a elegy to a box of flowers stems 
or the story of a wedding

each morning the flower shop below us
leaves stems of cut flowers 
in piles on the curb. they sleep 
in long cardboard boxes like coffins
to be taken away by the garbage me. 
green truck taking green stems.
the boxes are the same boxes
the flowers arrived in when they were bright 
& still blooming. carnations & roses 
& sunflowers & daffodils & lillies.
i have begun to imagine a factory of flowers
where a machine constructs each face.
there are tools to create 
the wavy edge of each petal 
& to fill them with light floral smells. 
sometimes i'm not sure what to make 
of everything i observe. the details
come like fragments of story. 
do the stems go to rot 
in one of the great landfills?
do they become thin slivers of ghost
walking around in search of their visages.
do they linger outside my home 
peering in the flower shop window?
they see a woman arranging their once-faces 
into beautiful bouquets for a wedding.
it seems around here 
someone is always getting married 
& they always need flowers. 
where do all these people come from?
how did they learn to love each other enough
to hire flowers to worship them?
most importantly, would flowers marry each other
if they could? i can see vases 
each with two flowers. the flowers whispering
about the bold short future. 
i am closer to a flower than a human.
rooting through the garbage there,
i touch the stems in their burials.
they are still damp 
from whatever water they drank last.
my feet are wet too. 
i was drinking from a gutter.
my face was coming apart in petals 
as i pretened tomorrow morning i would 
run away from my street & become something else.
on the other side of the moon 
there is a heaven for flowers.
i am convinced of this at least.
i walk around the block three times
before i feel at peace.
there is a slight wind threating 
to blow away all the stems.
i tell the wind to take me.
i could get married to a trash bag
when it's brave enough 
to danced across a street. 
sitting on a bench. i cut the heads off flowers 
inside my heart. i leave my stems 
with the others.

in th city of dead leaves,

we collect baskets of cigarette butts.
they are the closest thing to flowers
we can find. we hold each in between 
finger & thumb, imagining a willow tree growing 
from such a seed. each smoldered cigarette
is unique. a pair of lips lingered there
drinking in the smoke. at night
everyone hides under leaves. everyone scurries 
on the feet of mice. there is garbage 
to make love in: a chip bag, a tasty-cake wrapper,
the skirts of reeses cups. we are young
though our age is flickering. time is 
an ice skater here. she wears her hair in a bun.
there is no ice so she makes due
with a tiny moto bike. on a good day
the smog tastes like burnt sugar.
on a bad day it tastes like sad memories:
dying oaks & wilting daisies. 
we don't remember much about 
the color green. we make up stories
of a green god who sleeps
on the other side of the sun. 
he comes down to feed us edamame beans
only when we sleep. the city isn't a city at all.
we call it a city so that it sounds 
alive. a large flat of asphalt, really.
it is hard to be the older brother here.
my parents sleep all day & wake up only 
to change positions & glance 
at the flickering strett lights. 
their eyes are made of plastic & their teeth
turned into helicopters years ago. 
we collect tattered postcards 
of erased locations like
oklahoma & wildwood & maine. 
i gather the other children 
& we take turns conjuring these locations 
from their images. we close our eyes 
& walk out to the ocean. we close our eyes
& step foot in a bustling street 
with wide-eyes vehicles & street vendors.
we close our eyes again, blinking so fast
it's like we're taking photographs
with our eyes. the children of the city of leaves
are sometimes full of joy.
sometimes we hold hands in a circle.
we are not children of course,
we are maybe eighteen maybe twenty.
the children are still living 
as mice. we feed them what we can.
as for us, all we have is bodies 
in piles of leaves. a soft humming 
trills through the air & gives us goosebumps.
as for me, i actually do plant 
the cigarette butts. i burry them deep
under leaves so dead they're stuck together.
i don't check on what i plant.
i am not that hopeful. what i really want
is an apple tree. i saw one on a stamp once.
i have never seen something alive
so red. hope is something that needs
measurent. allow yourself only enough 
to stay alive, is what i say. 
there is still a part of me that believes
i will wake up once 
under an apple tree & the city of dead leaves 
will come around me with all their joy.
the god behind the sun will feed us
ripe red fruit & we will 
breathe easier 
through the smoke.

please forgive us 

we were desperate for quarters.
my brothers & i had spent all afternoon
fishing in the dryer for coins & then 
scouring the streets. the world is made
of pennies. we stacked the brown coins up 
like tired little houses. we hypothesized 
that our own house was probably made of pennies.
in the other room our baby brother cries
& rocks bacfk & forth in his electric swing.
he stares up at the ceiling as if 
he knows it's made of pennies too.
we want him to stop crying. we stand around him.
our parents aren't home. they have turned sidewards 
& become portraits inside pennies.
i tell my brother that when i was tiny
i swallowed a penny. i felt the cool metal 
as it plumetted down my throat.
we wanted to buy ice cream. we had
a dollar in pennies. you have to promise 
to not judge us for this next part.
you have to understand that children 
are so hungry especially in summer. 
we put our brother in the red wagon.
he stopped crying as he gazed at the dazzeling sun.
we walked all the way to the park 
where we went around to see if anyone 
would buy him. the squirrels inspected
his thick arms & agreed he wouldn't last in the trees.
some mourning doves cooed,
trying to teach him their sound.
=i explained that he was a new baby.
he was smart & brilliant. he was the next
beautiful everything. it is easy
to carve out pieces of yourself 
to sell but it is harder to fill those pieces in
with something other than a purchase. 
we dreamed of dishes of half-melted vanilla soft serve.
our baby brother wriggled like a grub.
my brother asked what we would tell our parents
if we sold him & i told him 
to worry one step at a time.
finally, the ferral cats brushed up against his face.
they purred & kissed him with their coarse tongues.
ready to keep him, one cat lifted him up
by the back of his onesie. the cat whispered about
how soft & pink he was. i reached out one finger
for him to grab onto as a sort of goodbye.
both my brothers cried & another cat openned her mouth
to spill quarters on the ground. 
they scampered away with him.
we filed our pockets with the change, 
nearly twenty dollars in quarters. 
we sat on a bench for awhile. birds rustled 
inthe branches. a breeze shook the playground mulch.
thinking about what we had done, we drifted away 
from our bodies. we were terrible siblings.
filled our palms with coins.
they felt heavy & real. 
we swallowed the ice cream in desperate gulps
& decided to tell our parents he was stolen
by cats. ordered more ice cream.
it melted down the backs of our hands.
all the cats in the world were walking on the ceiling
of the ice cream parlor. they were carrying him
deeper into the woods. how could we
sell our brother? we remind ourselves
he was so loud & so fierce. his cashew legs kicking.
at home we waited in the quiet of the living room.
out the window we saw 
an orange tabby cat staring inside.
shutting the electric swing off,
we stacked the quarters on the kitchen table
to split evenly between us.

in the temple of broken drinking glasses

in the temple of broken drinking glasses
we were all terrible children.
we had worn our bare feet
down to the bone & had clacked 
as we ran across the kitchen floor of our home.
we had thrown dishes like frisbees 
& used the butcher knives to carve our names
in the walls. we were just children 
making efforts to not disappear. 
i can't remember anymore 
whether it was mother or father who banished us.
their voices blur together.
a thick creamy whirlpool of dissapointment. 
their tongues like wooden spoons as they spoke.
they packaged us in a block of wood 
& drove far past the horizon to get to the temple.
we slept, leaning on each other for the drive.
awakened by the sound of cracking
we tried to peer out but could only see ourselves.
the our ghost reflections staring down at us.
they dropped us off there 
& we heard the car unspool back to our town. 
the fear faded quickly,
we loved the structure for its breaking.
i held my brother's hand as we entered.
it looked just like our church only built
from broken drinking glasses stacked every direction.
each day, shards came down from 
a shifting ceiling. the glass in our hair.
the glass between our fingers 
& our teeth. we clinked as we played.
our blood slipped out easily
in ribbons & yarn.
we sucked cuts clean. we forgot
about our parents & thrived in the temple.
became worshipers of it,
mending the walls when they needed restacking.
the other children who came 
were the same as us. we became sibling 
of glass. we taught each other
to sing, our voices turning clear 
& bright through the shards. 
the more we loved the place
the farther it drifted from being discovered.
maybe our parents searched for us.
maybe they drove & drove. maybe they were
full of regret. when we prayed 
we talked amoungst each other about
how we thought god would look.
we agreed she-he was a great shattered wine glass--
all the pieces spread to every single corner
of the earth. in the night
we curled up with each other, making nests
of the glass. we knew the scrapes would come 
as we tossed & turned. dusk made the temple glow
a citrus orange. it reminded me of a fruit bowl
on our parent's counter. my thumbs prying rind
from orange flesh. we missed eating.
we missed the television. we missed 
the smell of bath soap. our exile was 
as long as we wanted to make it. 
we did not want to stay & we did not want to leave.
my brother filled his pockets with glass 
& wept. i told him we should return 
to be children again. we should walk 
away from the glass walls we loved
& see how far away our backyard was.
we did. we stood for the last time in glass 
& noticed our house as a speck in the distance.
i carried my brother on my back
& as we went the glass trailed from our pockets
until we were only our bodies again.
we stood on the porch & the wind chimes there
loosened our bones. we looked back
only for a moment
& could not see the temple. 

lineage 

there are mosquitos in chincoteague 
whose families held my blood 
in their abdomens like hot soup.
sometimes, they stand in rows 
on a screen or near a flicking porch light.
they trade stories of human dreams.
this is all that is transfered in blood,
a forceful longing. 
one mosquito says he wants to grow up
to be a brain surgeon & doesn't know
what that means. another wants to move to 
a tropical island & take pictures of the water.
the mosquitoes with my blood 
are some of the most talkative. 
they each held onto a different aspiration.
some want to write the next great novel.
some want to director movies.
then there are others who want to 
crawl back into the past. 
this causeds them to remember themselves 
swimming in their eggs. meek & wingless. 
they want to cry, thinking of themselves 
so small & their mothers & fathers 
who flew away somewhere else--
whose lives were brief.
my mosquitoes wish they were human.
they hold onto the idea of
another life after this one. 
when they drink blood
they drink stories. they try to pick 
convienent places to scratch:
the arms & tops of the legs. never neck 
or face or feet. 
they swallow the warm pulses
of sun burned strangers
each of which they fall madly in love with.
the other mosquitoes don't understand
what is wrong with them--
why they can't just eat & move on.
why they waste so much time thinking.
some of them never drink at all.
waiting on the walls of beach homes until
a hand or the back of a book 
smashes them into asterisks.
they are hesitant creatures & 
it is all my fault. one day i will go back
to where we vacationed when i was small
& full of blood & feed more mosquiotes. 
this is my only dream right now
& i feel it turning into a droplet
with legs & wings. it flies out my mouth 
& stands on the wall. a great huge mosquito
i will crush.

self portrait as caution tape 

lately i can feel myself becoming 
more flammable. all fires 
lean towards me
like how sunflowers lean towards 
our great burning dinner plate sun.
someone posted a meme yesterday that said
when sunflowers don't have the sun
they lean to face each other
& i wondered how long
a sunflower can live without light.
on the sidewalk last night
i turned to face my stranger
& i drank the beams out of her face
until she was all seed & no petal.
i have been vampuric
with brightness. the dark rushes 
at me from all directions.
shadows empty themselves 
in to my throat.
taste of black licorice &
dark chocolate. 
with a flame i found in a parking lot
i touch the foreheads of candles.
their wicks clench like thin fists.
i have day dreams of giving birh 
in an alley. the baby 
a roll of soot. the candles kiss it
until the infant blooms into a great
purple rose. i am the mother
of all my bruises. i have raised
eggplants by only the selfishness 
of the moon. i should avoid
fire, i know i should.
i should avoid rubbing alcohol 
& other flammable substances
but these days everything is made
of possible ignition.
i am a plastic god. 
i am a gasoline pump's mouth. 
the worst part 
is knowing the fire won't come.
i hold my breath
& curl up on the floor.
i am a crow-bar. i am a bottle openner.
i am to be broken 
in case of emergency.
i try to count beautiful things
to stay alive. i turn to face
other sunflowers & 
feed off their flickering.
i say hold still
& i use my thumb to 
block out the sun.

dungeons of skyrim

a door in the earth. a heavy hinge
swinging wayward towards stone. 
the sound of two feet walking
on brittle grass.
that winter, i set my xbox up 
in the corner of my bedroom.
propped the TV on the floor against the wall.
openned the window just a crack 
to let in a slit of cold air.
kneeled to play as if it were
some kind of worship. if i'm being honest,
i made the avatar look how i wished i could.
hair shaved to the scalp & 
dark eyeliner around her eyes. she was 
thin as a blade but could wield a great sword
with ease. she walked across 
the brush fields of my heart.
i loved her like i have never loved myself. 
the movement of her animated body 
lingered in my knuckles.
controler in my hand. a tether between
my world & the map. my body fading into the sound 
of cars driving down noble street outside.
i traveled, leaving all my corners 
of soft flesh. all my fears
of the dark. all my weaknesses.
i entered dungeon after dungeon
alone & with careful footsteps. 
each room peeled itself
& left the rinds at my feet.
re-animated corpses & their restless bones.
i'd glanced over my shoulder
to check that none were coming out of my closet.
my room became so many dungeons.
boxes of treasure. my mouth 
brimming with gold. i could feel 
the swing of the sword in my own shoulders.
i smelled the must of the depths.
rats scurried past. i held the jewels i found
underneath my tongue. 
watched my healthbar replenish.
a full corridor of red. the sun on my face
as i excited each cavern. my avatar 
weeping as she stumbled to the next town 
to sleep. i laid her down.
i could hear my brother
taking a bath in the room next to mine.
his feet squeaking on the floor.
i could hear the fan on the far side
of my own room. my hands were red
from grasping. my knees tired 
from kneeling. i fell asleep
just like her but in a different world
where the dungeons cut across
& intersected in every single room
& every single body. a skeleton 
escaped from my own mouth
to stalk the hall. 

july melodies / elegies 

i watch knots in the floor boards 
turn into bugs & remind myself those are just
where a tree once made a fist.
it is early but i can already tell
the day is full of fists & running.
my third hand clenched in my rib cabe
like a parrot. 
it cannnot get any hotter.
the walls scurry away from me 
so i grab them by the hems 
& hold our apartment together.
i wrap myself in the structure.
a robe. i pace the ceiling of myself.
my stomach is an oasis for sad thoughts
so i decide to go outside.
outside is so hot 
everything's turning to droplets.
waves radiate from the asphalt.
a chorus of birdless wings.
i walk to buy an aluminum can 
from the corner store. all the people in town
are gathered underneath the bridge
to hide from the sun. they are limp 
like overcooked pasta. 
i think vaguely about how if i were jesus
i would invite them all in my house 
where there is a lonely air conditioner 
singing its praises into the living room.
i am not a savior of anyone but
i bring them bottles of water.
before i return they turn into pigeons 
& fly where i an't reach them.
i consider buying a net to pull them down 
& force them to drink.
i tell them i am sorry for my hesistation.
i buy the aluminum 
& drink caramel water all for myself. 
a radio tells a story of more items 
i could buy. there are no other humans.
in my mind i carve a swimming pool
& fill it with aqua blue water
& pool noodles. i lay on my back.
i become an inflatable raft. 
summer invites itself into my apartment 
behind me. a heat that drums 
on all my corners. i tell the temperature
a story of being young 
& taking a bright cold shower. 
i dream up a rain storm & watch
as it doesn't arrive.
the sun rains light.
the floor boards rain memories 
of their tree-swaying. 
i rain nostalgia on my street.

i make packed lunches for non-existent children

i ask out the window if they want 
their sandwiches cut straight 
or diagonally. outside it is raining 
more than i expected but i pretend 
it's bright & there is an playground whirling 
up the street.
i peel the crusts off with a knife
& consider the heat of a great factory oven 
responsible for them. my children 
are picky & i don't mind. i eat the crusts myself--
pressing the pieces into my mouth as i work.
soon it will be dark & time for them 
to get in the bathtub full of air.
they will protest but i want them 
to be clean. i picture them 
sitting at long lunch tables
& i hope they have friends. i can't remember anymore
whether or not i had friends. i put
extra fruit snacks into their lunches.
i decide that i have two & a half children.
the half child says home & sits on the counter
to watch over me like an angel.
the half child is my favorite. 
there is very little fruit
in fruit snacks, but they are good 
proving to other children that you are normal
& that your father isn't a poet
who perches at his desk like a raven.
next i fill Ziploc bags 
with grapes & carrots. healthy food, yes.
they might just throw the stuff out 
but it is good to have it there anyway.
the children are helping the ohter children
pull the hot orange sun down.
a rubber ball. i had a red rubber ball 
i used to cradle like a child.
my children are all more beautiful
than anyone else's. this is why we are
lonely together. their mouths turn 
like bottlecaps in my heart
& i call for them to come inside.
a staircase grows taller or more reptile.
my half child is hungry so i feed him
gummy worms. my baby bird.
juice boxes are crucial, then a bag of chips.
i won't have them feeling hungry.
i consider lecturing them
when they come inside about how many days 
i felt hungry when i was a small bird 
but i don't. i want them to flourish.
i want their eyes to turn to jems
each & every day. their footsteps tumble
up the stairs. i open the door for them.
instruct them to take off their shoes.
the half child beats his wings & calls because
it is night time for the family. 
i'm not sure i would make a good
mother or father. i'm scared of being selfish.
i'm scared of packing terrible lunches.
i write them love notes 
to make up for falling short.
pleading, i tell them i am just one person.
i am easily distracted. i love their beaks.
i love their talons. i sign them 
& fold them as small as a note can be folded.
the truth is, i have no patience for noise. 
i send the half child to his cage
& the other children to the bath. 
i zip their lunch boxes shut as they scurry.
my mice in the walls. my pigeons.

angel bird 

the first human to grow feathered wings 
will feel terribly out of place.
she will take comfort in knowing 
most humans feel misplaced.
despite not having wings. 
people will spend all day mistaking her
for both an angle & a bird. 
when she is an angel, they will bring her offerings
of caesar salad & wendies gift cards--
shoving their gifts at her while she tries 
to fit her wings down a grocery aisle
to buy a box of granola bars. 
they will ask her to bring messages to god.
when she is young, she will protest, 
but as she gets older
she will assume the role. 
she will carry strangers hopes inside her,
walking out into her backyard & pretending 
to send them off into the sky as birds.
to learn how to fly she will have jumped 
from the roof of her parent's house 
over & over on saturday afternoons
when other children were walking plastic dolls across carpets. 
she will tape lined-paper wings to her dolls 
& toss them off her top bunk.
they will fall hard on the floor.
she will cradle her dolls & tell them she is sorry.
when she is seen as a bird, she will flicker
in the binoculars of neighbors.
the neighbors might hang up stripes of aluminum 
which is supposed to scare birds away
or they might hang bird feeders.
she will want to eat from them, 
bot because she's really part bird
but because they suggest that inside
all people are welcoming when it suites them.
she will fly to an office job 
where she does data entry 
so no one has to see her wings.
she will hate them somedays & other days
she will wonder if she really is an angel 
forced to live on earth. she will have a friend
who believes she had wings in a past life.
this will not be true but she will be happy 
for a friend. they will discuss the possibilities 
of their origins. they will build nests
& try to sleep in them. many many days
she will wish she were just a bird.
their mouths full of seed. their breif singing lives.
she will grow old & some of the feather will fall out.
she will fly from town to town,
sleeping in empty attics & roosted in trees.
when she is waking up
she will think faintly of her mother
who loved her feathers most of all,
who collected them as she molted the first time,
saving them in a Ziploc bag.