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.

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.