two

no one tells the truth about the ark.
the animals did not come in twos.
instead, they rushed. five giraffes 
& three turtles. a woman with the face
of a cliffside. noah was actually not even
on the ark. instead, he stood outside.
not a martyr but something else.
a tired man whose hands had long ago
turned into voles. they tell us the creatures
came two by two because the story
is both gender & end-times propaganda. 
there were no bulls on the ark.
the cows had to invent a way to survive.
in the dripping after-times
we carve what we must from our bodies.
god did not even mean to flood the earth. 
no one means to flood the earth
but then it is coming & we are the horrible 
& the too much. noah was his last ditch effort
to make a story out of a mistake.
there will always be noahs. hammers 
& nails. the belly of a great vessel 
that somehow can never carry quite enough.
what the story also doesn't say is that
he built most of the ark in the rain.
thunder & hail. a donkey who kept
coming back to bring more wood. the frogs
who sang in the downpour. there was no order
to the boarding. creatures arrived as he laid planks.
he did not have a family. just a love for the future
that he would not even find himself in. 
a final latch. the wind tilting the trees. 
five dogs. a haggard old person. a two-headed goat
& an intersex deer, antlers still velvet. 

birthstone

we shared rubies
in the house without a roof.
my aunt watched the phillies
while i would sneak into
the poster room where
they said my uncle used to sleep walk.
his hand prints are still 
on the ceiling. 
i was only the size of grain of rice. 
on most days, i still am.
a good breeze will take me somewhere else. 
our birth days were only three days
apart. i believe in birthstones
more than astrology.
the yearning for a color
trapped in the earth's ugly fist.
i refuse to believe the truth.
that a room of money people
picked the rocks. 
can we salvage it from them?
probably not. late-stage capitalism
is not a graveyard; it is a pit
of hair. but i do know my aunt joan
looked best in that laughing red.
not a garnet. not a blood stone.
a ruby. a fearless tooth in the mouth
of an unraveling earth. she was sometimes
the only one who listened to me. 
rooms of cousins. we sat away
in the quiet shag carpet rec room.
did not ask questions. just let me tell 
her all the nothing stories
i wanted. one day she gave me
all her birthstone jewelry.
little velvet clams & inside
a pair of earrings. a necklace. 
a stuffed bear. i slipped inside their colors. 
sometimes i woke up in her hair. i still do. 
the smell of roses & blow-dryer. 
i don't know where the jewelry went.
passing from room to room.
it is not lost. it can't be lost.
maybe a seed for a future
vein. maybe i swallowed them
when i wasn't looking. 
maybe when she died
she did not just go to the soil
but to the stone. something about
her fingers still moving 
when the light comes without
any teeth. 

entry fee

as far as i know
they are still trying to get
aunt joan into heaven.
the family pays for 
a mass each year where
like coins in an endless machine
everyone
besides me because i am a heretic
go & mumble little paper airplanes 
at the sky. i am told there is
a threshold
where you have been prayed for enough
that something shifts.
i like to imagine it like a puzzle door
in tomb raider.
she was a small women with 
hair dyed orange right up
until the end. she had alzheimer's 
& sometimes she would just
hold my hand & weep.
i loved her more than the other aunts.
she was always the one to make jokes.
the one to come with me
& sit on the porch while i picked
crabapples. i refuse to believe 
that there is some kind
of entry fee even into an afterworld.
i want to know where those prayers go though.
no to her. she is in the water 
& the crabapples & sometimes,
on the right year, she's in 
the backyard pear tree. the prayers, they spin
like flipped quarters. heads or tails
without a bet. i do not pray for her.

executive order

i'm not afraid of kings. 
i take my orders from the sycamore 
& the ghost coyotes who stalk
the corn fields at night. i bend down
to the sage bush & tell her i do not know
anymore what to try to heal first.
there are the ruts in the driveway
from the trucks & the rain. there are
the men who marry their guns.
there is that family member 
who disappeared into a river of fake gold.
his teeth fall out & he lives bathed
in screen light. an order means nothing
to the cat birds & so it means nothing
to me. an order means nothing to the
dandelions & so it means nothing to me. 
i do not know if this is a litany or
a spell i'm casting. i become less & less
sure about who knits the world
the older that i get. i know & believe
in water & spiders. in the brief feast
the wild raspberries offer on the ridge. 
i want to believe that we are enough.
we were not meant to live like this. 
crouching inside words until they bite down.
i have seen friends lose limbs to
a word. swallowed by a chasm between letters.
the desperate reach for the other side. 
i find more & more traps each day 
in this country. 
they do not think they are speaking 
prophecies. they are not false prophets.
they are something much worse. 
what is the opposite of a poet? what is
the opposite of a hearth? 
they think they can cut a deeper & deeper gash
between us & the mountain's shoulders.
she lies down like a sleeping bear. 
but i do not take their orders. 
i hold my gender like a honeysuckle.
drink the nectar. talk to the bees. 
there are still gifts they cannot take. 

vellum

last night at the circus 
someone was singing "sheep go to heaven
& goats go to hell." i have taken to only writing
on skin. in math class, when the neon 
used to eat my eyelashes i would use sharpie
on my thighs. a teacher with a pterodactyl face
said, "you're going to get blood poisoning."
she made me go wash the poems off.
the sharpie was too strong though 
& the ghost letters always whispered 
as i walked. vellum is a paper made from
animal skin. mostly, sheep. mostly babies.
calves & ewes. something about their softness
makes it easier to receive words. everything
is gospel if you are hungry enough. i ran 
a wild red light last night. i pulled over
on the side of the highway & made paper
a car-killed deer. she was still talking to me.
us both sapling girls. she had beetles for eyes. 
i wrote about my favorite moon, 
the honeydew one that drips nectar down 
into the little stream through our yard. 
breath like a spare tire. i buy a sharpie again.
lay down beneath the sycamore 
& start writing. a math teacher shows up.
i get her to poetry herself too & then
there is a flock of lost genders. the sheep come
but not the goats. the goats are the 
only animals who have discovered how 
to write without skin. they climb the trees
& bleat. if i had a third hand, i would use it
to free myself. i don't know where 
i would go. there would be a paper maker.
a blanket of vellum. a moon closing its eye.
then, the night. 

bat in the sacristy

it was late summer when we found her.
the priest had called early in the morning.
my father, a kind of make-shift grounds keeper
for the church.
he brought me with in the blue jeep, top off. 
our hair blew wild on the way over.
i was used to playing by limestone kiln
& the pavilions on the ridge
while my father planted flowers 
& pulled weeds at the feet of a mary statue.
sun cracked open & spread across corn fields.
i do not remember the priest ever smiling.
he was a quiet man. when we got there though he
was frantic. he waved my father over
& whispered to him. i waited in the vestibule.
ran my finger across the wooden poor box 
while the two of them disappeared
into the sacristy. i was an altar boy-girl
so i knew that place well. the drawers of candles
& the closet of robes. each year i went
a size up, working my way
to the back of the flock. i still believed
in god i think. i know at least that 
i still prayed sometimes. it is hard
to trace an exact moment when you 
bury a spoon. there had been
a bat. a small soft creature. my father caught her
with his bare hands. he was never afraid
of getting bit. i had watched him 
snag snakes & snapping turtles. 
this was no different. she did not make 
any noise. my father carried her our
the heavy doors of the church. i do not remember
what he did with her. i like to think
he let her go. i do not know if he did.
maybe she was sick & he laid her in the lamb's ear
for her to turn into weeds. maybe still
he carried her to the forest line & she 
found her way into the night there. 
however it happened, she was removed
& we piled back in the car to leave.
i wished desperately that dad had let me
hold her. i was convinced i could
have helped in a way he did not. 
a little god fallen from her house. 
at home i prayed a hail mary for the bat. 
dandelions grew. at some point we stopped
going to the church as much as we used to.
i wonder sometimes if my father stopped
believing in god too. i think that is
too grandiose. he doesn't think so definitively.
his hands around the lost bat
carrying her to the dark.  

eggs

i didn't tell you when the chickens stopped
laying eggs. first i found lemons
& then apples & bullet shells & even
a copy of a diary i wrote in during middle school.
the chickens were getting more & more
connected to a rift in time that runs
right through the middle of the yard.
they started to call my old name. the one 
with peach fuzz all over it. it was not them being
transphobic, it was them trying to call back
to a little knot in the depths of my sea weed.
i grew feathers. plucked them out. they came in
cinnamon just like some of the hens. 
i collected each harvest in a little basket.
still not eggs. you offered one day to go out
& check the coop for me. i stood up, panicked.
i said, "they are mine." you were offended 
& i didn't try to fix anything. instead i ran 
out to the coop. i locked myself inside
& hunkered down with the hens. they showed me
their shiny newest creations. a television &
a pocket knife. i asked them, "what made 
you stop?" they did not know. i told them,
"sometimes i don't know how to create anymore."
they laughed at me. a year or so earlier, a fox
had gotten into the coop. none of them were eaten.
i wonder what they told each other in the dark
while they waited for him to leave. he swallowed
all their eggs whole. one by one. i do not know
how it is that i still have more to lose.
i woke you up in the middle of the night. i took you
to the coop. it was full to the ceiling with eggs. the chickens
slept on top. you were confused but not angry.
you asked me, "why?" & i did not have an answer. 
i wish that the world didn't always come at me
in oceans. i take a shovel & dig at the earth.
i find eggs there too. there is still so much i do not
tell anyone. i still think the fruit was real. 
i ate that first lemon in the moon & it tasted
like lightning on a blue night. 

glass 

i resort to colors 
to try to talk about the world
magenta 
& cyan & even sometimes fuchsia. 
i get mauve for days 
& you make me put on a dress & dance 
for you. eventually, even the colors
go clear. i have a glass face & 
a glass flag & a glass house.
on the other side, the minnows
are trying to burrow
to the boiling center of the earth.
if i joined them maybe i would
get crystal & one day
walk around on someone's wrinkled
ring finger. tell me something
about the end that i haven't considered yet.
will there be soil to burry us in
or will that be too commodity for people
like us? you wash potatoes in the sink.
i have dreams full of isopods
in which i wake up screaming in lowercase.
the curry is good just like it always is.
soft yellow. a muted brown. 
i am told it is pride month. yesterday
i saw a cop give a little kid 
a badge sticker. they ran around.
i felt so burgundy & jet fuel. i got
all the birds on my side too.
they said, "you all are fruit punch red."
i couldn't disagree. the glass shatters
& i don't even know what broke.
it could be the car again or the house
or the tree that used to hold up
our little piece of sky. i keep all 
my old t vials. glass eyes in the beast. 
someday, someday, someday.

repeating itself

my father's records turn into bats at night.
i open a thousand cd cases & find no cds,
just the little carapaces where sound
used to live. my desire to gut a room
is hereditary. i carry a knife.
slit from neck down to baseboard. 
i look at houses & imagine us moving in.
the world has less finger nails every day.
i try to chew a walnut open & break 
the hinge off my jaw. i wish we would all 
take a whole week off. let the damn thing
crash. let the tomatoes get really angry
& the birds invent their own national 
anthems. the nights have turned licorice on me. 
i find beetles in the walls & just hope 
they go away. of course they don't.
they start reenacting the american revolution.
i let them have their flag & their horrors. 
freedom was always a trojan horse word 
for this country. inside crouching,
"hunger" & "knife" & "greed." when it rains
a little stream forms in the yard.
the frogs come to try & record a hit album.
it is too late. there are no more hit albums,
instead, we put teeth in our ears. try to hear
the bite-down when the flesh becomes break. 
i am surrounded by circles. the way next week
feels like this week just without any bioluminescence.
there are not enough outlets in the house
to plug in all my little gods. there are also too many.
i find my father with a tri-corner hat. 
he is holding a musket. he is barefoot.
the moon is casting lots 
with the visiting blue-face stars for his clothes.  

plague doctor

i ask my friends,
"how have you been keeping yourself
together?" i do not actually want
advice but i want to hear if/how
we are surviving. i look up designs
for a plague doctor uniform. 
needle in my teeth, i get to work. 
sew together old jackets. 
i stop sleeping. sleep is for a different time
with less fire & less windows.
i walk around outside in the uniform.
moon swimming like a jellyfish. 
on my phone more people are dying.
there are sleepless cities & rubble & ghosts. 
the long snout of the mask
was once filled with dried flowers
& perfumes. there is truth 
to bad medieval science. you cannot breathe
the dead air. if you do, the end will
take root in your bones & you will
be able to count your days
on one hand. i knock on doors.
i do not pay attention to the time. 
early bruised blue morning. 
some people are still pretending like
none of the terror will reach them.
i find them tending their lawns. hands & knees
worshipping the green. i try not to believe
that they are too far gone. but i know
they are. soon, they will be billboards
& i will drive underneath them. 
i breathe in the flowers. rose & lavender 
& a few fingers of dandelion root. the first person
who opens the door for me tells me,
"this is not my house." i hand them 
a needle & a thread & i say,
"i can show you how to make 
this body too." together we make
another robe & mask. we touch foreheads
beneath the lightning tree. they wander
off into the sprouting may corn field.
i go towards the sound of wind chimes.