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. 

unalive in the midnight 

i want to survive the shift
in language. the tongue beneath
the pillow. i speak
the ugly kitchen words
into your ear. you tell me,
"smart yourself
or we'll never get to see
the kids." my favorite words
are outdated or forbidden ones like transexual 
or homophile or dyke because there
always feels like there is
something truer about them.
maybe we have
admitted too much. maybe
death is not a place we get to go
but an undoing that envelopes us here.
if that is the case then
i am already unalive. when the radio 
tower turns into a pizza hut
i'll still be talking. in the dead internet 
theory, i am the last one standing.
a handful of teeth 
in the zoo of gone words.
no one says that anymore.
i remember the extinction 
of the great cats. the end of elephants.
i keep it short when i say 
what became of us. we were graped
& not in the vineyard
but here i am transexual 
& impossible to eat.

green sheets 

the popcorn turned
into stars in their microwave bags.
a girl with too much beautiful
was now my roommate
& the windows filled with deer. 
i had wanted college
so badly but i arrived terrified
& empty. i had not thought
to pack a blanket & the green sheets
i'd bought at the thrift shop
were thin. i searched for warmth in them
like a hand beneath the ocean.
in the halls footfalls & laughter
peppered the night. 
my heart, a little parking lot seagull.
i wrapped myself up as snug
as i could. a piece of meat
in butcher paper. the room was frigid.
my air conditioner singing,
"halleluiah," in a voice
made of gravel & gods.
i got up in the middle of the night.
went down to the common room.
sat there. my little vigil.  
no one else was there
& it smelled like wood & water.
out the building's front door
i saw the fresh orange sun.
it tasted metal like blood 
& sweet like citrus. a yolk
waiting to be punctured. i looked 
at my phone. called every
dead end i had until 
one answered. it was a stray cat
that used to live in the garage.
he said, "do not 
come home." 

mailbox

sometimes i go to the mailbox
to have someone to talk to.
the junk mail might as well
be pigeons. i say, "i am looking
for a letter." the mailbox purses
his lips & says, "i have nothing
for you." he is always lying.
there is always something.
even if you know no one
& own nothing there will
be mail for you. a local plumber.
a politician's wax face. the mailbox
really likes to talk about black holes.
he says, "one could come at 
any moment." i don't want to know
more about physics so i don't
google whether or not this is true.
instead, i accept it. maybe a black hole
could keep me company too. could even
transport me a heart
from a creature in another dimension.
something for me to chew on
in the dark. i admit to the mailbox
on day, "i do not think 
anyone knows me." the mailbox
spits out a letter that i sent
to a friend years ago. it never
reached her. thank god. i have
this problem with thinking
i'm in love when really i'm just 
trying to catch my own ghost. 
i invite the mailbox inside for dinner
& he declines. he says, "it is busy
around here." no cars have passed 
since i've come out. the street is bare
& freckled with salt from the last
snowstorm. a therapist once told me,
"you should never assume what
someone thinks. ask them
or move on." but she didn't understand.
it is always safer not to know.
i do not ask the mailbox if 
he thinks we are friends or
if he doesn't like me enough
to have dinner with me. i just imagine
a circus behind the door. 
something that only he can keep running.
maybe a bird or a rat is coming
to lay inside his mouth tonight.
sometimes, i sleep with my mouth open
in the hopes that i will steal his job.
wake up with a mouth filled
with words. letters. paper cuts.
a package of shiny little beads. 

feast

i let the mosquito land
on my flesh. i tell him,
"give me pearls." he plants them
beneath skin. i want to follow
his drinking. swallow myself
until i am turned inside out. until
the sky is redder than red.
i see him work. his device,
his body & my body. the pearls
that will grow for days. turn hot
with fury of what was taken
& what was given. i do not know
why i permit this. i am disturbed
by my own inaction.
it is winter & i do not know
how a mosquito spawned 
& found his way into the bathroom.
he leaves me to talk to the light in the ceiling
like it is a god. the room is cold
& i cannot feel my feet.
i wonder if he feels cold too.
if when he landed on me,
he felt warmer.
quickly, i move to kill the creature.
his blood, my blood, a stain
on the white wall. i rub at it
but it won't go away. i think of
lady macbeth washing her hands.
i wash mine. already feel
the spot where the creature drank
throbbing on my arm.
the pearl growing. for me, beauty
is always like this. a buried
bloody thing. i wash my hands again.
look at the curtains of my cuticles.
cut my nails as short as i can.

toads

that summer was the last time
my lungs filled with coins.
i walked early in the morning
with no teeth at all.
lied to my mom uselessly that
i was going to church.
i looked up nearby catholic churches.
saint olivia's. once, i walked there
in the middle of the night.
considered what i would want
for worship. i did not believe in god
but i wanted to. wanted his thumb
pressing down on the roof.
i walked to the crooked neck
of the gushing creek.
rows of homes touched the thin forest.
i tried to find a house to imagine 
a life inside. my favorite 
was the one with the windchime colony.
all those throats. by ripe july,
i went looking for a family.
my dad had just turned into 
a pile of stones. i picked 
the stones up & hurled them one 
by one at the moon.
in the dirt, i found a toad & then
another. two little sets of eyes. i asked them
"would you like to be my organs?"
they said, "no, we prefer it here."
"if you come with me, i will sing
to you every moment of every day,"
i promised, knowing i would not
be able to keep it. 
they agreed & i sung 
all the way back to my dorm.
i tried, i really did. fed them crickets 
& my eyelids. told them everything
about gender & how it was killing me.
they would demand, "sing"
& so i would try
until my voice turned to sand
& despite all the stones,
the moon was still as loud
as a car horn in the window. 
i took them back when i knew
i had nothing left for them.
their eyes rang, golden bells.
my face floated in the creek,
a murky portrait 
of a diminishing girl.

the only one awake in the world

i am confident in my ability
to find a seam in the night
where no one else's eyes are full
of beetles. you tell me,
"you need to sleep" & i hear,
"you need to bury yourself
in the yard." in high school
i used to set my alarm 
to one in the morning. i would wake up
& stick my hands in the inky sky.
purple stain. the smell of iron.
there i would sometimes find
boys & sometimes 
find teeth. my own teeth that 
wandered off while i was both 
trying to die & trying not to die.
in that way, i am an expert trapeze artist.
i can balance myself on the nose
of a father. i can steady my body
on a hitchhiker's thumb.
i hailed a ride to the city.
it was the oily time after midnight.
he fell asleep at the wheel 
& i drove for him. a grubby beard man
with grit under his fingernails.
we have all been so far from
rest that sleep feels supernatural.
i am convinced though that i have
found those sweet spots.
when the dark & the silence 
swallow each other ouroboros style. 
i'm not sure who is the head
& who is the tail but there i was.
the only person awake 
in the entire world. the silence
was soft like moss. i did not 
let myself close my eyes.
i drank in the aloneness. 
wrapped myself in it.
just as fast as it comes,
the moment always leaves 
in a blinking pair
of headlights. a bird sneaking in
through the back door to become
a little girl. the street lamp flickering 
& catching a boy on the roof. 

ant paths 

while you slept i traced 
the paths ants took through your dorm.
like a river of little hungers
from the windowsill
to a mug on your desk. then, a march
along the ceiling to reach
the keurig in the corner. 
they never bothered you the way they
haunted me. i would imagine
waking up entangled. maybe even
being taken away piecemeal
by their parade. we met in winter
when there weren't any ants.
a snowstorm is a perfect place
to love someone without knowing
very much about them.
&, after all, isn't that the easiest 
place to love someone?
sun in a box of tissue paper.
spring brought the ants. at first,
i would try to kill them. my thumb
a little massacre. they knew though
where the trail was already. 
they would return. you would say,
"why do you bother with them?"
my heart like a balloon drifting
on the ceiling. i did not have
a good answer for you. instead,
i just want to the bathroom
to wash my hands with the dorm's
pink sickly soap. washed my face
with water. what would the ants 
come to take first? my fingers?
my eyelashes? one by one.
i think we both knew that
there wasn't enough snow
to keep us together. there is always
a little silent ending before
the official breaking up. i think it came
in the dark of morning
when i watched the ants. 
a little shadow part of myself, thinking,
but if i followed them,
then they couldn't get me.