animation

in the flickering dark 
outside the subway car window 
a piece of graffiti frolicked. 
an image animated, frame by frame:
a purple body against a white background,
springy legs, rubber ball head, pulsating creature 
the drawing danced outside our car for several
seconds, then receded into long hollow of the tunnels.

i have spent the last few days
imagining the kind of person who would
make a piece like that, climbing down 
into the subway's damp mouth,
a backpack full of color, deciding
to make a film reel out of the rushing trains.
listening to their approach, hiding
in between each line made on stone.

i think of my uncle taking a sticky note book 
and showing my how to draw 
a little rubber ball at the bottom
of each yellow square so that it would bounce
when you flipped through the whole pad.
we bought dozens of notepads,
repeating the same little animation game,
all the while thinking, 
look we can make drawings alive. 

then of course there's all those movies,
the ones where people drew every single frame, 
i see all the hands filling in cinderella's dresses
over and over, blue and blue and blue 
and all the hands making birds to flit 
around snow white.

are there hands inside me like that?
making me body move like i do?
maybe a single being sneaks down into 
the night's damp hull to animate me, me: a purple man,
flickering out a subway window, dancing,
for fractions of a second  

handstands

i should be honest more often.
we walk through Washington Square Park
and dusk is blue today. i say 
that i'm glad i didn't go here for
college, that i would be so caught
up in the city. we watch three people
tossing a frisbee in a triangle.
the grass is scraggly, recovering 
from winter. i don't meant that though,
i wish i had moved to the city earlier.
i remember being eighteen and telling
an old boyfriend that i needed to go,
that i just needed to go and that we
would make the distance between us work.
we pulled up Google maps and saw the three
hours between us. i picked a closer 
school to home because of him.
i've tried several times to teach
myself how to do a handstand and 
none of them have worked out.
i get close, posed against a wall,
hands gripping at the carpet.
i might change my life if i could,
not because i don't like my life now, 
but because i'm prone to regret and nostalgia.
we stand there in front of the arch
at Washington Square Park and i imagine
a person big enough to stand in it:
a great big doorway. i think 
of all the people who we watched 
stepping out of their houses and
you saying, "look they're leaving
their houses! they here here!"
all the different types of doors:
white painted and brass door knobs,
rusted edges and silver hinged, and
the glass door lobbies with doormen 
i imagine trying to do a handstand
in the archway of a door to our 
apartment in the village. i imagine
trying to do a handstand in the 
Arch at Washington Square Park.
maybe i would be in the background
of some passing tourist's photograph.
they might assume i'm a local
because of the unabashed strangeness 
of my handstand, pointing to me
years later, my body clear against
the blue dusk, and wondering, "what kind
of life do you think he has?"

X-Ray Fitting

Dad says that when he was little
they used to X-Ray your feet 
at the shoe store to check if 
your new shoes fit right. Peering down 

through the microscope-like eye piece,
he'd see the bones, moving them up &
down, two wriggling rainbow trout.
His bones glowing back at him, smiling

toe knuckles. The nails, white petaled
flowers grinning up at him, saying
this is what you are inside, luminous bone,
rocks under skin walking across rocks

outside of skin. The meeting of stone.
I am probably heavier than I think.
When I look down at my feet I see 
Dad's bones. I see a rock collection:

quartz and calcite. I put on shoes
and pace the hallway in my house, trying
to step back into the X-Ray machine, this time 
with my whole body. Laying down inside it, 

a clerk checking my whole skeleton to see
if it fits, if my whole skeleton fits.
It always feels tight, like my skin wanted 
to stretch across a smaller collection of gravel,

like someone tried to fit mountain ranges
in me. My feet turn into the bones 
of rainbow trout, so I let them sit 
in the bath tub practicing their gills.

I imagine Dad, a little boy in the backseat
on the car ride home with his new shoes. 
Does he cross his legs? No, he doesn't. 
He stares at his shoes, leather church shoes.

They're a little tight, he thinks and considers
taking them off, considers sitting there barefoot,
considers that his bones would be closer to being free. 
Glances down at his fingers, remembers they have bones too.

NASA Research Confirms Saturn is Losing its Rings

i ask the earth everyday 
what it feels like to have creatures
crawling across her
what kind of company 
an organism can be
i want
just one
if i could have just a single 
warm body 
i might believe the
colors of my surface
i would name that animal
tell them stories about how
i've watched all the other planets
the earth with its blue blue bones
angry red-eye jupiter
uranus
her light quiet halo
i want to give her everything:
the words i've spoken towards solar glow
the pieces of space & star i've collected 
to make myself less lonely
i don't want to hoard particles anymore
you can't take these things
with you when you fall into yourself
our lives are too short for that
i imagine the pieces finding their way
to her collection
her rings growing thicker & thicker
as i watch from a distance
as i speak towards her 
hoping one or two words 
land close enough
for her to know me
i ask the sun as i turn
why he made us so so far apart
i run my fingers through my rings
touch space objects
to feel alive
i imagine all us bodies
close together
our competing gravities
our memories rippling in each other's skin 
all the animals on earth
i could reach down
add them to my rings
tell them how much 
i have loved them
how their short determined lives
have made me want give away 
my objects
replace them 
with organisms
earth tells me
their bodies are warm

the world unravels uniquely for each of us

static grows like moss outside
the window, an angry mass & i ask 
you to look out for me, tell me what's 
happening on the street. you describe
a scene between a man & a woman, they're
talking & they have so many elbows.
they have an upside down dog with eight legs.
i tell you to describe more, tell me 
what the trees are doing & you say
they've all turned into nests for
the hoards of giant egrets walking
slow & measured on the sidewalk. 
egrets would make better people than us
i think & i say that that's enough for
today, because i don't want to hear anything
more about what happens on the TV.
i want just the house. i know the house
& i count the walls for you. i say
one, two, three, four, five, six, seven...
each week or so it grows a new wall & we don't
know how to keep decorating. we hang plates
up, nail them to the farthest wall
which is about a ten minute walk.
the plates look like white pupil-less eyes 
from far away where i ask you 
can sleep for three more days? the alarm clock
just a kitchen timer, clicking as i hold you,
it makes me feel like a bomb & you turn
into a purple stuffed rabbit
or you were always a purple stuffed rabbit.
the windows were always big bold TVs like
the ones i only saw in appliance stores,
no one actually owns TVs that big
i had thought, until they were my windows.
the news behind the static tells muffled
stories about the sun escaping 
our solar system & the planets running scared
like fat beetles, leaving while 
she can. this reminds me that reality
unravels different for each of us.
i wonder what your house looks like
or if you are actually just a purple rabbit
propped up on my bed. if you can hear
the news. maybe your floor is sand.
maybe your floor is grass. maybe you 
are one of the egrets, stalking the streets
learning to live in the radiation of 
a cracking planet. i ask you what
you would do if you only have one
more day on earth & you just stare 
at me with the black bead eyes. 
i tell you that i would open
the door & let the static if i
knew it was my last day. i bet
it feels like a world of gnats 
all over the skin. three more days,
yes three more days, i tell myself.
crawl back in bed, hold you tight
to my chest, listening to the static
growing thicker & thicker. 

i begin with the lights 

middle of the night
throw covers on the floor
skin tells me to start
right now
this instant
right now
or it's too late 
conserve electricity
running out 
keep it safe
in mason jars
or clay mugs
i dreamed there was
no energy left
on the whole planet,
a big dead battery
leaking acid 
from its core
we drink the acid
to stay alive
i begin with the lights
flicking them off
one by one,
like shutting eyelids
letting the darkness work its way
into the living room
it's eager rush on insect feet
the shadow 
on shadow on shadow 
i think to myself 
this is what
the world would
look like without our
bulbs & our neon signs 
& our headlights
a mass of animals
making lives in the dark
some with vision that 
cuts through the blackness
i want to make a life
in the dark
i ask god for better
evolution but he's still 
asleep so i move on 
to shutting off the rest
of the house
the hot water 
& the heater
& the fan which i keep on
24/7 just for a calming sound
without the fridge running 
the white machine 
stares like a carcass 
so i eat all the food that will
go bad out of it
& lay it on it side,
a sort of burial,
with my house finished
i move on to the others 
on my street,
entering in through the basement
where all organs of the house are
i mutter to myself
about how much energy each 
of us here have been eating,
i see it in the air,
leaking out, its viscous & blue
i try to catch it 
as it trails away but it
leaks right between my fingers
like a puff of smog
make make the whole street
dark & quiet
i stand in the road, 
turning in careful circles
taking it all in,
my beautiful conserved street
no energy leaking out,
only the steady stream 
that travels 
from each of our electric mouths
i watch mine, a trickle 
up into the clouds,
go back into my house
& stare out the window
until the sun comes up

inflatable mattress

i wanted to train myself
to be able to sleep anywhere
so i bought an inflatable mattress,
made lists of all the places nearby 
where i should sleep, starting
with the 7/11 up the street.
plugged the pump in the corner 
& watched the soft grey cushion 
fill with air. people went about
there everyday business, most pretending
not to notice & i curled up next
to the soda machines that groaned
& groaned & groaned. somewhere 
through the night at least one person always
gets in bed with me, at the 7/11
it was an old woman holding 
a carton of milk. she offered 
me some but i declined & then 
the manager joined us & told
us stories about his family
back home in an apartment 
in queens, the smell of tomato sauce
on their walls. we held each other
like only people can do who share
a temporary bed & i realized that
everyone's skin has a softness
to it, as if we were all filled with air.
the next place i went with the mattress
was the parking lot by the grocery store,
i had tried the store itself but
the bed got too crowded, people were
too eager to stay in bed with a stranger there.
in the parking lot i unscrew the light bulbs
of the lamp lights to make the place darker
& more cozy. the cart man who's job 
it is to wrangle stray shopping carts 
got in & told me that he should get 
one of these inflatable mattresses
in case some nights he doesn't feel 
like going home. we press into 
the mattress so hard with our conversation
that it begins to float & we join
the weak city clouds, mixed 
with smog, the grey of the mattress
blending in seamlessly with
the texture of midnight sky.
he tells me we should never
come down. we should sleep here 
forever & tell each other stories 
about all the lives we wanted
to live. i want to kiss him 
in a way i've never known before
not like a lover but like
a limb of my own 
i ruin it by telling him
that we do have to go down
that i have to go back 
that i have more places 
i want to sleep & he doesn't cry
but the mattress lowers
gentle & slowly back down
where we met in a parking space
under the phantom glow
of the Stop & Shop sign. 
he gets up & goes back 
to herding the carts, pretending
like he didn't see me 
& we hadn't gone anywhere
at all.

lent

i don't go to church anymore
so on ash wednesday i wake up
to the priest hovering over me,
the glint of his thick glasses
his dry wrinkled hand raised,
thumb ready to make the sign 
of the cross on my forehead
i shoo him away, open the window
for him to fly out,
all his white feathers
blowing around the room
in the bathroom mirror
i notice the sign of the cross
is already there, black dust,
a small plus sign 
an addition problem started
on my skin 
as if everything next
to me is being added together
i think 
door + window
i think
sun + walls
i wash the cross off 
but it keep coming back
the birds perched outside sing
what are you giving up for lent?
what are you giving up for lent?
and i say 
nothing, leave me alone!
and i go about the rest of 
my day thinking of what
i should give up until easter
remembering all the years 
i gave up candy 
or ice cream
what did god do with all that
candy and ice cream?
i imagine him with his feet up,
eating a bowl of vanilla bean 
and watching his shows at night
in recent years my uncle 
has been giving up beer 
and open the windows of his house
to let the birds in
they peck at his canvases
and they eat his canned sardines
he says the birds help distract him
from wanting to drink
he paces his downstairs,
back and forth, counting how many
steps from one side of his house
to the other
if i did give something up
i would want it to be something
that would really get god's attention
something that would make god 
nestle in his arm chair 
and say
i want to watch
this human
until i find of something like that
i'll touch the chalky plus sign 
on my forehead
and think about what 
i should add to my body this lent
plus feathers
plus running faucet water
plus white lotion
plus bare feet
plus i want to like my hair
plus i want to like my skin
plus i want to like my fingers
counting each of them each morning
to remember what i am

to the snow mound in the super market parking lot

growing
cold gritty mountains
we stare up from my small 
shuddering green Volvo
you ask me what happens when
they run out of places 
to put the snow 
& i tell you about 
the time when i was
in middle school that it
snowed for nearly a week
& no one went anywhere 
& all the windows 
of the house turned white
i thought we'd be buried 
house & all
& somewhere inside
i want that to happen again
want to watch the sky
endless & spilling snowflakes 
the size of mice
we stare up at the dirty snow mound 
& i want to climb it with you
i think of the monstrous
piles after that storm
& my mom warning my brother & i
not to try & scale them
i want more than that though
i want to dig inside
using a gardening shovel,
tunnel to the center
of the snow-mound 
in the supermarket parking lot 
& see how long i can live inside
a temporary world
cold & slick with slow melting
i could give you a tour 
& together we could 
remember warmth
speed up process of snow 
becoming liquid
drip from the ceiling
the gravel of the road collecting
all on the floor
we could sort through it at night
to see if we could find 
any shopping lists or 
misplaced earrings
in the last days my world
would be very small
the pile just the size
of a curled up pig 
hiding its face 
inside 
knees tucked into my chest
a new kind of burial 
the walls melting 
on my back 
a boy on all fours
in the parking lot where
the snow used to be 
come take me home &
tell me that it 
will snow again soon 
remember for me how tall
the snow was 
that i lived in

mystery machine

standing at the mirror
i trace my finger around 
the seam where my face is
attached to my skull & consider
peeling it off
remembering the ending of
each episode when someone 
would be unmasked, faces torn
off in one careful twist of Velma's hand
how easily the mask turns into 
a leaf & blows off screen
i had a plastic mystery machine 
& dolls of all the gang shoved inside
on my hands & knees pushing them
around the kitchen floor, towards
another mask, i wanted all 
my mysteries to come free with
the pull of a hand at the corner
of a face, i try to pull, i do
but my face refuses, stares
back at me & declines to be plastic
i wanted to go with them 
in their blue & orange & green van,
traveling far away from 
family & hometown &
all obligation to live in one place,
moving fingers over necks
putting clues into mouth
& chewing them till 
they turned paper 
girls who grew up like me 
always knew we were Velma,
thick orange sweater &
glasses reflecting faces 
back to everyone she met
i am want to be her now more 
than ever, lining up everything
knowing who i can put my hands on
to reveal everything
i look at strangers now
& wonder whose faces 
would come free if pulled just right
i see them tumbling 
into the street, the faces,
shopping bag ghosts
i pull at my own face 
each day now
& sometimes it comes free,
but i always settle it 
back into place
i don't want 
to see yet