night mass

i have a recurring nightmare that i am a priest
& it is the big moment in mass
when the bread turns into body.
everyone can tell i'm faking it. 
my words turn into birds & i choke 
on the feathers. eggs smash on the floor.
the pews are empty until they're not.
until they're all my father. until they're all
smelling of roses. i still talk about my aunts
as if they're all alive. there is only
one left on this plane but the other two
are in the pews. the third, up in the rafters
or maybe in the stained glass itself.
she has said all her life, "i'm never going
to die" & there she is. prophecies are meant
to be left unfulfilled. there's the point. 
if they all opened then what would we 
be waiting for? he's not coming back. i'm as much
of a priest as anyone. i know how to listen
to the water. i know how to scoop the baptized bugs
from the foundation. holy little beetles. holy
little fat flies. in the nightmare i do not 
finish mass. i can't. i want to. the words
to the prayers have left me for dead. that is
the thing about repetition. it can unravel.
i used to say the our father in bed
at night to ward off the ghosts. of course
it didn't work. they played with the words
like rocking horses. i run from the altar
& i hide in the church bathroom
still wearing the priest robes. the heat 
never reached there & so the whole room 
would be cold. cold butt on cold toilet seat.
cold hands. cold water from the sink. 
i don't know why i keep the robe on.
it is the pink one for that one day in advent. 
a candle rolled sideways, still lit, underneath
the stall door. they want their body.
their bread. i don't know how to deliver it. 
that is when i wake up. there is always
a communion wafer dissolving 
on my tongue. i swallow it, guilty
though of what i am not sure. 

pill organizer 

i keep my days in their terrariums.
a frog on the ceiling. my gills come
& go. the zoom call has a brother
& we are being watched in new &
increasingly horrible ways. 
would you like to share your location
with this god? would you like to 
let the overlords know how often
you hold your breath? the medications
i take sound like drag names.
i open their room & they say,
"are you still deficient?" i do not get
into an argument with them about mad liberation.
instead, i take what i should. 
when i'm feeling really down i  believe
that life is just a series of entered 
& exited rooms. my script did not
come with stage directions. in my parent's house
they removed so many doors that
the ghosts did not know where to hide. 
i could feel the places on the wall
where hinges used to be. i have a pill organizer
that is a replica of that house.
the days mix together. sunday stretches
like a bouquet of legs. my brother tells me
he's off his meds. i suggest to him,
as a joke, that he gets a terrarium.
he doesn't understand the joke. 
we are frogs. glorious frogs. poisonous frogs. 
there is a new pill i saw a commercial for
that prevents the grief from collapsing time.
i make a note to avoid that. i need my grief.
what am i without my grief? 
i used to have two pet toads. i fed them
crickets from my hands. i pretended
i was feeding them time itself.
delicious. all my pills become crickets.
they sing. i take them because i am 
trying to stay alive. sometimes though i imagine
what it might be like to get midnight 
all of a sudden. tell the bugs to scurry away.
hide where no mouth can find them.
when i am my most untethered, i see bugs.
mostly centipedes & ants. they tell jokes
i do not understand. they say, "you should
get a brother." i remind them, "i have one."
he comes over & both of us want to cry but don't. 
i take the bedroom. turn it upside down.
empty it & all the dirt into my mouth. 

killjoy 

i want to be pineapple every single day.
canned like gold teeth. i think there is
a vibrant version of us 
in the galaxy of iron & water. 
here, i am a bird with too many throats.
a red light cutting through clouds.
when we drive into philly, we always watch
the radio tower lights. a cat's cradle
carving into the sky. as a child,
my father & i would escape to the forest to name
the painted turtles. their reds, less like
alarm & more like leaves. what i wish
is to live a life with only a spoon.
digging myself out of a dirt-floor cell.
no knives or even the sharp edge of 
a tin can lid. a smoothed smile. pastel grease
on our thumbs. i am not special or 
any more real than the seagulls fighting
for laughter. i have a wound that 
echoes. searches for places to deposit itself.
lands often in your mouth & weeps. please
stay with me. suck on this glass candy. 
i want to eat berries that don't bleed 
someone else dry. i want to go barefoot 
in the summer. stroke the cold face
of the mountain. not have to try to fit
the wound into a pair of pants & a computer screen
& these fingers that have always been too short. 
we can decide to be a new species of birds. 
not the killdeer but the killjoy. 
the song we make, not a balm 
but a tearing. nectar at our feet. 
a bathtub full of sugar. 

two feet

in seventh grade, snow fell for a week straight.
a vortex of mashed halos & teeth.
my brother & i would venture out
as far as we could. me, pulling him 
on the purple plastic sled. the corn fields
became the wings of an ancient bird.
they beat into ocean. swallowed us
& never spit us out. my body was changing
in terrible ways. one storm night, alone in my bedroom,
i peeled off cold wet socks & 
green snow pants. i stared at myself
in my window reflection. my body,
like a night light, a blade through the room.
all skin. a folded bedsheet. i put on 
the only bra i had & stared at myself.
i was not excited or afraid. more like hungry. 
please let me human after all of this. 
i cannot understand now why i thought i wanted
to get older. this week i am almost thirty
& the snow is falling & my ribs are 
harp strings of a terrible what-if. 
the thickening past, the week of snow, was only one of
many precipices. my body peeling away from me.
the snow falling. a buried house. one day
my brother & i went too far. his boots filled
with snow. he does not remember this now
so i often wonder if i made it up but 
i took his feet in my hands 
to warm them. breathing on my own fingers 
& flexing. the blood, a water cycle. 
corn husks all sleeping gilless under our feet. 
i think i saw my reflection too in the snow.
it was that bright. a vision of a girl-boy without
a place to take his fear. his flesh. 
when we made it home i put the kettle on.
poured out packets of hot chocolate in the blue mugs.
laid on the couch next to my brother
while the windows & the future 
filled with two feet of snow. 
 

modern seance 

sometimes i wake up & my grandmother
has made a facebook profile. she's been dead
for almost ten years. i do not miss her
& i feel badly about that. when she's online
she messages me only in italian, a language she spoke
but never spoke to me. instead, we used to talk
in the ugly bridge language. her apartment bathroom
had soap shaped like seashells.
i would cup them in my hands & hold each
to my ears in case they whooshed like
the real seashells. i did not hear the ocean,
only a phone call coming through the walls.
a dead husband. a dead clock. the cats, standing
on their hind legs & dancing. on facebook
she posts pictures i have never seen before.
i am small & sitting on her counter eating pastrami.
she shreds the meat. cold in my hands. pepper 
in my teeth. pictures of our hands. pictures of
a beach when she was young. the ships. the boats.
streets in philly flush with snow. window cakes.
wildwood spring. in her pictures,
she tags me instead of my mother. her mind 
is a thicket. tangled & precise.
in her last months she did not know who most
of us were. i was always my mother. my mother was
always her sister. on facebook she will sometimes post
prayers. i do not remember her being so devote.
in fact, i think she does it for show. maybe hoping
to meet an angel on the glow machine. 
i refresh her page until it is gone & there is
no remnant. the pictures gone with her. 
once, i interviewed her for an elementary school project.
we were supposed to ask if our grandparents remembered
pearl harbor. the only thing i remember 
about her response was, "i was sitting on 
the end of my bed with the phone in my hand."
was there a phone or did i imagine it there?
i cannot predict when she will come but 
if i am honest, i can summon her. all i need to do
is weep & roast a tray of roots just like she always did
on fridays. then, the profile will return
even if only for a moment. i eat the roast.
sweet from baking. she sends me a meme of a 
greenland shark. neither of us understand it. 

miniature winter

i try to pull the winter 
out of my face but none of it leaves.
we get coffee in our hometown
& everything is the same. the word 
"decades" has shoulders to it. 
there is a storm coming
& i refuse to hear about it.
i grab a handful of snow outside
& let it melt in my hands. you keep
your hands in your pockets. 
as a child i used to take a plate
& fill it with snow. something bright
to eat. fork & spoon. the dead coming
& dining with me. their affinity for the cold. 
were you there too? i decide not 
to ask you. i forget the memories you were there for
& the ones that you weren't. to be
siblings is to be moons with 
interlocking orbits. sometimes 
we have the same name. 
sometimes i want to shake you 
& say, "if we don't run there will
be no where to run to." you send me
in the night, pictures of the miniatures
you paint. i have always admired
your ability to shrink the world.
i have the opposite problem. i find myself
in a world of giants. i consider what
it would take to push the season forward.
i just need a crocus. i just need
that garden in brooklyn we visited
when you were trying to show
how much you loved me. 
next time it is summer we can try
to stop the season up. tie it down.
no more cold. no more hungry 
afternoons. we are not children anymore.
when i wake up in the middle of the night
i do not wake you too. moon light,
our own faces, in the window.
i will get the firing going & you can 
come over & we can close our eyes. stand
right in front of the stove & pretend
the sun is beating down on us 
in the dead grass at the public pool. 

horse meat 

my brother earnestly suggests
that we could eat animals piecemeal,
keeping them alive. he knows little
about blood. he thinks, one leg, an ear. 
i don't know why he is fixated on
meat. he should be considering
how we're going to survive without a gun
in the world of fire. my mother is washing
dishes & she starts crying. she asks,
"where will the water come from?" i tell her
we will dig a well. we will wash our hands.
it will still rain (will it still rain?). the differences
between what we eat & what we don't
are a matter of proximity more than 
anything else. our bodies touch horses 
& so we don't eat horse meat. we keep the cows
walking far away. they lay down when it is
about to rain (will it rain?). the last wild
ancestor of the cow, the aurochs, died off hundreds
of years ago. now we only have his fence held
brethren. i do not think i could kill an animal
even if we were all starving. i do not think
i am prepared for what is coming. i do not know
if i want to be. my aunt is dying. she told 
the emts to came to take her, "let me please
just die in this chair. i love this chair."
i feel the same. i love this window. i love
to watch song birds with the cats. we pretend
we will one day catch them. they will be angels 
& we will be guilty of something glorious.
in the freezer my partner has bison meat
that he is saving. on the coldest nights 
i hear them wake up. hooves trampling over
the winter fields. in the morning i follow the tracks.
they lead to a smokehouse. meat on hooks. 
i join them. bathe in campfire. sweet sweet wood. 

vow

i have never been good at promises.
i think i've maybe been present for
one wedding. i was far away.
the couple seemed happy. 
or maybe when i was small i flower-girled
just a little bit. there is a hole in the sky
where i am told we should stick out fingers.
the horrors of tunnels evoke for me
a chapel. smoke doesn't seem like
it should be able to make a shadow
but it does. a lovely veil coming
out of our horse. not house. horse.  
once, we were in the forest & i thought,
"yes let's get tethered." a room without walls
is a stage. a stage without a stage is
just an altar. i miss being a child
when the worms meant something else.
if you really want me to promise i can try
for you. i can. but it will be made of 
paper machete & it will taste like glue. 
this isn't about fidelity or infedelity.
i mean i cannot promise we are going
to be alive in the way we wanted.
without a ceiling & with enough water
to drink. i wash my face in the zoo.
the zoo tries to recruit me. why do i resist it?
it is about time i get into the reptile house.
behind the glass, i'll be lovely. goose-shaped
& full of heaven. i'll wear white for you
until we are both dust if i have to. 
pure as the snow which is to say
full of gravel & feathers & soot. 

bunker

for us, there is no bunker. 
i have had neighbors
who dig graves for themselves.
fill them with canned meat. 
my first husband loved spam.
he talked to it like an unborn limb.
if i had a place to hoard my future
i would probably collect cereal.
i think the end times will require
much more sugar than we assume.
something to ring the pain
like a bell. something to remind me
of when i was a child & asked 
for extra mayonnaise on my hoagies
my father is building
a garage where he can go to scream.
he does not say that's what it will be for
but i know him & i know
the kinds of horrors he carries. 
there are rumors online that 
the rich already have their 
end times plans. we do not exist 
in those plans. i take comfort in knowing
that i am only alive because
the maps of rich people failed. 
our eggs were supposed to be rosary beads
in the dirt. did you know if you 
put your ear to the frozen earth,
you can hear the past. it is wide 
& singing. to me it usually sounds
like a flock of trumpets trying 
to come home. my aunt is dying 
& she keeps saying, "i want to go home."
my father doesn't understand.
he tells her, "you are home." the thing
about the bunker is that it is never
a home. instead, it is the reservoir 
that does not believe in the future.
i do not build a bunker. we eat canned beans
& laugh by the fireplace. i tell my father,
"just let her know she'll be home soon."

mouth breather

don't get me wrong i enjoy breathing
but sometimes i see someone with 
a mouth so wide open that angels
start walking in. my mom told me 
when i was little that it is a bad idea
to clear your head because you don't know
what will walk inside. i did it anyway
because i don't listen to instructions
& now i'm gay. the reality is that 
my nose just doesn't really work. 
when i tell people that they usually say,
"you should get that checked out?" i laugh
with what money? with what time?
with what oracle? i picture myself
opening up my scrying mirror & searching
for an answer to all my ailments. 
once in a waiting room i watched 
a little boy press his sticky hand
to the glass door leading back into
the belly of the white world. his father
pulled him back & feed him
the waiting room toys. once i was driving
& could not find anywhere with a coffee.
when you crashed the car i thought,
"finally." no deer, just the side
of an ugly snowy road. it's my left 
nostril that doesn't work the most.
i don't mind being tired all the time.
what really gets to me is not having enough
to look forward to. i talk about food
like shrines to place my aching.
in the ditch i said, "we're getting thai food soon."
i know i'm a mouth-breather
& it is really embarrassing. it is me. 
i am the one with the angels walking in.
they never take off their shoes.
track mud into my brain. i know this is
not why i'm broken or melancholy
but it is easier to explain than the full picture
which involves more of my body
than i'm willing to share. i wash my face
in the shower. i can't really smell 
but i do feel the tea tree oil
when i rub it into my scalp. i don't know
who told me to do this ritual
but it makes me feel a little more alive.
sometimes the angels even ruffle their feathers
like chickens in the cold. 
i am drinking air from a plastic cup
it tastes like lemon soda.