human poem 

there are too many hours in the morning.
we put on our sugar faces 
& try to cut enough wood to last the night.
i tell my dog i promise that one day
we'll move somewhere with a huge fence
& nothing but woods around us.
i have kept most of my promises.
we left the city & then we left the city
& then we left the city. i walked her
down by the water & threw spells in the current. 
now we stand in the bitter december bite.
the first snow spits geese ghosts 
down on our heads. she tell me 
she wants to be an owl & i tell her that
i do too. sometimes we see creatures through
the slats in the fence. beasts stopping 
at our little house as they roam the corn fields.
i ask her if she remember that one time she
broke free of her leash in the fields
behind my parents' house. i chased her.
i called her and she just kept going.
i ask, "where did you think you would 
end up?" she answers only by saying,
"sometimes you get summoned."
i too have been summoned. a train.
a bowl of mints. the night we ate
sweet potato together until we got sick. 
i ask my dog to promise that she loves me.
she laughs. she tells me that once
in a dream she was running, trying 
to catch up with me. all she wanted
was to be at my heel. i take a shovel
to a cloud. make a secret place for us there.
i point to it & i say, "if you are ever lost,
go there." she does not promise.
instead, we keep walking. chase bones
& she grabs one & chews it with her eyes closed. 

how a boy becomes a sculpture 

if you stay still for enough moons
the artists will come carrying stone.
to be a muse is to be dead
in the mouth of the maker. 
gender is all about death. about preservation.
about how to store enough jam
for the winter. teeth fall tonight
after a blanket of snow. teeth angels
& teeth men. i always wanted
to be adored in a way that compels someone to
inflict my likeness onto rock. 
they start with my face. they work 
with spoons. at the fair each year
artists come to carve a masterpiece out of butter.
golden little family. i have watched my reflection
in a pool of cream. i have slid a knife
through warm butter. there is a moment
when everything shifts. when you can feel
that they have captured someone 
real about you. in that way gender
is so random. i will be shaving my face
for the thousandth time & the birds will sing
& i will think, "of course i am a boy."
then the same when i am eating
a blue popsicle & it is the hairy-legged
part of summer & i feel in my gut,
"i am fading thing." there is a garden 
somewhere where my skeletons go
after the sculptors are done. i stand in
a pose holding a canopic jar. 
in another, i am running barefoot & boyless. 
when the artists are done
they never thank me for modeling,
instead they eat the crumbs
from the stone. kneel in the gravel. 
then, scramble away like spiders into the forest.
their own genders glint like halos. 
i take a picture to reassure myself
that i really saw their skulls glowing. 

healing spells

i read in an old grimoire
that if we are sick we should bury all our hooves. 
we should prepare for winter. we must 
boil a whole tree until it is 
soft as flesh.
i pickle the moon to go with it.
sweet lemon divine. i collect the hooves.
there are never enough.
forkful of rind. all the running that a night does
& yet, unslept & unwavering, it refuses to rest. 
i have tried everything. i have
cleansed myself with an egg. 
read the yolk's bloodied veil. i have called from
a payphone & asked to speak
to the birds. they have responded,
"go to the ocean & lay there 
until you are a local." once i drove my car
underwater. it was in a tunnel but i saw
all the fish. they were holy & unafraid.
i have never been holy or unafraid.
another witch book says
all you need is a candle.
i burn one until it is a thumb. i devour
the writhing peaches with beetles for pits.
i used to like a boy so much 
i went to his bible group. they were the
"lay hands on you" kind of group.
we healed a girl. she laid on her back
& gorged herself on the ceiling. 
my hands tingled after 
& i thought maybe salvation was
this easy. when we were done
we stood on chairs & sang about jesus.
she never came back but i did.
no one ever healed me. instead, i gave someone
my eyes & she made them into a necklace.
somewhere in the deepest intestines 
of the forest, there is a bird in a nest
made of my hair. if i found it
i would sleep there. i would be whole.
it is a nice story isn't it? 
that something of you lives outside of you.
more than a phantom limb.
not a child. a wild tooth. 
a language of balms. singing 
melon girl with all the sugar in the world. 

candelabra 

what i have done to balance the ghosts.
a candle in every hand. the hallway 
as long as a swallowed word. 
i forgot how to eat & became 
a wick. begged on corners
for a light to shrink me. 
we sit in the living room
in front of a television with nothing
but stock markets on it. once i thought
about buying a piece of the death machine.
we walked in orbits around the city.
you talked like you knew where all
the spaceships were going.
i believed you. neither of us like to be wrong.
i guess no one does but we are
especially bad at it. one place
where we differ is that sometimes i think
it is a kindness to not tell the truth. you once 
promised me that we were not going
to have to hold another flame.
then it came & then we were running
& you were saying, "you are never
careful enough." it is hard because
it is true. i break at least one bowl
every month. always like holding
a dead bird. i should learn kintsugi,
the gold repair, but i don't have 
enough hope for it. instead i take the shard
out to the foot of the honey locust
where we have our graveyard. 
i know if i get one more flame
i will have to change. i will not be able
to hold my fists up in the night.
when i am worried about money
i think of you lit by only candles,
orange glow flickering 
across your face & your shadows escaping.
you have a whistle in your pocket
which you use to call our front door.
it too is coming apart. the knob,
like a choked coin face. i have a lighter
on the windowsill. tell me, even if
it is not the truth, how do you know
we can keep it bright enough? 

i explain ocd to the dandelions

it is like trying
to hold a terrible cloud.
i remember though
the first thrills of feeling
like the sky was pinned down
& not going 
to topple down on me again.
a ritual of fingers & teeth. 
i started with food.
pretended sandwiches were moons
waning towards new.
the blank sky. haven't you ever
tried to count the faces 
of the divine? haven't you ever
woken up before the sun
to try to grow a pair of wings?
when i am at my worst 
i am speaking into a velvet mirror.
the self i want
is not there. she is on the roof
casting out a fishing line
& hoping to snag her father.
i promise you that 
you can find ways to take inventory 
of anything. footsteps. dead birds.
droplets of water.
the world of numbers is one
of spiral & sweetness. is one that has,
somehow, kept me alive. 
this is an exercise in devotion. in loss.
i could bend down now.
give you all names like "one"
& "five thousand." when i am farthest 
away from the ribbon self,
i think i could teach others.
a religion of urgent collections. 
tell me, who do you think
decides how we sleep? is there
a little jupiter beetle in all of
our heads or do we just have
to find the yellow & spit it out?

infinite content ocean & our thumbs

there is an instagram account
that posts stills from every spongebob episode ever. 
it's been going frame by frame for years.
i think of the crouching person
& their fingers. the glow of their phone screen
in the dark of an apartment that smells
like wood & cats. how, in many ways,
the work of humans is the work
of librarians. of fishermen. of what is
taken to bed with the moon. in the car
on the way home, we talk about limiting our screen times
& i get frustrated. you say, "there is a program
that can lock yourself out of the apps."
i know i am an addict to color & light & desire 
but also at the same time to the idea that i am small
& that everyone else is just as hungry.
i want a portal without advertisers. i want
our rampant kelp forests & midnight songs.
to run out into the street & find piles of photographs.
i have a vision of an ocean of all the posts that
no one else has seen but their creators.
the unwatched youtube videos. a man holds up
a snake found in his bathtub. he tells her,
"i am sorry." a girl eats a flower. someone is
convening with ghosts. a stop motion where every still
is from a separate fractured story. 
gushing spilling ocean. every day the world becomes
more & more unknowable. i find relief in this. 
in the vision, i hold my breath. witness
what fires i can. fill my skull with their warmth 
& their burns. my fishbowl without any fish.
we used to have anchoresses who lived apart 
from the world. locked in rooms. prayed 
& talked to god. we are becoming the opposites.
tethered to the fullness & the flames. 
but yet still maybe, talking to fragments of 
some kind of divine we hold between us.
past the feed machine & into the blood.
the place where our strangenesses dwell like eels. 

6-pack 

in terms of masculinity my father 
measures himself by the holes in his belt.
he only has one & he brags when he
has to cut a new hole
for them to fit. the deck outside
where him & my uncle used to drink together
is falling apart. the steps collapse one by one
& turn into hawks. he buys beers
by the six-pack. counts them. hides them.
treats them like his sons. he has 
nine of us or maybe only three
or maybe only two depending on 
when you ask him. if it is late & no one else
is awake he might say, "i love you."
if everyone is around he might
break a bottle & chase his gender
around the yard until it makes him sick.
when i first came out i was ridiculous
& had mirages of my father teaching me
something about being a man. 
he is probably the last person i want
to learn about a gender from. 
i sometimes look at both him
& my mom & wonder if they would
be happier trans. honestly i think 
most people would be happier trans
but i'm biased. there used to be this razor commercial
where a dad teaches his trans son to shave. 
i watched it & cried even though that's not
what i want. the script is sometimes
so heavy with longing you can't help
but notice your lacks. i want to see my father 
without his gender. i want to see him 
at the end of a six-pack, whirling with
a storm-laden night sky. this is where
i used to be so afraid as a child. when he 
no longer had his daylight eyes
& he looked so lost. i want to be 
lost with him. i want to teach him
about masculinity. about how & where
we can bend. i want to paint his nails.
i want to break beer bottles. shards
of amber glass. i worry that someday
the whole deck will up & leave like a flock
of elephants. then the house would
be bare & it would just be us
& the windows & nine empty bottles.
one, my own, with a little boy inside. 

several kinds of downpour

the first kind is obvious. the rain comes
like spilled teeth. we go outside 
& soak ourselves until our water is blood
& blood is water. the next is less common
but has still followed me. the ceiling
like a mouth of moths. all the wings
beating against our faces. i am not someone
who can do anything halfway. it is always
a deluge. the flooding alleyway 
we swam through to be lovers again.
i call you & it is midnight. we are both
underwater. we are in the city again 
& no one else is alive. we walk the phantom streets.
sirens spill across the clouds, another form
of downpour. there are not enough 
wheels to carry the kind of grief 
of leaving too soon. i never reach precipices,
instead the downpour is the place where
the bodies can no longer carry all the peaches.
i learned everything i know from the first kind.
from clouds telling everyone, "soon"
& everyone rushing as if they might
outrun the arrival. i once walked around
with a shower cap on during the day.
i was preparing for the finger snow.
the great eyelashes of angels. you sometimes  
come to my backdoor & tap on the screen.
i do not want to turn you away
but i have a secret room full of buckets.
they fill with water & i empty them.
i am always just a breath away. i wonder 
what it is like to live as an easier person.
head filled with turtles instead of cicadas. 
i take my exoskeleton to the car wash.
put the quarters in the machine 
& watch it pour. when i see you next
should i pretend not to know you 
or should i tell everyone stories of what
we used to tell each other when the moon
was ready to gush? when the streets filled 
with ivory & birds? 

how to breathe

there were years where
i hid having only gills.
i didn't want anyone
to see me gasping
in a jar of water.
i think it started in middle school.
the water there tasted
like aluminum foil
& the color green. i never have been
a great swimmer. my gills though,
i loved them so much.
frills pleated into 
my face. i took pictures
of them that only i would
ever see. sometimes our bodies
know exactly what we need.
a dress without the world
attached. wind & leaves tripping
like eyelashes. i do not think
anyone every caught me.
though once, i was in the bathroom
& someone came in
to do the same. she plunged her head
beneath the faucet. gasped loud
& urgently. the kind of hunger
of someone who has not breathed
all day. i wanted to tell her,
"i feel that too." instead. i pulled away.
held my breath a little longer
& waited for her to be done.
she was so hungry
she didn't notice me.
eventually, i became an amphibian
like all people 
with a semi-functioning gender.
still, my lungs have always felt
like mismatched socks. 
i walk around & see a world
underwater. i wonder who
i would be there. clouds of fish.
eel ribbons. my mouth, a tear between
the sun & the deep. 

hypochondria 

come & let's catalog all our soft parts.
i put a needle 
through my ear drum & hear
gulls. 
the word "hypochondria"
comes from an ancient greek word
meaning "between the ribs 
& navel." here is where all my worms go.
they believed this was where
sadness lived. there is so much wisdom
in all the old science. 
i have felt my sorrow there
like a water wheel.
this is all to say
sometimes i make lists
of all the ways i am dying.
it doesn't help that
i am sick it so many 
bright & gleaming ways.
pills, like little eyes in their bottles.
the doctor measuring my skull
& saying, "there is a spider
big enough to crawl
in your mouth when you sleep."
i go to webmd when i want
to feel the full panic. 
cancer & lung collapse 
& sepsis. i imagine somewhere
there is a little angel man who
has to write all these entries.
sometimes he pauses
at the completion 
of an article.
he considers adding
a short poem before 
reminding himself
that science is not supposed
to sing. i trace my melancholy. 
count my ribs. i am missing one
& it is off being something else.
maybe a spoon or maybe
a bookmark. i look
in every encylopedia for an ailment
to explain this
but there is none.