teller machine.
"will i have a son?" "will you ever
be happy?" i escaped when he wasn't looking.
shot my gender full of holes. told him,
"oh no... i guess we can't." i am a master
of escapes. the window & the trap door.
i built my first underworld 
when he was gone. i laughed in 
the mud. it was march & the soil
was still cold. grass roots snapped & tossed.
down there i laid down & wept. i dreamed
the place velvet & then moss. i wrote
a poem about my father on the walls.
imagined dragging him there. locking the door.
concluded it would not save us & so 
i just formed a bird from clay & breathed 
life into her. she kept my secrets. we all need
someone to keep our secrets, if not 
they start to turn into ghosts that follow you
into the purple night. i discovered i could
not have just one. an underworld 
beneath the house & one by the mailbox
& another on the side of the road where
the foxes go to plot. the digging & the darkness.
sometimes they connect to one another.
my bird, flying between. her eyes made
from pennies. when you ask me,
"where did you?" on a hot afternoon & there is
dirt on my hands. it was an underworld.
how do i stop? did he, that boy who buried me,
did he ever stop? i make an underworld just for
my grief. it is smooth & tender like a throat.
i wake you up, about to take you there.
i get nervous at the last minute so i 
concoct a lie. i tell you i just wanted to see
the moon crack herself open & crawl free. 
we watch. the trees glow in her light.