street sweeper

i park my car in a cloud & it still manages
to get a ticket. i'm afraid of how 
they tell stories without us. the phrase
"voiceless" is a speech act. it does not admit
that the voice was taken & put through
a paper shredder. the shreds used as bedding. 
i have been a pig in another life.
i wrote poetry & shared it with the others.
we plotted ways to take over the government
but then we died. they sensor death
on the internet these days. people say,
"unalive" as if death were an erasing instead
of a return. i was sitting & eating lucky charms 
last night & thinking about how one day
all the buzzing in my head will be nothing.
i don't know how to make sense of death other than
to watch the street sweeper go by & panic,
wondering if i remembered to move my car.
if this life were a quilt, it would be complete
with crisscrossing squares & a big tear 
through the middle. i tell my partner for
the third time this year that i am going to
dig out the sewing machine & get started.
i'm going to make a dress & sleep inside it.
everyone is always "just doing their job"
as if we don't all wake up & sleep longer 
than we're supposed to & steal moments 
in bathroom stalls craving rest. the street sweeper
puts on a dirty ball cap & sunglasses.
decides to clean the asphalt. the leaves are falling.
the road is clean. my car has a boot on it.
a parking meter blooms where there didn't
used to be one. i don't ever want to just do
me job. i want to wake up & scream with
the cicadas until we are both speaking
the same language. when i die i will only
be gone for seventeen years, just like them. 

love a pocket universe 

i will never fear smallness. instead,
i will put on my oldest shoes & try to walk
to the seam. i think if there wasn't
a big capitalism that scientists would be poets
& so would school bus drivers &
cake decorators & people whose hands
grow callouses where they hold the machine. 
i am in favor of all theories that involve cloth.
the pocket universe is a belief that we are,
with all our pinballs & all our sunspots,
just a vessel for lint & coins in the great 
pants of the everything. autumn is coming
& soon my skin will turn pale from the dark.
in the cold, i become a moon. astronauts crowd
my face with their worries. often when
i am doing laundry, i will find seeds that i 
collected from the ground. i am, for all intents
& purposes, just a crow without feathers.
i think the animals know more about
the other universes than us. a bear tells a story
by the light of the stars that once his great-grandfather
walked all the way out of the pocket. was swallowed
by a comet & never came home. the point
of his departure, marked by the constellation.
ursa major. his youngest son 
followed not long after. ursa minor.
do you think dreams are contained in one pocket
or do they bleed? is our strangeness the other worlds
trying to meet us? them, in a nightmare, 
of a convenience store with the neon 
sky whining. i repeat i am not scared of smallness.
in fact, on most days it is my only comfort.
that my mouth can fit inside yours. that
when the great hand decides to reach 
& sift for us, that we will be smooth & round.
easily missed in the field. the bears crawl into 
their caves. a pocket in a pocket in a pocket. 
the first frost on the tip of the year's tongue. 

can you eat crocuses? 

cany you eat crocuses? 
by which i mean can you be 
too early to the party? i come days
early. before there is even a door
to be opened. i joke with a stump
that i'm sitting on that i am either
way way late or way way early
no in between. such is the way
of bodies unstuck in time. in more 
ways than one i am the between agent.
the poison gender. when i'm feeling 
destructive i like to imagine the taste
of poisons. the crocus i think
would taste like rain when unripe
& when ripe, just like glass syrup.
once i took my family to a garden
in my head. i showed them a slideshow
of all the times i had almost crashed 
a car. then we were on a hill picking crocuses.
my beard, lush for the first time.
i put flowers in it & my family took
a rocket ship to an appliance store.
they craved a fresh refrigerator box
to pretend to live in. i did not see
any crocuses this year. the older i get
the more often i am late. not just 
by a few minutes but years late.
seasons late. it is autumn & i am still 
looking for signs of spring. my face 
eat every mirror it lands in like
a hungry goose. i put a crocus 
on my tongue. savor it. hold it
like a sword swallower holds a blade.
i do not spit i out. i do not swallow. 
instead, it takes root. turns a deep 
velvet purple. if you come close
i will show it to you but you have
to promise not to tell anyone.  

for who the flowers bifurcate 

i can grow as many heads as i need.
some of them are ugly & others
are as beautiful as they need to be.
a man walking down the street
takes my picture & eats it. he is 
the owner of a newsletter that goes out
to the stones. i crouch in the late-season flowers:
the mums & the golden rod who are
experts at farewells. they show me their necks.
each, a choice of where & how to breathe
despite the cold nights & despite the smell
of grass screaming. we got new neighbors 
this summer. i hide from them. i pretend 
i do not live here which is mostly accurate.
i buy a rose bush with long long legs. i pull
the curtains shut when i have to
sprout a face. i buy grass seed & eat it.
it tastes like fatherhood. 
you can get so good at it. there is nothing left 
beneath the fork. the string cheesing
of the road where it divides & becomes
not one but two ways to get lost.
i sent a letter to the neighbors. inside is
a morsel of seeds. i am wondering if they do
the same. wrap themselves in the curtains.
keep a drawer full of all the faces the highway
asks of them. in a small town, i am 
a snow globe. in a big city, i am a lava lamp. 
at home i am a "no vacancy" sign on top
of a vacant motel. i pick the golden rod
& make a tea. it helps soothe my crossroads spirit.
in the dark, all the lights look like eyes. 
my house & my neighbor's house get into
a staring contest until one of us gives in.
it is always me. in the dark 
the flowers all look like tires. i rode home
from a purple door on the back of a motorcycle.
he didn't know my body but he know
my neck. where i split. the leather was fresh.
the moon did not show her face at all. 

what is left

i almost named myself "remnant"
because i know myself best as the leftovers
of several kinds of fire. 
here is the gender footprints. the musk
of the huckleberries a week after all the birds
have feasted. a fossil of a complete human.
one with all the tongues & all the flesh. 
ladders unfurled from windows. 
the buildings we have escaped after
they turned bright & blazing. our shadows 
painted forever on the sidewalk.
in the apocalypse, i want to be a collector.
the one who says, "let's hang on 
to this pamphlet from the museum 
where we were in love for just a few 
more years." i save train tickets. freedom routes
that have long gone belly-up. i don't know anymore
if there is such a thing as whole. instead, maybe,
a chain of remnants. a zoom out to 
our little glass of water. i want to float on my back.
give the comets a place to land. i hope 
they bring snacks. i hope they bring
flowers that i've never seen. i do not always
want to be a bridge but someone has
to be crossed on the way. once the great snow,
now my spit. i have changed before
& i will still change again. 

sugar hill

we lost our teeth to the sound.
pulled off the highway & it was later
than either of us had bargained. 
you can try to give everything to someone
& they can still decide not to receive it. 
i harvest right hands & piled them
outside your door. i have a habit
of chasing empty rooms. i remember when
we came to tour the apartment. 
a little hole in the wall but it had a back door.
i'd never had a back door before. then,
that window in the bedroom framed
by house spiders. on the way to your house
i always passed sugar hill. imagined it 
just as its name promised. a mountain
of sweetness where one day our cars
would break down together & we would
have nothing to do but feast. i keep a spoon
in my glove box just incase. you can think
you know someone & then they can
throw a rock through your window. 
bite your flesh until it draws the curtains.
your father was a giant. was always peering
just above the tree line of the mountain.
each of his eyes were as big as planets.
if we were get there to sugar hill we should
make sugar angels. maybe you can tell me
what i already know. i loved the idea 
of not being alone. i do not think i loved you
just like i do not think you loved me.
let's pretend things were different. that something
was nectar between us. rolled the sun in 
the sugar. take turns chewing at the core.
i know what will happen is this:
i will pull over. pump gas. buy a brownie
from the gas station there. search for the hill.
find no vast sugar. just the tree & the wind. 

cursive 

i don't regret any of my tattoos,
they have become more & more true
as i get older. i have a pug being abducted 
by aliens with the words, "take me home."
i was nineteen when i got it at some shop
off main street in phoenixville. the artist
was a weirdo who face-timed his dad while
he worked. wiped away my blood. what did i know then
about escape? they taught us in school how to write
cursive. i practiced my letters on lined paper.
the windows in the classroom filled 
with televisions & birds. outside my hands
went cursive too & so did the trees. a rush past.
sometimes i think i was a child for a shorter time
than most people. or else maybe i am just 
finally getting old. nostalgia starts to change.
it becomes a gone language instead of rain. 
cursive letters were invented for the quill pen.
early quill pens were fragile & prone to breaking.
you had to work fast or else the letter would take you. 
i had a phase in middle school where i wanted to write
everything with a quill. i spilled ink all over
a drawing & all over my bedroom floor.
it never fully came up, we just moved 
a bookshelf over the stain. sometimes i picture
the letters as families holding hands 
in a wild storm. i am not good at keeping in touch.
i am not good at holding hands. my partner tells me,
"relad" & i don't. i feel like when a sentence
swallows the next. i feel like we are 
losing something when the page becomes
an eyelid. i have something in my eyes. 
all the irises worn down & used as hats.
we sleep inside a "q" which is to say the wind
blows clean through our bones. makes letters
in a private alphabet. a bird walks around somewhere
naked. all her feathers used 
for our mundane prophecies. 

billboard

if i had a billboard i'd fill it with teeth.
make it chomp down on all the little ant people.
we'd sleep inside a peapod & get angry 
at the light. i once saw a man who lives
inside a billboard. he came out to shake his fist
at a passing amazon truck. i do not know
what he eats but i also don't know what
i eat. there is a tiny door on the backside 
of the billboard where he goes inside.
becomes two-dimensional. dreams of having
a family live flat with him backstage of
the great shout. on really dark nights when
the stars go on vacation & every the trucks
are burrowed like cicadas, he dreams about
what he'd put on a billboard. he is not like me.
he wants nothing to do with teeth. instead he
considers fingers & then he considers eyes.
eyes are his favorite body part. he prefers them
shut because those are rarer. people are always staring
right into his guts. he buys a bulletproof vest
in the hopes of preventing that kind
of intrusion. someone asked me one day
when i was gathering a bag of teeth,
"what was your favorite thing about living
inside a billboard?" i do not remember my time
there at all. i suppose it is possible that we all
get time there. maybe we are grown
like pre-disciples. i do not know much about
who or what i worship but i know it has teeth.
i know it could bite my hands off. i pass an 
empty billboard & so i cover it just as i've always
dreamed. all the mouths moving like wing beats.
the ghost of the billboard man rises to beg me
to stop. i tell him, "what is done is done."
he weeps & i tell him we can get devoured together
if that makes him feel better. so we get mashed up.
the relief of being matter again. think that is
what the back layers of the signs feel. finally,
nothing else to say but flavor. a star, when ripe
tastes like sweet deer jerky. chewy sinew.
the ringing of a heavy bell down the throat. 

a thousand fractures

we have one chicken who cracks her own eggs.
i find them, not smashed but with tiny holes.
at first i thought they might be hatching
but i always found the eggs empty of creature.
runny gold yolk. the white, like a fresh halo. 
the more i care for animals, the more i am certain
they all write poetry. this is hers, a little fracture
in the dark of the coop. sometimes one of
the other hens tries to guard the eggs. tries to 
make them into chicks. thus far, they have
all given up. left the eggs to rot & spoil. 
when an egg goes bad, sometimes it dries up.
becomes a fist beneath the shell. the chickens roam
the yard all day. they egg bugs & talk to the ghosts.
every once in a while, one will not return to 
the coop when they're called. my partner & i 
like to tell stories about where they have gone.
maybe eating corn in the field or, if the season is right,
raspberries in the patch of trees. one of the chickens
hides from the others. they like to try to peck 
her clean. her bumpy flesh beneath. feathers grow back
even slower than hair. i do not touch the birds often.
they are dinosaur creatures who prefer to see me
at a distance. but, when they are sick or hurt
& i need to hold them. they always thrash. i try
to calm them but i know it is no use. we are such
strange bodies to one another. still, i think of 
the flesh beneath the feathers. the broken eggs
that the others read in horror. to create is the process
of gathering fractures. yolk in our hands. 
am i in her poem? is she in mine? this morning
i harvest the unbroken eggs from their bedding. 
one of them is still warm. 

lottery

beware of decoy hope. 
in high school there was a huge powerball jack pot.
on a billboard outside my boyfriend's house
i watched as workers added numbers 
to the winnings on the sign until it practically
stretched into the sky. offices bought tickets together
with a promise of splitting the prize.
my boyfriend, older than me, stopped every day
to pick a new number. held it between his fingers
like a ticket into a bright & shiny life. 
he had promised over & over that we were
going to get married. he bought me a ring 
with birds in the gem. at night i let them fly
so they could go feast on the stars. sometimes he would
take the numbers out just to look at them.
his parents' house was falling apart. mold on the wall.
a hole in the roof. his parents bought numbers too.
worshipped them. committed them to memory.
i asked him, "what if we don't win?" after an hour
of him counting our millions. he became furious
with me. his words have long turned into minnows
in my mind but i know he wanted me 
to believe in money as much as he did. i do not think
i was that much wiser than him i had just seen
how easily money came & left in my family. 
there were years when we had light-up shoes
& years when we shopped at the thrift store &
times the food ran out & all there was to eat was
the birds in the yard. still, i think of it more
like a wave than a god. after we all lost, we never
talked about it again. the numbers spilled 
into the night to become their unenchanted selves. 
it was a decoy. a false creature. i did not know where
to find hope back then. i thought i was going
to have to become this boy's perpetual watermelon.
i picked wild onions. the seasons walked all over us.
if you want to find hope you cannot look
just for a way out. when i left him i took the birds.