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? 

spaceship water

i drink everything from little rockets
because i am traveling & there are
no more watering holes.
sometimes money feels like rain.
like when it's here it's really here
& when it's gone there is nothing
you can do to conjure it. i think
i am an amphibian who was 
wrongly classified at birth. 
if i watch the news the news will start
watching me. i say, "i want to reuse
this story" the story says,
"sorry, this is a single-use narrative.
you will need to rent it again
if you want to try to say something
about staying alive." i wave my hand.
i cannot handle another subscription.
the water starts to taste like blood
& i get a conspiracy in my bones
that each bottle has a person in it.
a man captured in a ray gun & forced
into cool liquid. i pour it out in a trash can
to be sure. a miniature waterfall.
people come & watch. take pictures.
the wonders of the world are shrinking.
it is a glorious night if i am full
& my hands have no holes in them.
i buy another water bottle & another.
the ocean, refuses to give in to ai
& disappears. not the water just
the whole thing. a void where
the sharks used to mistake us for seals
& leave disappointed. i hope one day
that drinking fountains bloom. that
instead of sips we step into them
fully with our clothes on & drink
like any real salamander. the caps
always sound like cracked knuckles
when they open. someday a big
lovely stranger will twist my neck
& take the biggest gulp of their life. 

slot machine 

someone asked me "are you american?"
& i said, "no, i am a slot machine"
which is another way of saying "yes,
& i do not know what that means."
in the airport at midnight in las vegas 
all the purgatory seats surround an altar of chance.
the planes take off like coins. my flight 
is delayed & there are ghosts mixed with travelers
mixed with disciples mixed with glorious non-believers.
i wish i was a non-believer but instead
i consider the odds. a woman tells a man
as he returns from the pulpit,
"i thought you were winning?" he says with
a hint of despair, "i lost fifty."
i am just tired enough to think, "maybe
the lights would give me fifty." balance the scales.
let me eat something sweet & ruthless. 
i check my bank accounts for the third time today. 
i buy water in little space ships. have i avoided 
a confrontation with the machine if 
instead, i watch others play? press a button.
cascades of digital gold. i am prying apart
the words "country" & "land."
"gold" & "whole." "chance" & "destiny." 
i miss the call for boarding. end up
at the back of the line between a man 
who keeps trying to call someone 
who will not pick up & two children who
do not let go of each other, their guardian
gripping a stroller, eyes shut. i savor the un-american
parts of me. the yearning to be swallowed
in places like this. to be unexceptional. 
to make it home in pieces. an unnamed part of me
left behind in the miniature sin city 
that glows loud & wordless 
out the tiny airplane window. 

stone soup

before i knew the stone soup story
i thought people gathered to eat the rocks.
that maybe in the boiled water
even the stones softened like sesame buns.
a sweet ringing kind of broth. 
in our yard on summer mornings 
i used to sometimes put a pebble
in my mouth while they 
were still cool from the night. once it turned into
a new moon. i was on the surface 
looking down at the gumball world. 
at the diner in the town where i grew up
if you go there in the dead of night
they'll still make you a black & white milkshake.
then if you say, "could i have a stone?"
they'll lead you to the quarry where 
a glider crashed when i was in high school.
no one inside. a roasted bird or pterodactyl. 
i get a pot & go into the yard. i pluck
all the smoothest stones i can find.
i ask the ghosts to help me. the work 
with their third & fifth hands. a pot
heavy with pieces of the thrumming earth.
fill with water & i get them boiling.
i know i am not jesus but i hope
they turn into fishes. i would release them
into the thickening clouds. a whole school
above. instead the rocks sing for us. they sing
about whales & about the earth's core.
how there is a pizza shop there that 
still sells dollar slices. it is 2002 & no one
knows yet how to microwave an apple. 
the water flies away. leaves the stones,
angry from the heat. there is no soup.
maybe in the story but not in the dark. 
i try to pick up a rock but it burns
through the floor & down into the crawl space
where the rats stare at it like a prophet
& then up at us through the floor. 

sick 

i get the disease from not using the moon
or at least that is what the telephone doctor thinks. 
(i can't afford a blood & guts one). 
all my teeth fall out so i sell them for 
a red wagon to carry my lungs in. 
it is so hard to remember all the ways
we are supposed to keep our bodies. i forget
to drink water & i turn into fruit leather. 
i don't remember to eat & find myself
a werewolf standing on the ridge & looking down
at the big ugly mcmansions that stain
the hillside. i don't breathe for days & then
i'm gasping & trying to take in as much air
as i can. i don't mean to neglect all these things
but there is only so many caramels in a sunrise.
only so many postcards that say,
"it is time for us to shuck you again."
i go to a secret healing fountain & there's
a cardboard sign hanging on it that reads,
"out of resurrections." i am used to disappointment
so i don't get too upset. i just go ahead
& book a television treatment. something
really loud & blue. i keep thinking that one day
i will get on top of all this bile stuff. i'll just
move through the world like everything
is silk. i have never felt like that. instead.
i put my bones in the dishwasher. i watch 
woo woo tiktoks about healing my inner bird.
the bird gets cooked costco style. i eat it 
with my hands tied behind my back.
the moon is here & i take it in the form
of a little dry pill. the shell tastes like
a beetle skeleton. i walk all the way down
to the place where the frogs are born
with my lungs in the little wagon. 
the frogs say, "we are sick too. how do you
fix this?" i tell them we all have to start
investing in clouds. or so i am told 
or was it buy a tree & dance? i can never remember
what we are supposed to do so i don't do
any of it. i bite my nails off. peel my flesh.
pick at my wounds like a cone-less dog.