a letter to my senator 

i understand why you think 
of yourself as a god. i have called you
so many times that my tongue absconded
& took a better life as a salamander. 
each time a petition, "would you like
to see me as human? would you like to 
stick your hand in the soil?" when i was
a little dragon i used to pray
for all kinds of things in a church
with confetti windows. i asked that
my family would have more money.
that we would eat the good canned moons.
just like you, either he did not hear me
or could not or did not want to. 
i am not asking you to hear me.
i stopped talking to god & started
talking to the deer. they say, "take what
you can. cross the roads with your
eyes closed." i picture you in rooms
of white. marble tables. i picture you
without any wings. with a mouthful
of sugar, laboring to swallow. no matter
how much you eat, you will never know
fullness like my people do. i wonder
what it would mean to never write
to you again. i stopped talking to god
& he vanished. left a glorious void
where water rushed in. the salmon
& their sacrifices. the tips of spruce trees
taste like lemons. have you ever stopped
in the rain to pluck one? i know 
you have not. just for today i am not asking
for you to see me. i am not speaking
to the paper shredder systems you worship. 
instead, i am plucking a dandelion.
i am basking in what cannot be taken.
my gender, a shovel. my words, spilled
so far & so deep that even the birds repeat them. 

breakup text 

i love when the end has an open
car window. somewhere to release
all the crows you've been keeping.
i spent all night fishing
& caught nothing but glow sticks.
i have a backpack of scissors in my house
even though i never use it. that is a lie.
i'm sorry i use it often. 
i have sent & received breakup texts.
in the middle of the blue morning.
with a thumb on the tongue of a phone. 
pretended for hours that i didn't see them.
landed on the moon with nothing
but the scissors. unlike what 
the tv shows say, survival is not a skill
it is a happenstance. there is a bowl
of watermelon. there is a man sitting
on the bench at the bus stop who asks
over & over, "how do we get to alburtis?" 
i prefer a text really. the space to be privately 
distraught or relieved or confused.
little birds in the back of my throat. 
a frying pan with a whole zucchini medallioned 
inside. i appreciate all shades of gold.
vegetable oil & a ring that loses 
its purpose. when we break up, i like
to gather all the items we've shared
& sacrifice them to the oldest spirit 
i can find. tea cups & wooden boxes & rings.
the beings are always ravenous.
i watch them chew. wish i could 
eat your bones one last time. not in 
a sexual way but in the way a neighbor
might come over in the middle of the night,
saying, "do you see how loud the stars are?" 

hula hoop moon

we got play guns from
the bus stop shack where
see-through men lived. 
aimed at the hole in the moon & fired. 
as a child i was a collector of orbits.
i walked in circles around the house.
widened the circles until i was
a planet x. until i was on a highway 
in the middle of a horrible downpour.
i couldn't even see where
to pull over. all i noticed where
great huge hula hoops that i managed
to keep driving through. i don't
look for portals. they find me.
i am never certain where they take me.
maybe i have slipped through dozens
of little purple lives. my favorite 
rings are not the ones on my fingers
or the ones around a big celestial daddy,
instead i crave mushroom rings to stand
inside of. halos in medieval paintings. they always
look like the saint could just reach up
& pluck the thing from their skull.
take a wild bite. i am watching the openings 
shrink. sometimes i can't even get out
of my own front door. i buy a hula hoop
online & have it delivered via the forgettable 
kinds of violence. it is pink & it is the exact
same one that used to hang on the wall
of our must-smelling garage. 
it is brittle now & incapable 
of making my holy. i don't care
about stuff like that anymore. i just want
to reach through some kind of maw. 
the other side, loud & wonderous. 
i go through as many times as i can.
until the moon is a pin prick. until 
all the stars have shut their eyes & shadows
take my halos beneath their tongue. 

honey television

i put my tongue out to feel the snow.
a hole in the ceiling says, "let's panic."
i give the hole a handful of change
as if it is a parking meter. 
my father tells me a story about
being a kid in the television. how it used to 
sing itself america & then blacks out all night. 
now the television never stop. he loves it.
he takes a broken lawn chair & opens it.
gets real real tan & drinks a diet coke
with lemon squeezed in it. 
i grab a spoon & feed myself
as much as i can. until the sugar makes
my teeth ring. until we are famous 
& cisgender. when i say cisgender i just mean
safe. i don't want anything to do with 
a cord. instead i take the television
everywhere i go. swaddle it. brush its hair.
even in the night when no one else
is breathing the television sits up 
in bed & thrums with all the bees.
i feel like sometimes i'm the only one 
who notices how thick & gelatinous 
the danger has gotten. i take my eyes out
& rub them on the television. rub them down
to bitten erasers. i just want to see
all the shiny unreachables. i just want
a car commercial in my lungs. 
my father gets too small to see 
in a mountain video illuminating the living room. 
i buy binoculars. sit only a nose away.
lose sight of him. put my hand to the round belly
of the machine. it does not let me in.
instead i have to wait until morning comes
& he crawls out for work. he always looks
like he's been caught when he emerges 
with me sitting there. he tells me,
"it's enough" but how could it be? 

form rejection

i collect the copy-paste emails
that say, "we didn't like you enough
for this job." i hold grudges. if you don't,
how the hell do you stay alive? 
once i went out to dinner to try
to impress someone to give me money.
i felt worse than when i was a girlfriend
for hire. i kept reminding myself to smile.
the woman talked about her garden
& i didn't give a fuck about that. 
i wanted to talk about the mountain recently
catching fire again or maybe the fact that
gender was out there growing legs. 
raise your hand if you make enough money
to be happy. put your hands down. 
anyone who tells you
money doesn't buy happiness has never
been so hungry that the world started
to turn into tofu. has never savored 
a shower in a planet fitness. i'm not trying
to hold an olympics for "i'm more 
ravenous than you" but i do want a little more
anger & a little less "that's just how this goes."
it doesn't have to. sometimes i wish i would
have left that interview halfway through.
i would have said, "there is a hole 
in the sky that is calling me more than this."
i wish we could get real with each other.
i want people to tell me i didn't get the job
to my face. i want them to say,
"you looked too crazy for our 
pretty white building." then i can laugh.
i'm convinced i can hear it between 
the form rejection's lines. i don't apply
to jobs anymore. i plant garlic. i leave offerings
for fairies on the windowsill. i check my bank account
like a morning mass. no eucharist
just the stingy taste of spruce tips
from the cutting board. sometimes feed my fingers
into parking meters to buy myself
just a little more time. 

art project

i wish you saw my face with
all the glue. i have gotten used to
the process of putting things 
back together. the ceiling fan & i go on a date
& i try to tell her how scared i am.
the rain comes down like mouthfuls
of marbles. i have an art project in my hands
& i know it is going to end up
just another pile of noodles. you tell me
to start making lists. i ignore you
& instead i get the little-kid clay &
form a pinch pot to keep my teeth. 
i want a television that says
bright & delicious lies. i am not ready
for a life without you but i see it 
thunderous & without any rooms.
we get paper plates & you tell me
i am killing the earth. i go to a tree
& try to put the paper back. i am the patron
saint of too-late. you scream at me
& your mouth becomes a gutter gushing
water in the midst of this storm.
i remind myself that nothing grows
without downpour. a part of me always feels
like i deserve whatever is happening,
mostly when it is terrible. 
the paint runs & the pigment runs
& even my name signed on the back
turns into a puddle of worm footprints. 
i consider what it would take for me
to remake the art project. i go through
the phone book in search of a teacher
willing to cross her arms & tell me
my brain is made of pink erasers.
it is the middle of the night. 
one arrives. you are the silent kind of furious.
you ask me, "how much is this going
to cost?" i show you the project.
it is sticky & has too many pipe cleaners.
i explain, "it is a self portrait."
you say, "it doesn't look anything like you." 

bruise map

let's go along the gulf. the jupiter pillow
at the end of an elbow. i take a sandwich 
& chew like a new ruminant. the wound
becomes the land on which you have
to gather huckleberries. on which the house grows
aching & without any doors. i remember
every collision. i can't even manage 
to name culprits anymore. often for me 
it has not been with it. they've been eaten too
or else they are somewhere carrying 
a picture of me beneath their tongue. 
has anyone ever escaped their own blood? 
i point to the weeds. i gesture at the mountains. 
a topographic map. a traveler runs their fingers 
in circles around the knots. i buy ice skates.
winter is purple for me. there are
lands uncharted where the bruises get
as dark as molasses & yellow as beaver teeth.
there are lakes that thrum with only 
the names they've given themselves. 
lovers are always asking me why i don't
have any words to talk about emotions. 
i take them into a mirror room. pull a chain
to snap on a light. there we go walk
on the bruise map. barefoot 
as the other planets' moons. the ice bridge.
the fist & how warm it gets when closed.
broom handle held high & brought down
on my forehead. i do not go 
to that mountain. it is for the lizards
& the night monkeys & sometimes briefly
it is for a knife. the other kind of fracture.
sometimes clean & other times a bloom 
of blood beneath skin. 

pear harvest

the first time my eyes grew pears
i fed them to the dogs. didn't even
use a knife. they were slop-ripe
& dripping. the seeds came
right out. i had plucked them from
the inner corners where they grew.
hid my face all day, waiting for them
to be ready. then, winced as the stem
twisted off & my eyes welled with nectar. 
i have rehearsed how 
i will explain it if a lover ever asks about 
the pears. i will tell them that years ago
i fell asleep beneath my aunt's pear tree.
while i slept the sun rotted & shed seeds
that slipped between my eyelids.
this is not what happened. the truth is
i think they come from somewhere deeper.
maybe a family curse or a blessing. 
i have never eaten them myself. i've fed them
to neighbors & birds & people on the street.
i've even fed them to my lover without
him knowing they came from my face.
he asked, "do you want a bite." i said,
"i am full." my mouth watered.
i want to know what they would taste like
but i'm afraid they will greet me with
some kind of truth i am not interested in.
an image of my father in the yard
eating his own pears. then maybe feeding them
to the foxes who used to whistle in the dark. 
i am hoping that maybe after i die
that there will come one more
set of pears. one from each eye. i want them
to come after they bury me. then those
two pear trees can grow from the restless soil. 
people can gather. feast on the pears.
catch visions of me. nothing identifiable.
maybe just a glimpse of a deer skull
or a pigeon moon or my lover's face,
juice running down their chin. 

sword eater

i didn't ever mean to be this kind
of hungry. i was trying to put on
a money show. open your mouth.
take in the dangerous. everyone claps
& thinks, "i'm glad that's not me."
there are thousands of little colosseums
in any given house. i started to crave
that taste of metal. how sharpness 
rings against skin. the threat of a complete
bifurcation. split section of a human.
one lung on either side. i thought i would
just hold the blade in my mouth.
i thought i could keep it there. instead,
my body demanded more. i did not
just swallow, i ate. i ate & ate. ran
to the wood block in the kitchen & ate
all the knives too. my whole family watched
like i was a television. in some ways
i am. i am the thing you can turn off
when it becomes too much. the living room
with all the windows open. the neighbors
page through magazines. cut out my face
& mail it to me. they write notes like,
"i saw what you have done." they always
sound like threats but i know what 
they really mean is, "i don't know
how you are still alive." i don't know either.
i have tried to curb my appetite with 
lesser hazards. sometimes just a spoon.
the limb of a fallen tree. a corkscrew.
i always come back to the swords though.
there is something so clean about the way
they slide through me. a moment to feel
as if i never was meant to be whole. 
a small exhale comfort to not have to smile 
without any blood between my teeth. 

grubs in the wood

when the grubs go to sleep
in the rotten wood for the winter
do they meet in some other
dreamscape? do they tell stories
of wings & whales? maybe
they play games in which they pretend
to have legs. their translucent bodies
coiled like new letters, each in
their own private vein. the crumbling wood
once strong oaks & wild walnut.
now, giving in to the soil. i find the grubs
as i split the wood. each a finger of 
an old god. they do not wake at first.
then, startled by the frozen light, they twist.
i tell them i am sorry to have snapped open
their wandering time. i want to explain
to them that humans have, for the most part,
forgotten how to sleep. i remove them.
dry the wood on a rack above the stove. 
carry the grubs out to where the chickens 
are huddled together. i apologize, terribly
i might add, to the bugs before i deliver them
to their devourers. i tell them,
"i have been plucked from rotten wood before."
but i know it is never a comfort that 
your destroyer has suffered like you.
often it is actually worse. once, a police officer
knocked on the window of my car
i was sleeping in. he said, "i know what it is like
but you have to get out of here." it was so early.
the sun was eating handfuls of our hair. 
i drove until the car was made of wood. until
it was winter. until i was in a kind of a dreamscape. 
in the end though what do i know of their shattered
quiet dark. of what winter meant to them.
of the rot swaddling their bodies. the chickens
thank me. i go inside. throw the wood
on the late fire. soon the weather will turn
& other grubs will awaken. will they ask
where the others went or will they know?