a better ending

i love to rewrite the back door. 
lock the mice in the bread box
just to join them. your plane turns 
into a heron. everyone is wearing yesterday 
like a shawl. i get kissed on the subway.
we are not elephants like i wanted to be.
in this version we grow old. participate in
the private property death cult. 
you get famous. i get famous. i think 
a better ending would involve more stairs.
a dress or at least a window. instead, 
there were sirens & cakes smashed
on the sidewalk. there was a dog with
birds for eyes. i did not hold you 
like i should have especially near the end.
i could have taken my shoes off 
at the door. i could have washed my hair 
with the sweet soap you liked. i got my nails done
for the last time. i saw behind a store
a herd of birthday balloons. rounded them up
& tied messages to each of them.
each was a different ending. all of them
were for you. let's call each other ghosts.
let's buy a boat & sail until there is no more
water beneath us. i get caught up in these 
writer tricks, believing if i dig enough
i will find the one ending that will save us
from all the ache. from the midnight drilled
full of holes. i stir a pot of water. i have
no shoes, just a mask. the town is quiet 
& laughs to itself at night. god i miss
your howling. the hardwood floor. 
our neighbors above us, dancing. 

4th of july

when i was small 
a teacher asked us to write
about our favorite holidays.
i told her the 4th of july.
i do not remember her reaction.
maybe it was delight, thinking that
all the flag pledges had worked
& that i was a devoted disciple. maybe
she found it strange, knowing me
as the creek stepping child i was.
knowing on a bone-level, no country
could hold me. 
i did not write about the united states
or even fireworks. i wrote about
fireflies & how everyone was home from work
to watch me catch them. a tupperware
with holes in the lid. my cupped palms 
& their brief lights blinking in the hollow
of my hands before i released them
back into the humid night. all around
the fields filling with glimmer. the bugs,
unconcerned with a country. not thinking
of borders. heavy though still with
the weight of fire on every horizon. 
i look to that kernel of wisdom. 
a knowing that a holiday can be undone 
just like a country can. the celebration,
our breath in the dark. our bodies 
somehow here. somehow quiet before a rupture.
these days i do not catch fireflies. instead,
i try to talk to them. i ask, "do you remember me?"
knowing that fireflies only live one summer.
the fireflies flourish. they respond,
"we remember everything." 

your underworld 

there are geese in your underworld.
i bring a shovel. you explained that
you need another room. a place to store
a hunger without any legs yet.
in the sky there are war planes. in the mailbox
a war face & a letter from a man trying
to sell us another underworld.
it is enough tending our own. the portals
waiting in the bath. i prefer your underworld
to mine. yours is almost velvet. like
a sock turned inside out. instead, mine is 
prickly. woolen. i reminds me of my mother's
old jacket that i would put on to walk
outside in the winter dark. isn't that how
it always is? you crave anything but 
your own lungs. i see the geese. i feed them
& you scold me. you explain you have
been trying to get rid of the geese for years
but they always find their way back.
i can sympathize. my underworld has 
bugs on every wall. centipedes & jupiter beetles.
i used to try to smash them but that just
brought more. each fracture the seed-making.
one bug into two into four. once i thought
i could stay in the underworld. i started 
to bring magazines & peanut butter crackers.
i think i was in middle school. i curled up there
& wept. the walls widened. i shrunk. 
my sibling snuck in there. they were astounded
by the colors in my underworld. they explained,
"mine is all grey." we sat together, unsure
of what to say to each other. i felt better though
that they could feel it too. the cool 
of a root cellar. i even sometimes visit your underworld
when you are not there. that is my favorite.
i try not to touch much of anything. 
i find video rooms & plow rooms & dog rooms. 
some doors shut & locked. when i emerge 
i try to go outside but the heat makes 
a hot plate of the street. my fried egg face. 
i picture all the underworlds sewn together. 
i used to think i could reach my father's if i
dug in my own enough. i never did. instead,
i made new rooms to hold each absence.
the doors, refuse to become geese for me.
i bring sugar to feed to bugs. 

hunting party

we leave early. you with your 
gun & me with my wings. 
we walk until we are on all fours.
until our hands are hooves. we go
to play this game with each other. 
once you told me it was a celebration.
when you are afraid of losing me
you tell me you love me over & over.
the words start to mash into each other.
unlanguaging in the daybreak. 
when you are feeling extra generous
you give me a headstart. you say,
"run" & so i go. the forest doesn't end.
i go deeper. i get so far i unspecies 
& then i am a sound. the sound of 
your voice peeling backwards. i will
admit that i enjoy when you hunt me.
it is like finally a twist in the celebrations.
everywhere i go someone has a gun. 
someone has an idea big enough 
to swallow us all. someone is making 
a flag to honor colonizers or terrible men
or both. when you hunt me i think,
"at least he'll use all parts of me."
the antlers & the hooves & the teeth
stitched into a dress you'll wear when 
we are laying & walking our laughing box.
in some versions of the world there are 
nesting dolls of violence. of course i like
the smallest ones best. your hands. your flesh.
our forest. our night. the hunt does not
have to end with the day. we could do this 
until our bodies are dust. once in the night
i stumbled upon a campsite. an man 
was holding his wife & devouring all
of her hair. i covered my eyes. i was not
meant to see. our intimacies are breathing
on each other. when you finally get me 
hold me tight. let us eat something sweet
together. you always tell me i am too 
devoted to grapes. i know i buy too many.
my secret is that in my throat i feel the globes 
becoming bullets. i am the most loaded gun.
the trigger, somewhere else. i stay full. 
you gut me the following dusk. 
music plays on a tin can radio as you do. 

sadie hawkins dance

i get my gender from the gymnasium 
covered in streamers. there were boys
without teeth & boys without fingers
but never boys without eyes. 
i made myself a plate & waited like
a mailbox. i have something for you.
i have a place for us to pretend. i remember
the thrill of the boundary. what would 
it mean to be the boy in the blender.
the one i liked was not kind. he no bones
but plenty of bedrooms. even the dark
beneath a tree can be a bedroom 
if the boy you know is hungry enough. 
i had my own faults too. i wanted to
be loved which was a real shame 
in the four walls of a sneaker-chirping place.
that night it was still summer-hot. 
maybe september or maybe may's unfurled
tongue. farm field breath in the sky.
i remember the parking lot. a night sky
without the stars. i took off my shoes. 
he did not carry me. you never arrive
at what you crave by asking for it.
the moment it becomes a request 
it looses that plum-hunger. becomes a need. 
i needed to be a boy. i needed too for 
the boy to be a rocket ship. i do not know
what he needed. maybe my skin. maybe
just my mouth. we did slow dance. 
was it a relief? i do not remember. i just
remember the sweat afterwards. 
he was much taller than me. the space
beneath him, a bedroom. 

power puff girl bed

the old house grows hairy legs
& walks to me. i remember vines
on the brick shoulders. a crack widening
in the gills of the place. smooth wooden
floors & spearmint whispering 
all through the night. in my room, my dad
built me a power puff girl bed.
wooden & pink. i adored that show.
wanted to be powerful & still small. 
instead, i have grown. i think there was
a time when i could fly. i looked down
on the lamp lit little town. we did not
stay there long. i remember a snowman 
returning to water. his gutter ghost. 
i remember too a wooden spoon 
i used to dig in the wet dirt. the house is 
lonely now. stands like a sick creature.
sometimes i leave out bowls of cereal
& peanuts for her. she mopes. clips
her toenails & hurries back to the railroad tracks
that stitch the towns together. 
i wish i still had the power puff girl bed.
then i could sleep in it. experience once again
being a popcorn chicken. instead i sleep
in a plate. fork fishing for hair. i dream of 
going to the house. coaxing her over.
stroking her ruffled siding. feeling the fracture
that run up her side. climbing within
to be a little radiant being. spoon beneath my pillow. 

lizzie run up the hedge 

i ask the the ground ivy that crawls
up the throat of my favorite tree 
in, "how do you feel about 
our names for you?" common names
are probably my favorite form
of micro poetry. a story in a body
in a name. ground ivy can be 
creeping charlie can be gill over ground
can be runaway robin. the ivy responds by
climbing higher. an escape or a question?
i wonder then too if the ivy has 
common names for us. tiny poems 
in which it tries to hold onto us.
maybe syrup spinners or laughing legs?
i ask the ivy if she is willing to disclose 
one of those names. she hushes in 
a breeze. the trees whisper in each other's ears.
i think it is probably good that there
are secrets kept from me. afterall, i am
a poet & i would definitely tell everyone.
i am not good at keeping things under wraps.
still i ask them again. they give me a leaf
that falls on my tongue. i tell them i think
lizzie run up the hedge is a little absurd
as far as common names go.
the ivy tells me it remembers the young girl
who used to crawl through the yard brush.
her soft skin. her mother then who 
came up with the common name.
she was thinking of her daughter long after
the girl turned into a passing cloud. 
she would go & talk to the ivy & the ivy
would respond by growing as wild as
she could. there are poems written only
in names. i thank the ivy for gifting me
that story. now when i see the vines growing
all i can think of is the mother there. 
sometimes she even arrives. i bring her tea 
& we whisper to the plants. our breath,
like clouds. her daughter up the hedges
& like blue broth up in the sky. 

chapstick 

in the school mirror i am
a worm girl. the morning has 
one fresh blue for me to pull.
i take a picture of my teeth
& promise my boyfriend i have
never loved anyone else. i keep a 
strawberry chapstick in my throat
for if & when i want to have lips.
the sun rises like a dime. smaller
than i want it to be. i am getting old.
my glimpses of the school turn into
harmonica cages. i see on facebook
that an old friend believes in god now.
i remember his chapstick & borrowing
it once in an attempt to feel less alone.
he has wedding pictures. everything
brings flowers. my ex eats someone else's
teeth. i see him sometimes in 
the chinese place at the end of the world. 
he used to say, "i like you bite-sized."
there was kindness too though. he learned
what chapstick i used & kept one
in the bathroom at his house. once when
his parents weren't home we 
ate mulberries until we were sick
with purple. the night bruised 
across my face. he had perfect fingernails 
& a way of opening me up like an orange.
we went strawberry picking once. 
afterwards in the school mirror i could
find those tiny freckle seeds across my face. 
i grew a whole patch. plucked them 
& fed them to the crows in the field behind
my house. my mouth falls off sometimes still
to ask me questions i cannot answer.
"was that us in the back seat of the subaru?" 
"did he swallow the chapstick when
we were gone?" 

winter mangos 

i don't want a mango the size 
of the sky. i want your hands & a spoon.
i want a country without a country.
to walk the mountains back to a river.
i do not want a mailbox. i want a street
where i am unafraid of my neighbors.
where the chickens return with beaks
stained with raspberry juice. once in the middle
of a frigid break, we ate mangos at the kitchen
counter. those too were not our sweetness. 
how to reckon with the grief inside of joy
inside of grief inside of violence inside of
our little cake slice house by the creek. 
licked our fingers. the heat right behind
someone else's door. i was born an
a dearth of satiation. i talk to sugar
& it too quakes at the emptiness it witnesses.
teeth made of cellar doors. the windows 
thinning in the summer. i slept in the basement.
the ants begged, "can this be our home again?"
damp fires. orange in the sink. from your hands.
i do not want a billboard. who told us 
we could sell the sky? i imagine the pairing knife.
the same one we used to score the mango
into cubes. cut flesh away from pit. that knife
taken to the legs of a great sign until it too
gushed some kind of nectar. all my wounds are
dear to me. sometimes siblings. sometimes my face. 
the supermarket glows on the horizon. 
we drive there in the dying car full of all our
elsewhere junk. i do not want a handful 
of grapes. i want that river to wash me.
to grow as a huckleberry. flesh in
a moonless dark.  

firefly talk 

i hold my eyes like angler fish lures.
let them blink. their light, a glow
in our field ocean. the fireflies 
are coming & i am alone & pretending
to be one of them. i think
i love myself most when i am talking
with another species. o sibling, can i 
come & put my skeleton on the outside?
can you teach me how to answer
when the yellow glow flashes across
the soybean fields? i am concerned that
when you come home you will find me
gone. a jar of bugs on the table. do not
let me go. instead, feed me poems
& sugar. the illuminations like undulating waves.
i feel the pull of the land. come & be
a spirit here. walk the hills at night.
tell the deer, "always always."
i stop myself before i get too far away 
from our yard. i see in the distance
the patch of forest in the middle 
of the farmland where the foxes & 
the fireflies sleep. imagine my life there
eating wineberries until the winter takes
our eyes & puts them back in the sky.
the stars have spare teeth just like a shark.
one falls out & then another is there
to keep the glimmer going. i bring a firefly home.
his eyes grow wide in the kitchen. 
we have dinner together. rice & beans as usual.
watch a movie. a scary movie which
does not phase him. when i am done 
i open the window to let him go. 
apologize for keeping him from enjoying 
his brief life. he blinks & i pretend it means
that he either accepts the apology or he is
unbothered at all by our escapade. when 
you come home let's eat nothing 
but sugar. let's take our bones out & 
lay them on the cutting board
like kitchen knives. i am so loud right now. 
will you be able to keep me?