gulliver 

i want to build you 
a tiny house--

one small enough 
to fit in the top
drawer of your desk--

i crouch on my speckled carpet:
desk lamp sun--

nanoscale hammers & nails

my fingers are too
big for this--

i feel gigantic 

& i think about my 
brother who read gulliver's travels 

he was most afraid 
of the land of giants 
as opposed to the 
land of small people--

i feel like a small person 
& a giant at the same time--

6 inches tall
with my head breaking
through the shingles of the roof--

glass in my hair--
tooth pick femurs--

you wished
you had started planning
your tiny house earlier--

you wanted to
build one on your own 

but you didn't say where--

i pictured it
like one of those 
HGTV shows 

a wild backyard--
grass ocean-rippling--
mountains framing the 
skyline with jagged 
god-teeth--

do you want to build
yourself smaller?

do you want to
crouch on your
hands & knees enough
times so that you 
stand 6 inches tall?

i'm making the doorway now--

i measure my open
mouth as a template--

i want to be a house
some days--

small & with one back 
window above the kitchen sink--

i want a mantle 
to take off memories on

photographs from
underneath my tongue--

prayer cards from funerals--

i'll leave 
the bed room only
big enough to hold me--

walls of my wingspan--

loneliness is
big & small--

tell me-- did gulliver 
envy them?

with their rare bodies?

& i wanted to know
if you intended on 
keeping company--

i can fit in 
the smallest of closets--

i can be the miniature 
on your end table--

or you can keep me on
the top shelf of your
medicine cabinet--

i mean the one inside
the tiny house--

right now you live 
too far away--

more than a wing span--

when you open your desk
& find me i will
fit in the palm of
your hand--

pick me up gently--

this is an invitation
to be smaller--

this is me with the
leftover bolts & screws--

they'll never find people here--

microscopic us--

our heads of pins--

our tomatoes plants on
the porch the size of aphids 

when you kiss me 
it will be so quiet that
only we can hear--

my father's favorite president is theodore roosevelt 

theodore roosevelt is pacing
the floor of the attic--

always my father's favorite
president with his caterpillar 
mustache & his spectacles
perched on his nose--

i often mistake him for a grandfather--

trapped up there in the same
room as my own granfather's
urn of ashes--

most nights he sits in
the dark-- patient--
gazing out the screened windows
at the alien glow
of a small rural town--

counting automobiles 
as they wing beat down
noble street--

check his pocket watch--

my father told me stories
about him as if he 
were a god--

breaking big business
with a pick axe--

out of breath as 
he swung-- ruptured 
cement & concrete--

i imagined him standing 
at the desk in the 
oval office like
how i stand at mine when 
i'm too alive to sit--

he checks his pocket watch 
that has been dead for decades--
sets its carcass on
a book shelf & pages 
haphazardly through 
one of my childhood picture books--

the hungry caterpillar--

he scowls with the eyebrows 
he left in portraits--

i know he's up there but
i'm always too shy to
go visit him--

what with his stern face
& his pointy shoulders--

i would tell him that when
i was younger i believed 
he was the last good president--

i wrote book reports on
him & always included 
the story about his daughter
bringing a horse into the white house--

i told my own father 
that we could therefore 
fit a horse in our own 
little 19th century farm house--

even now when i've
moved away from my parent's house
i can still hear 

his astray foot steps 

as he ponders what brought
him there--

what forces bound him
to the attic with the green carpet 
& the half-built lego
star wars sets on the shelf--

we all have promised
now to give him any newspapers--

keep him pristine & 
unknowing 

sometimes i do leave
my poetry up there though
in the hopes that the
26th president might
find something of himself in it--

i wonder if as he
stares out the back window
if he imagines the landscape
of yellowstone or cliffs
in colorado--

will he one day cut holes
in our walls like
he did to panama? 

day dream floating on his back 
beside canal boats in
south america--

for now he's just perched on
the side of what used 
to be Billy's thomas
train table--

pocket knife whittling 
away a number 2 pencil--

his face stone-hovering 
on the black hills
of south dakota

weatherman

when will you become snow?

i felt the rain getting lighter

each drop deploying parachutes--
disembodied wings of geese--

whose winter are you flying towards?

wet against my red jacket
under a grey night sky--

stars burning under the 
oily face of the moon--

was that you underneath my
blankets?

hot & headlight melting--

traffic singeing our bodies--

i stood in the 
supermarket parking lot 
last night 

as i texted you 
that i'd gotten
home safe--

i think you were already 
asleep--

the world smelled metallic--
like ice & screw drivers

they're calling for 
4-10 inches

i feel it up to my neck--

i feel like i won't
know if i really love
you till i say it a loud

& i wish i was 
brave enough to be 
trapped inside--

tell me-- 
did you look out your
window to check 
the progress of the rain?

did you feel yourself getting
lighter? 

getting ready to fall--

red balloons & stop lights
in your lips--

i wish you would fall 
into me-- a handful of bolts
& bottle caps--

a downpour of mouths--

your teeth grazing sidewalk--

each ivory sky scraper--

puncture the moon--
bleed asphalt & rock salt--

i keep a pair
of scissors in my
back pack to shatter 

the walls of snow globes-- 

& earlier today when
i talked to my father on
the phone he said that
he wished he was a weatherman
so that he never needed to 
be right--

i want to be a weatherman too--

stand with me tonight
in front of the green screen--

let's predict a cold front--

let's stand in the lawn
& measure the snow fall
with a yard stick--

do you remember that year it
snowed in october?

or that year we had off from
school for nearly a week?

no? sometimes i forget
you didn't grow up beside me--
i imagine us small--
snow to our waists--

i kiss you & we turn
into snow flakes--

i miss that excitement 
that the world could end-- 

even if only
for a few hours--

when i got up this morning 
i opened
the window to listen 

to the clouds rip
out their children's feathers

leave tinsel in the nest--

you said you're allergic
to down-- the kind
used to stuff pillows--

my mother was too--

for you i'm rejecting
the metaphor of snow & feathers--

this snow is glass--

chandeliers snapping their necks--

i wanted to ask you 
if i could be your weatherman--

if you could trust me 
to read your precipitation--

foot prints in your body--

thumb melting through
your collar bone--
i'll guess that someday 
we could be a 
terrible storm 

the kind of storm 
children 
pray to 

i feel you getting
lighter--

dying in street lamps
& driveway--

your body just like
every other snowflake
i've ever loved into water--

where are we going
to put all snow?

one hand 

your mother was scared
of sink holes

she read aloud the 
headlines about a home
in florida where a sink hole
swallowed a little boy--

eight years old

he reached his hand out
from the mouth of a sea monster--

fingers turning red as
he was chewed--

floor board teeth--
grit gravel tongue--

he died 

& there's another
sink hole forming
in your grandparent's  
backyard--

i never got to see
it for myself but
i imagined a whirlpool

a bath tube drain

emptying our bodies
of bone--

i don't think much about
sink holes 

but when i loved you
i worried you would
get devoured by one--

in your back yard
soft from april rain--
barefoot i saw
your ankles sinking--

twisting-- 

the ground planted
with shark jaws

i tried to think 
of what i would do 
if you ended up
like that boy-- hand 
holding onto a piece
of sky--

i would probably walk away
out fear--

maybe i would find
a thrust of courage--
entangling my fingers
with yours--

tugging your arms
loose from its socket--

i think my greatest fears
were realized when 
i kneeled in front
of you & realized there
was nothing i could do
to make myself love you again 

your skin reminded me 
of sand in winter--

of firework ashes--

now sometimes when i 
take walks i think 
see sink holes
opening in the middle
of the trail--

i see the last 
glimpse of that boy
as he tries
to understand what 
could be happening--

did he even know
the earth could do that
to us?

contort-- pucker--
consume us at will--

did he pray?

open his mouth to 
shout to his mother?

i know that it's selfish
but i hope if you're eaten
by the soil beneath you
that maybe you'll
think to call out to me--

maybe you won't know
why or what that means--

i would come--

i'm older now

i would know not to try 
& yank you free--

i would take your hand
& push it deeper--

this is to say that
i would expect you
do the same for me--

if in your own throat 
you feel my name

swallow hard--

god was a bottle cap 

my father makes me into
a confessional

doesn't use a kneeler--
sits down-- hands folded on
the wooden table--

bless me daughter for i have sinned

how long has it been since
your last confession?

when was the last time
your confessed anything

maybe five years

i tell him four 

i really want to know
how long it's been since 
i've talked to him
un-edited

there was of course 
an email i sent last
summer where i said i was
gay but i just said
that because i thought
it would be easier than

i'm a boy

i have made so
many confessionals since
i left home

the back seat
of my car in the parking lot
of the giant up the street
where i light street lamps 

& eat blackberries
like rosary beads

the creek with the 
long black beetles spilling
from moss

the bench where i kissed you

the bottom of the library--
a corner desk-- 

are there lips living
inside my skull?

the ones i use only
to speak to god & 
sometimes my father?

how does he know to listen?

sometimes i confess
in irreverent locations--

behind sales wracks at Target 

eating peanut butter
with a soup spoon on
my dorm room floor--

legs criss-crossed--

i become a palm leaf 
to be knotted in from
the pews--

did you know that
they burn palm Sunday 
for ashes?

oh what does my father
burn for ashes?

his striped ties?
his red & yellow checkered 
guitar strap?

i want to ask him 
where he's made confession 
if not in church--

& i think about
when i was eight 
& we'd go to 
the bottling works-- 

jungle gyms
from cases of beer--

bottles clinking--
drunken windchimes--

dad pointed out the labels--
Pilsners, Yuengling, Stout--

& i would climb--
cataloging the printed images
on each case--

elephants with top hats--fat men 
clutching tankards 

birch beer or cream 
or orange soda 
from the fridge--

we'd end kneeling in the blue
jeep as i gnawed on 
a slim jim--

god was a bottle cap

ping onto asphalt

our confessions
were swallowed

today when i drive
home i say confession 
for him--

i tell god
what he already knows--

that my father makes confession
with his body-- 

his back a precarious mountain
of beer bottles

i'm still climbing 

his hands stolen from
the stone mary statue
in the church garden--

course-- heavy

his mouth 
a rear view mirror--

the rain switched to sand

& i went to bed with
the hush of each grain falling--

a muffled sigh-- 

soothe the ache of windowpanes--

making hourglass earth--

turn & turn & turn 

& the face of each clock filled--
stagnant arms--

my own elbows & forearms
heavier with the stubborn death
of watches--

time escape each face &
turning into more 

flecks of sand--

glisten in the emptying moon

the whole solar system coming
down-- giving-- bones eroding-- 

before the night is
over the ceiling caved--

commandment tiles peeled away
& promptly buried--

their sins no longer applicable

have you ever made a grave for
your wrongs?

what confessionals did you build?

i think about Ozymandias

& the level sands stretching
far away &

i know i will never
remember all the words
to that poem--

so i find a tree branch--

one from the very top
of the oak tree in the playground--

sand devoured torso--

my own body sinking with 
each step 

as the sun crawls on
her hands & knees up the
side of the crooked-toothed
mountains--

curled into a ball--

she has long brown hair 
& a pair of scissors 
to save herself--

she eats planets like
cheerios--

her stomach fire lover--

so i find a tree branch

& i think about the zen gardens

the ones we always said
"we should make one someday"

with lines patient enough
to hold every duvet of a body--

a corn field un-planeted 
& brave--

the seeds are in the souls 
of my feet--

king of kings of king of kings--

to make lines of it all--

there is so much comfort 
in evenness--

stick dug into earth--
trailing behind me as i meander--

lines wavering--

the ocean resurrected 
itself in me--

seashells in my bones 

when the sun searches for
the moon tonight

she will come up empty--

she will plunge her
hands frantic into
the sands-- 

lift pyramids & 
castles & the playground 
swing set i once believed
could send me into orbit

she'll find me--
knees tucked into my chest--
as i wait for cool night
& sleep--

i clutch the stick like
a rifle--

she comes 
storm sobbing 

blanketing me 
like a stone

the first hour & prometheus 

you say that
after the power goes out
the first hour
is the most fun

& i stood in the stairwell
while the ceiling flickered 

sun quivering--
her flesh swarmed by 
the cellophane wings of snowflakes

knees buckling in
the torsos of trees--

dropping limbs like rain--

your car snare-drum
smashed-- holographic 
on the shoulders of the road--

did you feel me blink
in & out of existence?

where was i when i
wasn't sitting
here with you?

where did the light
take herself?

packing her bags in the driveway--

leaving stray socks &
open dresser doors--

& i tell you that 

i am fascinated by praying--

that i don't know if 
i believe in it 

but that every time something goes
wrong i pray out of habit--

i don't think it's
something that is believed in

but rather just happens
no, i don't
mean just our fathers 
or hail marys

i mean nebulously--

a yearning skeleton--

tongue as a candle-- 
glimmering as i drop 
it down my throat--

the sink still wax dripping
in the kitchen--

have you ever misplaced your
tongue in a fit of desire?

as if wishing for
light could will it back
into or lamps--

as if there would ever be a god 
who would respond to 
the fears of a moth as 
small as me--

we talk about confessionals 
& priests like telephone operators

about our own baptisms
 
& the will of babies 

being dipped into water--

their souls instantly salvaged
in a dip of water--

& i remembered the cardinal 
making a sign of the cross
on my forehead in oil 

saying my patron saint's 
name wrong 

that's me the eleven-year-old  
telling him he was wrong--

Kateri Tekakwitha 

say her name right

& all the candles in
the church blew out at once--

at home afterwards 
i stained my
white robe with blood &
fermented baptism water--

ceiling lilting-- 

god's throat swallowing smoke--

the first hour 
is the most fun you say

when the power goes out

& we leave the house
behind like a deer carcass
on the side of the road--

i tell myself that
this is what i wanted--

this kind of humanity

this kind of chaos
without street lamps-- 

when god laughs at prometheus

our arrogance for 
thinking fire 
was un-revocable--

all the letters on
each page turn blurry &
becoming snow flake--

the blizzard has come
to infect us as well--

moving on from the sun
& shuddering-- six-legged
beneath our skins--

the first hour
we keep in the top
drawer in the kitchen--

somewhere my mother
is sewing a blanket
for before i go

away to college--

let me burn a candle 

i want to burn a candle 

i find myself alone
without desire for 
a tongue--

cut it out & use
it as kindling--

my bed room a kind of 
closed fist--

i strike a match 
& set out tea lights--

find myself praying--

not for light this
time but for a feeling 
i have no word for yet--

opening my mouth
hive of clear wings--

oh prometheus 
i understand

we are both such 
thieves 

this is the black line for your legal name
pie-cutter veins-- pen-leak your legal name

we sat--marble notebook line-conjuring
born blue-retainer teeth to fix a name

your thumb prints migrated to wing-span knees 
abandoned geese inhabit your last name

mother with her furious paperwork--
the birth certificate gnawing your name  

these audacious snow children: self-naming 
fear me black feathered & illegal named 





  

the planets

you
carried the solar system
on the surface
of a CD--

made two-dimensional 
orbit--

rainbow refraction--

replacing gravity

we swore we could
see gravity--
smooth & metallic in
our fingers--

greedily
stuffing our pockets--

it felt like tinsel 

or the pull of the CD player
as it swallowed us
into our mother's
blue station wagon--

began playing 
the seven movement 
orchestral suite
of Gustav Holst 

the planets 

what made him think
he could give a voice
to someone as
loud as saturn?

me & you walked all the way
out to the sixth planet 
just to see what she really
sounded like--

the sidewalk 
is full of black holes 

& we lose the car keys--

boom box floating 
by in the vastness of space--

when we arrive
we find the rings are really
made of sheet music 

& cassette tapes dismantled--
their insides halo-making 

we hear it--

the soft hush of violin 
& trumpet & drums
recoiling from mallets-- 

saturn 
the bringer of old age 

i don't know if
you still have that CD
but if you don't we can
take a walk again--

past the blinking neons
lights of jupiter 
& the lusty cloud cover
of earth--

past the war-torn heat of 
mercury 

& the love-poem moons 
of venus--

i always liked saturn 

the way she keeps
a hula hoop--

the way she believes 
in flutes & 
the quiet yet to
come out of our bones--

when we are old 

& i forget what the planets
sound like will you
remind me?

catch the boom box

or push the CD into
my mouth--

past my teeth--

who knew the solar system
would be so easily devoured 

i'll let myself become
entangled in her rings--

open my mouth 

a phonograph body--

& when you sit
out on the porch--

ghost of a violin in one hand--
steering wheel in the other

listen close 
for me--

& steal another handful 
of gravity

i am so tired tonight

taking off my
tan pants & button-up
& binder--

down to my boxers--

standing at drawn
window blinds & thinking
how close i am 
to being terrarium 

& how many nights
i have glanced up at
dorm buildings to 
see open-window creatures--

citrus monsters--
pink peeling skin

i wrap 
myself in the teal blanket 

the blanket 
i once bought for you
& then you gave back--

that was two years ago 
when i still argued 
for a belief in god--

when i was reading hunter
s. thompson in an attempt
to remember your voice--

have you ever
felt an ending before
it happened?

i don't mean like
predicting an ending--

i mean feeling it 

i know there are 74 hours
until i graduate college

but today i feel glossary--

i feel us epilogue-ing--

summoning the ghosts
of our freshman girls--

the ones who still eat 
Dairy Queen sundaes in the
graveyard--

red plastic spoons in
between teeth--

have i never
told you how terrified i
was of us?

of the old trees
whose roots i discovered 
deep in my thighs--

the first week--

their blood 
a kind of new ancestry--
of motherhood leaves--

i have grown less afraid 
of un-locked doors--

i leave mine open--

this is an invitation 
to god & other angels

or a 14 year old girls with long
brown hair & a desire
to wear red panties--

i'm feeling myself 
caught in all these 

stairwells who've 
gulped down my voice--

oh the ball-point
pens we would dig into walls--

oh the bricks 
who would fail us--

you reading me a poem 
you reading me a poem 

i listen to your mouth
as if it were a window
i would get to climb into--

i was terrified of us

of falling in love
with your teeth--

oh i did i did--

this is the feeling
of the sound of broken plate 

of the closing
of a bathroom stall door--

your porch giving me
more shadows than i deserved 

you don't live there anymore
but you always will--

& tonight i felt 
the mythical flyleaf-page breeze--

the numb-- the blank

read me a poem 
read me a poem 

the back cover
is that oak that
fell in thunderstormed glory--

what a way to end--

her carcass dismantled--

taken apart by
maintenance staff--

her rings still rippling
through damp earth--

how many years
did we touch
when we sat at her base?

she was selfish

for not kissing me

skin to bark
to moss