rest stop 

i buy a satellite from a vending machine.
all the ghosts are circling like sharks.
every time i pull over at a rest stop
i think about staying there forever. living
in that lush liminal. standing on the roof
of the wingless car waving as people
come & go. some, assumed into the clouds.
others, turning into dust. i drink a gritty coffee
& eat a swarm of locusts. my favorite rest stops
are the restless ones. the ones with blinking
lights & cars that won't start. a man who has
been turning to call down the moon for months.
i don't want a shiny place or one with clean glass.
i crave the anywhere-ness of the right kind
of side of the highway. in the middle of pennsylvania
the world can feel the size of a tongue.
or, when it is raining & grey, even smaller.
a pinwheel or a frog. if i stayed i think 
i would start a shrine. it would just be my
open trunk, or, once the car has run away too,
just my mouth. i would point & say,
"leave a note about the distance between
where you think you're going & where
you know you'll actually end up." the red lights
eat each other like tadpoles. i call you but
you don't pick up. the road becomes a ribbon.
i use it to wrap myself up tight as i can. 
remember the satellite. close my eyes 
& hear her blinking, taking pictures of us
from as far away as she can get. all blue 
& storm cloaked & bright.  

cathedral w/o

without windows. without a gun.
without stained glass. without a god.
without a father singing in the choir. without
a shovel to dig the bones out with. without
confession & without anything to confess.
without a place to go afterwards. without stone.
i take a knife. peel off the rind. 
all that's left is ringing. i list all the places i used
to have to lay face up like an offering.
i sleep easiest on the tongue of a giant.
turn over like the tilling of the soil in april.
soy beans are coming. corn lives under
our nails ready to burst & scream. 
a fresh kind of worship. eternal. like meeting
yourself at the end of a long night.
your fingers falling off like petals. nothing
lasts long enough. not the sun 
but especially not the teeth. each turning
into a bird & flying up to the rafters. 
every ghost has one place only they can go.
the sheets hung up like a blanket fort. like hide & go
speak. i find a valley of veils. it is a communion
or a wedding. it is night & no one knows 
where i am. the coyotes dance.
eat ruby meat. sleep inside each other.
nesting dolls. worship without walls. fell
just enough trees for a fire. each resulting shadow
running off to build fountains. without butter.
without a pair of shoes. without anyone else at all.
without a door. without a scythe. without 
a word for salvation, paired down.
knife in hand. nothing left but "save." 

(no) petting zoo

"you look with your teeth" they say
in the knot of tails & cage wire.
i get all the animal feed & bathe in it
with the hope i will be gone in just
one bite. in a dream we go to a glass party
& the room is full of donkeys.
we are told they are genetically modified
to be able to complete small talk
better than any autistic adult (that's me).
obviously, i panic. i'm not ready
for all this juice. the crushed cranberries
& the strangled limes. you are always
telling me not to worry while there
are dinosaurs in the yard. i say,
"what if i just have one touch?" i am told
the fur of the never deer is impossible 
to hold. the horses who have stopped horsing
really really long ago. i don't know how
to keep up with my friends. they turn
into kites that father's fly with their sons
in ugly parking lots. it's supposed to rain 
all week by which i assume there are
not very many reasons to be a bird.
i get this ridiculous idea that maybe i could
get on the other side. instead of wanting
maybe i could be the creature everyone
is not allowed to hold. i don't know
which is better. i get tired easily. there are
not enough trees to choke on. the giraffes
unfurl their tongues like flags. we are
a nation that has never seen a miracle. 
i have this terrible plan of becoming the first.
i go outside. beg for the animals. the snakes 
& the spiders & especially the vermin.
i want to get unholy. get grubby & real. 
none of them come. the zoo has no walls
& not even any popcorn. i call my mom
& she says she has a shovel i could borrow.
i don't want to though. i just want something
gentle & warm to lay down next to me.
to stroke my head & say, "no one 
is waiting for you." 

black pearls

i don't want to go home yet.
bite down on me until
i turn glossy & iridescent.
we drive with the headlights off.
i lie & tell you my house 
is tucked behind the moon.
let's keep going. the more we drive
the closer i get to telling someone the truth. 
i don't want to be crushed under
the tongue of this terrible down world.
i want a jeweler to pierce 
my throat. to hang me to
the neck of a mistress. we talk in lists.
of all the new horrors & the old
& how they both dance 
on a stage of teeth. i have started 
burying televisions. i google,
"what is martial law." i know
what it means but i want a machine
to say something different.
what if we were safe? what if 
instead of flesh we were born
of salt water & sand? sweet little
memory of a wonderful rain. 
when you pull over the chickens
call out in the dark. our eyes
like black pearls in the waning moon's
wild light. i think i could make
amazing earrings. i think i could
next time maybe tell you about 
how often i spend days 
the size of an eye lash. why 
are the people who are supposed
to love me always the first to
part the bivalve's lips. 
knife in the dark. you ask,
"what do you want me to do?"
i want to say, "stay. let's keep going.
drive until we reach an ocean."
instead, i admit the truth.
"i don't know how to fix this." 

girl dinner

i love to get the wrong kind of hungry.
cold canned beans with a wooden spoon.
a handful of knives & a sugar light bulb.
i have never learned how to eat. i want
it to be something about gender but
i know it has more to do with bodies 
& the werewolf in me. i open the back door.
let all the mice in & we go crawling 
on the foreheads of cardboard boxes together.
they say, "i thought you wanted a wedding?"
i tell them, "i have too much to do."
by which i mean, i have too much to devour.
my favorite times of my life were
the paper plate times. when everything 
was flammable. when i didn't need 
to remember exactly how far i went.
everything was snow & blood. the tongue
always has a gender & so does the stomach.
if i ever get out of this though i promise i'll cook
real people food. i'll be a wife with an apron
& thousands of ground beef recipes 
at the back of my throat. for now though,
i am the cutting board god. i eat the carrot
unpeeled with dirt still dusting wrinkled skin.
scoop hummus from the plastic container.
every little morsel. lick the spoons' head
& shoulders. i think it's ancestral. a hunger
like a lightning bolt through me & all 
the not-girls, mouths open in the dark. the desire 
to be full always escaping us. just another handful 
of wings. just one more lemon taste.
the shadow of an iris tree. 

mouth in the yard

at first i would feed it hair.
a strand or two tied in a bow.
i didn't tell anyone. 
i discovered long ago that it is best to 
dismantle yourself alone. put on
the cantaloupe face & say, "nothing
is eating me alive." the mouth 
has followed me all my life.
it used to be just the size
of a tiny ant hill. i mistook it for
the home of some kind of small creature.
brought it sunflower seeds just like
i used to feed the mice who came
to my bedroom at night. 
then it grinned at me. my hunger
became its hunger. pressing bottle caps
into the soil. i hate to smile
with my teeth showing. they've
always been crooked. in yearbook pictures
i would color my mouth in with sharpie.
just a gaping hole. the hole becoming
my entire head. it got bigger. asked for
fruit. an apple. a peach. i made it promise
not to scream. i was so scared
of hearing whatever noise it might devise.
it listened or at least so i thought.
the hole is never really part of you.
it is just a hallway through which
you try to be real. the mouth. the door.
the chimney. in biology class i sat 
in rows & learned about the bodies
of sponges. one long passageway
through which priests walk dangling
their little incense cauldrons. laying 
with a lover he once asked,
"what is something you've never
told anyone?" i thought about 
telling him the truth. about showing him
the mouth that follows me.
we lived in the city so the mouth dwelled
at the corner of the nearest parking lot.
instead, i made up a story about
craving the moon. he asked,
"like an astronaut?" i said, at least somehow 
honestly, "no, like a great big gumball.
something to chew to death on."
today i bring the mouth rotten bananas.
they're slimy & sick. the mouth
accepts everything, but especially
the dead & decaying. the mouth has
never spoken but i think if it did 
it would say, "please keep me" as if i have
a choice. as if its hunger is not my own. 

ancient girlhood

we would shovel out the sun from behind
the wall of clay. 
at daybreak, i took off my fingernails
one by one. replaced them with tree cuttings.
laid down in the valley where 
no one else will go. i think to be a girl is
to be a specific kind of hungry. no one would
come with me. they all wanted
to sleep in & suck on sugar stones. 
i ate a bird whole. felt the wings beating.
i always arrive like this.
with an urge to find out all 
of what i might contain & what might 
contain me. the roots tear me like
bark pulled from the stomach. i worry that
one day my skin might get so thin
that all the stars start crawling out
& i am left like a sieve with nothing
else to catch. the bugs are girls & the tree
are girls & i am somehow not. do we always 
define ourselves through a lack? i am not
you & yet you are a thorn-sized hole
in the skirt i used to wear. all holes widen.
become deer paths. become genders.
little lights in the dark. like moths,
here we come. not the sun. not sure
exactly why or how we are supposed to
satiate ourselves in this kind of muck.
the trees bear fruit. i eat it until i am sick.
my gender gets real lost. loses her eyes.
i come back hollow. wind blows
through me easy as a winter ash. 
everyone else is painting their lips red 
so i join them. the sun burrows again
like a fat toad. all that's left are mouths 
& the ancestors still searching for
their skin too. their teeth ring. 

children's bible

i liked to feed goldfish crackers
to my bible. 
i watched the book's spine bend
& snap as it accepted them. i asked,
"can you tell me again the one about 
the loaves & the fishes?" the book,
always eager, spoke. i liked 
that story best because it was about hunger.
i would see all the mouths & the teeth
like stoop steps. 
the book would tell the same story
different every time. sometimes 
there was a knife. other times there was
a little boy who ate the scales. 
sometimes i was in the stories.
a little disciple or a donkey. other times
the whole thing was loud & full of birds.
i wished i could be inside one of
the book drawings. 
they were bright & bleeding. i didn't 
really want to be holy but i thought
i did. i prayed until screws fell from
my mouth. the book beat its wings.
flew & perched on the top
of my bookshelf, waiting for me
to call it down again.
no one knew where the children's bible
had come from. my mother or father
didn't buy it for me. maybe it had
wriggled free from the dirt
or maybe there was no bible
at all. just a tiny bird who 
believed he'd visited god. sometimes
you can get so in love with a story.
it becomes your body.
i have woken up with words
on my skin. poetry. the songs of 
dead bugs & pigeon iridescence. 
i told no one else about the bible
until years later when i went
looking for it in my childhood bedroom
& could not find it anywhere.
i found a mildew-smelling bible
but not the children's one.
sometimes when i eat bread 
it regenerates. i eat the same piece
again & again & i know 
the book is close by.
just beneath the skin. 

bone makers

in the fallow time 
we ate from each other's tangerines.
i gathered the fat of an ancient animal
to make a fading balm. rubbed
over & over into flesh & then it was
all gone & we had to find bones
for one another. i made yours
& you made mine. i carved each
from a different precious voice.
the birds & the water & the wind.
i have seen people sometimes claim
they have made themselves. this is always
a lie. everyone knows that 
you cannot make your own bones.
they have to be gifted. one by one.
i sometimes wish you hadn't made
all of mine. i did not make all of yours.
there was the collar bone from the mouth
of a megalodon. you had that when
i met you. i always wanted to ask 
who had given it to you but i never have. 
just traced it with my finger. felt
the fossilized teeth. i guess i had a bone too.
a little hammer. the ear bone.
my father crafted it on a whim from a match stick.
he said, "never listen too closely."
it is my little waiting fire. 
i want you to love me like you did
when you found me. when nectar
ran down my face & we ate as much
as we could. when we went one bone
at a time. i gave you & you gave me
until we were skeletons & the stars 
had eyelashes & they all wept. rain on
my car roof. your fingers without any hair.
the last bones were the teeth. mouths open.
then closed. tongues like oars 
of an urgent ship. god i miss you. 

wisdom teeth

sometimes my face is a radio.
i open my mouth & all the airplanes 
are talking about when & how they can land.
i don't think i would last
up in the space station. i like gravity 
too much. pin me to the ground.
i used to like to lay on my back 
& look up at the clouds & then i learned
about bugs. they always come 
to plant their little flags in my hair.
i tell them, "i'm already taken."
we are done kissing & i point to my 
wisdom teeth all the way at the back
of my mouth. i explain, "i stopped going
to the dentist in high school."
you look at them. see the little citadels.
the tiny creatures who live there
writing books no one will read. 
i think the teeth are going to be the only
wise part about me. it's probably overrated anyway.
who wants to know more than their
little pizza slice of horrors? not me.
i want to be ancient. i want someone 
to find my skull & title it something like,
"average transexual." all my teeth, including
my wise ones & my dog ones & the ones
that were supposed to fall out but never did.
i find a helicopter on the roof. 
lock the windows in case they are
trying to get inside. you can a lot about someone
based on how they bite down
on something delicious. my brother & i
used to try to eat donuts in one mouthful
when we finally got a hold of one. 
our bursting cheeks. the sweetness 
like a fist to the tongue. some people,
i am told, never feel this hungry.
my teeth rattle at night like bell acolytes. 
i clench my jaw to make them stop.
still, they try to ring. i have read they might be
trying to talk to the moon. i would understand.
they are kindred spirits, dull white
& pock marked. ready to eat the sun.