dissection of a toothbrush
                                       for gina olson

i put each canine & molar to bed 
one at a time in the teeth room.
flick on the night light that projects
stars across the roof of my mouth.
i have always wanted to have bloodly
little roots holding me into place.
instead, i tend my teeth. they are the likely footprints
of this tiny life of ours. in the bathroom
without the rest of my face
i take the toothbrush & tear it apart.
at first it is for science & then for pleasure
& then for everything i cannot name.
all day my partner & i fought over 
the color of the moon. when we were done
he asked, "do you love me?" over & over
until i ran out of ways to say "yes."
i searched out all the toothbrushes in
the house. i was careful not to wake up
any of the teeth. stuck their heads
in the hardening dirt. 
i hope we can never change. not at all.
he has to know the moon is red.
so so red. 

t-shirt press

in 7th grade i stayed after school
to use the t-shirt press.
i don't remember much about
that time other than feeling
like i no longer had a body. 
i scratched myself out of mirrors. 
ate less & less. 
there was a soda machine
behind the school
which i fed a quarter for a sprite
whenever i could.
the t-shirt press was a rusted machine.
i sat at the computer dreaming
of all kinds of images i wanted 
on shirts. i printed a warped 
flyleaf album cover & stretched out 
still from buffy the vampire slayer.
it was only me & two other kids
also sifting the old internet
for fragments of a self. the images 
always came out in squares.
televisions to our bones.
the t-shirt fabric was coarse
& the fits were all boxy. i loved the shirts anyway. 
i was a size large then
but i wore extra-large to have room to hide. 
steam from
the press.
touched my hand to the still-warm designs.
i always put them on before going home.
layer after layer. my blood 
somewhere between fabric & running. 
the teacher was an older man
with a bowlish haircut & wiry glasses.
we said few words to each other. 
sometimes he would print a shirt too
when the rest of us were done 
& packing up for the afternoon. 
a phish band image or song lyrics.
smell of burning teeth or rubber. 
i would cross the soccer fields to get home.
that autumn there were
always vultures. huge black birds 
with their mouths full of guts.
i was scared of them. convinced that
i might be small enough
to be carried away. i can see one now
with a t-shirt in its mouth. 
i stopped going. i don't remember why. 
the sun turned into
a doorbell. i was often furious with myself.
why was i so hard to be? even when
i didn't make shirts i would lay
on the floor upstairs sometimes after school.
staring up at the dusty ceiling
dreaming of designs 
to make a body out of. 

rooftop girlhood 

i remember the taste of plum candy.
our elbows & the open window.
me, the last one to end up
on her roof.
the other girls
quick to change themselves
into their favorite birds. herons
& swifts & even a blue jay. 
i was always a pigeon. 
the following ghost. a message curled
like a foot in my mouth.
i wanted to be one of them. i loved
her house. the wooden floors
& the bay window. 
especially though the pond in the back
where we listened to the frogs
become men. once, when no one 
was looking
i waded into the water. 
felt my skin go amphibial. cool 
early spring. to be a girl is to
replicate each other's laughs. is to
put stars in your teeth. 
i never did any of those things.
instead, i followed. i loved the girls
who kept me. the brownies we ate
in the basement. the older brother
who played basketball in his bedroom.
thrumming house. thrumming window.
the clock in the kitchen
which sung bird calls on every hour.
the loon was late at night. 
a lonely song. me on the roof alone
with everyone else asleep.
i was looking for 
a television 
beneath the clouds. i was convinced 
there had to be something they had seen
that i did not. i found nothing.
wind making an instrument 
of my gender. a whistle or a chime. 
her lipstick open on the bathroom sink.
i put a little on the back
of my hand to feel the texture. 
waxy & soft. red, far too deep. 

911

every time i try to all the emergency machine
it is my father on the other side. the first 911
was just a hole dug into the earth & screamed into.
sometimes i take a shovel to the soil 
& look for calls for help. my father is not good
in emergencies. he turns into an angry man.
once, he turned me into broom bristles 
& swept the house with my face. i became
a disciple of the cob webs. a caretaker of dust.
that is what it means to be a poet. someone has
to tell the truth about how we came apart.
i sometimes wish i was a different kind
of cartographer. not one who wrote about 
hunger but one who wrote about wholeness.
about finding the foot you've been missing
& sewing it back on with beading thread. my father
drives a two-wheeled car. carries a gun without bullets.
i ask him on the phone, "what are you going 
to do?" masculinity is about hands & femininity 
is also, kind of, about hands. i tell him,
"can you put someone else one the phone."
he replies, "it is only me." unsealing the chimneys.
teaching the house how to breathe again.
the air fills with gnats. if he was going to pick up
i wish he would do something. i wish he would
take off his face finally & weep. we could
harvest his tears. turn them into glass. 
a panacea. the reminder that in the terror hours
we are all nothing more than lovely water. 
he does not have a plan. i tell him what to do,
"get into your car & just sing to me." 

sunflower seeds

i make a house of sunflower seeds.
zebra in the pit of
of my running.
enough salt to keep us heavy
through the worst parts.
i don't mean to be
so small. i never realized
that a whole fist fits
in the shell.
the year we grew sunflowers
i lied & told everyone 
that they were sisters of mine.
we held hands. went to confession.
pleaded guilty. 
we plucked our petals.
fed them to the stray cats.
the mountain was always
a threat. if you are not
swallowed enough, you might
have to climb over
& to the other side.
now, my neighbors often offer water.
they say, "did you know
if you drink you will inevitably turn
into a fish?"
they say it like it's such a good thing.
i like to be a mammal.
at least i like it as much 
as anyone does. i don't want
to relearn how to talk to trees. i don't want to
wake up in a baseball field 
with a bat in my hands. 
the sunflowers bloom
even when i beg them not to. even when
i want to be the quiet dead place
with smoke coming from
my mouth. a fire is always 
a dream of meeting someone else.
someone brighter 
than yourself.
i blink & my eyes are seeds too.
i bite my lip. try my best
not to weep but i do
& there goes my head. all the flowers.
all the fire. 
i cannot see anything
but yellow. i walk around
in a busy street looking
for the little house so that i 
can crawl back inside. 
plug my ears with nettle 
& keep the baseballs 
where they belong 
down down deep in my throat. 

white peach

the bruise is a sugar trap.
needs to be eaten quickly 
& without protest. 
where did you fall & who harvested
your dazzling pit? i have been searching
for mine for years. sometimes
with a lover
i will ask them to open their mouth
wider
so i can see if it is just beyond
their teeth.
when it rains i melt like dandelions. 
my flesh is a sick palace.
a boy removes his hand
from my back.
he's left an imprint there.
i assure him, "by morning it will be gone."
that is not true. i will have to take
a paring knife & eat it by
candlelight. 
how close have you gotten
to confessing everything?
i used to be paranoid that people
could read my thoughts
but maybe i wish it were true.
they would have seen 
a candy shop. 
the bones i still suck on & the ones
that have turned into glass.
what i am most worried about
is that someone took the pit
& is going to plant it 
without me knowing.
that one day
i will find a tree
& start weeping. they will 
have done it wrong. too far
from other trees to bear fruit. 
when the moon comes my lonely plant
will feel a yearning for a holy place
when we were one. when we were
as small as we can get.
tell me, do you still believe
that you decide who gets to mark you?
it is what i tell myself but
my love, that is like saying
a bruise is a limb
instead of just old
plum-laden blood. 
the spoons are full tonight. 
we can tell one truth to each other
before we kill the sun. 
what do you swallow
only in the dark? 

unripe banana

at the grocery store 
i always search for the largest bunch
i can find. no, this is not an innuendo
this is just me saying i don't just want
one bite. on the television 
there is a man talking about 
how he was healed by punching
his shiny new car. when i was younger
sometimes we would watch mass
on the catholic channel. i wondered if 
i put my face to the screen if i could
become eucharist. the body the body.
the blood. i wish the body were
something better than wafers.
we could all be eating bananas
& thinking about jesus. instead 
it's the cheap wine from the tinny metal chalice.
we talk about trying to form
some kind of religion in the wake
of leaving the church. i tell everyone
"i am a disciple of the unripe banana."
they laugh but what i mean is
when i get bananas i always 
get three green ones. the ones that
we will wait on. the gods i know
are never ready to eat. instead, they hover
in their green. a sweetness on the other side
of some war, holy or otherwise.
i try to find places to shop that 
don't support genocides. i end up
at a stand at the end of a gravel road.
there a dead man is selling bananas.
they are the wildest bananas i have
ever seen. every color you could imagine.
i don't know why but i panic. 
like they can't possibly be for me.
the starchy skin. the snap of the urgent flesh.
on the television they say,
"hold your breath when you go outside today."
the sky is red. the sky is gutted. 
one banana never ripens. i hide it
from everyone i now. leave it offerings
of eyelash hairs & stray salt. 

octopus shirt 

i plan to wear this into the afterlife.
barefoot & threadbare. 
i found the shirt on a june evening.
all summer i lived in the guts of
my vacant college dorm. the shirt, like
a snakeskin, lay in the middle 
of the common room the day after
everyone else had left. blue & soft. 
the image of an octopus 
printed across the chest. 
when i put it on i went all ocean.
my eyes, brimming with schools of fish.
i felt the tentacles & the beak. i believed
in depths greater than the drain.
i have slept in the shirt for years now.
it is a ritual in meeting my ghosts.
slipping it on is a tether
into the skin i have lost & the skin
i have grown. soft as spring magnolia fingers.
all the buds christmas-lighting.
i used to wonder if i might be able
to find the shirt's old owner. if maybe
i could fly it like a flag above
my head until its mother returned.
would she weep? if she wore the shirt
could she feel all my grottos 
& my deep night hungers? i think it is
too late now. now the shirt is mine.
still, each night i crawl inside the octopus.
we swim. trade species. draw pictures 
of god. mine is a broken window.
the octopus just draws the sun. 

mall

everyone is going to the new sugar.
first just a shoe house & then a television garden.
the stores grow on one another's backs.
we get lost & food court ourselves all night.
drink slushies & hide in the potted ferns.
the sky becomes a sky light. our clothes 
new & new & newer. tiles like the scales
of a great monster. we know somehow
that all our friends are here & yet
we cannot find them. there are maps
but all of them are different. one just reads,
"we are asleep." i follow the footprints
on the ground to the as-seen-on-tv store.
there we can buy a non-stick pan. hold it 
as a weapon or an offering. there are more ghosts
than we can handle. there are more windows
than we can look into. the smell of butter.
a holy tea sample. i start to think "if i ever 
get out i'm going to go to the woods. 
i'm going to evaporate & they will write
some kind of a paranormal show about
my disappearance." a santa is begging us
to get on his lap & take a picture.
he says, "your mother will love it."
finger guns that fire. a salesman is
not accepting credit cards. he asks
for all debts paid in bone. a femur.
a nose. he says an ear will do.
if i find you in this labyrinth i want
to split a soft pretzel. i want to hold hands 
& climb the escalators as high as they
can go. there is an unfinished floor.
a worker says, "don't wait for heaven." 
vacant storefronts. i want to get out
& swallow a handful of dirt. 
find you & weep. confess, "i spent it all.
i do not even remember on what." 

prayer for living alone

once in the rain all of us met 
on the porch. it was spring &
i was leaving soon. the man who smelled
like pond muck & beef jerky
& the other man who sold guns.
he had short black hair & an infant daughter
who visited only occasionally.
we had never all stood together before.
the tenants of each floor of the 
tall white house on west broadway.
i don't remember what we talked about
but i imagined each of us 
holding our own little 'alone' 
in our hands. mine was always soft
as bubble gum & just as pink.
i spent nights tracing my outline
on the walls & waiting for them to come 
alive. you can get so alone you become
a terrarium. or, rather, maybe you just
discover what has already been there.
the isopods & the centipedes. the words 
hatching beneath rocks. i became 
so vast & so small. the older man smoked
& the smell lingered, captured by
the mist. the younger man ran his hand
through his hair. maybe we mentioned
the tourists coming soon or maybe
they asked to see my dog. maybe
none of us spoke aloud the word,
"alone" but it perched on our shoulders 
& laughed at the impending moon.
a car driving by with headlights 
like angels. i was the first to leave 
as i always am. i do remember that i told them,
"i will see you" which is another way 
of saying, "we are both mammals."
water ran down the street. a brief little river
carrying leaves like canoes. 
aloneness is one of those places you don't
escape. you can't wash it away
with a storm or even with the company
of fellow ghosts. it becomes a part of you.
feather or gills or hair.