vow

i have never been good at promises.
i think i've maybe been present for
one wedding. i was far away.
the couple seemed happy. 
or maybe when i was small i flower-girled
just a little bit. there is a hole in the sky
where i am told we should stick out fingers.
the horrors of tunnels evoke for me
a chapel. smoke doesn't seem like
it should be able to make a shadow
but it does. a lovely veil coming
out of our horse. not house. horse.  
once, we were in the forest & i thought,
"yes let's get tethered." a room without walls
is a stage. a stage without a stage is
just an altar. i miss being a child
when the worms meant something else.
if you really want me to promise i can try
for you. i can. but it will be made of 
paper machete & it will taste like glue. 
this isn't about fidelity or infedelity.
i mean i cannot promise we are going
to be alive in the way we wanted.
without a ceiling & with enough water
to drink. i wash my face in the zoo.
the zoo tries to recruit me. why do i resist it?
it is about time i get into the reptile house.
behind the glass, i'll be lovely. goose-shaped
& full of heaven. i'll wear white for you
until we are both dust if i have to. 
pure as the snow which is to say
full of gravel & feathers & soot. 

bunker

for us, there is no bunker. 
i have had neighbors
who dig graves for themselves.
fill them with canned meat. 
my first husband loved spam.
he talked to it like an unborn limb.
if i had a place to hoard my future
i would probably collect cereal.
i think the end times will require
much more sugar than we assume.
something to ring the pain
like a bell. something to remind me
of when i was a child & asked 
for extra mayonnaise on my hoagies
my father is building
a garage where he can go to scream.
he does not say that's what it will be for
but i know him & i know
the kinds of horrors he carries. 
there are rumors online that 
the rich already have their 
end times plans. we do not exist 
in those plans. i take comfort in knowing
that i am only alive because
the maps of rich people failed. 
our eggs were supposed to be rosary beads
in the dirt. did you know if you 
put your ear to the frozen earth,
you can hear the past. it is wide 
& singing. to me it usually sounds
like a flock of trumpets trying 
to come home. my aunt is dying 
& she keeps saying, "i want to go home."
my father doesn't understand.
he tells her, "you are home." the thing
about the bunker is that it is never
a home. instead, it is the reservoir 
that does not believe in the future.
i do not build a bunker. we eat canned beans
& laugh by the fireplace. i tell my father,
"just let her know she'll be home soon."

mouth breather

don't get me wrong i enjoy breathing
but sometimes i see someone with 
a mouth so wide open that angels
start walking in. my mom told me 
when i was little that it is a bad idea
to clear your head because you don't know
what will walk inside. i did it anyway
because i don't listen to instructions
& now i'm gay. the reality is that 
my nose just doesn't really work. 
when i tell people that they usually say,
"you should get that checked out?" i laugh
with what money? with what time?
with what oracle? i picture myself
opening up my scrying mirror & searching
for an answer to all my ailments. 
once in a waiting room i watched 
a little boy press his sticky hand
to the glass door leading back into
the belly of the white world. his father
pulled him back & feed him
the waiting room toys. once i was driving
& could not find anywhere with a coffee.
when you crashed the car i thought,
"finally." no deer, just the side
of an ugly snowy road. it's my left 
nostril that doesn't work the most.
i don't mind being tired all the time.
what really gets to me is not having enough
to look forward to. i talk about food
like shrines to place my aching.
in the ditch i said, "we're getting thai food soon."
i know i'm a mouth-breather
& it is really embarrassing. it is me. 
i am the one with the angels walking in.
they never take off their shoes.
track mud into my brain. i know this is
not why i'm broken or melancholy
but it is easier to explain than the full picture
which involves more of my body
than i'm willing to share. i wash my face
in the shower. i can't really smell 
but i do feel the tea tree oil
when i rub it into my scalp. i don't know
who told me to do this ritual
but it makes me feel a little more alive.
sometimes the angels even ruffle their feathers
like chickens in the cold. 
i am drinking air from a plastic cup
it tastes like lemon soda. 

knocked over heaven

i love to thwart the overlords
in small ways. i lie when my phone
asks me about my hungers.
i say, "of course i would like to buy
a ticket to the orange place."
the best i can do is keep a varied 
propaganda diet. if i dig myself
out of my grave today i think i would
like to see my grandmother.
i have not seen her bones in years.
they just arrested a grave robber
a few cities over. apparently his house
was full of hundreds of skeletons.
i know true crime is mostly copaganda 
but sometimes i want to see 
what horrors are going on. just give me
a little taste so i can know one truth.
it makes some people paranoid
but to me it makes me more reckless.
i am prone to breaking glasses
& spilling drinks. once i held heaven.
it was kind of like a dense water. 
fatty. almost soup. 
i got it all over the kitchen floor. 
sometimes i still see smudges of it
in the corner or on the hem 
of the fridge's skirt. i don't know i we 
only get one glass in our lives. it would
not be the first time i wasted something.
my dad told me to invest the money
i used to have. i never did. where did it go?
i was laughing. i was buying 
smash-proof eyes. you were living
in the ceiling watching me eat with my hands.
most of us "just one more" ourselves
into the sunset. that is me too. 
i met a holy man in a toll booth. i moved
too fast to hear what he said. 
on my hands & kneeing cleaning up the mess.
i cut a hole in the ocean to breathe. 
open the windows to let the angels in. 

cold brew

my teeth put on their shoes. 
i have strip-malled myself somehow
into adulthood where i dig graves 
& welcome the snow. i think of us
when we were twenty-one & we seem
to me now like children. one night crying
in a red robin. was i mad at you
or myself? the island took my tongue
& rung it out like a wet towel 
on the front stoop. the neighbor never
knew my name (thank gods) & we 
stayed up until the moon went rancid.
i think it was a date or it was a plea
from you. the car parked way too far away.
i walked to the corner store. i walked
to the grocery store. picked up quarters
on the street to buy another cold brew. 
we drank until we were wind chimes.
until the distances shortened & we were
as old as wood. the future is best left
without any hands. a rolling ball
of wool. every time i have tried to build
a mausoleum, i end up leaving it unfinished
with my plastic take-out cup inside.
i eat a hole in the bottom of an ice cream hole.
flush the galaxy down the toilet
to be with the fish. when i call you i can
hear the caffeine in your voice. 
it is like the parking lot never ends. it is
like there is a stoplight hung from my neck. 
i run the red, chew the ice. 

i don't want to write a poem without you

they split the moon to make 
your feet. hoof prints in the dark. 
i have to do robot things today
& the sun doesn't have any fur. i was standing
in front of the hummus at the supermarket
after you died thinking, "why am i here?"
everything seemed strange. the neon 
& the carts & the day moving on. at home,
i pick leaves for you. separate out your favorite
& feed them to the others. they tell me
they miss your eyes. the moon is cleaved.
drips nectar. forms pools in the mud. 
she is a ripe melon. i would feed you
all the airplanes caught from between the stars.
i would stay up until the days turned over
& over. i still remember carrying you 
through a crowded farm festival. 
you cried until you got home. the yard.
your bleating in the morning before i brought hay.
i do not know how anyone could say 
"just animals" when talking about
the other bodies who hold up the sky with us.
i feel all of them. the deer whose body sleeps
beneath the cedar. the quail who left 
one by one like ellipses. i wish only that 
the last night was better. that we all slept in a pile
beside one another. that i became a goat too
& we spoke finally in a shared language.
your breath & my hair. hoof prints
leading up to the moon where we rest 
& nothing is loud. in the car, parked beside
an ugly gas station, i could smell 
the soil-laden must of your fur. the lights
washed out the stars so i drove home.
parked & wept. fed the others again. 
carrots. watermelon. grapes. i told them 
to eat extra tonight for you. 

teeth jail

throw away the key. i will eat
with my eyes. pay an application fee
to look at the moon. they say it is withering
with each poet's glance. that we must conserve it. 
soon we will run out of metaphors
& we will have to start screaming.
i had a past lover, who, when in grief,
would walk out to the gnarled woods
at the edge of campus & shout
into the trees. you would imagine that
the animals would run but instead 
they shouted with him until everything
was raw & red. in fifth grade they removed
six of my teeth. i wanted to swallow them.
let them turn into steps inside my chest.
i am building a staircase to see you. i am
opening the windows & letting the ghosts out.
i am so glad we got rid of the curtains. i used
to love them. now everything is bright.
my teeth were too crowded. they still are.
it is mostly because i lost a retainer
when i was little & then i refused 
to get my wisdom teeth out. if they 
are going to be shackled i want to be 
the one. one day they will have all fallen out
& i can plant them in the yard. grow a teeth tree
& no one will ever be in prison again.
a laugh from the sun. i will spend the rest
of my life trying to convince my beloveds
that we can be free. i feed the windowsill.
i sweep hay from the floor. slip the turnstile. 
this is my snake garden. this is our moon.

perpetual stew

i add garlic to the noise.
five fingers. your pocket acorns
from a walk without the moon.
we drive again through the corn fields.
i want someone to call on the phone.
for them to crawl through 
the receiver & hold me like
a worry stone. you come home late
& the room is dark. i hear you move
through the guts of the house.
wonder if you are not you
but some intruder. i would have
no method of resource. i go back asleep.
online there are people making
perpetual stews which are just 
simmering pots of meat & onions & worry.
i have enough stew to deal with 
but i do not mind watching theirs.
thick brown broth poured from a ladle.
every once & awhile it will look delicious.
of course it is dangerous. a breeding ground
for all kinds of bacteria or whatever 
but i don't like to think about that.
i like to witness what the online people
who i guess are also real people somewhere
are doing with their hands. 
we all need a vessel to tend & 
our own is also a hazard. stew of my heart.
stew of my dreams. i pick wild onion.
a pocketful of sage from the bush
by the well. swallow it all & weep. 
it is you in the dark & i know by
your soft voice. you empty your pocket
on the nightstand & join me 
in the night's broth.  

bad history 

i used to be able to list all the presidents
of the united states.
we memorized it for 
ap us history class. my memory was not
in order. instead, it was 
a patchwork. dipping back & forth
until the march was complete.
the names became hopscotch squares.
pebbles cast into their mouths.
a man with hair like a dead bird.
another one with pickled eyes. set jaw.
dull skin & tombstone teeth. 
in the classroom their portraits 
looked down on us disapprovingly. 
high schoolers with lots of big ugly dreams. 
horrible men are almost never depicted 
with their hands where you can see them.
instead, they wiggle their fingers in the dark.
i lost my memory of the president's names
one by one. first the 1800s presidents 
& then on into the now. i do not forget 
what they did though. their wars & their hungers
& their genocides & their blazing white house.
when my grandmother
was dying they asked her often
if she knew who the president was
as a way to test how much she still remembered.
she always got it right up until
the last weeks. i hope to one day too
be emptied of their names. to say,
"i do not know but there is a valley 
full of bones to tend." when i was finished the list,
i would look at it & marvel at my work. 
the outline of a knife museum. & still somehow
none of them are dead. 

recreational arguments before & after the sunrise

you talk to me in grubs.
i love you even when the walls rot
& peel like old cattails mucky from rot. 
we are driving & the windows are covered
with butter. i am crying & the sky rain
is so warm that i mistake it for a shower.
buy a bottle of shampoo & lather us wild.
everything about the body could
also be used to talk about clouds.
cloud teeth. cloud religion. cloud envy. 
once you bit me & said it was because
i made you do it. the bite got infected.
i become a werewolf but i do not show you.
argue instead with my reflection in
a bottle of sparkling beaks. 
i prefer to keep my monstrosity to myself 
these days. there is not enough storage
on my phone to hold the pictures of the life
i thought i wanted. tied down like a runaway tree,
we watch a movie & it plays backwards. neither 
of us stop it. instead, practice our new tongue. 
i learn to make shrines to my words.
to take bites out of the inside 
of fruit, leaving the flesh intact. 
we are sitting in a parking lot when 
one of my birds falls out. you help me 
put it back into place. i tell you i am sorry.
that that wasn't me. i am left though wondering
who we are outside of our open mouths. 
when you fall asleep before me, i take myself
to the gas station to argue with 
the color of the neon. pink. too pink
for a world as heavy as this.