corpse candles & velvet dinner

at night the roads around our house
fill with corpse candles. 
you can never see them & so i pretend
i do not see them either. when you fall asleep though
i go out to witness. each light is different.
some the size of fireflies & others 
like burning soccer balls. the legend goes
that each represents a death. a ghost
holding up a candle just behind the veil.
i try to talk to them. sometimes they put a veil
on me & i wander barefoot through the corn. 
the foxes & the deer walk on two legs. 
i wish my life were smaller. contained to 
a candle or maybe just a graveyard.
instead, my life spreads out. there are phones 
that dance. letters with teeth inside.
i draw blood & send it to the hungry place.
never manage to eat enough. the corpse candles 
move slowly. on the lushest nights,
almost like a waltz. i sway with them.
once, starving, i went out & the corpses fed me.
blindfolded, i ate with my hands. velvet texture.
the feasts of the dead. i heard their voices.
each light, a little mouse hole. they gave me
no answers. instead they handed me 
a candle & told me to walk with them.
i blended in. almost stayed. would they notice
one body among dead? instead, i went home.
i had missed you & the dogs. it was so bright
that night that the windows glowed like midday.
the ghosts coming to witness us. washed my face.
i stood bare in the shower before turning it on. 

walk-in freezer

i would take off my meat gloves
& pretend i was becoming 
an ice sculpture. the breath of the 
walk-in freezer at the dining hall was
bright & wild blue. on the shelves 
were cases of drink mixes & broccoli 
& broth. sometimes i would place my
warm hand on the surface. leave a print there
like the walls of cueva de las manos.
the ancient impulse to leave a little mark
in the belly of a creature bigger than you. 
i could never stay too long. counted each second
until i had to return to a cutting board.
chicken breasts that needed to be sliced
& sandwiches that needed 
to be painted with mayo. a drop of panic
at the thought that maybe i was locked inside.
i would rush to the door just to make sure
that it still opened from the inside
just like it always did. the contrast between
the hot & chaotic prep room hallway 
& the freezer always gave me a pause.
i considered receding again. just one more minute
before i emerged with a hunk of flesh
or a bag of ciabatta rolls. 
the portal shut behind me
like a spaceship door. 

zoo horses 

they used to have a herd here.
ten or twenty creatures. 
wooden fence. the valley's eyelashes. 
when a storm came through 
a god would pull the horses into the sky
to run & make thunder. the last two 
are slow now. they stand far away
from where people can come 
to stare. take pictures. squint.
they are keepers of a threshold between
dirt & rain. body & blood.
they tell each other the same
stories from their previous lives.
stepping through clouds. hoof & lightning. 
the fields that still bear milkweed flowers
this time of year. the sun has become
more merciless as they've aged.
i want to join them. to kneel down
& feel my hooves arrive clapping. 
i wonder if they wait till we are all gone.
gates closed. yolky sun sleep. then,
maybe they run. never racing, always
pounding on the door of a next life.
one without a fence or a sky. one where
we are both bright & boneless.
we'll keep our manes. one lifts her head
to me. a flick of the tail. a light breeze.
hush of the branches still full of leaves.  

ice house

i buy an air conditioner to save you.
then another & another. i am prone 
to buying ice houses like you. i cannot help it.
i meet a bird who tells me, "i have a place
for you to dream." then i am following them.
the ice house is always bigger than 
i should be able to afford. i make concessions.
i can live with the chill & the weeping. i can
make peace with always having a cold shower.
your chandelier falls. i turn the air conditioner
to as cold as it will go. wrap myself 
like a stuffed grape leaf. olive oil on my lips.
you are coming apart. i am drinking the stairs.
the attic full of all the dead people. 
my bones, made of ice too. i grab cups 
& vases to fill with your windows. i beg you,
"try to hold on just a little longer." it is summer
& i am afraid to sleep bare toward 
the wild night sky. i knew this when i entered you.
that there would come a day that the roof started 
to bleed & i had to sit in a field of buckets.
i stop strangers on the street. i tell them,
"there used to be a house there." all they see
is a lake. my clothes float on your surface.
i pluck them out like a body fisherman. 
the rain comes & i cannot tell what is house
& what is home & where you went. 
to sleep somewhere is to let it claim part of you.
i hope wherever you have gone that 
your walls are wide. that the fish learn 
to sing just like i used to in the bath. 
i knock on doors. their houses blow away.
i turn all the air conditioners on just to feel again
what it was like to sleep stone-like inside. 

turkish coffee

you turn 42 which makes me 45.
to have a sibling is to always measure your life
in distances between one another.
we drive the car (which is on fire
& has been since we were kids) to the 
turkish place we went to after you 
almost graduated. the sky is full of flashlights.
we drink turkish coffee from the mugs
with little faces on them. their soft
clay tone. a tooth. a lip. i remember
when we were younger & you told me
that your dream was to have a job where
you could afford to stop here & drink
this thick warm coffee each day on 
your way to work. there is a flood warning
again. i have never known how 
to be an oldest sibling but then again 
i do not think anyone does. you certaintly
have not known how to be a middle sibling. 
once i called you later than i should.
ran a stoplight. the sky was full of turkish coffee.
sweet & bitter. i take you back here
as a kind of ritual towards hunger.
that which has never been satisfied.
neither of us have jobs we want. the earth
is warmer than when we were children. 
sometimes i still feel like we are children
only now we drive cars & sometimes
get on planes alone. i never can finish my cup. 
my hands always tremble after.
we sit in the restaurant until they settle.
cold coffee. the hole where the snakes
pour out of the sun. it will have to be enough. 

invisible fence

the trouble is that the fence is never 
in the same place. i go running in search
of a raspberry bush & then there i am
at the edge of the words i have left.
sometimes the flies are fat & sometimes
they are just little flecks of hunger.
i dance headless as them. 
the raspberries turn into bed bugs & the city
wilts in august. i take a train without anyone else
inside just to get smacked with a fence.
i throw myself from the moving car
in an attempt to not be vivisected. 
the neighbor's dog used to have one 
just like this. i would watch the creature
bound right up to the halo. stand there
deciding whether or not he would accept
the shock collar consequences of his 
curiosity. as with most things, there is 
a decision between the pain of waiting
& the pain of breaking. neither are ideal.
i dream of flight. of alien abduction. 
lifted from the sand & into a worth i
do not have. they say heaven is above
because anywhere we can't reach is also 
a place without borders. i try to dig a hole 
beneath the fence. it just goes deeper
& deeper until we are at the core 
& our fingernails have dirt & grist in them. 
i write my name on one of the posts.
think of that one day when the dog
did push past. he ran all over town
while his owners chased him weeping.
escape involves betrayal. what was he looking for?
the dog got hit be a car & lived. that last part
was a lie i just didn't want to end
with the truth. they never took the fence down
or got another dog. in the dark i would see 
him running on the outside of the fence. 
once i went with him. he climbed into the clouds 
with our other tiny gods. 

lily pad

the water learns how to 
cover her face. i hear a baby crying
even though it is the middle 
of nowhere & nothing but stop signs 
are up this late. i sometimes go to 
the bathtub & find it full,
lily pads floating on the surface.
if i have been gone too long there will
be frogs in there too, leaping
from one pad to another & then beneath
the surface. there are so many ways
to hide. i have started looking at each room
as a game of hide & go seek. only,
the hide is a game of death or death.
i also look & ask myself, "where could
lily pads grow?" which is a question
about how we will manage to be beautiful
when we are trying to keep the most 
important secrets of our lives. i buy 
a plane ticket & do not take the plane.
the lily pads are in my coffee cup,
the one i don't wash because i like
how it tastes like dirt. a thin skin
of coffee stain. don't get me out of here.
don't fly the plane. give me all your lily pads
& i'll give you mine. i think people forget
that a lily pad is the full plant,
there is a flower floating. a little dream
of breathing with a tape recorder.
the frogs sing a mourning song.
i join them. the tub overflows &
we all get to be amphibians when
they come for us. 

bounce house

take your shoes off before
you get in my mouth.
we are on the roof without umbrellas
& there is a wet dog running across the sky.
i buy a pocket knife 
with the sole intention of saying
it was an accident. the house keeps
you jumping. you decide
to set higher & higher goals.
touch the ceiling & leave handprints.
i call a repair man in the middle
of the night & a flock of hissing cockroaches
arrive with a toolbox. it is our birthday.
the bounce house is for us. there is a cake
with someone else's name written
on the face. 
sometimes i want kids desperately.
like, i feel a space where our children
would live like voles beneath
the soil. the roots that, when removed,
always resemble the hair of my grandmother,
ragged & tangled near the end.
i bounce. feel my socks against
the vinyl. smooth. a carnival man 
peers in the window. we could sleep in here.
we could listen to the groan
of the air machine. i know tomorrow
it will be my birthday too. dog years. 
dog teeth. tearing the meat
from a street chicken bone. how do
you survive the pressure to smile?
grey balloons fill the sky. i call you
& you do not pick up. the number
leads nowhere. you get out of my mouth
& leave with a little party hat on.
we never talk again but i still
wonder about you. 

living stealth 

everyone is going stealth. 
a doctor asks me again, "when did you know?"
i buy a time travel machine on ebay
& go back to kill a pink balloon on a porch
in a photograph. i get my gender
from a corner store in a little fridge
next to the bottles of soda. it is a sepia tone
kind of year. it is a race car kind of year.
a past-my-bedtime kind of year. 
i stopped telling people i'm trans not because
i want to hide it but because i want people
to be unsure. my gender is uncertainty.
the perennial "which way are you going?"
i answer, "not home." i dig a hole in the yard.
i find a bunch of bird bones. i walk into
a car parts shop & i feel like the whole place
is staring at me. i'm pretty aware of when 
i do not really belong somewhere 
(which is most everywhere
if i'm being honest). i feel most alive
at thrift stores, antique shops, parking lots,
& somewhere in the woods off the trail.
the existence of stealth implies that there
are people who live loudly & openly. 
i have not met them. gender is just as much
about hiding as it is about telling. 
when i meet a man i know he has killed at least
one bird & buried the bones. when i meet a woman
i know that she has gone sleepwalking & woken up
in the dewy grass. i think loudness is overrated.
it is fun to have a secret. i love how shiny mine gets
when the government tries to peer in at it.

pennsylvania gothic

fog spills across the cornfields.
we have been driving through
finger woods for days. you use your phone flashlight.
reading a map from the 80s. we get service periodically.
a few texts. a snippet of a youtube video
you watch to keep yourself company.
everyone is alone in pennsylvania but 
especially travelers.  
we learn the names of lakes from the gps. 
drive to one & walk until we reach the shore. 
there are footprints of strangers. a church bell warbles
even though it is the middle of the night.
against our better judgment,
we drink from the lake. the trees turn 
into copperheads & chase us back to the headlights.
we drive & drive. pass the same strip mall
thirty times before you start weeping
& we decide we must go there. a dry cleaners 
without an attendant. pizza place that closed
ten years ago. nothing for us. nothing
for anyone. all the signs from dead places have
"coal" & "steel" & "slate" in the names. 
the mountain laughs sometimes. all the holes
in her lungs where men scrambled 
like rats in the dark. the trains that carried
her meat to the cities. now she watches
as the land swallows again. turns men
into coal. shoes hung from a telephone wire 
in a small town with nothing but a smoke shop
& a turkey hill. we wait at a spotlight,
alone, letting the ghosts march past 
in a little parade. you ask me, "are we going home?"
i answer, "no" & we keep driving on an empty tank. 
pull over & fill it with bones & pokeberries.