goat grease 

we get warm as butter skin
in the larva sun. it has just stopped
raining & there are eyes in the mud
& eyes in the clouds & eyes 
blinking in tree knots. i pet the goats
until their grease gets on my hands &
i am one of them. we go 
uncover the wings from beneath
the old sycamore. the goats are laughing
& they ask me when i will grow horns.
i lie & say that i'm a nubian,
a hornless brother. at night i have seen
the goats stand on two legs
& walk up the road to an ancient fire.
i do not join them. instead, i walk around
with the grease on my hands. 
wait longer than i should to wash it off. 
savor the ripe grass smell. then, finally
in the sink, i scrub my fingers. 
see myself in the window above the sink.
me with a goat face or else a goat
on the other side of the window.
soon enough it will be morning
& everyone will have to be four-legged again.
it's hard to scrub the grime from beneath
each fingernail. i do. i try to be
human. it has never been easy. instead,
i am prone to brief & unsuccessful bouts 
as other species. as the moon dips herself
into a bathe of feathers, i go out
with buckets of sweet-smelling feed.
the goats speak & i call back, not knowing
what i'm saying. our throats like mud rooms.
i reach for them. stroke their thick coarse fur. 
their grease between my fingers. 

planned obsolescence

i take a picture with my dead people phone
& watch as it turns skeletal. once, i had a charger
that i could plug into my mouth to
keep me going all night. somewhere my 
old eyes are being dissected for usable glories.
i buy a phone. the phone starts bleeding.
i wrap it up with all kinds of bandages & gauze.
wipe my hands on my pants. learn to only
wear black so that the stains aren't as apparent.
someone says, "that used to happen to my phone
but then i got a new one & all it does
is laugh." i stare at their phone. i know that soon
it'll be just the same as mine. a sticky wound.
finally, the phone refuses to eat. 
i would hold my fork up & beg. i say,
"just one more day of honey." i can't even play
any games, just make calls. i call the clouds.
i call my dad. no stranger to obsolescence.
he talks with a corkscrew voice. i think of 
my next phone. my next computer. each
thinner than the last. soon they will tell you,
"here is your flesh." i do not want a new phone.
i don't want a new skin. i don't even want
a little game i just want to chew on something
salty & holy. i just want to hold my phone
& find everything i am missing. a portal. 
instead the phone finally stops time. 
makes statue garden of the world. i walk around,
cradling my stunning carcass. i see with me
other people & their bloody hands & 
their dead phones. one comes to me & says,
"did you know there are screams in there?
do you hear them?" i plug my ears. i don't
want to risk that kind of truth. instead, i get
a fresh tiny horror. it opens its eyes. bleats 
like a calf. i feel terror & relief. 

syrup cellphone 

i cup the sweet glob to try
to hear you. we were never really
long distance, were we? we were 
two veins of sugar dug from
the ant-ridden earth. i stand out
in the third day of rain. 
i want to the water to eat our
tether. let me be a shovel maiden 
in the silky dusk. instead, the syrup 
comes back. every faucet a cellphone
ready to make me talk about hunger.
as a kid sometimes when no one 
else was home i would take a spoonful
of maple syrup & fill my mouth.
let my head ring. gnats flocked 
from all around the house. my rotting
peach head. their thumbs full of children.
i still sleep in drains. think of the nights
when you called me over & over.
left voicemails. each a footprint 
in the mud. driving to a lover's house,
i would call you & leave message two.
do you ever wonder what would happen
if we had tried to eat it all? sick from sugar
maybe we would have turned 
into an ant hill. spilled from out throats.
found the queen & fed her too. 
i still always think i can empty myself
into the slow kind of liquid. take 
the shape of whatever kindness 
comes close. i see people who have regular
phones. i see them call their lovers.
facetime in a mall parking lot. each time zone
is a rosary bead. i would count them.
there you were with a bucket
at the throat of a tree.  

pill bug

i learned early how to turn my body
into a moon. how to bring my skeleton
to the surface until it turned exo. in the kitchen 
we talk about fear. the sun has
thousands of legs. i remember how
when startled, my father used to tease me
about how i always curled into myself
on the floor. a little pill bug. easy to swallow
but also easy to disappear. to slip into
a damp corner where i could check for wounds.
you say, "by the time you decide to leave
it will be too late." i am not a runaway 
kind of insect. instead, i brace myself.
i have learned to endure most kinds 
of horror. thumb prints leaving labyrinths 
on my flesh. the sound of glass breaking
in the sky. it has rained for days 
& i find hundreds of pill bugs. they roam across 
the side of house where the wood is probably
rotting & soon we will be soaked through
to the guts. i do not ask to join them.
instead, i play them a slide show
of the planets. they have never seen
anything but the sun & the moon.
they curl up to imitate mars & neptune. 
you sound exasperated with me when you beg
for us to look for places we can escape.
my reactions are blood-deep. this is my body
& i do not know how to leave it. 

clothing bin

i seek the disappear places.
pull my car over on the side of the 
licorice road to stuff bags of old clothes
into the mouth of a clothing donation bin.
i have never seen one emptied or open.
maybe there are black holes inside or maybe
there are just ugly clothes pressed against each other. 
when i am my saddest i like to think
of packaging myself up along with
musty jeans & dead sweaters. going 
with them into that metal dark. 
who knows how long they brace themselves 
for some kind of journey. i understand why 
so many religions have an element of waiting.
no one wants to arrive. to already be here.
maybe that is why i crave the parking lot
habitat. the wild trash. the sea gulls who long ago
turned in their ocean for a mouthful 
of rotten buffet. i don't actually want to be
carried away. i want to wait. i want to
hold my breath & consider a whole
new life. the socks dream of running feet. 
the bras of someone to hold. 
inside the bins, everyone can see just one
slit of light. sometimes on a glorious night
a traveler will come to deposit their face 
in the dark. the mouth will open & give us all
a glimpse of the stars. 

faux fur

do you ever feel like 
the hunted empty animal?
i come with a "cruelty free" label
& whisper to my wearers,
"you & i both know this is not true."
once as a girl my aunt 
who now i haven't seen in years
was wearing mink. deep brown fur
wrapped around her neck. i asked her,
"how do they kill them?"
she said, "it doesn't hurt." i think 
she was talking about herself.
flesh is always judged in proximity 
to its owner. pain, an element
kept inside perfume bottles.
weighty only in the mouth
of a shiny body. minks are mostly
raised in fur farms. little nests
of hurry. this is what i feel like sometimes
when every door becomes a knife. 
i wear a faux fur jacket & still manage
to feel like i am hiding inside
a different animal. i take it out to the yard.
stuff it with my organs & let it run around.
i weep. i am so happy to see my blood
doing something different than what
i'm doing now. the mink fur breathing
around my aunt's neck. my emptied flesh
in the shower. mist enveloping us.
the creature falls apart. does not know
how to live. i feed myself 
all the sugar in the house. 
lift up to the ceiling. i know 
someone is talking to me. 
i know they have a bucket. i want 
all the fur. i have never been able to
tell the difference anyway. wrap myself.
make a new beast. one without lungs.
without a farm. our flesh as our flesh 
as our flesh. 

confessional 

no one knew where they came from.
the little wooden rooms on every corner
in the city. confessionals with their 
hungry doors. when i was a girl
i used to confess to the same thing
every single time. "i didn't listen
to my parents." i wasn't even sure
if that was true but it seemed like 
the least embarrassing sin to admit.
the priest had paper-looking skin 
& the same soft cough each time. 
he would wipe his mouth with a napkin. 
we sat across a wobbly table. his glasses
on the tip of his nose. of course people
could not resist them. the rooms.
their butterfly tongues. the need to tell
someone what you have done. i have
gotten better at digging a pit in myself.
keeping the sins like fine china.
look, don't touch. we lost our bones
for this. i try to avoid them but everyone
was talking about confession. they were
gushing, saying, "i have never
felt so clean." it never did that for me.
i remember wondering if i had done it 
wrong. searching my body. all the weight 
my shiny guilts still there, unmoved.
i said twice the amount of hail marys 
the priest told me to do. penance is a shifting
place. not an achievement but a staircase
with a drop-off at the top.
some people had conspiracy theories 
about the confessionals. that they were
a government spy tactic. that maybe
they were using our sins to make a monster.
we never learned an answer. instead,
they left one day. years later they found
their doors in the river. a man drowned
diving in to try to open it as if the room
would still be there waiting for
his next confession. i was taught that
even if you forgot to say all your sins that they
would all be forgiven after the sacrament. 
i have to admit i still crave it. the release
that never came. i think i might 
have felt it once. not in a confessional
from the church or the sidewalk. instead,
i once slept on a roof. the sky like 
a tabernacle. the stars each confessed to me
all they had done. blood & wild wounds. 
we dazzled raw in the dark. 

chicken soup 

if i could be the animal star
i would get sick without any feathers.
turn the tv into a cathedral & pull
the curtains shut. in the house
that no longer exists, there were
birds in the walls. i followed them
to a boiling face. none of us had teeth.
beaks in the bruised spring. 
i am getting to the age where the past
is really sepia toned. where one of
the old words work. chipped bowls.
can lids turned into bells. 
my father's knuckles turn into
chicken knees. salt & corn. i have a fever.
school building inside a little tupperware.
i get my nostalgia license & abuse it 
from the get-go. meat & hair have
a lot in common. strands & sinew. 
the jump rope i did not use. the chickens
we did not have but somehow found
their way into our food. grocery stores
without any smiley faces. just the smell
of tunnels & gasoline. i get a really
good spoon & look for something to drink.
a potion that will give me the view
from the overpass. our "secret spot"
that everyone knew about. the cars
full of chickens driving beneath us.
waiting to be turned into soup. 
broth spills from all the faucets. 
i pour a bath. soak myself until i am tender.
until i break apart under the press
of the back of a spoon. 

chuck-e-cheese 

i want to birthday again
but like for real & with a plastic mountain
& coins for eyes. i had a friend
who always got older there. sugar 
& a tube into the sky. if i could
go back i'd climb higher. have
a second piece of cake. forget my body
in the machine place. you are always
asking me, "why do you love plastic?"
i feel attacked. i want to lie & say,
"i hate plastic" but that is not true.
i go back to the arcade talk. the sound
of plastic machines & little plastic
dinosaur prizes & plastic wrappers around
laffy taffy & plastic dads with plastic
sunglasses on their necks. i don't actually know
if i can birthday like we used to.
eventually you get old enough that birthdays
don't feel as much like celebrations 
as belt notches. maybe i could start
holding unbirthdays. alert my loves ones,
"i am getting younger." plastic is one
of the few things that are eternal at least
as far as humans go. the wood rots 
& the bones return to roots but the plastic
lives on. ghosts without eyes. a bright
prehistory. flashing lights. the chomp sound
of the ticket eater. nothing is more u.s.a. than
the wall of impossible prizes. the million ticket
hover board & video game palace. 
when i got birthdaying i always let myself
believe for a moment that they were
within reach. right there. not worth money
but tickets. tongues of paper. we could 
lay in the ball pit until the orbs turn
into synthetic planets. we could get older
& tell no one. then maybe it wouldn't count.
then maybe we could go run legless
with pizza in our lungs. coins falling 
down on the street. 

lamp post supper

i get the curved knife. the one you
sharpened on your teeth. we talk about
what we're going to eat in the end times.
i offer up a mirror. the taste of fingernails.
you look to the street lamps. lick your lips.
of the two of us, i am always the least prepared.
i don't want to think about
how we're going to survive when 
the machine we're on finally reaches
its logical conclusions. the fields full
of vacant houses. all day showing.
there is a new craze of selling your lungs
so that you can have a door. i cut into
the light. pull downward, making strips.
remember the summer where we tried
to make our own pasta. we didn't have
a roller or anything fancy. we just had our fingers
& the kitchen counter bathed in light.
yolks pressed into dough. the noodles
were always thick. i hope that there is 
enough sauce in the cupboard to make
the lamp posts worthwhile. i suggest
inviting the neighbors but you say,
"we have to take care of ourselves." the neighbors 
are busy preening their lawn. they bleed
into the lawn. they bring the lawn
offerings in the hopes that it will stay
lush & weedless. they rent the lawn out
to birds who are down on their luck.
if you close your eyes you can make just about
anything in your mouth taste good. 
i chew the boiled lamp post. outside
the lamp posts have learned they are next
& so many have started to migrate. 
why is relief always like this? a breath in the dark.
then, the hunt. bare hands. a wide & restless sky. 
in the closet i have one spoon left uneaten. 
at first i lied to myself. i said i was saving it
for you but instead i think i might lose control.
cold & bright. i might feast. stomach burning
from the street lamp's final song.