antelope 

we stared nature documentaries
all early pandemic. screen glow 
a sever in the wall. leaving soon.
everyone would be leaving soon. 
you pleaded with me to turn on
anything else. stubborn & sick,
i lied & said i found the documentaries comforting
but mostly, i just wanted to disperse my body
& this tactic was working.
arctic & ocean & hyenas bright night-vision eyes.
ever since i was small i've hoped to be 
any other animal. washed my hands 
& asked to come away with hooves. 
this is of course a great romantization.
through video i saw how 
anxiety urges an umbrella bird
to change branches. my heart 
in any body would find its same fears
would worry about swallowing. 
sharks never sleep. jelly fish thought
is so much more complex than our own 
we say they have no brain. i saw jellyfish 
& knew they were dreaming of utopias.
antelope stand only a few seconds after they're born.
i pictured us this certain. standing 
in the dry tall grass. knees ready.
you & me, we were not antelope
or even tigers or even red tail hawks.
we were skin wrapped like a flag 
around bone. i couldn't pry you open
& you didn't know me anymore. or was it
the other way around? in the shower
i clenched as clam or mussel. you knocked
on the door & made me human. at the time,
i hated you for it. was i really close
to antelope or was i fooling myself?
sometimes i still hope 
for another species to sweep me off my future.
give me seal or blue ring octopus.
when a siren beat its wings against window
we'd pause the show. i'd say "i love you"
& i'd mean "i'm trying to save myself." 

dimensions

my dad asks for the dimensions 
of my body so he can build a coffin
or a cabinet. i can't remember which.
i lay down & ask you to draw a line
from my ankle to my skull
then jump rope with it. on my best days
i fit nicely on a sheet of printer paper.
pin me to your favorite telephone poll
or fold me into paper airplane. 
still, on wide august night i can swell
to the size of a garage. wait out
next to my father's ghost jeep
& talk about girth & thickness.
in another dimension, i was born
a sunflower seed & i lived very briefly 
in a hardware store package. 
no one bought me & i slept better
than i ever will here. i'm not sad
about having a body, i'm sad about
all the ways it's prone to measuring.
step on the scale, a nurse says
& all of a sudden she owns a handful
of my numbers. i want to swipe them
back from her & say, "my dad is 
the only one who can know that
because he is building a vessel." 
his actions are similar to noah 
building an arch only i am only
one animal. likely never two. two by two
is a very small square if we're talking inches
but could be a fair window 
if we're talking feet. i don't need
a tape measure to know the snake
in the basement is a leg. 
hammer to wood. i gave my dad 
imaginary number knowing i'll never fit.
he's eager. what is a child but
a project in containment.
i take my heart to the washing machine
because i want it to smell fresh & clean.
ring it out in the yard. a song bird
the size of a couch darts away.
basement door open. i measure 
the size of the yard & picture shoes 
filling every inch of it.
shrinking & shrinking. i feel proud.
tuck myself in a desk drawer.
wait for the numbers to sleep too.
a seven curled up next to a three.
me in between, most closely resembling
a nine but often, sadly, a four. 

prophecies 

the knobs fall of my parent's cabinets
one by one like silver hearts
or empty dove eggs. naturally,
i am the son to harvest them.
fill my pockets. weighty little wrists.
the cabinets ask me to fix them 
& when i'm feeling generous i oblige.
screw the handle into thread bare hole 
& open to find whatever menagerie awaits.
once, i pulled up a chair to watch
a circus of moths teach each other
to waltz in the remnants of our flour.
another night i witnessed a rat
playing harmonica for a lost lover.
every cabinet is its own secret little show.
even the empty ones yield prophecies
if you stick you head inside
& close your eyes. 
hunger is a full-body memory. 
an opening that doesn't seal shut
even when humming with dried apricots.
when i eat from the cabinets
i feel like i'm throwing
sand into a suitcase. gaping each door
to ask crumbs if they remember
my searching as a child. ask
if they can assemble themselves
into a sitting room or a sanctuary.
once, i opened a cabinet & found
a mirror that would not hold
my reflection. how much had i thinned?
even light had no questions for me.
i asked my own what color 
are my eyes? no answer: refraction.
it is better tonight thogh. 
the cabinet feeds me
a television show about climate change
& i suck on the knob like a pearl.
something in the oven is going 
to be ready soon. i can feel the heat
in my skeleton. i'm goin
to eat with my fingers when 
there's no one else to see. 
i'm going to slip inside 
a cabinet door myself. 
become a picture-show or 
a package of dried milk.  

several kinds of alarm 

in the before times there were no sirens,
only birds trained by a monk 
in the courtyard where weeds grew
like children. he would bend down
& whisper horrors in their ears
to make them scream. a separate 
atrocity for each creature to spit
back out in sound. in the city,
we knew the sirens as women. great bodies
scrambling through the streets.
what does it sound like to search for
a child in the wild tall grass
& come up empty? 
we were both rooted for & ultimately 
unfound. slung our shoes over
a telephone wire. someone is calling home.
someone is calling you "darling."
sirens with the stoplight 
in the back of their throats.
i would count them as they passed.
cover my face. no. i'm not who
you're looking for. a tape recorder
in the living room taking inventory.
the loudest siren always rushed
from left to right. then, the ambient one
whose direction even she was unsure of.
as a child in the play yard i said prayers
for sirens. one hail mary. let all bodies
be whole. jars for screaming.
the birds in the courtyard. the monk
with a leather notebook for inventing 
terrors to give the birds. weeping,
he wants to tell the birds beautiful things only.
imagines saying, "i am in love
with another man." but instead swallows
that urgency. the birds are neccesary tools.
who else will be the warning if not them?
a bird landed on my windowsill
& shouted orange & red. i covered my ears.
i am skilled at ignoring emergency. i don't
even have a window or a windowsill.
the monk is walking out & nodding
at dandelions. the birds are gathering.

brother assemblage

i found the older brother on the edge
where the jupiter beetles truth tell
& the copper men reap dead wheat.
put a collar around his neck
& said, "this is how you younger."
we were great friends as well as blood.
took him home to show my parents
who were always busy chopping onions
& placing my embryos in the crock pot
for tomorrow. i proclaimed i no longer
needed to be the eldest. 
they thought he would weat off
like most alchemy performed 
by small inexperience boys. 
what they don't know is
i have a whole other few lives
just waiting in my pocket. 
when i cast, i reach for one
until that substance shivers.
the older brother wasn't a good listener
or really a good influence. he spat coins 
at lightposts. he growled when i offered
him a nice fresh tabloid. who do you go to
when you age is starting to fray?
i thought older brother would be
a nice solution. find someone looming
to place his finger on the wound
while i work as i need to.
the bulbs aren't going to collection themselves.
gender isn't going to arrive as it should:
shined & ready to be read. 
instead i write my pronouns on everything
i own: he he they ze he they ze 
he they they them his how help
here & there. brother scratches them off.
doesn't like idenity. believes we are
not the same person from moment
to moment. in the middle of a new moon night
wakes me up from his cage, leash still
around his neck, & says
he is no longer my brother.
let him go outback where
the mistaken clocks are just waking.
watch him lumber off between 
the glass grape vines. farewell.
farewell. farewell. 

root

like jump rope-strangle
my long hair haunts me.
i used to be an outdoor animal 
with ribbon teeth & loose waist.
when wrapped around myself five times,
i was a piano maker's daughter
with enough string to re-wire 
the planets in the mobile. 
in a foxhole,
she sleeps with her tail twisted
into a fisherman's knot. i coax her out 
with a handful of barrets. 
takes them gentle. lip & lip
& tongue. over & under.
laying down on the roof, 
gritty shingles against my back,
my hair would touch lawn below
& stray cats climbed my mane up
to perch with me by the chimney.
listen for smoke. swat at biplanes. 
chew purple bubble gum & complain 
about our scalps. the merri-go-round 
waited for a signal to spin shyly.
go go go. clouds on a dinner plate.
i carry her carcass 
to the nearest river.
clog a drain with my thoughts 
& half-drown before i notice 
i've flooded the whole scene.
in the old house, water would leak 
from tub to living room. evidence
the whole structure was fake. trust nothing
but hair. trust nothing but
what's attached at the root. 
a single strand coiled round my finger.
don't forget don't forget. 
my hair whispers 
as if length is something 
perishable. i'm growing back
like a field in april. skunk cabbage 
& swamp stung. keep the apples bobbing
& the swings tangled up 
with the telephone wires. 

the last ww1 soldier

dear florence green, i tied my skull
to a pigeon today 
& sent it to an old lover.
he will probably no know who it's from.
i don't know why i'm telling you this
but i discovered you on purpose.
i woke up with a need to know
the last surviving humans
of great wars & maybe that's not fair
to determine the width of someone's signficance
based on how long their past could follow them.
i haven't survived anything history-book-able.
or, maybe, it's just impossible
to see our lives as consequential.
do you care about being a woman?
about being the last woman alive 
whose blood remembers 
your particular battelfields?
would it be different, do you think,
if the last rememberer was a man?
i'm not sure, this is why i defer 
to your judgement. i am lucky in many ways. i keep 
all my battlefields in closets & notebooks.
once or twice in doctors waiting rooms
& toll booths. if i live to be 110, 
no one will attach a world to me (i hope).
i think the past will always be 
my greatest lover. i am eager 
to replay a night from years & years ago.
hence my skull delivered by bird. hence my
lingering feelings for once-friends houses
i pass now in my parent's neighborhood.
tell me, has the meaning of the world
"plane" changed for you over time
or do you still see biplanes when 
i say the word to you? when i say "lover"
i cannot picture one person. i can only
see a staircase & a windowsill
& a set of keys on a dining room table.
what i'm asking is, should we 
move on or should we always 
double back? florence, what did you tell
your husband in the cool dusk?
what did you recount & what image
did you save for yourself?
i am prone to slipping finger bones
into envelopes with no return address.
i won't write to you again. i know
you want to sleep now & so do i
but if you have the moment. send
telegraph or phonecall or letter.
answer me however you know how.
it could even be just a photograph.

drawing hands

i used to think i could will myself 
to recreate knuckle & thumb. stare 
long enough at my palms & my fingers
so that when i took pen to paper
i could replica with no hesitation.
my father bought me a sketch book
& i tried over & over. an orphanage
of hands sequestered in turning 
spacious white rooms. float wrists.
sink arms. my fingers reaching & coiling. 
then loose. clasping. in frustration, 
i would often tear a page out 
& then stop before crumpling my lop-sided hands.
then, simply fold & deliver them
to trash can burials. 
later, apart from pencil & pad,
my hands punished me. i folded them
on my chest. watched rise & fall
with each breath. 
from learning to be an altar boy, 
the only rule i remember
is to always have your hand around
a holy plate or a candle and, if not,
then it should be holding the other.
without me, sometimes, my hands would
knot themselves trying to transform
into birds or beings. 
in a mirror, i let them
touch my face with curiosity.
strange how i once thought my body whole
& then, upon inspection, can denote 
so many parts. my skull that asks 
to please recreate my hands 
& my hands, who, being the body's
mischeif conduits, refuse. 

burden 

every day, on a broken scale,
my grandmothers weighed themselves
like orange gatherings or pear pies.
pink tile bathroom. the sink 
crooning hymn or radio. 
still their ghosts come to measure pounds.
i watch from the bathtub where 
i have been trying to shave off a few pounds
with an old razor. you can remove
so much or yourself & most of it
will grow back. once, i carried a backpack
full of stones to forest
to offer the tree spirits 
a little new beauty. crystals polished
by hand. even the trees have scales
these days though. drop a limb.
shed leaves from the guilt.
in middle school we learned
about the egyptian land of the dead
but all i remember is a drawing
of thoth & his golden scales. 
a feather weighed against each person's soul.
ever since then, in preparation,
i collect every wisp i see: cat tail 
& blue jay tongue & bloom petal. 
i want to be able to know 
if i really can thin like an afterlife feather. 
salvation is something measured & recorded. 
my grandmothers know this. they make sacrifices
to the garbage disposal. they leave
the oven door open to speak yellow sermons
into kitchen. i pass through
all of this though knowing
the scale is broken. always reads:
107 lbs. i'm wondering if there is something 
perminantly un-shed-able? our bones weigh
about 20 lbs so it's not just skeleton.
something like memory going golden bird.
rib-caged. how heavy can a voice go?
mine doesn't float in water. sinks 
like bronzed shoes & arrows. my grandmothers
stock closets with rotten chocolate
& christmas lights. i build them ladders 
upon ladders to encourage their final
attic-ing. as for heaven, they tell me
you can only enter through a hole
the size of a thimble. they contemplate
what else they can get rid of. 
shake their heads & take scale turns again
until the sky is greasy with forecast. 


 

shape shifting 

we swallowed plastic bags for lungs.
felt their billow in each passing breeze.
i called us "parking lot" & we waited
for the impending mega bus mirage
to land full of knees. a single goldfish
woke up in my throat. glittered & 
sent me his scales. the first day i was 
amphibial all the water wanted 
was a little kiss but me, i needed
drenching. my gills made of soda tabs.
what does it mean that i spend so much time
switching out organs? a bouncy ball 
for a heart & now a lovely silver bowl stomach.
i'll get bored of them eventually though 
& pray to the dumpster for what else 
i can use to function. when i say 
"recycle" i mean i want to try over again.
hatch in the ether & relearn how to say 
my name. try each toe on for size.
in the asphalt we planted corn 
& it grews into stoplights. blink red-blue.
purple always asks too many 
of the right questions. television host
making promises just for me, saying 
"if you buy this new vertabrae you'll 
believe in god like only children do."
if we could just lay & look at mixed vegetables
making their rounds overhead. let's name
our first child "echo." let her split
in two & spend our time parsing her body 
between the skin & the ricochet.
when the lungs filled with water 
i poured them out in the backyard where
the bobcats have too much free time.
they played games on their electronic devices
& ruined their necks craning to see screens.
bother me please with you dream muscle.
a raft appeared in the middle of a drought
just to mock us. what i would have given 
to ride down artery towards body. 
it's all a series of skin circumferences.
earth needed a hair cut & you & me,
we needed floss & a hammock maybe or at least
a ball pit to land in. don't tell me
you didn't also dream of merging 
with the weeds. up to our necks 
in mulch-fracture. breathing in exhaustion.
we will make brilliant traffic cones one day
or at least stop signs. walking hand in hand
you told me the story about the rat 
& the free clothing bin. then, all night
all i could think about was whether i should
become a rat or rusted vibrant potential.
opened my mouth. let my lungs say "hush."