march

the toads have been waiting
like frozen hamburgers in the dirt. all winter
my father used to talk to them with me.
then i would go barefoot in the yard on the first day
the frost broke. heard the toads
unthawing. showed my father
my best karate moves i had. he closed his eyes
& fell asleep. when it rained
they wriggled from the soil. we were/are
amphibians too. it is a hereditary kind of indecision. 
on the radio a man was blowing up
a giant balloon. i would buy dollar-store 
helium balloons just to let them go
with notes around their necks.
one reading, "i don't want to be a girl."
the balloon asked me, "are you sure
you want to send that?" the toads answered
for me, backing me up, saying, "yes." 
i never included a return address
& still hoped someone would find
a way to answer. i admit it. i have littered.
or, worse, i have taken a squirrel skull
from the body. there is a headless squirrel ghost
because of me. the beast i fed it to adored it. 
my partner says, "i don't actually know what you do."
it is true. the only beings who know
what i do are the toads & sometimes my father.
i have gone out into my yard & found him
coming up from the soil with them. 
against nature, i have helped them. 
march is our season. the almost time
to breathe through your damp skin. 

we should have gone to the carnival 

it's good to bury as many fingers 
as you can. i return like daddy long legs.
the thumb slowly returning after being
plucked off. i have a mouth the size 
of a doorbell. outside, the bats are returning to 
play telephone in the dark. i get
a phone call from the dead. they want to know
where i'm from. i point to the closet 
& they think it's a joke. the mail truck 
now drives itself without a person in it.
i get empty envelops every day.
i know i'm supposed to be waiting for something
but i don't remember what. the carnival
comes to town with enough lights
to save us. i have a daughter made of
glass & light. she breaks & we sweep her up
with the dust pan & broom. i used to have 
a magic tunnel where i could pass through
& change my sex. there is clear evidence
of trans dinosaurs. i try to tell someone this
& they think i'm joking. when i say
we're ancient i mean to be alive is to
want to change. to shed skin. to dig 
until your hands are nothing. to turn
your body to syrup & emerge with
a pair of wings. sometimes the moon
gets drunk & texts me. she says,
"i really really think it could work."
i don't know what she's talking about
but i try to be a good friend. i tell her
"we should have gone to the carnival.
i know that's what you wanted." it rains heavy.
i got upstairs where the stink bugs live
to hear the drops fall against the roof. 

ruminants

i sewed my second stomach the first time
i ran out of money. it is a horrible feeling
to know there is an empty hole you are supposed
to pull your life from. i made the stomach 
out of plastic shopping bags 
& floss. it smelled like mint. at first, the second stomach
did not work. i tried to eat leaves like the deer.
i ended up sick. i ended up watching my antlers
fall off & turn into snakes. i thinned to
the width of a lamppost & feed my face to boys
with nothing but hands. i returned to the stomach though.
i mended the holes with socks & then with candy wrappers.
next i caught a fish & used its scales to strengthen 
the sides. the stomach came alive: a living room for that which 
could not be turned into lights. i grew up thinking 
of money almost like deer. they will come 
& they will go & you will not feel very different.
always a worry about catching them. turning them
into meat. turning their stomachs back into clouds.
the word for animals like deer is ruminant which
also means, a person who holds on. who mulls over
every detail of the past. i do not forget anything 
that had to do with fear. each time money
ran out again, i build more stomachs.
more places to harbor a few dollars or a song. 
there is a room of stomachs. some of them reek
& others are soft & bright. no one has seen them.
they are mine to keep. on my walk this morning
i find deer tracks that bisect the early spring field. 
hooves in the wet earth. i steal some of the dirt they touched.
decide not to check my bank account today
& build another stomach instead. this one maybe
from clay & dew. stitch with the early march wild onions. 

bullet with 

we kept a drawer full of rocket ships.
you never wanted to come with me
when i climbed into one. we always talked
at night when i got home & the stars were playing 
their little keyboards. lately i have been thinking
a lot about endings. the song "bullet with
butterfly wings" climbs out of my mouth.
it was/is one of my father's favorites. when you are
a teenager, angry music feels prophetic.
when i hear it now, all i can see is him.
his guitars changing into crows. the rats
who we were trying to poison in the basement.
there is a duality to escape. within it is
an ending like the mouse in a trap. a television
dangling by the cord from a tree. i wish
we would have broken more rules. i do not know
if there is still time. the rules are different now.
the night has our baby teeth. sometimes
i want to call you & ask you what you remember.
if i imagined the hornets in the walls &
the ants who ate out my eyes. the broom handles 
& texture of our father's hands. i also want to ask you
what we will do with the house when we
are old? should we keep it? turn it into
a haunted house attraction? these are the trap doors
that only you know how to fall into. i am sorry
i am always the sibling with the questions. but,
have you ever used a rocket without me?
where did you go & who did you meet there?
in our lives, all our beloveds hold pieces of us. 
i come to you when i want to remind myself
that i am full of blood. when i almost forget
the smell of a struck match. there you are,
standing in the dark of the red-floored kitchen. 
i am home & i am not. 

american idiot

in fifth grade i had a rock band in my head. 
they broke guitars. they stuck drumsticks
into the earth & waited for them to become trees.
my favorite song was "american idiot"
& i carried the lyric book from the cd case
so i could sing along. on the playground
everyone was starting to know their genders.
mine, still, a knot of distortion pedal dreams.
i spent as much time as i could alone. in my bedroom
i would open a little door in the back of my head
& let the band out. they would rehearse 
as loud as they could but it was only the volume
of chattering flies. lady bugs lived
in the walls & they would come out 
to watch. the band was insect size. small. smaller even
than me. i would hum along with them.
bring them sunflower seeds & cookies to eat.
on a good afternoon, i would offer my own lyrics.
usually they were about death or birds. 
the band loved my ideas. they whipped their
long black hair around. they had tattoos.
i would draw in sharpie on my arms to mirror them.
a lyric from my elbow to my wrist. at school
the teachers would tell me i was going to poison myself
but i didn't really care. i can't remember 
the last time i let the band out to rehearse. 
it was probably in the summer. maybe the summer
before high school. in the sticky heat
of my room, i must have watched them. they did not know
it was out last time & i think neither did i.
the thing about rage is that as you get older
it does not wither, but thickens. becomes 
a syrup. i eat spoonful after spoonful. let the band play.
let them do their shows for my irises. 
a little stage where a song can hold everything i need it to.
i remember when i made the mistake of singing
"american idiot" aloud around the wrong teacher.
she confiscated the lyric book but it was too late
i already had it memorized. 

flicker

once i let all the light bulbs
in my apartment turn into skulls.
there were rat skulls & bird skulls
& moose skulls. at night the place 
swallowed me just like how
i wanted it to. i do find myself
sometimes craving that dark. 
the way you can become a deepening cave. 
for a week i did not leave. it snowed
& i watched as the snow came alive.
the sleeping bodies of ghost bears.
birds that broke into frost. 
once a woman knocked on my door.
i rushed to greet her but when
i opened it, no one was there.
just footprints leading there. 
you might ask how i knew it was
a woman at my door & i'll tell you
that lacks can teach you so much. 
the last light to go out before it was dark
was in the kitchen. i loved to bask 
in the flickering. i imagined myself
as a slideshow for a room full of bees.
they would say, "this person
is losing their mind." they would
be correct. a mind is not nearly 
as useful as the dark though.
in the beats between light flickers 
i would sleep for years. the sink 
was always empty. i had two plates 
& two spoons & one lop-sided fork. 
the flickering got quicker the closer
we got to a complete skull. rapid.
my stop-motion body. then, finally.
an exhale. the skull of a rabbit 
overhead. all his children flickering too
along with me. i slept alongside
so many creatures. my old body 
& my new one & my future one. 
the ceiling of bees who had seen
my show. the other creatures, noses 
to the wall. i slept so heavy there. 
when the snow thawed i waited
weeks before changing the bulbs.
even then i wept when i did. 

prop closet

we got ourselves regal in the dark.
one window. a pile of shoes. there was always
more bones to try on. that summer
we did plays. took our bodies off
in every direction. got used to flesh.
helping each other change behind stage.
folds & freckles. how in a few minutes
anyone can emerge a witch or 
a monster. we laughed as we stuffed
hands into too-small gloves. bending feet 
like bridges. archways. trying to fit shoes. 
children's lungs bursting with geese. 
at home i was not much at all. a feather duster
of a late girl. i slept with my eyes open. let the ceiling
devour my face. a boy standing on my roof with 
a bucket of beetles. i never wanted
a show to end. the last performance
a kind of funeral. goodbye beautiful other face.
goodbye shoulders & knees. that was when
we would return those ghosts 
to the prop closet. a room of bursting fabric 
& batons & baseball bats & fishing rods. 
we lingered, holding up dresses & asking
one another, "how do you think
i would look in this?" or saying, "maybe
one day we'll do a play where i could wear this."
when we were done it was like watching a plane
take off. the clouds eating our legs.
outside the arts building it was sticky august.
birds without anywhere to go. 
trees wearing all the custom jewelry 
they could find. i always wished i could
go into the little closet & stay just a little longer.
lay on a crown & wait there
for a story about a king in which everyone emerged 
without anything to take off. 

one headlight

on the way home from picking out funerals
& reenacting them, we would count
the cars with one headlight out. 
stars spit teeth on the street. the highway
opened up to cornfield roads. everything smelled
like dandelions & hot breath. the counting
was a game to see who would
notice our cyclops nightmates first.
you would hit the car ceiling with a fist
to try & claim the monster. i never wanted
you to take me home. we were teenagers. you were
my first friend who got her license. i was always
too embarrassed to ask you to just
take me for a drive but when you offered 
i would drop anything i was doing to go. i wanted
to feel briefly like we had an escape plan. like
we could skip rehearsal & drive across
state lines to the nearest beach. become horseshoe crabs
& bathe in the moon. one of your windows didn't roll down
but we didn't care. we used that surface
as a makeshift whiteboard. wrote the initials
of crushes. sometimes we would stop at the turkey hill
just a block from my house. drank milkshakes
in the parking lot. you always beat me at our game.
you always found more headlights out
than me. our harvest of vacancies. your father
on the roof. my father out drinking from
a hole in the earth. we tried to stay out
as long as we could manage. inventing new
places to park & wait. the town got smaller.
we talked about how far we would move away 
when we graduated. once, on a night in august, 
you said, "sometimes i think of driving at night
with no headlights on at all." 

water park

i think if i ate the houses up the block
they would taste like sugar & fingernails.
i keep a fork & knife on me just in case
the opportunity presents itself.
the suburbs are contagious. i watch as
they eat the land. bite marks & all.
to be from here is to be hungry 
& never satisfied. i think it is best to 
not look at the bank account. best to pretend
there is a trap door beneath the house.
it's easier to tell myself there is a water park 
waiting for us to laugh in. it is dormant
or so i pretend. hiding in the earth. a kind of atlantis.
i am not good at asking for what i need
because i get better & better at shrinking
what i can survive on. i shrug & say
"i guess we don't have a mouth anymore."
when i am feeling rebellious instead of starving
i'll go to the lawns & tell them that they should
grow crabgrass. that they should burst
with poison ivy. that they should want more
than to live choked & smiling. when i lived
in the city i spread seeds & watched as
wild flowers grew around the collars 
of stop signs. dear god we are so close.
don't you hear it? there is something delicious 
& real. we saw the spring onions starting
to burst from the wet earth. each, a wild bell.
we saw an angel without any shoes standing on the roof.
i don't know how to admit how far gone i can get.
i'll find myself standing there in the water park
only there is blood instead of water.
a man without a face tells me, "go."
there is a slide & i must take it. i hold
my breath. sweating in the lamplight. 
the space heater full of moths. my hands 
cold as beef patties. i flex my fingers. the windows
ache with birds. i want so much i cannot have. 

guy fawkes mask

i've watched v for vendetta with everyone
i've ever dated. i don't know what that says about me.
i guess i am trying to ask them,
how do you feel about masks? about what
we keep beneath them? sometimes i'll see
an edge lord with a guy fawkes mask
bumper sticker & i kind of want to tear it off.
i want to knock on their window & ask,
"have you ever even seen a fire?" 
we have been too loose with symbols i think
or else maybe i am just finding a small detail
to be furious at instead of the big 
soul-eating things that are hard to even
explain anymore. sometimes when people ask me
how i'm doing i'll just let the silence do the work.
other days when my brain is a vending machine 
i'll lie & say, "i'm doing good." 
i think i love v for vendetta
because i crave the myth that one body 
could save us. that in the darkness there is a spirit
of all our rage. is this the remnants of my catholocism? 
a salvation would be nice though. the first time i saw
v for vendetta we watched it on a portable 
dvd player sitting on folding chairs. 
the room fell away. the screen, enveloping us. 
i watched as v made the birds in a nest.
the next morning, my boyfriend cooked that
for me. the egg surrounded by toast.
sweet butter. glowing yolk.
days later i almost bought a guy fawkes mask.
i did not have any plans with it.
i just wanted to feel not alone. a current to hold
my hungers. the world asks
so much of us. fingers & dimes. 
i don't want to buy a mask anymore.
where would i go with it anyway? i am not that man.
i have seen the fires already & they have seen me.
we do not all want the same midnight. oh if only we did. 
mine has sugar & a heavy moon. theirs
has a pane of glass from which they dream 
of watching us burn.