hives

my body is a cartographer
of secret planets i will never see.
each morning,
a mountain ridge.
the path to a dead city.
i love that the word "hives"
for the rashes on my skin
is the same as that 
of a thrumming hornet body.
i run my fingers
across the raised flesh.
never the same. sometimes
a bracelet. sometimes 
just one like an angry lonely star.
my body rejects this world
so it maps others.
says, "here is where 
our treasure is buried."
i take a too-hot shower 
until i am ringing. steam 
filling the room. one map
wiped clean for another.
the flesh, settling back
into its present assignment.
i stake pictures on my more 
curious days.
a book of maps. i have tried
to follow them & i always end up
in parking lots
for places that no longer exist.
i know it is serious
& of course i have
an ointment & of course
i weep when the hives hurt
more than i can bear.
but i am a poet so it 
has to mean something more 
than just skin. there has to be
a symbol beneath 
the flesh or else just a deer path
to a rush of wineberries 
red as my bees 
in the morning dark. 

well water

my favorite place in the house
is not in the house at all
but in the little cellar
where the well lives.
the spiders there speak 
a different language than house spiders.
we all worship blood. i ask them 
what it takes to be a creature 
of their water & they say,
"years of questions." if anything
i aim to be a disciple of questions. 
the well is always 
in the neck of the question mark.
that soft & urgent curve. 
water's flow from tongue to tongue.
laying in bed last night 
we tried our best not to talk
about this country that has 
never been ours. i thought 
of the well & the water
that always finds its way
back to our bodies. little rain clouds
in the upstairs that i keep as pets.
the well froze this morning 
& i sat there in the cellar 
with the spiders. it's the coldest 
it's been all year. blue words.
a handprint on the sun.
i plea with the water. "i need
something." the spiders 
teach me their word for hunger.
it is something like "lemon"
but softer & without all the buzz.
they assure me that we will drink soon.
that they have seen the water
stop before. i look up at 
their webs. a private constellation
garden. i want to stay here
all day. drown every bank account
& every phone call. every terrible man.
drink until i am the well.
until i speak the spider's language 
& all i hear is the unbruising
of a plum in the sky. 

i join the stink bugs because i'm sick of this

i follow them back into the wall.
bend my body into their little pentagons.
they don't talk much. my kind of people.
i believe i could stay here. forget about 
cars & radio call-in shows.
that is until i start thinking about 
blue snow cones in the summer.
no matter how badly you want to leave
your nesting brain will always say,
"do you remember how sweet it was?"
the stink bugs are all business. a culture
of quiet legs. when they do talk, it is always
about finding a warmer place to die.
it's morbid to me but to them, it is
just crumb chatter. i suggest the roof
& they all look at me like i am unwell.
one of them discusses the space heater
saying, "right there is my crooked sun."
you can know factually that things 
were not as beautiful as you remember them
but our minds are candy yarn places.
i think my favorite part of being human
was windows. how, for a moment, 
you could fill one. become a television.
a private little movie. watch the snow.
watch the rain. watch a deer rise 
from the dead. i return to the upstairs
defeated & no longer a stink bug. 
they wave goodbye as i put my skin
back into place. i want to be done with
so many things. with lungs & how heavy
they get. with bones & how they turn
into oars. escaping becomes a way of life.
i remember the stink bugs & still crave 
that warmth they worshipped.
their debates over the best places 
to bloom. to burry. the dead are all 
around. insect ghosts & the deer 
tapping his antlers on the window glass.
i ask the stink bugs, "please tell me
i am good enough at being human."
they do not answer because they 
do not know enough to say. 

monastery 

we could take our butter knives 
to the hills. cut a face for living.
i watch dozens of videos
about monks of all religions.
buddhists & catholics & jains.
i am trying to answer if a monk's life
is an escape or a journey 
further into blood. 
i wonder what i would be most equipped
to be a disciple of. maybe we already are 
the order of yearners. 
keepers of all kinds of longing. 
in the forest we measure a path
that is the length between
the sun & the moon. we practice their
sapphic dance. to be queer is not just
to hold a sliver of the unknown
but to be ravenous for it. i want to know
if we will always be hungry
or if one day the earth
will crack open & we will find
manna. chew sugar until
we are mountains. breaking teeth.
breaking vows. i think there is joy
in certain tensions & pain from others.
when we are done walking
our legs ache with achievement. 
we lay in our beds of moss. 
observe the silent hours. 
fold our words into private poems
& swallow them each until
night comes to pull all language 
from our bones. 

cornfield

we never went in far.
my brother & in the late summer
walking on the winding cornfield roads 
took turns slipping between 
the stalks. these days
we don't talk as much as we should. 
i leave his message on read.
drive my car to a place 
where the sun doesn't have his teeth.
we go into the corn
even when the fields 
are wintering. growing nothing
but the fox foot prints & deer tracks.
fill our ears with husks & listen
for the sound of each other breathing.
i sometimes wish we would
have gone deeper. ran into 
the shaking belly of the field.
for whatever it is that they hide
all swollen august. there must be
some kind of organ. a spleen
or a lung. a place where all the rain
is going. i like to think that 
if we needed each other,
we would meet
in between the rows. light
making shadow boxes 
of our hands. once, when we 
were very small, he called for me
& i did not answer. i crouched
there in the mud & the earth.
i thought, "i could stay here
& become a creature." i finally
emerged. he wept & i held him,
saying, "i was just kidding."
i was not. i was so close to being gone.
then again, do we ever know
how close we are to any given edge?
i want to devour the animal corn
with him. i want to call him now
in the middle of the january night
& tell him, "let's go & pluck
the fields. there are always some
kernels in waiting." 

cicada killers & your holy porch

we screamed like metal bugs
into the thickening dark.
both of us ghosts. both of us 
unzipping from all our exoskeletons. 
i do not know which version of you
i was talking to. 
your apartment was hot & luminous. 
i loved the nights i got to stay over.
there were only a few before
you moved in with me & we died. 
it is wonderful to get to be
a freshly guillotined flock
of wildflowers for a person
you want to keep you. you breathed me in.
my arms turning into windows.
sometimes, in the morning, i would
get up before you. i would 
sit in the kitchen, barefoot,
looking out at the porch. there
the cicada killers would congregate.
anger looking creatures. like giant wasps. 
what is it like to be named
after what you destroy?
i guess in a sense, that is how we
are all known. cicadas, from a latin word
meaning "tree cricket." 
only it is a loan word.
sounds from a long-buried language.
i think, in that language, it used to mean,
"song eater." i never wanted
to leave. always wanted a longer weekend.
a mouth to sleep inside. we drank coffee
on that porch too. 
the sun shaved our heads.
we hummed with the cicadas. 
hoped the killers didn't come. 

fishing

he held the fish by their lip.
scales shining in the mid-day heat.
i knew very little about
the two brothers who lived above me 
in the scarred old house.
i would watch one walk up the street
always with the day's catch 
as soon as the frost faded in late march.
he swayed as he went. we both
had similar limps. 
his walking stick was glossy.
almost amber-colored wood. 
none of us had jobs. i would 
sometimes get paid to die gloriously 
for men on the internet. the brothers would
sweep the lawyer's steps 
& from time to time, clean the gutters
of the houses on high street.
once, a neighbor asked me to help her
put plastic over all of her windows
to get them ready for winter.
i pretended to be able-bodied.
when she was out of the room,
i sat on the ladder, rubbing my leg
to relieve some of the pain. 
in the stream, all the fish 
were limping too. none of them
had jobs. instead, they feasted
on the waterlogged sun. 
i loved cash. would hide it 
all over the house. a dollar here
a dollar there. once in a parking lot
i got paid to be beautiful. he bit
a hole through my lip.
a world of hooks. i thought
of the fish in the light. their sway
& the sway of the neighbor man. 
i always liked one brother 
more than the other. i liked the one
who went fishing. the other,
had sharp eyes. he yelled once in awhile.
i never knew about what. open window.
fish in the clouds & fish getting gutted
in the sink. sometimes when i hear
footsteps above me i think they're
still there. that we're still
orbiting each other in
in a lungless mountain town. 

hops

i ask my father 
what beer tastes like.
he is sitting in the rocking chair
in the shadow room. 
window open. we watch dragons
come in & out. i prefer 
to stay awake. there is always
something to hide from.
he tells me, "it tastes 
like hops." points to the green
little plants depicted on the bottle.
i can see them growing up the side
of the house. ringing bells.
he takes me by the arm
& tells me to come with him.
we slip somehow 
into the mouth of the bottle.
everything smells amber. he is laughing
& then he is weeping. it rains hard.
so hard i cannot hear him.
i want to take it back. i wish i'd never
asked him. there are no windows
in the bottle. it just gets deeper
& deeper. smells like basement.
the hops fall. i chew one 
& swallow. a little bird grows 
in between my ribs. it sings.
it has a voice just like my father's.
i never find him there. i look 
for hours. the mouth closes up.
i decide i am going to pretend
to be a caterpillar. this, my cocoon. 
imagination can only save you
so much grief. eventually, it gives out
& you are standing on your porch
as an adult. there are hops
growing on a vine & you 
are picking them all to feed
to a ghost. you are wondering
if you remembered to climb out 
or if your whole life happened them
beneath a layer of thick glass.
you look up & there he is still.
your father with minnow-full eyes.
he blows a hot breath across
the lip. everything hums. 

blindfold 

they took us to the parking lot
in blade-ridden winter.
we were fifth graders. parched knuckles. 
my dinner plate face. we were preparing for 
confirmation. to offer our pomegranates 
up to an empty ceiling. the church
sat in between two cornfields.
the priest had carved a statue of mary
to perch within an old limestone kiln.
she watched us with her eyes
made of pennies. no one really 
knew what confirmation meant.
terrified to ask too many questions
i tried to find my holiness
but it was like sticking your hand
into a sandbox. lost rings 
& plastic dinosaurs & a stray shoe 
no holiness. i always thought holiness
would probably be something like 
soft serve ice cream. 
we'd spent all day reciting 
answers to questions like,
"what are the seven sacraments?"
i don't remember what the activity
was for but they put us
into pairs & blind-folded one, 
telling the other to lead those
who cannot see. maybe it was 
a metaphor for what we were
called to do, to lead others home.
the irony of the forced blind fold.
it had snowed on a few days prior.
wind bit us red. a bruised flock
of clouds. i was the blind folded one
& i peeked. watched my feet,
one in front of the other
while a girl i barely knew
put her hand on my shoulder,
as if she was saving me. she spoke kindly.
she said, "we are almost there."
i did not trust her. i did not trust
any of them. not the catechists 
or the windows or even the open-mouthed
mary who crouched in the kiln. i held on to 
the slit of light. when i made it back
i lied. i lied lusciously. i thanked
the girl. i thanked the ceiling.
is it a lie if a part of you 
wants it to be true? 

ex-boyfriends

we go to the stranger depot
to talk to new sets of hands.
you say, "that one looks
like my ex." you pull out
a picture & it's true, he does.
only, the stranger has a sign 
taped to his chest
that says, "for sale"
but not in a sex work way
more like in a "i will do anything
for someone to write
a poem about me"
kind of way. i guess you could
consider that romance work.
we avoid him but soon
everyone has his face. that is
the trouble with going places
like this where everyone is no one
& no one is everyone. 
you say, "we should have
drowned." i tell you i much prefer
the idea of being consumed
by the sun. we argue about death
a lot. you like the drama & 
i guess i do too. the trouble
with loving anyone is that 
you are also always in mourning. 
the you before they set up
shop inside your lung. the eventual
parting. one of you buried 
in a tomb of green & the other
walking around with a metal detector
trying to locate a god. 
we leave empty handed.
you tell me, "i want to go back.
maybe it was him."
i keep driving for your own good.
i try to remind you,
"there was that night he ate your face
& we had to tape it all back 
together." you shake your head.
"that wasn't him," you say
even though it was.