muscles 

in a news article i read
they found a giant
15ft long python today 
image: five men working to hold 
the thick ink ribbon up
dry tall grass all around 
the muscles of the men all
strained against the weight
of the animal
balloons under skin
the snake longer
than three of me 
if I was all laying down on the floor
& looking up at the ceiling
three of me rolling over 
to lay on our stomachs
three of me, each counting
the other one's scales
a collar bone full of scale
flattened jewels
a necklace pressed into flesh 
i'm thinking about the snake's muscles 
what that looks like
under the scale
a kind of collaboration 
of meat
a belly asking the ground
over & over
what the body should do
with all the directions
how to scale a heavy wall 
i check my room for
snakes: under bed &
in the closet
i do find a snake
possibly longer than
the one those men found
i should have known it's
been here all this time
this snake is green & loud
with tongue flickering
a pink flame
i do what all people
would do &
i get on my stomach 
so that it knows i'm
just a snake too 
& the snake shows me 
how to get longer
how to stretch & remain 
thick with muscle
the important part 
is finding a place to leave
your bones
i hung mine on coat hangers
making mobiles
our bones must prevent
something more 
than just stretching
i think of those men
holding the snake up &
the way their bones
& muscles let them 
bring the creature into the air
the strained grins on their faces
the fear evident 
in their their knees
i'm thankful 
i'm the snake 

to our Xmas tree in april

we left the fake Xmas tree
in the living room so long
that it came alive
this morning.
it's near the end 
of april & i think
this might have something
to do with all the rain.
maybe it rained so much
that the tree 
got inspired.
i smelled pine 
all the way across 
the house &
so i plucked a few needles,
rolling them in my fingers 
to be sure-- yes fresh 
evergreen smell,
almost edible.
i asked the tree 
right away what it was thinking
& what we were going
to do with it
now that it decided to be real.
a breeze rustled it's branches
which was strange because 
no windows were open.
i knew that meant
that the tree wanted more.
the next day the house
filled with chirping,
all sort of birds all
nesting in the tree--
tangles of branch beds 
on nearly every limb--
a blue jay munching cheerios
from the cabinet-- a swallow
basking in a sink full 
of water. 
i was so jealous 
of the tree that something
could have stirred it
to all of this, that 
the tree was so happy 
so easily.
i wondered if maybe
i should stay still &
let birds nest in me
if maybe that would make
it feel like a new season 
in a new place
instead of a tangle of
branches
i broke arms off the tree
& used them to make 
a nest in my bed 
i told the birds to come
& let me in 
on their secrets.
the rain arrived sudden
washing each window with beads
of water. the birds
opened the windows by themselves
& i picked up the branches
to find them turned plastic again.
inhaling deeply,
pacing the house
i hoped to locate even a faint
scent of evergreen 
to confirm for myself
it was here 
in the first place.

if there is a stone to be 
eaten i know it
& i think about the dinosaurs
who ate stones to digest the leafy plants
they swallowed
leaves like feathers of a bird 
fossilized in rib cage
my therapist asks me what i think i am 
outside of all the things i do
& i want to say nothing
by which i mean 
i believe i am nothing
outside of what i write
what comes pouring out of me 
a stomach full of stones 
a green bird
aching with fossil
but instead i tell her
that i like to think 
i am kind & that 
i read beautiful 
people & that i write poetry 
enough to make up for the rest
(insert thought about 
the purpose a therapist 
can serve in a poem)
(insert a thought about 
running out of money to see 
that therapist who is now
just a line in your poem)
(insert a cup of strawberries
measured perfectly)
(insert a boy who lays on 
his stomach by the creek, peels 
a layer of moss off a stone before
placing it in his mouth)
(inert a boy not swallowing)
there are good things
that come from heaviness
the way the whole earth might
laugh under the feet of a dinosaur 
the way the earth might
laugh when i lay down 
& ask again 
if i am real
i do not know how many
stones there are to eat
or how i will perfectly fit them
in a measuring cup
but i will find a way 
& i do not think i will ever
be a person cured 
of all my (insert a list 
of sadness here)
but i am placing
a rock in my mouth & 
not swallowing

old city 

there is a woman 
crumpling pages of
library books & hanging them
with fishing wire from the 
cherry blossoms
i listen to the soft 
crush of each page as she
squeezes paper in her fist
ringers on her fingers clink
as she works
i watch & she lives inside
a tapestry someone 
at a library tried to tell me about
said there are panes of fabric 
each capturing a different era
of the city 
one behind the other
pull them down & you 
could find older & older city
i tugged
the great clothes loose
each hitting the tile floor
with a slump 
dust scattering 
the room thick with a hushed 
sticky mist 
breathing it in i tasted 
old buried city & came upon
the woman crumpling pages
& hanging them from 
cherry blossoms branches
straining she reached 
billowy sleeves & hair
made of dust 
it was the same someone
who told me about the tapestries 
who planted sewing needles
in the wooden floor of library 
she ran fingers up & down 
the spines of books there
& each time she did i 
felt it as if it were my own spine 
i sat to watch her work 
& asked her what she was doing
with those pages
she didn't turn to acknowledge me
just kept on decorating
& children swarmed her
to pluck the pages
stuffing them into their mouths
hungry small beings
the city was 
just this tree back then i think 
no tenement houses 
no streets of plastic trash 
no sirens shouting themselves apart 
no libraries just library books 
& this women tearing them apart
i touched the tapestry & 
without warning it fell 
a gasp of soot
heavy soot filling the air
i waved my hands & behind
tapestry was nothing
truly nothing 
no just blank a kind of opening 
that only the old bones 
of the city knows 
i somehow leave 
back on a street & all the blooming trees
have shed themselves already
their browning petals 
on the sidewalk 
i pick up a handful 
& put it in my mouth 
let it sit in there until they
turn to paper
consider taking it out of 
my mouth to read 
but instead swallow & 
keep walking 

small god  

all year round,
i find plastic easter eggs 
hidden everywhere.
on windowsills, on grocery store shelves,
in the crook of dogwood tree branches,
and i think i'm the only one
the sees them.
at first 
i purposefully ignored the eggs,
assuming they were intended 
for some else.
even in my home 
i told myself 
there must be a child here
i don't know about.
or these must be a gift
a different tenant left here
for another 
not me though.  
recently though something
has changed in me.
it wasn't subtle,
it was hungry & anxious.
walking home from the train
i saw a pastel pink one
in the street & swiped it up.
i already needed more.
feeling the capsules all over,
they were staring 
blank eyes.
i shook the egg to try 
to guess what it was hiding
with each shake
the rustling would be different.
once like a rattle snake tail
then a bell
then a handful of sand.
i did not open it,
just needed more of them.
got shopping bags & swept the house,
filling bag after bag
then out into the town
street by street.
green egg blue egg yellow egg.
i got strange looks & tried
to show off the eggs but other people
just saw that emptiness.
they shook their heads, confused
at my bags of air.
i reassured myself they must 
just have their own eggs.
i got this vision of the whole world
as a scheme of overlapping 
piles of eggs.
each day we're just 
trudging through them, kicking 
other people's plastic eggs 
around without knowing it.
i made a nest for the eggs
from pillows & i laid down
on top of them.
no i don't think they'll hatch
into birds but i think
they might hatch into something.
or maybe they'll hatch into nothing
erase themselves
to re-hide. i keep them warm
so they know it's okay to 
have nothing to give.
i don't open them myself
because i want to be patient.
i want to  be a good 
kind person. 
i do let myself clutch 
them in my hands
one egg at a time.
i swear i feel a small god
in there. maybe he hides
the eggs. maybe he is the eggs.
maybe he's hatching.
i keep collecting the eggs
shaking them every once in awhile
to check on the possibility
there might be something.

graveyard 

angels must lay down like this
in perfect rows
splayed out specimen
fingertip to fingertip
bellies to the dirt
a kind of reptile funeral
metal & asking to be kept awake 
i want to be buried 
as a B52 in 
one of the aircraft bone yards
near where you lived in arizona
i have to walk 
all the way there 
this is a migration 
following only the highway signs
my phone turns into a beetle 
& snaps itself in half
there's a fatal theme
in tonight
a longing 
to find wherever they 
still have open land
away from every single city
until they mash together 
in the distance 
collapsing stars
i arrive & pace between the rows
of bones
foot prints in the reddish dirt
put my hands to the wings of the plane
& tell them they can 
be birds if they want to
they don't just have to wait 
for a military man 
to cox flight out of them again
i want to lay down 
& wait for someone to come 
tell me the same kinds of truth 
but i don't
i do this for the plane 
& they listen
aching creaking hollow bones 
i rub their wings 
till they break open with feathers
giant blue jays &
birds of prey all yellow talons
& all the other song birds 
& an owl with the face 
of a sundial
they fly away & i'm left
with their graveyard 
i lay down
& try to become
a sleeping plane
gust of wind 
i divide into perfect 
even rows
come find me i want 
to be birds

in between fingers 

in about three days
all my nail polish comes off 
in flecks
a pollen scattering
or gust small strawberry seeds 
i'm thinking about all the places 
i've left these chips of gold nail paint 
if they might grow something 
in my absence
sliver of pigment
crinkles of color
buried in a sofa 
or square of speckled carpet
a small tree growing
in the shape of a hand
taking root
waving & asking 
to grab onto someone else
asking for a bracelet 
or ring to wear 
a small hand in the shape
of a tree
i remember the bonsai 
i had for a few weeks
as a kid
how somehow it bloomed 
sticky yellow pollen
how that pollen 
made flowers bud & burst 
all over my face 
how i picked the flowers
in the mirror & tossed
them in the trash
how i wove my fingers 
into the braided trunk 
of the bonsai 
as a kind of handshake
or hand holding
all my many hands 
now growing all over
scattered by my nail polish
i close i eyes &
try to move all the dozens
of fingers
imagine one in a small pot
like the bonsai
& maybe my bonsai tree
grew from someone else's 
chipped nail polish
& they felt me 
press my hand around there's 
i hope i spread pollen
& the flowers rupture 
from the floor
& the walls &
in between fingers 

and i plant daffodils
to remind myself it's spring
but also to show my neighbors 
that i know about the color yellow
and that there is still a corner of me
that has smile teeth.

you tell me with my old face
my crooked was more visible
and in the horizon my blue retainer
dips like a memory 
of a different face i'll never have.

i wonder what the house is for.
what my teeth are for
if i smile for you and i eat for you
and i tuck yellow under my tongue for you.

pull them out and plant
them in the dirt for the worms
to make sense of. i smile to let
all the yellow out. pick the daffodils
and smash the petals 
in my fingers

before saying i'm sorry daffodils
i took this all out on you.
i never wanted to own a house.
i buried the blue retainer
maybe in someone else's mouth.

something 

i had a dream they took out my uterus
& handed it to me.
it was an ornate vase
& i asked, "what am i supposed 
to do with this?"
& the doctor shrugged
he was in a suite & tie &
had lavender gloves
he suggested i use it to collect something.
i stuck my hand in deep to see 
if there was already anything in there,
found a ring i lost maybe four years ago
& i wondered how it got there.
silver claddagh waiting
scraping up against the glass 
lining of the vase.
it had something to do with hope, 
i think a uterus does even if you 
take it out 
& discover it's 
a shoe box or an urn or a vase.
i tried other items, starting
with buttons, snipping them off
all my clothes so that i would
have more. clear buttons, black buttons,
brown buttons, red buttons, all of them
inside the vase, i thought they might
transform, i thought that might 
be the point of the strange object
but nothing happened. i slept 
holding the vase & imagining
what it was like inside me
what kind of objects it hungered for.
i talked it, i told the vase that
i was sorry this was how 
everything had to happen. 
i bought flowers after flowers
to let sprout from the vase's mouth:
lilies, carnations, roses
& i'd keep asking 
the uterus, "are you happy?"
but the vase wouldn't respond.
emptying out the greenish stem-water 
left over from the flowers 
i stuck my hand in again
only this time i felt an ache
in my chest as i did, a kind of 
phantom connection, a hand under skin.
i wept, it was something about hope
for something; a hand searching
under skin for lost objects,
the ring like a kind of opening
for beetles or other insects
to crawl through. i was scared 
it might always be like this
if i kept the thing around.
i had to  break it.
no, not in the driveway or the street,
a push from the counter in the kitchen
where all glasses & plates 
will eventually shatter.
the pieces on the floor like 
teeth of an unknown monster.
i apologized to the uterus
as i cleaned up its pieces.
i took a bowl from the cupboard 
& began filling it with buttons
out of habit or maybe
some kind of hope. from the buttons 
grew the stems of flowers,
only the stems.

someone laughing 

i fed you with a tablespoon
from the bowl of rainbow sprinkles
because we were hungry & that 
was the only thing left in the house.
the crush of their shells
in your teeth; their colorful
exoskeletons gone to sugar powder.
i watched the mashing
the way your chewing made a mess
of the colors, 
is there a word for what happens
when you blend together
every color? a collapse of rainbow;
a significant
greenish brown. a stain glaring
down the middle of your tongue.
& the sprinkles scurried,
insects only hatched 
when someone somewhere 
laughs so hard that they cry.
i want to make you laugh
so hard that you cry
so i clink the spoon 
against my teeth,
keys of xylophone,
they play & you recognize
the song. you ask if i 
want any sprinkles 
if i want a turn eating 
& i tell you no that
i want to feed you sprinkles 
sunup sunset until your 
teeth also turn to insects
each a new color not found yet 
like butterfly sight
& your scared because i ask
so much of you &
i'm raising the spoon
& the sprinkles are crawling
all up my arm, won't stay still,
want to crawl all over us
& you ask if someone is laughing.
i say yes there is always
someone laughing.
you ask is it me?
& i'm not sure if you are.
i look again at your teeth,
each becoming a thick colorful beetle
& crawling out of your head.
you know how you never mean
for things to really happen?
that's how i feel, i feel
like i didn't mean to do this
i just wanted to know 
what would happen. 
i put the spoon in your hand.
there's still a few sprinkles 
in the bowl.
i say feed me, go ahead you 
can feed me now.
you shake your head 
& pull the bowl closer
to your chest. no teeth left,
you smile 
like a sliced peach
saying, 
these are mine.