partial sonnet (you decide which part)

i get on a plane without any wings.
it is really just a flock of pins. plant me 
in the ugly place. i wish i could fix the world
for you. isn't that what love is?
the sewing bags from goodwill complete
with thimbles. i fill one with honey & milk
& we go bury our beautifuls underneath
the long neck tree. i don't need a car.
i don't need a gun. i just need a finger's length
of licorice & a sliver of moon. they say that
if you want to be a poet you need to have
a command of language. i would disagree.
i think you need to bend over & let the
consonants do what they want. i used to make
money by being a pilot for empty planes.
we would fly over the hole in the map 
where all the unfulfilled milkshake orders go.
get wild on heavy cream & gas station roses.
maybe one day i'll try to get real formal.
apply to all the poet things & take professional
faces to show the world. for right now
all i have is a favorite spoon & the birds
who come to pay their respects. i tell them,
"i'm not dead you know?" they reply, "yet."

look-away rooms

you tell me there is a man in the mailbox again.
i go out there & find a television. 
there is never a man but there is always a talisman. 
carry it to the compost & ask it, "please go easy." 
ants spill from its mouth. a sputtering video 
about the lives we lived before we 
had fingers. on my phone someone is
asking their friend if shrimp have brains.
i want to shake them. of course they do.
we are all always thinking about who
will love us & who will eat us. if we were shrimp
i would compliment the length of your antennae. 
how you clean the mouths of gods. 
we drive home & the car grows millipede legs.
you close your eyes & say,
"the man is back." you are driving.
there is no man. nothing. just a road full
of optional deaths. the billboard that advertises 
plastic surgery & the billboard that tells us,
"it is time for money." i want to tell you
to pull over but i know you like you drive
when you're feeling impossible. i find another tv
on the porch when we get home
& this time i take it to the look-away room.
the long closet with all the skeletons & all the bills
& all the clothes we don't know what to do with. 
i wonder about putting myself 
in the room. if it would eat me or if i would
learn how to live there. sometimes life
closes around you like a drawstring bag.
other times you really feel like the meadows
are eternal & not always under threat
of being transformed into warehouses.
i pet your head. your eyes are like hard boiled eggs.
i wish there was a man. something real i could
wrestle to the ground. who i could feed
to the look-away room with the broken chairs.
instead, your fears are like mine. standing right
there. full of blood. gone in the flashlight.
standing always jut over an arm's length away. 

lovespoon

you fell the echo tree.
axes & worms. 
the spoon, a little rib. the roots
still clenched in the ground.
what heads have you cut off? what hands?
as a lover, i want all the gifts. 
i want bones with our names
cut into them. i want a rocking horse
for our future ghosts to play with.
i want a lovespoon with a chain 
around its neck. who taught us
to want to keep each other
both like birds & like bulbs?
hold me not in the mouth
but in the woodwork. i want to be
shaped by your hands. breathe only
when you cut the heart, an eye
in the middle of the wood
for us to look at each other through.
i see a tiny snow globe place. a house
without gods. a knife. the one you used
to make me from. all the shavings.
the eyelids of the tree still blinking
away in the cellar. a gift
sometimes lives longer than the love.
not this one. the spoon is bound
for a tired museum. behind the glass.
a little placard that reads, "lovespoon,
they fell asleep on its tongue
until they both turned into stag & ran."

spray paint

the sky is feeling really sick. i get orders
from a political flyer to paint it blue
so no one notices. i can't tell if the flyer
is handwritten & meant just for me
or if it came from a little machine
with hands like my father's. i'm ready
to do anything if it would mean we were
happy again. we see crows on the fence
of one of the nearby farms & you tell me,
"those aren't actually crows, those are
blackbirds." the blackbirds are looking
for any wedding rings they can steal
to make portals out of this world. 
they slither through & end up somewhere
with candy in the water. i do a bad job
of painting the sky. i have a can of spray paint
& i write my name & my lover's name.
at least this way every time i look up
& i see my mistake i'll remember i love someone
enough to want to pretend i am okay.
the blue i picked is too bright. we are cartoon
living. we & sitting on the half-grin of 
the waning moon. soon we'll fall into
the ocean & have to watch daytime television
with the sharks. i tell the sky i am sorry
she is so sick. the politicians have a meeting
about how sorry they are. they are 
always so sorry. then, they dress in nice clothes
& kiss each other under the sky they
made sick. i don't want to talk about bills.
i don't want to be protected by my overlords
i want to be protected by the blackbirds
& the crows & even the sky. i want to paint
my body blue & crawl up there. let the clouds
lay down like big dogs around me. my lover with me, 
the sun tasting citrus & sweet on my tongue 
when i open my mouth to laugh. 

conditioning the thread

i find you in the beeswax model
of our house. soon it will melt in the sun's
devil belly but for now, the world
is sweet & gold. you tell me,
"i want you to love me like 
when we first met. like a wave
ready to swallow me whole."
can you forget how to beg? i run
my fingers through your hair. 
we pinch off handfuls of wax. pull
our thread through the soft tacky masses. 
i love to condition the thread. 
we can teach the strands not to fray 
just by showing them our bones. 
then, the soft scent of honey on
my fingers. honey on my skin. 
the bees in their coffins. the bees
in the walls. all autumn you begged me
to let you eat them. there was a nest.
their larva like quotations. words passed
between us in the dark. with the thread
we stitch beads to our fingers. i try to remember
what i used to say to you when our love
was fresh & un-wintered.  the figs 
i grew from my ears. i tell you,
"in another life we made the wax. we
found each other as bees on a flower.
escaped the hive. died full & rested 
in the mouth of a fat hydrangea's skull. 

eggs

i told you "do not worry"
when you asked why i took 
all the chicken eggs out to the edge
of the field. love is about what we bear
for one another in the dark. 
you tell me that is wrong.
that it is about what we share. i have never
known this. still, my father does not
look at the family bank account.
all my life i've overheard him
say, "please tell me there's money."
then, once, my father helped me
burry a rib i lost. we said nothing but i knew
he was promising not to tell mom.
i had cracked an egg in the pan
& a toy car had fallen out. sizzled in
the hot oil. i opened another & found
a tiny rubber chicken. another, a key.
none of them with the sweet golden yolks
we're used to. each a panic room.
i dispose of the eggs. i do not know
what i'll tell you happened to them.
i visit the chickens & ask what is wrong.
they stare at me as if i am the one
who laid a dozen knickknacks. 
i admit to them, "i have found myself 
doing the same." i don't want to give
the same little glowing pieces of my body
anymore. i want to be useless. 
i want to sleep for a year & wake up
inside one of the eggs. no egg tooth to help me.
waiting for the flick of a wrist. the side
of a bowl. of course, you ask me
"where did you go?" i tell you the truth
about the trinkets. about the flock. 
we go out to the field together. 
you see a pile of broken eggs. their yolks
sticky in the dead corn stalks, earth still waiting
for the spring till. you ask, "what was wrong
with them?" i search. no toy car. 
no mini rubber chicken. no key.  

ant number

why can't you just let me be crazy?
on the television a man is saying,
"soon virtual reality will be in every house.
they'll be like toasters." i stick my head
in the toaster & i see a virtual reality whale
who is trying to escape the land of make believe.
when i used to have math tests
sometimes all the numbers would turn
into ants. i would start squishing them
with my thumb until the time was up
& i hadn't answered any questions. the ants
returned stronger than before. they came
with their new numbers. ones we are
supposed to explain how much
more time we need to sleep. my alarm is
a little buzzard. she wears a bow she stole
from a road-side memorial. i want to go rogue.
i want to drive the car into the clouds.
park it there. see them try & give me a ticket then.
sometimes i believe if i could just
see an ant number again i might have
a solution to all my problems. my mirrors
spit me out. my blood is full of race cars.
the virtual reality whale tries to swallow me
but spits me out right away. i'm sadly not 
a little krill. i'm just a man who is not
really a man but sometimes might as well be.
gender is such a terrible thing to talk about.
no one likes it, don't believe what 
they tell you. i do one of those ridiculous
street interviews. i hold up a paint swatch
& ask everyone what color it is. no one knows.
some people get creative. "dried blood."
"broken finger." so so close. the worst is when
the ant number are inside your phone.
i try to brush them off the screen but they're
deep deep in the wild now. you tell me,
"i don't know what you mean" so i take
a needle & thread & sew a shoe to the wall.
there. i'm not going anywhere unless
the house goes belly-up again. the fish tank
has eyes. watches a television. i never finish 
the math test. sometimes i find it, still blank
waiting for me on the kitchen table. 

until the cows come home

i don't want to wait anymore for 
everything to be peanut butter. you get 
the blender out & pulverize a baby tooth.
it turns into a sweet spread for crackers.
the recipe book grandmother's herself. 
i see a picture of some ancestors on a history facebook group.
they are waiting for something to give. 
we have to start accepting facts. gender is dead.
now, it's just a word that means, "here is how
i'd like to own you." as its replacement, i am proposing 
we start to make a city beneath the earth.
shut the hatch tight. grow dark flowers 
& mushrooms the size of our heads. wait for 
the cows to find us. they will come in late spring
once the rain has stopped & before the world
steps into tongue fire. right there. a hoof
on a window. the cows, our twins, crying
for us. they want to be ground beings too. they're sick
of all the metal. they say, "i want 
to be held." they dream of being
the size of jelly beans. who hasn't? i would love
to be carried in my lover's pocket. 
i don't know what do to with distances between
arrival & now. i don't want to be another
waiting ritual. sitting for an ancestor picture.
home, getting farther & farther away. 
i want to dig. i want the cows here
right now. i want their hunger & their weight.
i want a field of cows, all of them eager
& coming towards my front door. pouring
into the house. trampling all the nonsense.
the picture frames & the empty vases. the cows
putting reality tv on. making their own 
dating shows. i climb up on one of their backs
& you do too. we laugh. get as ugly as we can. 
then, we escape. re-prometheus ourselves
with a piece of the sun in our pockets. so unholy
that we kill the last gender. dry it out in the sun.
make it into sweet & salty jerky & eat. 

cop car bonfire

we share the siren like a strawberry,
the sweet guts in our hands. ripened in the
wordy sun. we circle the carcass
of a star. all the streets have gone licorice 
in the fire. even the forest burns her brush. 
sighs & lays wide open in the ashes.
this is what i want for us. for the other side
to be something softer. all the metal 
turned to flesh. walking in the early hours 
on a vigil. we keep watch for the wire men.
tell them, "this is not a place for capture.
this is where we run away to." i know there
is no such thing as a utopia. i am not talking
about that. i'm talking about breathing. about
living inside a whale. i'm talking about
not trying to fix what has always been broken.
i'm talking about building a fresh mouth. an open
house. the old way to hold on to one another.
the tires we will use for swings. the headlights,
for the eyes of our mother statues. shoes in 
a heaven pile. feet like wings, beating towards
the sky's throw blanket. the heat from
the fire, like a pile of breast bones. he we always were.
all the guns drowned in a lake. the sea monsters 
swallowing the bullets to turn them into pearls.
i know i am telling you stories. let me please
just tell you stories. if we tell them to each other
for long enough, they will start to grow lungs.
start screaming at us from the nighttime trees
along with the other bugs hunger for summer. 
 

crow mountain 

i have started to point out potential hiding places.
we drive through the mountains. see the crows
playing video games in a parking lot of
a defunct pizza shop. yellowing plastic sign.
i tell you, "i think we could stay there
if we had to." i keep a running list
of apocalypses that i would want 
to survive & ones i would not. i have been
learning how to talk to the crows.
they have been thinking about the end times
long before we did. in their eggs they all
watch a video about keys. about trying to collect
all the fallen pieces of the sun. this is why
crows are always searching for shiny fragments.
we do not pull over. keep driving. see more & more
flocks of crows. you never respond
when i point out a hiding spot. instead,
you change the subject. you mention hunger 
or the scientists trying to make a wooly mammoth. 
we are both different disciples of resurrection.
the secrets we keep from one another
turn velvet in the dark. i have been letting
the crows in at night. they have been
telling me their doom parables. they say,
"if you do not find enough sun, you will
have to come back again & keep hunting."
i feed them brown sugar. the moon gets
so heavy that it cracks open & releases 
a thousand spiders. my favorite hiding spots
are the hollows i notice in the necks of old trees.
i ask the crows, "will we escape?"
they consult an oracle. the oracle is inconclusive.
spits out barbie shoes & a little toy spatula.
one crow lays an egg & buries it.
i ask him why he's done this. he says,
"the future is full of water." i think we could
fix the roof of the old pizza shop. open the windows
in the afternoon. let the ghosts place checkers.
when the big men come by, turn into crows.
burry our eggs in the silt & loam.