avenue there's too many so many people living on my street & it's night time. the sidewalks as belt loops thatching us together. clapping in the windows can indicate a birthday. whoever's birthday it is i hope the cake is chocolate or at least has a frosting rose. how old are you now? pastry boxes stacked on top of each other-- tumbling. the cars conduct themselves, their seamless migration back & forth to either side of the street. the porches shared by squirrels & cigarettes. mailboxes wishing everyone could sleep so they could read the mail aloud. my house gets mail for people who no longer live here. John & Lindsay & Olivia wherever they may be. the stack lives inside the door in case they return. a box of pizza grows legs & rings a doorbell. the grass itches & asks for bare feet. do birds sleep? a pigeon on my stoop eating a kernel of star. the planets are so tired here, new york city a hot tongue in the horizon. but here is my street, lit yellow windows, headlights crawling on the walls, a stroller pushing itself. someone's baby is crying, someone's dog without a collar. the thai restaurant whose back door is opening & closing & opening & closing. the dumpster fat with broken furniture. i don't think people stay here long. the driveway jammed four cars deep. an ambulance snoring. i don't know how long i will stay here. wednesday is a kind of mother, lugging trash to the curb. the green man full of bottles. black plastic bags. night time walkers are either ghosts or restless or hungry or all three. i looked down when they walk by so they won't see me from the white plastic chair on my porch. my street has so many people.
testify
Dear Christine Blasey Ford, i first knew that an ovary was an appendage when i felt it make a fist. to bear witness, to bare a body. god is made of wood & he knows us machines. i want to make sense for you. the boys who have been boys & will die boys who i will maybe someday summon me. i have never reported a rape & so the word turns into an ouroboros in my mouth. the snake eating its tail. around & around & around with teeth. this shouldn't have to be you. this shouldn't have to be me. but it was. it was it was it was. so it was. & we should not have to meet like this. in the belly of a beached whale that is justice. there is, as always, just us. i do not know you but there is a polygraph under the obelisk, the truth is a ring in the mouth of an intruded body. i'm here to tell you he was 17 & i was 15 & my fist has not let go of the name. he said she said he said she said she said she said she said she said & said & said & said i said i want a bed that doesn't remind me of gabbles. the smack. the throws. a thank you dissolves cherry throat. this isn't a thank you, this isn't where we'll meet, this is a benediction, on the skin as evidence call alchemy call a fact fucked in half & call that half her. call saint agnes & agatha & always always always joan.
09/26
several tongues i couldn't help myself but lick each knives instead of washing them off in the sink, a tongue split in two, one escaped on the tile floor. i should be more careful but i'm old now. the sink full of submarines & the garbage disposal a handful of teeth. this happens all the time, i lose them & live curious about their possible return. the vermin they are. i know their feet & their white bellies, the soil on their skin. when no one is watching that's when hunger takes over-- when the plate congregates with chicken bones & all the old tongues quiver, contemplate returning home. i know they want to. how many times has my mouth made divisions? the collision of language-taste, the word "calliope" always leaves everything tasting like cantaloupe. i feel each & every tongue, so many under the top soil. other ones hide in potted plants & under pillows with all the baby teeth that have yet to be collected. i've become accustomed to the aluminum taste of blood, to dabbing my mouth with a wad of toilet paper. they always leave no matter what i feed them. i open the fridge to take out slices of un-orange cheese. i eat an orange & lick the juice off my forearm & the counter, take a Clorox wipe & press it to my face. i will clean (punish) the tongue if it insists on escape. the serrated knives, drawing my pink skin across. a loaf of bread. slice & slice & slice. aluminum foil, wrapped up. these are leftovers. the swimming in roots. they won't be coming back, i know this at least.
On Piercing
Again, my father throws back the bluegills,
only, this time with my brother & the lake.
The holes in my earlobes; gaps my skin fills.
open close, open close: the algae ache.
only this time with my brother & the lake.
my lip, the landline, & the 32 size hook.
open close, open close: the algae ache.
Our yellow house in the telephone book.
my lip, the landline, & the 32 size hook.
If I die, let me return a sunfish.
Our yellow house in the telephone book.
caught by the septum, oh aberdeen wish.
If I die, let me come home a sunfish.
The holes in my earlobes; gaps a hook fills
caught by the septum, oh aberdeen bliss.
So, yes, my father throws back the bluegills.
09/25
did you sleep well? press flat into a cover. boys with no sheets. boys falling off bunk beds-- the floor of the rain forest where the jaguar is shadow & lavender. the springs cobra coiled, i let you out, seeping onto the floor board-- the smoke of a dragon. what do i keep under the bed? i keep dried rose petals & nettles & other means for burning. i wait for you to fall asleep to mark the door with lamb's blood. my mother first told me the story of the angel of death-- when i picture her i imagine the angel as a woman with no eyes-- just holes that turn into the long hallway in my parent's house-- the longer longer longer hallway. you stand at the end but you become the closet-- your shoulder, a door knob. please sleep well. i promise there is nothing here-- just a boy in his backyard-- cold & damp with dew. the first born son, a kind of talisman around the neck of a house. i coax the snakes back into the mattress, i do this with dead mice. they still snap at me & i tell them that you're sleeping. pillowcase promise that you recognize me even in the dark of the room-- that the spoon in the sink is a boy. that the glass of water on the end table is full of lips. i take mine off & hang them above the bed, placed with a single thumb tac, cover them with my hand & tell them hush.
09/24
koi i watched the men come to feed the koi fish outside the library. they aren't impatient, they eat out of hand with please-let-me-kiss-you mouths. the water pours, a running sink. i wonder if the fish sometimes look up & contemplate the building. i want to kneel by the water & read to them, tear out the pages of an old book & let them float in the water. i'd start with the pages of a dictionary, the letter 'A' like a building. would they contemplate moving there-- to a place with such an angled roof. the people come & go. i think that in another life that you were a koi fish. i don't know exactly why i say this, but when i see the fish all congregated in the water i imagine myself stepping in, kneeling, kissing you on the forehead. it could be something about the way your body flows-- a gust, a fist full of wind chimes. i could ask you to reach up & unscrew the moon but it's already in the water. maybe we both were. i touch the surface with only one finger-- the ripples, a new quiet species. the koi, writing their verses on the library windows. their language of mouth & air. a tail rhythm. there's one koi fish with a great red dot on its forehead & you told me that she would be sought after in japan: Tancho Kohaku. i ask her to borrow the sphere & she hands it over eagerly. i keep it in my pocket in case we ever need another sun. i could make it into a ring & slip it onto your finger while you're asleep. will you tell me stories, tell me fish stories? i'll tell you mine-- the lamps along the walk way obscuring in the water, a ripple as a necklace.
breadcrumbs
on the stone back stoop, someone always leaves bread crumbs. piled, a modest mountain, come thieves, eat bread crumbs. not everyday, but often. naan & ciabatta. an offering y platanos, being bread crumbs. the stale baguette was for the chickadee children & i met pigeons, they ask, who brought these bread crumbs? i sit with the birds, i tell them about my love. they heard rumors that humans live off of bread crumbs. course we do, but i lied & said we eat meatloaf. a bare stoop, where, broken down, there had been bread crumbs. i wonder about you, where you make your bread crumbs & why you leave them. visit me, let's be bread crumbs.
09/23
An Ode to Absences to the empty squares on a chess board that remind us of dead rooks. an empty castle-- hollow, without any paintings on the walls. the school-day in november when i had a fever & stayed home. dad dropping goldfish crackers in tomato soup. the taste of grape medicine & the weather channel walking into the living room through the television, wearing a saxophone for a necklace. this is where you laid two nights ago. where i used to have a bowl of oranges. where the bird feeder hung from the porch. this is where my body feels incomplete. what i would do if i were clay, go back to genesis, to our god who works in absences. his knights & bishops. a diagonal world. i trace my hand across my chest & tell you about all the things i would change. about the backyard where i would plant a spearmint bush. about pulling the freckles off my face like strawberry seeds. there's anyway some kind of basement. i want to learn to worship unfilled spaces, to leave more vacancies. the fridge door, left open & all the deli meat coming alive. white wearing dream-- where the mason jars are hungry. where my mother is un-doing a row of knitting. where you sat in the passenger seat & brushed against my hand, a stoplight. a wrong turn. a bowl in the sink left to soak. alone in my room i hold onto your disappeared places, take ink & draw your old outlines all over the walls, the floor, the porch, the kitchen cabinets. they're calling for autumn & a fit of rain. the living room says so. there is where we stood, where a banana rested on top of the fridge. i lay in your silhouettes & pray. you asked me why & how i could consider myself a catholic. the space between rosary beads. the candles blowing out-- a tongue of fire across my neck. oh absence, oh ghost.
the deceleration of color
life is a series of distances away from the first image. clear & bold as i remember. the old water tasted deeper & you wouldn't know. not yet. when i was born there was a circle cut out above us from which all the ocean poured. it was dry & all the fishes thrashed about, gasping. a hovering silver pitcher. the hunks of ice we mistook for lovers. the first stage of distortion involves falling victim to blue-- i'm sickened by it. what else is there though, really? freezing is a proximity, the edge is us & then the bottom of the world where no will go, that is god. he is blue. he is cruel, we know. slowly, gently pulling sight from us. he is also made of eyes. cold & stone, a clasp of coins, turning, dissolving in the salt. what you spend your vision on will never be enough. invent a language & eat it. crouch in a room made of your grey skin. occupy yourself there. become illegible to the others, it is best to listen only for flavor, the rest is dull. don't leave me, not yet. no one else will know your body like me. you must not measure age, that is crucial. i counted the sun for 200 years until i could no longer perceive it, time & light have nothing for me. left with these ghosts resemblances, flickers of yellow & green. my mother has become passing metal. the bones of a fur-creature moaning in me-- a hull. tell me then, please, what do i look like? describe me. you sound too fast to be alive, oh grey child. your eyes are cut out of the sky. how deep do you go today? you smell so so blue.
09/22
when i say i want to paint your nails i mean... i want to show you what girlhood looked like living in me. a mason jar of clovers. an escaped shoe lace. a snapped hair tie. on days like this my hair grows back all at once, down to the floor. the opening of an artery, an apology & an apothecary. there's Advil in the medicine cabinet, what hurts? i use craft scissors on the hair, kneeling in the bath tub. once removed i put the strands in an envelope & mail my hair back to myself. a new address, a sleepover. i invite you & wear a doorbell around my neck, a choker. a headband halo. i mean i want to know if love is a matter of bodies or a matter of time & place & proximity. if there is something tunneled in me, a sea shell or maybe a cough of mango perfume. something that you could have recognized. i take my nails off one by one, orchid faces, she loves me she loves me not she loves me she loves me not she love me i mean the nail polish tastes like grape medicine & sometimes like maple syrup. i mean in the morning my mom will make chocolate chip pancakes & i'll wear pink & black pajamas & i have a bunk bed. i mean there's a nightlight that reminds me still of god. i mean, pick a color. i want to show you this. the foundation pouring from my face & into the sink, blood mascara-- eye lash wings beating, buzzing on the bathroom window. what do you love in me now? is it the glass marbles, the fork, the finger nails?
