when we were small & plastic 

i convinced my brother to climb inside
the plastic pirate ship with me.
the process of shrinking is seamless 
when you're still 6 or 8 years old.
being the older sibling means 
showing the younger one what a toy 
can mean. i wanted to hide from dad. 
i wanted to pretend we were orphans--
pirate orphans & we would be far out at sea.
in the attic all our toys became 
a canal--a great river--a strait. 
stuffed elephants swam 
& lego star wars ships snapped. i liked 
the pirate ship because it had little rooms--
each fully decorated. a room with bunks 
for the sailors & a wheel house for a captain.
we had no plastic pirates-- just our own bodies
made small & pose-able. my brother asked
if we could leave over & over but i told him
we were just playing. i have to be clear
dad wasn't evil he was just 
someone to hide from. he was just massive
& we were small & plastic. he was just
always tired. he once
smack my brother across the head
for spilling his glass of beer 
& then he held him saying
i'm sorry i'm sorry. i believed
if we stayed pirates
nothing like could ever happen again. 
dad would get tired of looking
for us & forget he had two boys
who had been playing in the attic.
i hated my brother's devotion--
how he listened from the deck 
to try & hear dad's foot steps.
if it weren't for him i could have remained.
i could have learned to be a toy--
let the plastic make stiff each muscle.
he cried & curled up in the wheel house
& made me leave with him. we stood
too big in the middle of the attic
staring down at the little ship
& its crooked mast. 

two men 

the year after the last bee died
all the fruit turned to glass
& i showed you how to chew orange slices
without the shards cutting open your gums.
a lot of swallowing. we went out 
into the woods to look for greenness.
not for science. we were searching because
we needed to feel useful--
you with your binoculars & me with my hands.
i wanted to love you right into 
the end. i wanted to be the last 
body you touched with purpose.
we walked deeper & you wanted to 
stop holding hands. the farther into
the woods the less gravity pulls at our skin. 
you told me you sometimes tricked yourself
into believing in memories that weren't
actually yours. i asked you to please 
tell me the memories. you described 
sitting by a river with another boy
who wasn't me--the river flowing 
& not made of blood 
like all the rivers we knew.
i was jealous of him. whatever boy
lived there only in the thickness
of your recollections. what right
did he have to describe an unfading earth
to you? would you know me only as
the falling panels of sky?
the limbs of trees turning 
to coal on the forest floor?
miles away the city was working 
every single hour to manufacture fresh desires.
i may not even love you by the time
you read this. i told you i wanted to sleep
but what i really meant was i wanted
one chance i pretend the woods
were just a house & we were living
somewhere easier. i wanted a chance
to be the boy in your memory.
you told me another one about
pulling an onion from the dirt
& have it not shatter. i bit your
bottom lip & you shivered. two men
need each other to survive. 
two men fell asleep & woke up
floating slightly above the ground--
gravity leaking 
from the soil-- gripped onto 
each other. promised to never 
turn to glass. two men 
were the only green in the forest.

Survivor Man 

that summer we watched a lot of Survivor Man.
next to each other on the sunken-in polka dot couch
my brother & i talked about 
where we would want to go to survive.
my brother wanted to go to Bermuda because
mom & dad had gone there once & they told us
about the singing of the frogs at night.
i asked him what that had to do with survival 
& he said that it would at least be 
a nice to place to die if he had to.
he was maybe seven & i was ten.  
on commercial breaks the television told us 
we were young & beautiful & we should
make something of a summer. sometimes i felt like
it was just my brother & i in the house
alone all day together watching 
survivor man pry open fruit with a knife.
watching survivor man crawl into 
the carcass of a camel to stay warm.
on a raft survivor man told us he was
at risk of hypothermia & my brother
asked me what that meant & i told him
it meant freezing to death. i said 
i would rather die quickly like from
falling off a cliff. he said it might not
be so bad. i said he thought he might have been
close to hypothermia at recess the last year.
outside waves of heat were emanating
from the asphalt. sometimes we took breaks
to eat ice pops on the porch. 
the artificial sugary water dyed our tongues.
one day my brother asked me to promise 
i wouldn't grow up to be like
survivor man. he didn't want me
going places so dangerous. he said
he didn't want to watch me on tv
& feel afraid for me.
i told him not to be afraid for survivor man
because he knew what he was doing. 
he knew what plants could be cooked 
& eaten. he knew how to catch
a rattle snake & cook it over a fire--
the meat all fresh & white. the dirt 
on his fingers. he washes his face
in a pool of water. he drinks 
from a stream. he climbs a tree
to find a place to sleep. around 4pm
our dad would get home. we would
change the channel to cartoons & 
take our places next to each other
as if nothing had happened.
as if survivor man hadn't almost died
so many times that day. as if there
weren't dangerous wildernesses
i would want so badly to survive in.

i told him i wanted to see a drive-in movie

so we got in his car & drove for hours.
watched the landscape change seasons.
it snowed & the windshield wipers pushed
white frost away. it poured & the car
became i raft floating down a thick river.
he trembled & rubbed his hands across
his own thighs. tall river grass slapped the windows 
while we listened to a beatles album on repeat.
he wanted to hear eleanor rigby twice.
i began to realize i didn't know him at all
& not in some existential way-- this was
the first time i was in his car. 
i have this habit of telling strangers 
to take me far away. i seek them out.
i tell them i am a fleck of light. i tell them
i was a girl who needed to be buried
& now that i'm now a boy who needs to be escaped.
we get there finally after several years
of not even kissing. there's no one else
at the drive-in & i tell him the story 
i tell everyone-- that i'm from a small 
farm town where everything is made of corn 
or cows & that everyone's backyard 
has a drive-in theater. he tells me 
i'm impossible & dream like. he pressed 
a hand to my cheek to check that i am real.
boys never trust me. on the great screen
images start to play: a close up of feathers 
pulsing, undulating scales, & then finally
his hand moving across his own thigh.
he points & says that is me!
so i say i'm proud of him for being
made so huge & projected. there are clips
of our drive & of my teeth. there are 
scenes of cows along the side of the road.
i ask him if he knows that cows lay down
just before it rains. he says that can't 
be true but it is & it happens on the screen--
cows lay down. rain bursts open 
from the sky. we are drenched even though
it only rained on the screen. he wants
to go home. i want to stay. 
he threats to drive away without me 
to strand me out there in a field no one knows
or remembers. his truck turns into a blinking camera lens
i tell him to go then & leave me with the movies 
but instead of leaving he begs me
to take a video of him. he gets down 
on his knees in the video & begs
someone to come love him like he's always wanted.
i shut the camera off & tell him to 
let me take him apart even if only here 
in the middle of no where. no one is watching
the movie. no one has ever watched the movie.
he asks if i've seen it before
& i tell him to shut up. we kiss finally.
the screen plays bees. a whole hive swarming.
we are very bad for each other 
& it's wonderful & he drives back a few years
to take me home to where i live 
in an apartment with wooden floors.
i don't catch his name. my bed 
is covered in bees-- the same ones
from the movie projected 
on that wide white screen.  

albatrosses take you home 

you fell asleep on the train ride home
& as you tell my this i think of how
albatrosses can sleep while flying.
i imagine a whole flock of albatrosses 
outside the train window like guardian angels.
everyone is falling asleep around me.
everyone is discovering surfaces:
a patch of grass, a friend's carpet, 
a corner of dusk. outside i'm jealous
of all the people & their slacken bodies--
how they can just kneel down on the sidewalk 
& dip into slumber. the truth is though 
that albatrosses don't travel in flocks.
they travel alone. they fly far out 
above the water & that's where they 
sleep in the air. their bodies carry them.
wings pumping behind their eyes. you fell asleep
on the train & were woken up by an albatross.
you don't tell me this-- it's just something
i know because it happened to me too.
your face pressed up against the window.
my face pressed up against the window.
the instances happening in tandem. 
on the other side of the glass, 
landscape whirled like
movie frames. the albatrosses danced 
& laughed at us on our train. their bodies
snipping through the air while we are bound
by the lines of a road. how i draw a line
from home to where you are & wish i could
walk it like a tight rope. even as you tell me
you are falling asleep. even as i listen 
i am turning into a bird again.
i need you to open the window & let me out
but you aren't sure what to do. 
our house turns into a train & we're rushing past
station after station. the last station 
was home & were not stopping. we're going
to rush off the edge of the island
& never come back. we're going to rush
into the ocean the albatrosses trust.
salt water lifting our bodies. 
feathers across my skin. this is 
a way of me confessing that
i'm scared you're turning into 
a great white bird. i want to be 
the only great white bird in this relationship.
albatrosses only lay one egg. round.
i see the egg floating in the water.
sitting on an open seat in the train. 
you woke up right before 
our station. you gathered you bags 
& stepped off onto the platform.

collage of finger prints.

he touched my shoulder. thumb against
the back of me neck. brushing hands with
a man through a knot of bodies. 
everyone tangled & touching & 
taking pieces of skin. pinching
my ear lob & ringing my collar bone
like a door bell. i'm peeling them off--
each trace each stroke. i want to look at them.
i want a photo album of hands that have
pressed into me. i don't remember much
about voices or teeth but i remember the fingers
of everyone who's ever kissed me.
there was julian with his thin digits
& the way he would rake his nails
across my wide open back & afterwards
we would stand in his kitchen with 
our bare feet cold against the tiles floor.
we would snack on apples or frozen yogurt
& his fingers would hold the fruit 
or the spoon with less hunger 
than how he held me. i have to admit
i love to be dug into. to be scraped open
i want to be the ledge you hang your wants.
i want to be eroded. sean who 
never cleaned his nails. eating pizza
with him on his deck. lily who 
pulled her fingers across me like tall grass.
eric who moved his hands in circles
across bare skin when he didn't know
what to do or say. i felt like
i was being stirred. mia with their
index finger tracing a line from 
shoulder to shoulder. a trapeze.  
hand around my throat pressing to hard.
grabbing my ass too hard--
finger prints leaving small mazes 
on my body which i have yet to enter--
little labyrinths of pleated skin.
i am tired of hands & of remembering them
& remembering who entered & who left &
caring where he puts his hands now
& how she eats an apple-- i never saw her
eat an apple. if i never touched anyone again
would i miss it or would i feel 
like a forest? a drying canvas?
i press my own thumb into my chest--
rub in circles as if to smudge something out.
i lay on the floor & see the prints 
glowing neon. they move across me--
phantom foot prints. i close my eyes
& when i open them the marks are gone. 
i'm just a body. just a body.
just a body.

an elegy to the plants i've killed 

if i had plants now i would tell them secrets.
i would crouch down & bury my mouth
in their leaves-- press my lips to 
the faces of orchids. watch their stalks 
tremble with words. watch them try 
to not tell each other. all the plants
i've ever had have died & sometimes i think
it's because i never talked to them.
could they have died of loneliness?
i took myself to the botanical gardens 
& there was an exhibit where
you could listen to plants. 
i put on headphones 
& heard their muffled singing--
clear in through the headphones. one fern
singing jazz-- a flower humming 
a nursery rhyme. i wondered why
my plants never showed me their voices
or if that wasn't their job--
if i should have sought them out more.
i ambled around the gardens speaking to plants 
& laughing about how strange it seemed.
sitting at the foot of 
a bare cherry blossom trying to
talk it into blooming. telling the tree
stories of humans playing
in the snow. was she sad about
being stuck in one place? i got her to 
bud & open one flower & i stuck
it in my hair. i thought about 
all my plants & how i watched them 
slowly fade. the last plant
was a small pinkish orchid
in a too small pot. i wished
i would have taken my headphones
& plugged them into the dirt.
what would the flower have said?
would it have just been screaming?
a farewell? a gentle crying?
i go to the green houses to ask
other orchids what mine might
have said to me if i would have spoken
to it. i ask & ask & ask &
the orchids cover their faces
with their leaves-- too shy to 
look at me. i beg them
to explain what my orchid might have felt--
if it was me who killed it but 
they won't move. they go silent 
for me. i keep walking till i reach
the lemon tree & i tell the tree
how much i want to live somewhere
breathing-- how sometimes the city feels
is a knot of dead plants. we're climbing
all over to chew on the sweet rotting bits.
i chew on a square of sidewalk outside
the gardens. the leg of a tree
digs in to the path & i kiss 
the tree's knee. i tell the tree
that i want to have a word with it.
i speak to the bark--to the woven-like patterns.
i admit i feel guilty but i also wish
my plants would have spoken to me.
how ridiculously obvious our wants can be.
i ask the tree to show me his voice 
but he stays silent & i take the train how
to a room where there are no plants.
outside a thin tree grows 
from the sidewalk. 

wall ball 

dad & i look for tennis balls.
in the grass by the high school courts,  
the grass grows untamed
& spiraling-- brushes our ankles. 
we're looking for something to throw
hard & fast against the steep brick wall
of the school. it was a game we played
for years, riding our bikes 
down the hill to the school 
& laying them in the gravel parking lot. 
dad's bike had orange detailing 
& mine had blue. 
i forget when this begins or ends--
when we first went, got down on our knees
to look for tennis balls 
or when the last time was that we
threw the balls back to the grass
& left without a word. i can't remember
a single thing he said to me or 
that i said to him only the movements 
we made together in early fall 
when the leaves were just blushing,
only a few taking the trek down 
to become a part of the soil.
i wonder how long it takes
for a tennis ball to decompose so 
i search online, alone in my room
where there is no grass or dads 
or high schools. 450 years.
i imagine returning to our spot
for that long & picking up those
same tennis balls-- throwing them
until they collapsed into themselves
& after that just throwing the rind
like an already-devoured fruit. 
or, maybe we could have planted 
the tennis ball & see it grow into 
a tree of tennis balls 
all fresh & bright like we'd 
never known. there's something
to the action of throwing, the muscles
in the arm that want to, need to,
force objects through the air.
here's dad tossing the tired dull sphere
harder & harder & me watching,
living through his motion.

vanishing points

i became obsessed with 
how cavernous an image could go.
i began to see lines 
trailing from every object
like strings holding a scene in place.
we learned about dimensions
in high school drawing class
where the teacher had us all draw 
the same room.
the work of rulers. 
planting the vanishing point
in the background 
like a seed. 
the room was to have 
a sofa & a bed.
simple shapes. she told us that everything
at the end of the day was 
a simple shape. 
i drew a portrait
of myself in cubes.
a vanishing portrait.
i clutched my sketch pad & a pencil--
took them everywhere
though i never drew what i saw.
i practiced drawing that same room.
scribbling to mark 
the point everything fades into. 
i started to look for that point
at the end of roads. 
i watched everyone
walk away into it 
& cars drive recklessly
into nowhere at all. 
all the while i worked to draw line after line
connecting them back to the pit.
i curled up in the road some nights
& tried to be someone else's 
vanishing point.
in drawing class we moved on to 
new topics each week. we all made 
the same pastel beach 
& the same water color sky 
& the same sketch of a thumb.
there was something wonderful 
about repetition. about replicating
an image across a dozen hands & papers.
all those other people though
they could move on from the vanishing point
while more & more i became obsessed
with plucking it-- reaching for it
like a fruit. holding its softness
in my hand. as if maybe i could outrun 
the stretch of sight & pin myself down 
to the spot. i'd run up & down
the gravel road behind my house
but could never catch it. 
over the years fell in love
with so many boys 
to make vanishing points of--
to tie strings to & draw a kind of life. 
in high school i was bent on 
knowing the source 
of my own diminishing. 
drawing the room i tell a boy
to hold still until i'm ready 
to walk into him.

everything i can't tell you

i've never ridden a horse 
but i have a memory of doing so.
we're smacking across on pavement.
bareback. my legs holding onto
the warm animal's torso. 
the only thought in my head is
that i have to get away from you. 
horses are beautiful machines--
they suggest muscle & freedom 
as if one day i could grow myself hooves & 
nothing my fingers did would have to matter.
i want no one to love me the same way
they love other humans. i want to be loved
like an animal. the horse
is terrified of cars. he screams the way
only horses can. the streets are
mostly empty aside from those few
dwindling vehicles that never go home.
i cling to the mane. coarse & black.
my phone is ringing so i throw it 
into the moon where it skips & leaves
a scar. i am trying so hard to be 
beautiful all the time for you. 
maybe this is a memory 
of everything i haven't done--
how only inside myself have i let 
the horse do what only horses can do.
somewhere outside this city there 
are fields & i am not aiming for them.
there is water that offers sinking--
an ocean full of boat-lights swaying.
the horse wants everything for me.
wants me to be a boy but 
i seep into a mesh of fears--
a shroud flung over the shoulder
of a monster. i am easily taken away
by a strong wind. all my blood 
a kind of fabric. on the horse
i am tying myself into knots
& telling the animal to go faster.
gunshots come out of my mouth.
i try to swallow them before
they come out. in this memory 
we reach an impossible tree
with fruit of all different kinds 
hanging from the branches.
i ask the horse if i am dead
& the horse doesn't respond
because he's a horse. i feed him
& he sleeps & i lay down
in the scraggled grass. this is not
a parable. this is everything i want
right now & everything i can't 
tell you.