houses & houses we tried to play "house." sat in the sparse grass behind the school. recess was a circus of legs. we were the kids who didn't run. a scream. the smack of a ball. went around the circle saying who we would be in this house. i always though of kate as an aunt & jess as a mother. kyle would make a good father. a house grew around us. clean & freshly suburban. a tv grew in our hearts where we would sit when there was nothing else to do with our hands. we grew up in houses speckled all over town. i loved kate's mailbox. i loved the flowers in front of kyle's house & nothing compared to the pond in jess's yard. i imagined our house near where kate lived because all those houses were large & clean smelling. no one wanted to go first-- admit to what they wanted to be. we were wasting time. soon recess would be over & soon after that we would be twenty years old & having to buy houses. around the circle we admitted one by one that we wanted to be dogs & not people. a house full of dogs. in the family, the best role is the dog. there is no responsiblity. no pressure to achieve any kind of balance. we ran through our house. we howled. got grass stains on our knees. failed to build a fence. let the lawn grow wild & the house fall into disrepair. a twig in my mouth. playing fetch with myself. i wished i could go home after a day of 3rd grade & be a dog still like this. all the words draining from my mouth. no answers. no spelling. no long division. no sister no son no brother no child just house & houses worth of dogs. fed from bowls filled by a hole in the sky. the teacher blew the whistle & we all stood up & became children again. we surveyed each other. left our house vacant under the thinner playground maple tree-- watched it collapse into a pile of leaves. i collected one leaf from the ground to remember our family. i was nostalgic even then.
02/12
i'm getting back my original sin one apple at a time. all the seeds tremble in me like jewels. when i die i might become a whole orchard & people might walk through me, pick an apple & it will taste like a birth stone. my birth stone is ruby & my great aunt joan had the same. we talk about apples as if they're red but even the red delicious are more maroon. precision is important though buffalo & bison mean the same thing. so about the birth stone, i glint red in the right light. my great aunt joan is an orchard now though the trees are headstones & no apples blossom in spring. the smell of a fresh cut lawn trickles down from heaven. i want that sin back. i want to really know the depths of being human. naked in a garden of birth stones wanting to be amethyst like my mom. i make many mistakes daily. i make a fool of myself. the apples are empty of knowledge & now the truth is deep in our ligaments. what was god keeping from us? my aunt was kind to me. her lipstick was soft pink, crackling on her wrinkled lips. i never saw her eat an apple. she wore clip-on earrings. i eat right through the core of apples. we burried her. we all wore black. onyx is the birthstone for december. her orchard is covered in snow. the dirt is fresh. the mass is short. the priest talks about her smile. she thought i was a good person. she cried at the sight of my face. what does it mean to crumble away from the image someone else has of you? i think about her hair when she stopped dying it. it was red but really orange. nothing is actually red as far as i'm concerned. most apple's flesh is off-white. i'm eating alone at a desk. my teeth are rubies.
02/11
types of cleansing for 7th grade girls the showers in the middle school locker room poured olive oil, not water. we were the warm bodies of chicken in our plumage uniforms & our fingers knotted in biology. there are always girls with long hair & girls who cut their hair off. the animal inbetween is a mistake. i had a bob-cut in second grade & my hair was slick with running. just one huge room for showers. i would peer in & imagine myself washing, preparing for a stove. the glossy rain coming down in glisten. oil rises to the surface of water like little jewels. when i think about school, i think of several processes to try & feel clean. i pump pink soap into my dry hand. i rub the soap on my airpits--terrified of my own smell. i fill a blue locker with worksheets. i stuff them down & crumple all the papers. my backpack swells full of embryos. in biology we are always working towards a good dissection. pin the worm to the tray. the heart is less pure then we imagined: a dirty bulb underneath the skin. in the largest bathroom stall i hid between classes. i took my own heart out & washing it in the sink. the water came out a light copper color. i am full of maroons. another class took us by the creek. we waded into the watet in old shoes. if no one had been watching i would have poured water over my head. i just dipped my fingers. crayfish are holy & so are ducks. i always go back to that shower though. a huge tile room. it was bigger than my apartment's living room. what would it have been like to bathe there? dripping in sweet bright oils. finger nails glossy & alive. i'd splash water in my face. i'd stare myself down in a mirror until i my mirror-self morphed away from my body. a forced separation. then, returning to class i pressed the two together. a face on top of a face. the mask metaphor is never quite enough. it's more like emobodying a conversation between all your own internal orbits. i grew up though which means i am the same only now no one can tell i'm seeking a fist of pink soap & a plunge in a creek.
02/10
memorial everyday my iphone reminds it's not backed up to the cloud. i plug myself into the cloud. the cloud is thick & the color of jupiter. the cloud is loud & static & waits in places you wouldn't expect. i'm sharing my memories so that when i die they can come down as rain from the cloud. technology is capable of wonderful schemes. i capture video clips of myself by accident while trying to take a photo. filming a the moon i watch it wink & then turn back into a blank needle-point hoop. one day the cloud will be the only one left & the cloud will tell some new animal about my laugh & how last night on the train i wanted to leave the atmosphere & how i cry alone when i am on long walks alone. my phone is not backed up to the cloud because i'm too erradic to figure that technology out. all my photographs will return to the moment they came from. the cloud is listening closely. the cloud is rustling in a strawberry patch. it smells like god & lemon. something clean. a shimmering in a breaking rift. it can be difficult to tell where the cloud begins & you end. my brother wants to call me tonight & i imagine us mixing in the cloud. we both are electronic bodies. i don't call him & instead i open the window in my living room & stare off at the void getting larger. all my contacts will peel apart & all the background screens will become a forgetten wallpaper. my phone itself will be a shell of screen & wires. i've always wanted to throw it & watch my phone turn back into a rock. the water is dribbling out of a hole in my download. soon, the hole house will be full. you have to understand, all i wanted was a good storm. my scars flashing as lightning. the stetch marks on my hips are several gigabites. there isn't enough space for all of us, just like some religions count out the number of spaces in heaven. at night, i scroll through years of text messages. imagine them as a pile of letters to sift through. phone to my ear, a robot respond to tell me my identity has been stolen. i already know that so i hang up but not before telling the robot she will be alright.
02/09
placenta recipes for young girls my boyfriend was trying to eat me but i didn't realize it. he took handfuls of salt & rubbed them across my skin. he called me tender & full & ripe. he fed me olives from the jar. i thought he was so kind & thoughtful. it is so easy to mistake a boy's hunger for his love. he asked me to put my hand in the cast iron pot & i did to prove how loyal i was. in the shower he turned the temperature so hot i thought i would boil. i thought my skin would fall off the bones. he sometimes wondered aloud what human meat might taste like. i told him i thought it probably tasted bad. he loved pork rinds & chicken skin. he wiped his fingers on his jeans. girls will turn their brains to spaghetti to forget being edible. the worst part though was when he'd ask for a child. he would run his fingers across my skin & say he was imagining me pregnant. he had read you can eat the placenta for stength after the child is born. alone, i searched for images of a placenta. i considered whether or not that would be vegetarian. i never said no to him about anything, i just braced myself. i gathered my thoughts towards surviving another day in my body. he cupped a breast in his hand as if to weigh it. he asked if i might consider eating more. in this version of my life i'll say i got thinner in protest-- so that he couldn't eat me. i remember him pressing my skin to feel for my bones. sometimes i meet him in my kitchen. he fills a pot with hot oil & tells me he's been so hungry all these years. we have a child made of raw chicken breast. the baby cries & i hand it to him to dunk into the oil. i would be a terrible mother. i keep track of where my meat collects on my skeleton. i sometimes bite my lovers. they sometimes bite me. we leave it there.
02/08
on becoming a horse / carriage in july all summer i watch humans taking carriage rides. a carriage is flexible in the city. there are carriages with horses & carriages with bikes & carriages with scooters. someone is carrying someone else. i have fantasies of carriages when i walk to work from penn station. i conjure a miniature horse that might carry my back pack. i watch a horse's ribs moving underneath her skin as she pulls a carriage. she breathes heavy in the smog of the city. rubber is burning. the bakery is thick with chocolate. i consider taking a carriage ride all the way back to where i'm from: a small town in pennsylvania where horses pull people up and down the steet in carts each day. a carn horn screams. a red light eats a fragment of sky. the tall buildings lean on each other. we're glistening with swet. there are people talking loudy on their phones about weddings & old shoes. a man pulling a carriage with his bike speeds past, nearly hitting me on the crosswalk. i try to imagine what the collision might have looked like. i don't blame him. he has three people in his carriage which is more than i could ever handle. i'm not pulling anyone unless you count the weight of memories. i am not a father or a mother & i am barely a brother. i tell myself to be my own horse. i pull my body down streets & up stairs & into trains. i consider a subway car full of horses & how in the city it might not even seem that outlandish. everyone gets hooves this summer. the carriages always have fake flowers. the fake flowers wobble in the rush. i consider carrying fake flowers with me all day & whether or not it could make me feel like a horse. i try everything. i get on all fours. i eat tufts of grass. my body is a stiching of crosswalks. i miss something un-namble about where i'm from. i pause & the horse on the side of the street asks me if i'm going to pay for a ride. i step back & say i'm not.
02/07
several houses i grew up in i've entered so many dream versions of the house. each always slightly askew. in the dream we accept the world as its given to us. once our house was glasss & another time we lived in a hotel with brass elevators. last night our neighbors were digging holes in our yard. i went outside, furious, telling them this is our yard. they stared blankly back at me as if this was their house. i took an Uber once this summer & the driver asked what i was. i told him i was a poet & he asked what i wrote about. i wanted to tell him i write about all the possible versions of my parent's house. i didn't because i wanted to keep it light. i said i write about family. he said you should write about an eagle & a lion because they are the kings of the world. i thought about my father & how neither animal resembles him. in another iteration of our house there are hands emerging from the walls. they are trying to pull my clothes off. a party is happenning but i only know by the chatter in the living room & the orangish glow. when we had parties dad would sometimes just hide in the attic with his headphones. from three floors down i'd think i heard him pacing. he was a lion. i don't know what to do with the eagle but maybe one day it will emerge in a dream, circling the house like a halo. the lion is clearer to me. the lion will sleep on my bed, tear holes in the comforter. the lion will be standing there in the yard with all its sporadic love. i tipped the Uber driver extra & tried to think of a way to send him a poem. in my own apartment i am weary of falling into my parent's house. my hallway looks just like their hallway & some nights when i walk down it i am worried if i blink or shut my eyes too long i will end up there. i am always trying to get farther away from something. a seed of myself underneath the floorboards. i used to say it was my family but it was the eagle up there with its talons & its promises. what will i escape tomorrow? the hands strip me down & i run to my bedroom. i see myself naked in a long full-length mirror. i am maybe thirteen. pink & soft. the room will soon be made of glass. the lion is chewing on a shard. my dad is no where in my apartment but i hear him walking up stairs. his hands reach through the walls of the hallway. all eighteen of them. callous fingers. the brown-bottle smell of beer.
02/06
dreams of becoming a piano the doors to the steinway piono store on 6th avenue are automatic. they open & shut as everyone migrates towards some kind of train. i don't stop but every day i walk slower. the walls are glass. the piano take up so much space. if the pianos were walking down the street they would push everything to the side. the store floor is glistening white. a sales person stands in all black just like the pianos. they are in a sense a kind of piano--with all their stoicism & all their watching. no one is buying a piano it seems at 5pm in new york city but maybe i'm wrong maybe that does in fact happen sometimes. i tried to learn piano for a few weeks in high school. my dad bought me a keyboard. i can't help but think of the keys like a mouth. i opened my mouth for a lover once after i told him i have too crooked teeth to be married. he touched them with his index finger. i wanted to give him rubber gloves so he could feel around more. whose mouth though is the piano? if i walked inside the store would they believe me if i told them i want to buy a piano? it would be hilarious to watch me trying to shove a piano up into my tiny apartment. it would take up my whole bedroom. this is what i'm saying-- these pianos can spread out. they have air conditioning & wide glass windows. my house doesn't have either of those things. i want to walk into the store not to buy one but to become one. i'll get on my knees & ask for a man to come play me gently. his fingers in my mouth in front of everyone. i've been trying to figure out how i'm going to survive in this city. i have been trying to convince someone else to take care of me. i'll be anyone's sugar baby though i'm not that fun or beautiful. from now on i will try saying i am not a boy i am a very expensive piano. the stop light changes & a crossing guard ushers our herd across the street leaving the steinway store to glimmer on its own. i guess that expensive part is important: i can't be any piano i have to be the best piano. a piano with its own bedroom. i hope the employees play those pianos sometimes. i guess i'd like to touch them too. i see pianos everywhere lately. in bryant park. on a crosswalk. i tell the piano to hurry before the traffic comes. i am sadly not a piano despite my efforts but on the right days around dusk i am a musical instrument. the air in august can turn cool in the dark.
02/05
my laptop knows my face. i look into the camera, eyes open & my laptop petals open for me-- shows me a nice screen saver of a mountain or a waterfall. my laptop knows what i like. knows the uneveness of my eye brows & the texture or my lashes. some of my friends cover their laptop cameras with a tiny sliver of posted note or a fleck of tape. i let my laptop look at me as long as it wants. google search: are people watching me through my laptop? answer: maybe. i am okay with this. somehow it makes me feel important-- like i might be worthy of observation. a new kind of zoo. a human somewhere might enter my life through a tiny lens. he might watch the expression on my face as i type an email-- something even i don't know. he might then, for just a moment, become my laptop: full of pockets & pixels. full of all my impulses. full of URL & background. i re-organize my desktop. i make folders to house some stray files: several self portraits, a tax form, & a document of aimless poems. i pretend the desktop is the surface of a great wide actual desk. look how much room i have now i tease myself. my room is so small. there is not much to look at. the man in the camera will only notice a shelf of books & a large fan perch on a dog crate. my laptop misses me when i'm not looking at her. when she is shut she is nothing like a clam. she sleep dim & cold. maybe she dreams of my fingers. some people might say it's a sad time when someone finds friendship in their devices but i say this is my future. i am prone to loneliness. i prefer it actually. if you are watching me then through the camera i want you to notice the shadows across my face. i want you to tell me if i seem beautiful even in the smallness. my fantasy is of a sketch artist using people's camera's to draw their faces. a sketch of my face pinned to a stranger's wall among others. i don't think i believe this though. really i think it's just me & the screen. my laptop who knows me.
02/04
high school reunion with the lights off an invitation in the mail, no card just a whisper in an envelope. a summoning. you tell no one that you're going to the class reunion. you're not even sure how many years it's been. your past is asking to be re-lived. who were you in high school? who are you now? how long as it been since you considered the clock face that emerged where there was once the blank moon? a great big auditorium. that's where you're going, walking out into the night. barefoot & showered, hair still damp. in the shower you tried to collect the moments you were happy back then. there were more than you remembered though when you try to define happiness it turns into a rodent & climbs into a mostly empty night sky. for a second, you are back in your old room with the christmas lights strewn across the walls. then, ambling through the night you are back standing in the soccer field sweaty & chilly for a march morning gym class. everything is sensory. the dark gets deeper & you feel for a doorknob or a hand to pull you into the reunion. you wonder if anyone will rembmer you. had you wanted to be remembered? yes, just a little. you want them to think of you faintly once or twice a year. yes! a door opens. a heavy door that suggests an auditorium. there is a room of talking. all the old same words whirling around. your head is thrumming like a honey dew. how does everyone have so much to say? you touch a hand: cold & firm. it reminds you of an assembly about drunk driving & how it made you even though your never drank or drove. you feel so small amoung them. you get so many handfuls. a clump of spaghetti. a soap bubble. a bare chest: warm & ready. a face with the mouth open. a wet canvas: maybe the painting you never finished & left in the art room. so many conversations. you hear someone say your name & you turn but cannot find the source. more people now, all of them chattering it. they're calling you in all directions. they did remember you. how terrible it is to be remembere. you tell them you are a new person. your body has shed so much skin & so much hair. in high school, most night you wanted to die. nothing acute but maybe a firm evaporation. you want to tell everyone this but you know it would be innapropriate now that everyone has your name repeating. you tell the room a story that's supposed to be funny & no one laughs. the darkness looms thicker. you get down on your knees. you ask to be forgiven. there is laughter & the breaking of a trophy case. these people came here the same way you did, slipping out of their lives to be lost again. everyone holds hands. maybe it's a circle. it's kindergarden. your hands are soft starfish. it's twelveth grade again now, you all are full of escapes. you let go & step backwards. everyone knows their own danced now. some are sporadic & fear inducing. you pretend it's sophomore year homecoming. you felt in love with everyone that night & here you are again. in the dark moving your body.
