dream bathroom

i am a collector of locked doors.
sometimes when things are bad
i just lay on the bathroom floor & convene with
the mold blooms above the shower.
wait for the isopods to arrive from
the grimy seam between the tub & floor.
they hold prayer books. i scroll on my phone
until my eyes are cradle-bound 
& violet. i try to imagine the bathroom
growing taller. a great chimney 
right into the clouds. i turn on the shower
to fill the place with mist. i know
that's why there's mold. the drain gnats
ask why i am always so sad. i don't try
to explain it to them. instead i hand them
my phone & let them scroll. the throat
of the toilet is full of sharks. the mirror
above the sink is so full of ghosts 
i am often scared it might burst. i don't
actually think my secrets are even that shiny.
nothing that would shake the earth. but they
are sometimes all i have. i wrap them in 
old newspaper like thrift shop figurines. 
set them on the edge of the sink. they tell me,
"we could dig deeper." they say, 
"a bathroom life." i couldn't agree more. 
i don't even care that i can't fully extend my legs. 
i look at the wobbly knob. its twisted
tooth. have nightmares that it falls out
& an eye peers through. i don't know
what i am hiding from. sometimes you wait
for a self to pass you by. an inconvenient self
or one without any gills. i finish my time
by singing with the pill bugs. i keep my voice
low & soft just like theirs. 

face recognition

instead of a machine i wish that
a creature would emerge from a pool of water
to take my face. is this a craving for angels?
i am more well-versed in demons. 
soil gods. there are several face-stealing spirits
but i think of the one from avatar 
the last airbender, koh. she takes faces
like masks. sews them into her insect flesh. 
drowning in her guts. i would go to her
& give over everything for some brief
bargain. at least with her i could be 
taken by the shadow. i do not want
to be consumed by just any deadly
little rich man. i would much rather
meet at the crossroads with a knife 
& a plate. trade my eyes for a bucket of gold.
walk around with them. live as a omen. 
there feels like there's some honor 
in the theater of meeting the ghost. 
of severing flesh. of being a true rotting zombie. 
instead, i let the machine feed. i give it a spoon
& a cafeteria tray. i let it trace my lips
as it considers where i keep my coins. 
prints ads into the hunger space. 
all my faces in a hallway of use. this one
for selling a pair of legs. this one for 
stealing a sliver of my anger & transforming it
into sorrow. i find a lake to look into.
see all the monsters beneath the surface. 
none of them breach for me
no matter how much i beg. 

plane full of geese

i end up on a flight with only geese. 
feathers in the aisles. i do not remember
where i am coming from or going. lately i feel
like a monopoly piece. some big finger
pushing me towards the holy "go." 
the geese ignore me. there is no wifi
so the world narrows. i wonder why 
they have chosen not to fly themselves. 
instead, gobbling up trail mix from 
little plastic cups. i never want the vessel 
to land. i want to become a piece of the sky.
if i gave a cloud all my water, would
i still be able to think? to write poems?
i have learned to shrink my list of necessities.
i used to need lungs. i used to need
a tablespoon of cream. my bank account
overdrafts again. i don't check it 
but i can feel it. i wonder where the geese
keep their money. maybe there is a pond
somewhere in an ugly ill-maintained park
where there are thousands beneath 
any given stone. the geese treasure right 
beneath our noses. i have stopped wanting
any of that. i want to open the window.
feel the wild air. the next flight i take
is a flight of only clouds. they do not speak
at all but they shift. the aisles go grey. 
thunder all over the ground. i evaporate.
join them in spitting myself up.
throwing lightning from my guts. 
when the plane lands i am home or else
it is my home now. my phone is emptied
of contacts. nothing but geese. i buy
a coffin from the airport gift shop.
set the phone at the throat of a half-dead fern
near the entrance. hope there is another flight.
any flight. a house in the sky. somewhere
with a television or at least a mirror.
somewhere for me to look & see
how i turned out. it is better to keep 
whatever self you manage to have in
a safekeeping place. beneath a stone in a park 
with the centipedes & the geese fortune. 

puzzle reprise 

when i see puzzle pieces for autism
i want to steal them. pluck them 
from the logos & the billboards
& bumper stickers. 
assemble them like worker bees.
teach them how to be angry &
verdantly disliked. i have to admit 
i reserve a sliver of tenderness 
for them. i picture the puzzle pieces
laying together in a field of teeth,
none able to interlock with
one another. no hidden picture. 
their little lobes like starfish arms or cactus knees. 
their alienness in a hallway of doors.
at the nursing home where
we used to visit my grandmother 
it was mine & my brother's jobs
to cut new puzzle pieces to make up
for the ones that went missing. 
i like to think that those wayward 
fragments escaped. are now somewhere
being a glorious autism. maybe
the stars are puzzle pieces just really
far away. i hate them when non-autistics
use the symbol like butterfly catchers
but i, in my stubbornness, remain 
convinced i could release them. 
puzzle piece moths & puzzle piece
fireflies & puzzle piece rooms
& puzzle piece dark. i find a piece 
in my hair & draw a life around it. 

the first straight person

he looked at the tangerines & thought, "billboard."
crouched in the grass. drew his finger across
the ground. delighted in a dream of borders. 
saw the elk sing & plucked their language 
from his heart. 
he did not believe in tying cherry stems
in your mouth. he thought, "love comes
from power earned & lost." he played with 
little plastic army men past childhood. he bought
a gun & married it in secret. saw people
as troughs. found a woman to make into
a woman. because what is a gender
without its mirror? he told her, "you have
everything you could ever want." she took
her hungers & put them in jewelry boxes. he bought
binoculars. he bought a little tape recorder.
he searched the valleys & the cities. he wanted 
to see all the ways people lived. not to catalog. 
not for a love poem but to invent new ways
to shrink them. he never just wanted 
a woman. he wanted a scheme of genders.
the small genders & the big voluminous genders.
he wanted genders to witness his gender. he wanted
a bunch of same-ish genders to tell him
his gender was big & marvelous. in the dark though
sometimes, his real hunger arrived. the licorice kind.
he would go out into the daylight. find
a tangerine. peel it with his hands. remember
what it felt like when once he met another 
boy beneath that tree. they did not kiss
or even touch but, in the velodrome of his chest
he saw their life together. felt terrified, 
not from homophobia. that wasn't invented yet.
he wasn't even sure it was romantic. a longing
to be seen. to be kept. he was jealous of the boy.
it was something in the way he ate. juice down his arms.
so, he crafted a way to control him. he became
the first straight person. 

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.