flight risk

i know i am at risk of becoming a bird.
this is what it means to be queer 
in a land of fire. sometimes i will wake up
all feathered with an airplane at the window.
no, i do not want any more one-way tickets. no,
i cannot imagine a tunnel without you.
i have boarded aircraft just for the stewards 
to scoop me up & put me in uniform.
they said, "please, we just want to go home."
i was apparently not allowed to leave
the state. once, i was on a flight that turned
into a cloud & i had to spend years raining
before my water made it back to the cisterns
in the yard behind my parent's house.
my favorite kind of bird to be is the long distance
kind of artist. a red knot flying from
chile to new jersey. my beak full of radio.
i stand up unannounced. i go home unannounced.
there are birds in the sink. there are birds
in the mailbox that i am afraid of awakening. 
what if they are going to tell me that i am 
not ready to leave? i am always ready to leave
& i will not be sequestered. i keep a bag in
the back of my throat. goodbye a streetlights
licking my shadow. goodbye all the feathers
i shed & regrow. leave the windows open
so i can avoid the shame of the front door.
i am no prodigal son. when i come back i pretend
as if i was never gone & i expect everyone else 
to do the same. in a dream i chased goats
until we were all birds. you called me
& asked if i was in the street yet. i was not
but i lied. put my body in a little syringe. 
called a doctor & instructed, "tell me i am a bird."
terrified, he whispered, "you are a bird"
& then the government turned him into
a smoke shop. i got away. 

parking tickets

i wake up with a parking ticket
on my forehead. i am so sick of the horrors
coming when i'm not looking. i guess that is
just part of their game. i check to see
the violation & it reads, "dreaming
too close to a fire hydrant." 
i put it with the others: a little box in
the crawlspace beside raccoon skeletons 
& rat fossils. i refuse to pay which means
more will come. which means officers
will put my dna in a little "wanted" list. 
i try to think of where i might sleep
to escape them. i craft a cloud like a tree house.
clouds are not allowed in this area of town
& i do not have a permit anyway. 
everything is better without a permit.
i do not want permission from any kind
of cop for where & when i can touch the ground.
i ask the dirt, "can i park here?" the dirt says,
"please. please stay." i make a pair of wings
from my parking tickets. fly over the town. 
drop messages to strangers that say,
"i hope you break the law today." i hope they get
that tiny thrill in the plum dark. i am sometimes
afraid. once when i was a child my mother
had an arrest warrant out for her because of parking tickets.
we had to sleep with our eyes circling the block.
i don't remember how she paid them. 
their orange envelopes bright against the dashboard.
then, blazing on the kitchen table. i stole one.
just one. i filled the envelope with nails & buried it
in the yard behind the garage where the sharp
& wild weeds bloomed. 

tunnel of love

i thought there would be 
more carnival boat rides in my life. i am 
leaving messages with all the flowers
i have phone numbers for. sometimes
the television will decide to present me
a father figure. i'll be stuck praying
to it all weekend. the fridge has died 
& the frozen meat is melting. turning back
into narwhal & chicken. pressed the door
open. i have been like capital c crazy 
in the last decade so i cannot really blame
anyone for deciding to avoid me. 
i buy a ticket to see a freak show
because i am hoping to join. i nail
the audition but i pass the species test.
they say i have too much neanderthal dna
so i am technically cheating. this is not
the first time i've been caught cheating.
i shoplifted jello once. it was a bad choice
but i needed some stained glass. i was 
in college & i had fifteen dollars. there are 
big doors & little doors. big boats
& tunnels shaped like cartoon hearts.
i make a boyfriend from neon & he glows
to keep the spirits away all night.
in the tunnel everyone is a hand or
a fire. i kiss someone. i prefer not to know
who or what they are. desire is best held
in a sweet shadow. sugar or fur. 
they tasted like raisins. when we emerged
no one sat in the boat with me. 
the fair was empty. only the carny men 
shaving their heads in fun house mirrors.
i decide not to stay because i never stay. 
why would i? no job in a box? no flowers
calling me back to confess their love?
i take a bus a new cemetery. just opened.
a little food truck in the corner sells falafel. 
i stand beside it, just to smell the spices. 

funeral drive

we get lost on the way to the funeral. 
the roads turn into ice cream. a porch light
without any hair. i keep telling people
"it's okay she was really old" which is true
but not true enough. it misses her house,
broken apart still reaching. the cabinets
full of coffee bought decades ago. her sisters
like leaves in a rain river down the driveway. 
we had debated who would drive but decided
that it needed to be me. the air is full of dragons.
i am not sure which one of us is the worse driver.
it is probably me. i am prone to kissing potholes
& daydreaming into billboards. 
i have been experiencing more & more
last times. i collect them. once my boyfriend
gave me a shadow box for our not-love
to live in. i broke the window like a fire alarm.
let all the birds out to devour what they needed to.
all families have smaller families within them. 
my sibling & i are one. my brother & my father,
another. old enough 
to remember but not enough to keep.
we talk about where we are going to go after.
a cup of coffee & a heavy sun. 
when we emerge we are less lost than we realized.
the stoplights braid our hair. the others cars,
rude & not looking at our licorice grief. 
the parking lot is full when we arrive. how did we arrive?
i thought i was driving but i am not. the car, 
like beef jerky in my hands. 
sometimes it feels like we are always the last
to arrive. this is mostly on purpose. the queer kids
are the ghosts. i see our aunt, her hair like
a cloud before a heavy rain. 

overdraft fee

i get it, you own my throat. 
you have a little freezer where you keep
a bowl of my blood. feed it to 
the feral cats when the moon
is getting summer in her cheeks.
in a great cage
there are ghosts rattling jars of beetles.
in the vault, everyone is see-through.
i look through a gender until
it becomes a reverse portal. not a way out
but a way deeper into the circus. 
i have learned to breathe only a dime's worth
of air. i have talked to the sweet 
mulberries when they want to gossip
about barter systems & hair. 
on the train my bank clawed 
at my ribs all jungle gym in the rush. 
i was on my way to work not
on the way home. the work like
an axe drug behind a horse. the horse,
trying desperately to walk on two legs.
everything about this country is 
about giving your grief masks 
to keep it at bay. i call this "broke."
i call this "horse." i call this "overdraft."
the rent like a flower without 
a neck. the bees in the bush by
the front door, raising them hum
to meet the train. i consider riding
until the train falls apart. until the 
last stop's last stop fractures & i am alone
among the wheels. why isn't it 
ever enough? the money, no where
to be seen. pilot numbers flying
into a storm. i go to the bay.
pull a heron from my mouth. whisper
to her, "do not save your money." 
she asks, "then what should i do with it?"
i respond, "buy as many grapes as you can." 

dry ice flower

i always wanted to be fragile. 
to keep the ghost in the window
without having to suck the flowers dry. 
we were only children 
with our faces made of salt.
every waterfall terrified me. i couldn't
drive yet but he could. we drove a nail
through an arcade. kissed each other
as if time had a go-cart in its throat.
i have since given up on cream. instead,
i thicken my broth with root.
the flower was briefly a world. a place
where we could have built a house
& had thousands of flies. 
then, a wrist going horrible. the ground.
the fires. a shattering enough to build
a religion. all the pieces, without
their stained glass. you could try 
for years to put that face back together.
still, there would be a fragment
gone to the underworld. one day i will
be a child again & reach it. open the door
to the crawl space where a snake
the size of the whole family has been
living on fruit. hungry & ready,
it descends. drags its belly across the floor.
swallows the flower & turns into a statue.
in the garden, everyone has a memory
of stone. my skin turned red
as a father hand. i had no water left
in my body. i was a blown curtain
& everything that followed. 

hamburger help me 

i used to write about meat when i was
trying to turn into a cloud. everything
sizzled in a hot pan. a parking lot
slice of turkey. all the cheese in the word
visiting for a brief blessing. my mom 
had a cell phone life. i had a bathroom
free of ghosts (mostly). a bowl could
cradle enough cream to last the dark.
sometimes we let our neighbor become a sibling. 
he still smelled wrong. i road my bike 
with a playing card in the spokes. we had
only one wooden spoon. i stirred & stirred.
woke up in the middle of the night
to visit the ground ground beef. how did
it live so red? i would touch the plastic 
swaddling the spirals. when it talked it spoke
in riddles. if a father is hungry is he a father?
i shut the fridge door. waited for the after-school.
a crock pot without a lid running wild 
in the basement. i forget how to eat often.
never relearn the same. the cows carried me
to a shrine. an old limestone kiln. i brought
buttercups & dandelions. every yellow
i knew. my tongue, lizard like & small. 
sometimes even still i will open the skillet
& find hamburger helper. i will know i am
required to eat. the cows say, "don't worry
we all do it." i don't know if they mean eat
or eat one another. the wooden spoon, soft
from so many years of stirring. somehow 
that utensil always finds me. tells me, 
"a bite is enough." enough to what? to grow
old & bright? to remember my first mouth?
i am still uncertain. i am comforted though
that i can learn over & over again. that in the dark
the town appears largely the same as when
i road my bike to the menonite store
through the fields in may. 

i used to live here

i go to the front door & turn time
like a stove dial. back to when i lost
the keys & left the apartment open
for weeks. the bears took advantage.
sat at the too-big kitchen table. 
watched tv & enjoyed extravagant baths. 
i could not figure out how or where
to go. the city had bugs. the mountains
had bugs. i drove my car & tried
to call you. only birds were on the phone.
i am a nostalgia eater. i love to go 
to places i walked at night. the street lights
like flowers on the moon. i bring new lovers
as if we could both get sucked back
to our old selves. become less lonely. lick our fingers
clean of mayonnaise. when i lived
on broadway (no not that broadway) 
once a man came & knocked on my door.
he said, "i used to live here." i took him inside.
i showed him the hole in the ceiling. i showed
him the back porch where the raccoons came
& still asked for him. i believe we are
more like mushrooms than anything else.
leaving spores of ourselves wherever we go.
if watered & spoken to right, i think
a little blind self would emerge in that place.
that was before i had glasses. everyone was
the texture of marmalade. the sun, 
a bright blur. the man did not leave for days.
begged me to tell him it was 2010 again. 
i asked him, "what did you leave there?"
he explained that his dog had run away
the next year. he had chased them for weeks
along the old railroad tracks. he whispered,
"they became gods." i believe him. i think
he just needed to confess. he left then. 
i do not confess as much as i should. we pass
my old front door. inside are thousands of us.
you calling me in the middle of the night.
me, letting it ring. all the windows turned to birds. 

chocolate fountain 

i really thought by now i would have
encountered more chocolate fountains.
in fourth grade, they consumed me.
tower of sweet tumble. my fingers,
like rockets. everything was a mouthful.
the sun, more blue. the sky, more purple.
i don't know if i'm imagining it but
when i was in elementary school i think 
the world had a grainy texture. the smell
of a photograph in the cafeteria. my hair,
cut short. a boy's haircut. i wore off-brand crocs. 
my retainer was bright blue. 
they wheeled the fountain out for bingo nights.
in the weeks leading up to the occasion
i would dream of what i could submerge. 
swimming in chocolate. strawberries & 
cookies & marshmallows. i told myself,
when i am older i am going to have 
a fountain in my house. i pictured it 
on the kitchen counter like a microwave.
i don't know where the chocolate fountains went. 
i never saw one in middle school. all we had then
was the soda machine on the back steps
that accepted only quarters. a half-flat sprite
in september. in some ways, it was all
downhill from the fountains. sometimes 
i'll think i see one in the early morning.
a little shrine on the kitchen counter.
what i wanted most as a kid was to dip my fingers
into all that falling. of course, i never did. 
when i catch a mirage that is the first thing i do.
reach out. feel the chocolate warm & soft. two fingers out. 
the neon lights of the school. my shadow,
unaccounted for in the shuffle. dawn now,
cream smooth, bleeding through kitchen window. 

banking

i say "show me the money"
& my phone says, "invest now
& escape later." i got to the bank to live
out my dreams as a thief. of course
i do not perform a heist. i do not have
the wings needed or the teeth.
instead, i deposit fingernails 
& glass into my account. the man person
lady at the desk always changes. sometimes
she is a mirror dragon & other times
he is a little girl. has the worms count
quarters. i know there is a dungeon somewhere
with all the gold. one time i leaned in
& i asked, "do they let you touch it?"
the goose said, "no, i have never seen
a dollar." the place is empty. we decide
this is our chance. we go together down the hall
of shut doors. behind each one 
is a different kind of sorrow. house sorrow
& empty sorrow & field sorrow &
leaking roof sorrow. i have known them all.
whoever said "money is the root 
of all evil" missed so much of the sweat.
evil yes but then there is the hunger
for the easy thing that is not easy. me & the goose don't
arrive anywhere. he keeps saying,
"it should be here. it has to be here."
once i found a twenty-dollar bill on 
the sidewalk. i quickly shoved it in my mouth.
it tasted like fingers & rush hour. 
i almost swallowed but i held steady. got home
& laid it out on my kitchen table, still
damp from my spit. when it dried 
i used it to by grapes. glorious black grapes.
man old man at the bank window always
lectures me about gambling. i tell him,
"i am not gambling." he laughs & says,
"or so you think."