collector of endings.

when we visit aunt flo
her television is always praying.
genuflecting too. a face full of holographic 
smiling people. moving pictures of rooms that look
warmer than any of ours. 
she tells me, "all the hallmark movies
end with a kiss." the television is 
trying to kiss me so i hide 
in the closet. find the clothes 
of aunt mary & aunt joan, both 
long since turned into soft pears 
in the hands of the tree. they return
over & other to leave their guts on the lawn.
sweet & pale. no one comes to eat
the pears anymore so they just keep
returning. wings in the basement
going wild. aunt flo follows the television.
she cannot take her eyes off of it
or she might miss another ending.
she is the family's collector of endings.
i lived with her once
for the summer. aunt joan had just died
& her ghost was heavy.
i slept in her old room that smelled
like hands. aunt flo said
over & over, "i'm never going to die."
i believed her then & i believe her still.
the television would
wake me up in the morning.
i sometimes didn't mind. it just
had people it wanted to show me.
i know it is a delicate balance. you must
always return to the glow. you must not
ever confess, "i think i have seen this before."
one night i found her weeping
in the dark bathroom. the television
was dark & laying on its side.
she had spent all the stories that day.
nothing more to say, just the silence
of the streetlamps spilling 
across the pink tile floor. 

if i saved all my father's bottlecaps 

i would not build a house with them. i would
also not devour them though i would want to.
the only thing that makes life worth living
is eating with your hands. sometimes i sit 
on the floor & feel a lot better
about the crumbling state of the empire.
it's not like it was good anyway but 
when everything is the right
kind of shiny you can get lost. you can think
you are going to feast on really sweet mirrors. 
the bottle caps that i do have are souvenirs 
from times he tried
to eat me with his hands. i'm not suggesting he's
zeus or anything but he does have
some tendencies. honestly, all fathers are
at one point or another, zeus. i would consider
making a road out of them. i would consider
taking that road & pathing a way to reach
the moon. i wouldn't tell anyone else 
about it. then i would sit up there
& see how long i could hold my breath.
most of my favorite childhood moments
were with my dad. he was tossing bottle caps
& we were listening to them "ping"
as they hit the driveway. i decide they were
each a little bell. my partner doesn't like bells
so i avoid ringing them but 
when he is still asleep i will go outside 
& ring one. it always turn into a bottlecap
in my hands. a parent is both themself 
& their ghost. whoever they used to be
when you were small & searching. 
i guess i am still small & searching. my favorite
caps where them black ones. laughing 
sometimes my father would put them
over his eyes. he would grimace 
& i would laugh because i did not know
what else to do. his monster face. 
the i-am-not-here face. if i had all of them
it would be too much to bear. i would 
have to call a doctor. i would have
to call my brother & i know he wouldn't 
pick up. maybe i could lay in them.
feel their cool surfaces against my skin.
it would be best if it were summer & i were
on the moon & no one else was awake.
then maybe i could forgot the terrible parts.
my father's hands. a mouth in each palm.
so hungry. i don't think i would be able
to get rid of them. my lover might beg me.
might say, "there are too many."
i come from a lineage of hoarders.
of people who hold on because if we
let go, what else will we have left to remember
what happened to us? 

my father sees a hummingbird 

he sees a hummingbird in the churchyard
while he is planting his fingers & pieces
of his tongue. i come with him.
he shows me how to use
a pairing knife to cut off just
the edges of yourself. never too much.
never too little. he points to the ferns,
twelve of them. "one for each apostle"
god does not live here
but the priest does. he sometimes comes out
to join us. bending in the dirt.
his papery skin. he wears a straw hat
which looks funny with his black clothes
& his priest-collar. when my father
sees the hummingbird he does not tell me.
he watches it all by himself.
the hummingbird is not a hummingbird
but an angel. when it is gone he gestures
to its vacancy. he says, "there was a hummingbird."
i spend the rest of the afternoon searching
for it. soil beneath my fingernails. 
i go to the butterfly-laden bushes & even
to the sick-smelling white flowers. no hummingbirds.
i sometimes wonder if my father invented the creature 
to have some peace. to rid himself for a few minutes
of his persistent shadow, me. i prefer though
to imagine that he savored the moment.
that the creature had a green iridescent crest. that
she drank deeply of the flowers that he planted 
& that he asked the creature to take him with her.
to paint his face her fuchsia. to let him leave
behind all the knuckle-tight days.
to give him a nest away from it all
where the weeds pull themselves. instead, he stayed.
took me to the church bathrooms
to let me wash my hands when we were done.
i never found a hummingbird in the churchyard
but i never stopped looking every time we came back. 

after the album "plans"

we went to the auction 
& got the red velvet room. 
it was everything we hoped for.
we were falling apart. your hair 
turning into horses that ran
as far from us as they could.
when you are trying to stay in love
every window is a place to drown. 
i held my breath. bought so many rings.
i put the radio in my mouth
& hoped you'd come with me,
following the sound of a ripe guitar. 
we spent our nights sleeping
in pet stores. pointing to cages 
& saying, "he has your eyes."
the rats stared at us from behind glass.
some of them were feeder rats,
made to be eaten. some days
the marching band would come
& you would try to get me to go
out on the roof with you. 
i never wanted to. it was so loud.
i caught you kissing a trumpet player.
he came inside & tracked mud 
on the ceiling. devoured all 
our honey bunches of oats. 
we stayed in a hotel only twice.
the first time we witnessed 
a man & a woman screaming
at each other in the parking lot.
"that will never be us," i told myself.
the next time, we didn't have
enough time. your skin was
made of flowers. i didn't care
if they were edible or not, i needed
to keep some for myself. plucked them
while you slept. i said, "just one more"
over & over until you were bare. 
you can start to believe that
it's all someone else's fault. the summer.
sweat on a can of diet pepsi 
from the corner store with the man
always on the phone with god.
i missed you so much 
while you were still right there. 

blank canvas

my uncle collects canvasses.
i think we all do. what do you hold on to
in the hopes that you will be someone you are not?
on his half of the house i grew up in
the canvasses are not hung on the walls but
leaning askew & piled on one another.
he buys more of them. stacks them.
sings to them. i wonder what they do
when he is not there. do they make promises
to one another? one day i will be
the face that you need. my father used
to lament my uncle's lack of painting.
what is an artist that does not make art?
i used to join my father. it did not make sense to me.
what were the canvasses for if not to create?
sometimes we need a vessel for our wanting.
to make a portal even if we know it will
not open. sometimes i buy notebooks 
just to leave them empty. i visited again
a week or so ago. stepped through my uncle's side
to see the canvasses still there. still dormant.
i want to ask him if he has ideas for them
or if they are mirrors. if he ever takes one
& waltzes with it in the dark. when i was small
sometimes i would beg him to let me paint on one.
once, he tried to show me how to paint flowers.
they were too stiff. he got frustrated with me, saying,
"that is not what flowers look like."
did he talk that way to himself? did he kill ideas
before they left his fingers? before he could
open his little tackle box of paints?
some nights when everyone in the world
is asleep, i will find a canvas in the yard. 
i will know it is his & that if i walked through it
i would end up in his room. the smell of 
irish spring soap. a tray with paint hardened on it,
little colorful mountains. my uncle, the size
of a paint brush, ambling alone between them. 

sycamore(s)

we put our faces beneath our beds
& walked away. the heat rang like
dinner bells. there was no food in the house
but powered milk & flour. a spoonful of each.
you learn to eat without a mouth.
we wandered through the town
& the sycamores followed us. they pulled
little pranks. tying our shoes together.
putting gum in our hair. i blamed you
one of the times & you pointed to
the branches casting long shadows 
across the sidewalk. brothers always know
more about one another than we will
ever admit. i did not believe you when you said
the trees were pulling out your hair.
i saw you do it. i also know you witnessed
me as i took out my teeth. tried to plant teeth bushes,
hoping one would grow that  
i could use as a body instead
of my own. the august heat swelled. i coughed up
a thunder cloud which then spilled all
its rocking horses on our heads. the sycamores
lent their branches. they were always begging us
to go down to the playground. i didn't want to
see other kids. not while i didn't have
my face velcroed on. still, sometimes, we 
gave in. followed the lumpy sidewalk down
to the schoolyard. there, the trees 
fed us leaves. they tasted like bitter salad
but they filled us up. we were hungry. 
i think they wanted us to become sycamores with them.
there is a legend that lost children are turned into
the trees encircling the yard. their hands reaching
to grab on to an arm. a leg. the sycamores do not actually
want to be children again. they just want to 
play pretend. i wanted that too. i loved how
you never made me tell the truth. held my lies
like little birds. sometimes when we got home & 
put our faces back on, i would pick up yours
& you, mine. we would laugh & switch back.
the sycamores standing in the yard, watching. we would 
shoo them away, saying, "our dad will cut you down
if he sees you when he gets home."

several portraits of the dining room table

there is a head we are about to eat
as if it were a turkey. all of my poems
are about meals if you look hard enough.
you get to decide whose head it is. 
i am hoping it is someone evil though
i am told to devour is to become. maybe
it is too late for me anyway. i dream of cork. 
of floating museums. a chain link god. 
there are bills from before i turned into
an ugly crow to join the mountain. there is
a fork that has never once been cleaned.
it is a tuesday & no one is ready. the door
folds into a flower. we all bend down to sniff it
just to have our ears cut off. the chairs got out
& now we have to go & chase them 
with the lasso & the cow pokers. they 
are hungry for soybeans & corn. we are all
still hungry. in my house we never use
the table for dinner. i heard someone who
i don't respect once say, "families who eat 
together are less likely..." & i didn't listen
to the rest. she was trying to say we were bad
for watching television & having
nothing to talk about. sometimes you will say,
"tell me a story" & i want to talk
about the kitchen table. about the stains.
the wings it grows when you are the only one
awake. how i have slept beneath the table
when the house almost collapsed under
the weight of a particularly nasty star.
my father puts his shoes on the table. we eat
his shoes. they taste like the head which tastes
like the turkey. everything is free until it is not.
until there is a table. until the door returns 
& knocks on itself all night. i have always been
starving. the head is satisfying. is worth it. 
paper napkins. an overflowing trash can.
a letter from a neighbor that reads nothing but,
"can i please?" look at the window
to see them all perched in the tree. crows. 
i cover my face. i don't have time today.
we lock the doors. go to sleep beneath the table. 
everything is cold but we are dogs so it is expected. 

tree removal 

we watch the men cut limbs away 
from aunt flo's house. fingers & knuckles
in the yard. i try to reason with the tree.
i have climbed her many times to escape
family gatherings where everyone had a face.
i tell her, "you need to not grab
the wires." she does not understand. 
i have never learned to speak the language
of the trees well. she says, "sometimes all the water 
is heavy." i sigh. our lost words. it is too late.
is it true that some unraveling cannot be avoided? 
that sometimes we grow in terrible places?
it would be easier i think if it were our faults.
instead, we were just roots searching. limbs
reaching for a lick of the burning sun. 
the men are methodical. they have
taken apart bodies before & they will again.
scale the torso. reach for shoulders. my aunt watches.
she's wearing her light pink lipstick, slightly smudged.
we are older than we used to be. us & the tree.
the tree becomes frantic. rips at the telephone poles.
i tell her she is going to keep her teeth. i do not know
when they are stopping. i panic too.
i ask my aunt, "are they taking the whole tree?"
she says, "i don't know." i go outside.
i'm ready to wrestle the men to the ground.
ready to tell them to take me apart instead.
they have stopped though. the tree is cactus-shaped.
no longer climbable. i tell her i am sorry but 
it comes out wrong. she says, "they told me
to grow in the blue place." i don't know 
who they are or where the blue place is. 
the men pick up her arms from the yard.
i take a fingernail. a little twig. a relic. 
she goes to sleep from the terror. on 
the car ride home i do too. we went outside
all together before i left. my aunt said, 
"now it's too small," about the tree. i try not
to be angry at her. i know the wires are important.
that they open the lights in the rec wreck room
& the fridge's little beacon. we all do what
we think we should. scattered leaves. eyelids. a hole in the sky. 

colander poem 

i want to know what is seeping through
& where it is going. i wash the fish 
in the steel colander. they shrink to the size
of grains of rice to slip away. breathing again.
deadly water. aa secret ocean they have
been hiding from us down the drain. 
the fish arrive at a different planet
to be eaten by more grateful gods.
there is this edgar allen poe poem 
about sand spilling from between your fingers
& it's kind of cliche now but it never
stops being true. i'm sick of tracking cliches.
i want to talk about a big fat sunset. 
the fish were not fish they were television remotes. 
my lover says i ask too many questions that aren't
actually questions. i keep my organs
preemptively in canopic jars
just in case i happen to need an afterlife.
i've been happier since i decided
it was better to be the sieve than 
what is lost. i don't know if this is
authentic though. i think i am much more
akin to what is lost than what facilitates 
the losing. you could look at it another way 
i guess & then i am a vessel for remnants.
broken clocks & portraits of families 
that are not mine. 
the television is gone. is being used 
as a dinner table. i lived in an apartment
at one time without a single chair.
i laid on the floor. ate with my hands. 
it was great to be alone. i guess if
it comes down to it, i can spill enough rice
to make a fish. take a video of it
& send it to everyone in the world. 
they will be so happy that they 
will make me briefly famous. i will
win a made-up award for what i caught.
we will still have not had dinner. 
a clock will stop working but we'll 
keep using it. at least we'll be right twice a day.

ikea show room

i believed we could stay there.
live our little three-wall life.
i could bring home the groceries.
get the dinner started while people
passed through our living room
looking for the price tags. 
i am prone to building futures 
too soon & too urgently. 
we would go to ikea in conshohocken after
you got off work & my classes were done.
sometimes we would spend hours there
maybe avoiding the chaos of both
of our homes. my tiny dorm 
& your cacophonous apartment. 
but also looking at lamps.
i did not know that we were pretending.
i thought that when you told me,
"i love this lamp" that you meant,
"one day we will live together
& we will have a place to put this lamp."
i was so lost. once, i actually considered 
trying to take a nap on the show room sofa.
you shook me & laughed, "come on."
bodies between white walls. 
the show room's maze was delightful
until it was not. until you just wanted
a new bowl & a set of spoon & we 
needed to get home. get to sleep.
start the car. walk up your block
with all the trees wrapped in colorful string
trying to crack the pavement
with their beautiful legs. i knew it wouldn't work
but i wanted you to give in for 
just one night. to mean it. to stay over
in the dark of the show room. turn on the faucet
& watch the water pour. the room,
suddenly real from our hungers. the fourth wall
growing & suddenly the space so small. 
a held breath. a racing moon. 
the couch on which i sleep. the window now
looking out at the parking light. 
the yellow signs holy glow
against our skin. i really believed
we could have stayed. maybe 
for a brief moment, you did too.