permutate

after the vultures have had their fill

lichens stretch out their many-pronged fronds

towards what is left of the sun 

moss curls out in-between webbed knuckles

spreads across the ground

everything returns, and turns 

 

we build steeples with our hands long after

the church has burned

you look at love and later love

becomes the lens through which you see

 

trees caress the sky

we trade places and lives

meat for metal, metal for wood

wood for fire, fire for salt

salt for oil, oil for gems

gems for coins

for the ferryman

to trade here for there

 

vultures dance with their wings spread wide

facing each other

all feathers straining outwards 

 

who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

the stairs have stripped their soft confines 

to lay bare their nails to meet my soles

fluorescents flicker their old-gold hue, 
as useless in the daylight as they are in the dark

I pass by the front door on arched toes and look out- 
the grass is so green against the asphalt as to become luminescent

I drum my staccato heartbeat against the walls 

the beige paint responds in patterns of light

in cyrillic and arabic, 

messages I could never understand, only witness

I am obsessed with almost everything

tracing with fingertips

the minuscule hexagonal structure of my own epidermis, 
how the mummified fly on the web can not scream in any way that matters– and neither can I. 

an invisible repeating line of footprints in the carpet

back and forth
in the same place in the same way at the same times.
a life like a palindrome, tick-tock on the metronome, 
we all go back and forth forever. 

This house starves its prisoners

I bang at the window
I do not look out the window.
I forget I have a window, 
for the curtains are so dark. 

I wake with bloodied knuckles 
and write them off

I do not go by day or night- 

I must have been born asleep and stayed that way, somnambulant bat with giant umber ears 

ringing with its own echo, 
searching for a fly that was mummified long ago

a struck lamp-post vibrating, lantern strobing
like a nightclub overhead a dead road

I am wrapped up tight

an eye is just an eye unless it is your own, then it is a well
a well is just a well unless it is the one you fell in, then it is home

in all the finite immensity of spacetime, 
outer bodies orbit in predictable measurements

everything is according to its own set of rules

7 years ago I was calculating for Europa’s orbit,
just a little bit off he said, without even looking

I lay on the cold tiled floor 
my cheek hot as fever 

this planet is a stranger to me 
I tug on its coat by accident in a crowd 
and it looks back at me, confused 
it seemed so familiar from the side 

I want to fall into it 

slide down a rope made up of many other ropes, in vibrant color 

crash into a sea of ribbons and gauze 
I want to crawl onto the shore underneath the bridge– frozen through

I want, I want

chthonian woman

smooth as subterranean bones, safe from sunlight, methodically cleansed by nightcrawling friends

almost untouched– almost, darling, there’s an imprint

there, on your collar, from a thumb. 

there’s lines on your wrists that remember a dead grip

from the man who ran away with your father’s gun

you cornered the king and checked him with your pawn, 

and though your fingers have oft felt the little cross between them

you’ve never felt like you've won

you know that the green fields rolling on in all directions

were once blue underwater, 

once red and black and on fire

and you carry that close to your skin

which was once cellular crimson, murky, multifarious, 

what a miracle it was to leave as a denizen of yourself 

so easily you could’ve become a clot, a knot, a mass of blood, toxic shock

reabsorbed or expelled from the old red of Ahab’s vengeful mouth

You’ll never forgive either of them, I know, not the bodies that were once homes and not your own

wagging your fingers at your own cells for trading flesh for bones

the sheer mass of it, the upkeep, worth double its weight in gold, how heavy- how useless

for all but conductors and crosses, dearest, no matter how rare your eyes or hair or smile

no matter how preciously formed- you are only bright and shining 

and the whole world is full of crows

secondhand skin

at night, the selkies sleep underneath a roof of whalebone

in the morning, they swim towards the surface

trade their skins for uniforms, hide their forms somewhere precious 

and they serve tables, sparkling, effervescent. 

the spit rolls off their skin, glass marbles, and the baneful,

apathetic stares glance off their well-woven scales 

at night, they may lose a memory, a lock of hair, a sense of time 

a small piece that will never return 

they will barely notice that it is gone, only that there is less

at night, cradled within a grand rib-cage, they play poker

with water-proof cards. At night, they laugh about their dreams. 

There is a new blackness at the corners of their eyes.

In the morning, they drive on the freeway, 

they visit the city, get ice cream 

Or they don’t do anything at all, up till dawn behind a screen 

before remembering who they are

at night, amidst anemones, they realize, collectively 

that it is getting harder and harder to breathe underwater

Today exotic leather coats hang untouched, gathering dust

in wooden wardrobes in thrift shops in trunks in the closet

and the selkies, don’t really go by that anymore, they prefer the term ‘land-locked’ 

and so they are

devoid of surface scars, smooth and shining

as slowly fading as the stars

twenty years from now their hands will tremble when

they tap their keys. Not from age or weakness, but from

the feeling that they have somehow missed something

terribly, crucially important. Their eyes will look like

lamplights, flickering behind heavy glass. 

and their skeleton will still be there,

home to millions, food for all

they will laugh about their dreams 

while trying to remember what they are

the birds traded their souls for wings

the spirits by the roadside dance to your delight, blind driver

you’ve got gilded fins no matter how hidden in the din of all the minnows that fly by night

there’s eyes in the striations on the strings connecting their collective at the speed of light

mycelial wire-bound messengers carrying transmissions from post to post

tears gather in polyisoprene irises, the rain falls rhythmic on the road. 

If you could only listen to the music, deaf rider, you’d hear us all calling you home

your tires crawl over, careless, this machine’s built to do what it is told. 

Your heels are leaded, you know where you’re heading and all we can do

 is watch as you go

between your crowded ears a hand twists a crank and brass pins pluck brass teeth

through the rusty music you can hear your mothers voice 

“There are places left untouched

within all of us, you have swallowed a key

alongside your first breath of air.”

you can see her waltz upside down with your father 

in the rearview mirror, her dress brushes past your hair

“The illusion reflects us as 

we reflect it, there are gods 

mechanical and corporeal

we live on the body we’ve built

from another. we live in bodies

borrowed.”

the reddened sky is in the pools of rain on the asphalt 

even now, you travel on arteries

“I know, someday,

that you will want to break the mirror.”

the moon watches on, faint and mournful

as your grip tightens on the wheel

bewinged

feathers littered the loam around,
iridescent shards catching the moonlight in shivers

it was a pelican— a vulture, no, some sort of seraphim
no it must've been a chimera, a swan

an icon's solemn face shown out from beneath billowing wings
it was Saint Mary— it was my mother, it was a rippling reflection of a stranger in a lake 

it shuffled as I watched, passed between invisible hands. Overhand, cascade, faro
it was a memory of a memory of a memory,
replayed so often it has lost all recognizable features, smoothed out by fastidious fingers
marble statues anonymous save for the hint of a brow, a nose bridge, a socket

it was the great other— it was myself— it was the hoarse cry of a fox in the night

a ring of pain crested 'round my skull
I asked for its name and a hundred voices sang at once

it sounded like my father's first rage— my first cry, the diner waitress asking "and what can I get for you, sweetheart?" 

it was up late at night finally noticing that no one calls me that anymore, 

and what year did they stop? 

It was faint, it was deafening, it was the Architect hissing in my mind as I laid on the ground convulsing. 

Do not indulge in forces you do not understand. 

It was the song the storm makes when it hits the shingles overhead 

there is a rhythm to all things, even chance

it tilts its head, stone venetian masque
the hollows of its eyes belie a vastness

If it was a blessing why was I held down to receive it?

 

bewinged Angler, where is the rest of your formless body? 

Where is your razor-filled mouth? How could I possibly satiate you?

It unfolds its wings with the sound of a hundred paper bags being crushed— 

with the sound of a tumbleweed scuffing against barren earth— with the feeling of friction between skin and threadbare fabric, and pavement, and coal— 

with your hands, too soft, too plush— an untuned piano being played by a cat 

your fingers in my mouth, salt and sweat, a set of old stairs collapsing

the soul is long and sweet, it gets longer and sweeter by the hour, it is tended to by time and light
everything that lives must eat, and all things that grow must be devoured

stonetooth

on my knees i look for teeth 

on the muddy ground by the backyard creek

toads stare at the air with unblinking eyes and their croak

is the sound my heart makes when its overfilled itself

and spends its night with its hands on the porcelain

coughing up years of accumulated rot

but when the toad makes the sound it is for love

when I do, it is not

I remember my mother’s snaggle tooth, a curved fang

amidst a cream-suited procession, a snake in the hutch

I remember my dead lover’s snaggle tooth, twisted to face

inwards towards his comrades, a traitor in the ranks

nothing beautiful is perfect

I’ll remember what’s been misplaced long after 

everything symmetrically sound has been wiped away

I have such the same malformity, 

though not as front-and-fringe 

to notice you’d have to reach in to touch it, 

to find it, hiding shyly, curling in on itself

There is a Physiognomist smoking a pipe in my head 

this is a sign of a crooked character, he tells me

good, I say, so let us be crooked

it is better for our branches to reach out to the light

I love to love liars and I love to be loved despite

how I cry as frogs cry, merely part of a larger orchestra

of homeless buskers that play for no one but themselves

(for who else is there to play for but ourselves?)

I pick a tooth from the creek, or perhaps a tooth-shaped stone. 

This will do just fine I think, it’ll fit in well enough with my own

this is the thing about a broken heart

it should be treated no differently than a broken bone

we speak of doom and sore-crossed stars, monologue

about the predestined tragedy of it all

but perhaps fate is always changing its mind 

its eyes are cast on the rug not the threads

and our little weaver is bored and tired and knows 

accidents will happen; people will fall

we set it back into place with a shout or a whimper

wrap it up with a shirt or paper, then we’re a little 

weaker forever and stronger for having overcome the pain

Not even cicadas know how to fly

I watch them crash into trees as 

I empty my tin bucket of painted shame

into the running water 

from its mouth trots out 

every mistake I’ve ever made 

and they salu! with little clay arms

and dunk their buttonheads under the water

the Physiognomist blows Os towards the ceiling

buttonheads are a sign of psychosis, he tells me

I can’t bear to sit and watch them swim around

so I head back home, full of wounds within and without 

suppression

the stag knows, familiar the feel of the hair on the back of your head

the sound is a sound omnipresent as the ringing in your-

river rambling over your submerged ears

He lifts you up to taunt you just to shove you under again

this is how the apple bobs- with rocks inside your gaping maw, this is how he haunts you even when he’s gone 

the lamb knows little and yet more than most, 

knows how to soothe, knows what to say, 

knows what to cover 

and how to hide, knows how to hold you 

and how to bide her time

so as pages turn you can see a pattern emerge in the ink 

that sours the fiber- 

you’re wounded and you’re bloodied and raw and before

you bite she muzzles your maw

Now now, darling, don’t hate- you should feel bad for them. 

You stay your hand you bite your lip

but the anger stays, a rattlesnake, wasps buzzing by your-

Bathtub faucet scalding as it runs over your submerged ears

He knows familiar the way you writhe in fear 

and he lifts you up to laugh and you laugh in return

you find that inside you all fire has died 

and the sky is a blanket no noise can travel through

you get hit in the head, you apologize 

you stage your own mugging, fist your hands through your pockets, you hold a gun to your own chest 

and then you drop it- hate along with it 

and you are lighter than air- you float above the ground

and apples flit around like lady bugs and land in your hair

the stag pulls you down periodic 

his hands briefly mnemonic, it flashes behind your eyes

but you catch it and he pulls you up to watch

and you watch back

what's your game, world?

illumination is most found in the gutter

I see it glisten when I stare down 

into the clogged sink drain; something there 

down among the strands of frizzy hair and rust

and spit, is more true to man than all this fanfare

about purity and light and god, 

all good things come from dirt

which houses rot, we’re born in blood

and sinewy strands of snot, we come out

toothless and hairless and wrinkled 

Sphinxes speaking in tongues

and we go absent in a similar fashion

leaving behind beer bottles in the deepest trenches of the ocean

You wash the floors until they sparkle and think

to yourself, isn’t this kind of a lie?

If I stare long enough at the threadbare patterns

of this old rug, I will see Manson 

his head, his face, the shapes, 

the cadence of his convincing

If I stare long enough

at the ceiling, the plaster will turn to marble 

to vines to honeybees and cherubs with molotovs

both smacking their bodies against the window like moths

There’s something there, in the obsessive conscious

stare at the ground at the radiator at the corner 

at the dust at the exoskeleton at the bones 

at the drain at your acne in the mirror 

pick and poke and prod, it’s a kind of perversion

and morbidity is more human than the catalog 

or better yet, this desire for perfection

implies a kind of underlying 

twisted need to hide 

no self-respecting animal has any desire to be

anything but exactly what it is 

And we walk around in this parade,

chanting no one’s here! No one’s home! 

We run a tight ship around here

Our pipes never leak, we have all our teeth

We leave all our lights on, you’d never guess

Where these hands and mouth have been

“Sitting in sediment at the bottom of the ocean at the Earth’s deepest point: a beer bottle. It had traveled more than 6.7 miles to the darkest depths of the Pacific, label still intact,” Dr Wright explained.

feeding cat food to the leopard slugs

I caught a gnat 

stuck to my hand
smeared its body on the dinner table and
went on with my life

a million synapses from a microscopic mind
swept up and crumbled in a tissue
thrown away
I am aware, and I think of this, 
and I still kill. This makes it worse.

I pretend to feel guilty,
just to myself
I am on the stage lamenting 
gnat #16,874,926,454
I am the only one in the seat
staring blankly. Even I do not believe me
But we go on with the show 

I would’ve passed the prison experiments

deflected the Lucifer effect
I would not have administered the shocks
I’d light every anthill on fire 
even though I know they are not so different from us. This makes it worse 
I’d save every dry surface worm
Just to starve the birds 

I roll around on stage, play games 
exclaim “Nothing hurts!”

Scientists have recently discovered that flowers sing their distress and impending death
that insects hear their mourning and avoid them

I dream of the symphony of a burning field
and a dark cloud of dancers swarming 

I clean out my ears with kerosene 
and smoke in the garden

“Boom!” I pretend to explode 
she gives me a half hearted smile
and walks off, tired, as I make a racket
as I rip off my clothes she exits, absent
“See? No scars! No bones!”

I am afraid of my own smallness
and how easily it can be wiped away
erased like an errant mark on a pristine page
I only killed it because it was flying in front of my face. 

I only killed it because I could.
This makes it worse.

I shout and shamble through the empty rows
Nothing hurts! Nothing hurts!
Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!

pretending as directed 

to be numb to the world

indivisible

tell me it will never happen

subdue me, my rattling 

rocking back and forth 

tell me a story, tell me a lie, 

tell me that dream was only a dream and that I 

will not rapidly unspiral, back into a child, further

back into oblivion, that all will end as it began

in sudden nothing, that space before memory,

that space that fills forgetting and leaves us empty

subdue me, tame me, control my mind

love me, learn me, leave me behind 

I walk through walls, through floors, through time

I covet only the atom’s singular eye, a piece so

spectacularly aware that it has become invisible

I want to observe the observer, I want to walk 

through its house, I want to talk

without a mouth,

and listen 

with a conch held close to my ear

tell me that if angels gathered

in a circle and sang 

that I would not feel any temptation

to look away, at a leaf or a beetle 

or a peculiar cloud

tell me that when it comes

I will be prepared

there is no hope for those with eyes

my face is faceless- my mind a sequence 

I’m a sentient thread

my only relief is 

to tangle 

to fray

saturn

Oh, young defector, why’d you change your mind?

I followed the path from your brow to your mouth

dove in, drank you, pliant benefactor

our teacups gather dust in stacks beside the sink

so we drink our wine from the vase and it tastes

of rotten flowers 

I feel it all around me surrounding and trying to get in

the hour is a dense fog I must squint to see through

but see through I do, I see you,

I see you now and I see you as a child in the crinkle of your grin, as old a memory as a coiled wire telephone

It’s all relative, my detractor, 

they stamp the same branch of veins in all varieties of materials, flesh and dirt and minerals

you lay into me and tie me into pretty knots, 

O willow I bend 

for you, my teeth yellowed pearls against your roughened fingers 

Same matter, same second, I can close my eyes

and your weeping hands fall upon me as do locusts from the sky

In the bath, the air shudders in and out of iridescence 

and I can see us creatures as if from without 

without a body the passing seconds capture and contain,

they hammer stoppers into our arms

to collect the sap from our veins

I can feel every piece of 2024 

as if I am watching it from 2067

life is a fragile flame, I catch on to you 

Curtains, carpet, bed, framework, and we burn 

I dream of my mother’s death for I fear 

I will never be ready to be anything but a daughter

We will reconsider, we will think it was a mistake

I will look back with wooden hands and scream, munchian, engraved upon a fleetingness

It is inevitable, dear deserter, can’t you feel it?

Your own last words are already hanging inside you,

bats asleep. 

It creates only to eat.

If you hold me in your palm tightly enough,

I will not escape

I will trace the path from the lantern to our graves

I will wil-o-wisp your way any time you should ask

as long as you distract me from the gun

I love you, take me, let’s spin all chambers

I feel lucky, fuck me

let’s have a son

you’ve nothing but what you've been given

My tea is full of nicotine 

I drink and chew the leaves

I put hypocrites like you to sleep when I

scarcely dream 

the mantis queen doesn’t know my name,

though her soldiers prattle up and down my arms all the same

all in formation in patterns unseen  

the cattle lay siege to the wooden fence in the night

glossy eyes like mirrors in passing headlights

they know nothing more than who you are behind closed doors

I titled my ear to hear and I’ll tell you what they told me;

That hares hide in fox skins when they’re scared

that feline hierarchy in truth, pays no mind to verticality

I walk backwards down the stairs

his name is nothing, no one, absence

his power is that of negation

shoulder-herald cawing an old song

into the ring of your ear, 

into the shell of your skull

his cadence is double-negative

whatever you say, derivative

whatever you feel, chemical

his power is that of negation 

you are a soft machine filled

with blind mechanisms 

his talons toy with switches in your navel

Old prince, never king, he flits around

with wedding rings,

delights in impossible promises

bowed heads, arched necks 

‘In the bed now,’ he says, 

‘then in the distant cell of memory, 

then in the haze of nonexistence-better yet a hot flash behind your eyes 

while your vehicle swerves and flips and skins the road’

do you think  vultures can taste longing

beyond the acid on their tongues? 

little star, never sun

did you know they ate the sky while you were still young?

there was once a ladder made of moonlight

do you remember the smooth breeze of platinum in your hands?

no, you wouldn’t, would you

I plucked the memory from you 

as you would a daisy,

petal by petal

until there’s no wonder left 

only metal

shoulder-herald, earth-bound son 

he reaches and he winds and winds 

he hides under your hat and in the barrel of your gun

his power is that of negation

knocking on your door, sliding down the bannister

You know how it ends already,

he curls around your eyes

pale claws picking at your mind 

why do anything?

why be anything?

why breathe at all?

birthright

the rabbit is just a rabbit

the window is just a door 

is it a sin 

to hold this thing

that always asks for more?

it’s the same spin you did

when you were four 

over and over again 

until you’re on your knees on the floor

never again, you say what you’ve said

a thousand times before 

but it never ends

its had your wrists since you’ve known

that the window is a door

you could leave through at any moment

you never bought it but you still own it

your own blood is a noose you 

didn’t tie around your neck tell me is it a sin

to carry along this thing

that will not let you rest?

it’s electric, it’s magnetic, it clicks with a dull thud

it finds its own kind wherever it goes 

with both eyes closed 

it’s the same spin that you did

when you were 10

again and again until you vomited into the sand

it’s the same spin your father did 

again and again

till his life coiled around the drain and left him

an empty man 

it’s the same spin his father did 

and his before him 

his brother his sister his cousin 

every single one of his friends 

you walk down roads 

with hungry eyes and hungrier hands

your need a knot in your lungs 

your fingernails itch

there’s never enough you’re never enough

you can only be yourself if they give you a kick

if they wind you up if they whet your whistle

if you find what you’re looking for amidst the

shine and grime 

though you know already when you catch that fish

who you’re gonna feed it to;

that-which-devours, that which hides under your collar

call it an exit wound 

call it a birthmark 

call it friend

what does it matter?

It’s made you a husk its got you

counting on luck its made you a slave

to lady Fortuna

Centennial

a black lipstick case, over forty years old
white floral lace-licked wallpaper

my mother told me

I tapped like that too, when I was a child

Imagined that the sound of my nails clacking

was a horse galloping, 

going at a breakneck pace down the asphalt street

I dream of polyethylene 

housing shells of aluminum and cement 

empty as snake skins, full as catacombs

we spend nearly 93% of our lives

indoors, in cars, inside

behind one screen or another or another 

in my dream I am lifting up storm drain covers

and collecting minutiae with handmedown hands,

I must’ve been born a bottom feeder

scraping glass and earwigs and receipts

torn mail, worms, candy wrappers 

40 years isn’t so long

I may see it sometime soon

What will my mind be full of when my

feet pass that precipice, will my mother 

still be there? 

Or will she layout the amber of my psyche

while I’m asleep? Tap tapping like a child

on the walls of my skull? Nothing I am is mine 

nor has it ever been

I am carrying around a borrowed soul

Send me back to 1976 so I can 

watch her hitchhike from behind that rickety house

so I can follow behind from window to car to bar

to long stretch of darker roads and back home again,

deflated, emboldened, innocent 

I’d savor every twilight moment

and if I fear’d not blissful nonexistence, I’d rewrite it

I’d tuck her back into bed

shield her from gazes that knew no better  

who could not guess but should’ve been able 

the swallowed path they shoved her along

I’ve seen the pictures, I’ve met the man

and if I fear’d not blissful nonexistence, 

I’d bring them with for kindling and start it over again

though this is a battered book, I know, 

shared by many to this day ad nauseam 

porcelain dolls still watch over 

emptying rooms, what will become of them

when these houses trade for graves

few see the horror in such worn-thin conditions

in the blankness of it all

what will become of us

when we lose what little we brought with us

and are left with a mountain of luggage, guilt,

and coins they told us we’d need

he says he is tired of life and 

I understand 

though I do not believe it is

Life that we are tired of

I wonder if the clock plays all instruments simultaneously

a one man-band with a nearly infinite audience

if somewhere

(overlapping this very second)

someone is placing sticky finger pads over 

inked out images, staining them with sentimentality

thinking to themselves,

If only I could go back, I’d savor

every twilight moment

I’d follow behind unaware and out of time

from window to door to window to door

to roads that get darker the longer you walk

for I see a yawning pitch-black pit in the distance

waiting to swallow us still alive

waiting for us to wander in, confused,

waiting for us to fall through gracelessly 

and eat all that we are;

a sequence of memories 

an order of keys