the only tattoos

the late-night shop had
a finger man. main street filled with
sick flowers. rain came in spit takes. 
i was wearing those cheap ghost shoes
& you had bleeding blue hair. 
it was either the end of the semester
or the end of a kind of flesh.
before, we drank sodas in the wawa parking lot.
i put my feet up on the dashboard.
outside, everyone was wearing their skin.
a stoplight coughed cars through town.
we talked in the future tense. we will.
we should. we can. we could. 
a man without any eyes asked us
if we were ladies & if he could
show us a planet. we declined. we were
not ladies. got a parking ticket.
go a second on purpose. the man 
in the shop listened to bad music 
that we pretended to like. we chose 
monsters from his gallery. you, a rose,
me a tombstone. it was less about
the imagine & more about the etching. 
i was glass. the man took a phonecall
with his father. kissed the phone. 
ate tortilla chips & wiped his hands 
on my lap. night painted the window.
all of our bodies warped. a folding chair
becoming a hotel bible. your rose, molding. 
when it was done the man slapped 
a paper towel on the wound. was still
on the phone with his father. 
was still hovering an inch or so 
above the ground. you bought a gun 
from the toy store on the way out
of town. it was gone before we got home.
in my phone, girls buzzed like jupiter beetles.
all of them gummy-shark-less. 
one asked if i could go on a date 
the next day. i said yes in the moment
but never went. 

puzzle rooms

my brother cut pieces to fit
in the tooth gaps of the puzzle. 
it was a picture of a beach i think
or else maybe a pile of flowers.
my last memory of my grandmother
is milky green. the nursing home
on the other side of town with
too many windows. everything smelled
like soup & toilet paper. we sat with her
in a "family room" & did puzzles.
her whiskers grew like a catfish. 
she never said much. coughed into
a clothe napkin while my mom
tried to talk to her. the day before
someone had escaped the unit. 
he was wandering in the parking lot
pulling on car door handles, hoping to find
his way out. my grandmother never escaped.
i wonder if she tried. if she ever walked 
the parameter of the floor, searching
for a seam to pull. puzzles inside puzzles. 
on the way out of the memory unit
there was an abstract painting 
with the four-digit exit code
hidden inside the swirling shapes. 
we culled the numbers each time.
a six. a two. a five. a seven. opened the door.
she never tried to follow us. what did
she think the door was to? was for?
we all live in worlds of portals. 
some of the more lucid residents
would ask to follow us out. i always
wanted to say yes. "yes, come with us,
we can be wild puzzle solvers. you can
drive us as far as the car will take us."
i do not know if the puzzles in the family room
were really missing pieces or if it was
just an easier task to make new pieces
than to actually sort them. my brother worked
in cardboard. took scissors carefully
to the edges. pressed the sky into place.
the other side of the puzzle, still fragmented.
i like to think no one finished it
& one day found two of the exact same pieces.

ash tree nymphs 

i learned my body through 
the blood rain of its making. 
a story of a great downfall. several actually.
on my mother's back there were
little hotels. we stayed in each to make our way
to the sky. my father was a severing.
a downpour in the dark. we spread though.
first just a limb & then hundreds.
i have more siblings than i can count.
all of us bloom with cream. we feed
the goats who come to us & ask
for a god. we do not tell them that
divinity is built through reverence
& awe. that we have seen the undoing
of a titan & we know they always
come & go. we tend the goats.
let them believe what they must. 
we nourish all travelers. we tell stories 
of bodies that make themselves
from the fracture. sometimes, on
the right nights, we take a train to 
our mother's neck. she is watching television.
a show about a war. we whisper
in her ear that she should join us. that it is
never too late to become a sibling.
she does not. she leaves the front door
unlocked. on the train ride home we notice
another zeus. there is always another zeus. 
he is punching holes in the walls. he is
forgetting the goats who tended him
when he was fragile as a petal of cream. 
back home, we dig our legs into
the warming earth. let the stars talk
about our father all they want. 
we will make gods of one another
then take the face off before it is too late.
soft flesh. twisted knees. the goats are calling
ubers to visit the shrines we no longer do. 

speaking prototaxite in the dark

i put on my dinosaur face.
the time machine is wherever you need 
it to be. i watch a little video about
the prototaxites, a branch of life that we 
no longer speak to. an artist renders them
like cucumbers tall in the soil. fungus-like
but separate. i hear them
like struck gongs made of soil.
their veins in the dirt. they hold hands 
with the thought of the tree. my guts
are too complex some days. i go out
to the sun & try to eat it. these creatures 
had a language. they grew toward
a hole in the sky. talked to blood until
it learned to be blue. a strand of a braid.
what did they do with their nights? 
i hope they knew the kind of rest
some of us do. i hope they did not
stand, wide-eyed at the bursting future.
time is a horror maker. a thumb in
the knots. each obelisk, a recollection
of our long-lost siblings. their bodies
in the back of our closets. sometimes
when the day is long & prehistoric,
i feel them. kick my foot to touch that branch
were we broke away from each other.
their hearts, worn & water-logged.
i ask their ghosts, "did we devour you?
what do you think of us? of the trees?" 
they answer with a sound like chopped celery. 
all of us, the thoughts of water. 
i find one moonlit in the yard & worship it. 

warehouse

they're building a warehouse 
for the warehouse. a warehouse for
all of our fingers. to eat the land.
to fuck the land again. again. again.
they get bigger each time. a field. 
a fist of trees. swallowed like rations. 
the warehouse always wants more warehouse. 
more places to hoard boxes of plastic beads
& plastic teeth & plastic gods. they want
everyone to go & work in the warehouse.
to have babies who know nothing 
but warehouse. to turn our blood
into warehouse guts. to warehouse our houses
until we are nothing but their tightening machine.
the warehouse asks, "what can we sell?" the trees
ask, "what can we shelter? what can we keep?"
i imagine us with hammers, striking 
the warehouses. the warehouse, asking 
for five dollars per swing & us paying it.
all the warehouse bones, where would they go
even if they were broken? centuries of rubble.
the deer looking on. telling one another,
"money people will do anything to prove
they are not animals." the worst moment
is when they flatten the land. the wound before
the warehouse. the dirt, bleeding wild
in the spring air. how quickly it could become
a meadow. the warehouse coughs up trucks.
coughs up people in terror uniforms.
dandelions grow at the edges. they say, "as long
as there is dirt..." i want us to be as loud as them. 

cottage core

we butter ourselves & talk about
perfect tiny lives. i bake an apple pie 
from the wet hearts of a tree bent over 
our backs. i wear rainboots even when
there are no clouds. the cows' milk
is endless & sweet. when the mirrors come
even they are warm. the face looking back
at me, not mine but a different creature 
to whom the land does not have wounds. 
i know a vision of us unspun from history 
cannot deliver us. still, sometimes, i need to pretend
all the light is soft & easy. the sun brushes our hair. 
each day we reach for an apron. a wooden spoon.
a wooden television. a wooden car to never leave.
fields that open their albatross wings.
the horses do not need to be taught 
how to ride. instead, they teach us. 
prairie grasses & tower flowers. a wooden cellphone 
incapable of answering. lately, i have 
been getting more calls than ever from unknown 
numbers. i do not answer them. they do not
leave me messages either. i let them ring.
we eat nothing but cookies all day. teeth ringing
like bells. the deer know we are friends 
& so they come & join us on our blanket.
you braid my hair with crocuses. there are 
no telephone wires. there is no road.
once in a while, a plane flies overhead. we do not
talk about it. instead we take it as a sign
to start canning. raspberry jam & pickled greens. 
sugary melon moon. a mailbox with 
with red flag up, waiting for the night to come
& read our fears aloud to the window
until his breath fogs the glass. 

claw machine

i don't think i have what it takes
to replace the "i"s in my poems
with "we"s. who would want me,
speaking for a generation? i think
i should try more often than i do.
afterall, there has never been a poem
i wrote which my father's tongue
was not inside of. my brother too
& sometimes the dirt people
whose bones mix like spilled utensils drawers.
we go to the claw machines, my brother
& i. we go with our mom & do
a waiting ritual together. we say,
"one more" until we are empty-handed
in a new way. the poem had fish lungs.
the poem had a way out. the claw machine
reached in from the ceiling of the bathroom
& plucked me out in a great "almost."
if i were to write a real poem about endings,
i would talk about the arcade by the beach.
how each year there are more claw machines
& less puzzles. in the corner, we play
pinball. my mother teaches us that
if the machine "pops" it means you beat
the high score. i beat the high score
& jump when i hear the "pop" thinking
it is a champagne bottle or a gun shot.
noon runs her fingers through our hair.
each of us with waves of deep brown.
i have been growing my hair out. really, i 
should say, "we have been growing our hair out."
we get worse as we go. farther & farther
from a plush handful. the boardwalk 
tells a story about witnessing. the ocean
is always a "we." we crush. we crash.
we pull back & leave fragments
in the sand. we go back to the machines again.
we lose together. tiny chapels. a strong wind. 

sound machine(s)

i go to the sound machine place.
we used to put our ears to clouds
so that we wouldn't hear teeth.
i preferred the rain. you preferred 
the ocean.
we spend all night
removing oceans from our ears
just to put them back. i sleep on
the couch. i sleep in a pit of fire.
the machine has a pad 
of butter for one of 
our eyelids. i drown the cars.
a flood worth having. i watch
a tiktok where the speaker asks,
"do you think god should
apologize to us?" my answer,
"of course." i think he gets
all the sound machines & here
we are searching wherever we can
for a pinky's worth of full.
i have used shells as ears. i have
climbed on the roof of the old
apartment building to try & find
a bigger sound machine. one large enough
to snuff out all the thunder in me.
i do not talk enough about
the lack. god does not apologize.
what good would that do anyway?
we have soil & rocks. we have always
been left to our own devices. us & the birds
& the snakes. 
an outlet. recording the wind.
microphone swallowed in the attic.
i have storms enough to burry 
all of our thoughts for tonight.
we talk by the corner lamp.
you ask, "do you see me?"
i answer in a rare 
machineless dark, "i do." 

night beach

we walk with pearls under
our eyelids. i want to go until
there is no more land to hold us.
until something lets go. i want to be
balloon born in water, salt, & shadow. 
we talk about meeting the ocean
for the first time. my bird feet.
to be an animal is to crave smallness.
even the whales in their water
know they are shrinking. children earlier today
mistook the churn of the water
for the backs of dolphins. they asked
their parents, "when will they grow legs?"
fish with two legs in the dream time. 
barefoot & kicking at the water. 
all the footprints of the day
amble cross-path. the ghost bodies
repeat the day's march. the spirits 
of sea escape-artists reach for 
their shell fragments in the dark. 
i tell you we should build a house
on the night beach. let the night pull
us apart & smooth down the edges.
together we could squeeze the blood moon 
for orange juice & drink until 
we are nothing but sugar.
i do not want to return to the land. 
i tell the fish to quick, lose their legs.
far away we still see the lights 
of the shoreline hotels. honeycomb
sliding glass doors. towels hung
on railings. eyes, like pearls in their night.
all of us, leaning toward an infinite.
you ask me, "what does the ocean mean to you?"
i resist the cliche urge to say, "god"
& instead, i say, "an answer." 

blue heron

i follow the heron, convinced she
might take me to the underworld
or the otherworld or wherever the seams
of the land start to give. i find it harder
to plan for the future than ever before.
i hope for small pleasures. a warm day.
the scent of brine in the water. toads
in the field where rainwater pools, singing
as if they will never turn to bones.
at the creek in my hometown a blue heron
would step with me across the marshland.
she would ask, "when are you coming home?"
i imagined putting on a heron suit.
how delightful it would be to shrink 
into a flickering body capable world slipping. 
instead, i always ran from her. she turned into a 
smudge in the dusk sky. purple like
a real plum. thunderstorm dumping fruit
on the sidewalk. everything syruping from
the wild heat. the bird in me tries to escape.
dipping legs & a yearning for thread.
i lose the heron where the trees thicken 
& the sound of bugs turns into a machine.
i search. i call. she does not come. the future
feels like a bowl of weeping planets. 
i feed them honey from those little sticks 
that are supposed to be from tea. i used to 
try to make huge & ugly plans for triumph.
i used to run from herons. now they run
from me. i feel in the dirt, searching for
that little crease. a string to pluck & pull
it all apart. i do not know where the herons go.
i hope they do not talk about me there.
i am mostly embarrassed of what i am. 
so much flesh. so much hair. never enough blue.