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. 

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?