I know a girl that piles on the necklaces
“Makes me look pretty,” she says
She’s all nervous, high-pitched laughter that jangles
as she fidgets with her armored collarbones

Rose red rashes bloom around ivory flesh,
She scratches at her skin inflamed
Ring ring ring around her pretty little neck
With those posey necklaces and gemstones

She smiles fondly at each reflection
of chains and rocks entangled
Wrung wrung wrung of beauty is she
Bitten so fiercely to her ivory bones

Her laughter hacks into little cough spurts,
and the metal winks dully as it strangles
Ring ring ring around her rosy little neck--
she piles on more necklaces.

In the heart of us are a set of bagpipes
that blows the beat of a drum
but is described as a hollow *****,
like one in a church that echoes deep whalesong
in the midst of a funeral.
Our mom had rules for visiting the newly departed, lest their spirits attach to ours:
Take home no food, or the dead will hunger.
Wash your clothes, or the dead will wear your skin.
Don’t go straight home, or the dead will follow.
Starved and naked, we wandered
through IKEA and nearby coffee shops
to deposit our lost and beloved friend in a final resting place
before heading home
our empty and quiet home.

we are a mass of sun-fearing people
bowing as she bows,
rising as she rises, dancing as she
makes her way across the sky.
our earth turns to bask in more of her
and speaks in hushed voices as she sleeps.
let there be light: and there she was,
just like that, the source
of all that glimmers,
the source of all that burns.

go back to your roots -- so I dug,
knuckles deep in mud, where the roots were thickest.
Worms tied themselves around my fingers;
it had been a good year for rain.
I dug past tunnels and underground kingdoms
until the soil crumbled
until pebbles became boulders became bone
until spines stitched the earth shut,
scars that once hemorrhaged
something distant.
I dug until my knuckles bled
and dirt puddled into paludal flames.
Sweat glistened in the lava light and sizzled
drip by drip from my fingertips. For miles more
ash choked me, pressure suffocated me,
fire consumed me, ripped me up raw as I screamed,
I kept digging until I scraped the last of molten earth aside
and gazed onto what keeps an earth whole,
what I’ve always known: the liquid fury within.

So many plans have been ruined by wrenches
that we should rid the earth of them all:
wrest them from metal workers and stonemasons,
pile them up, burn them.
A crowd gathers in the firelight,
cheering the flames on, warmed by
dreams of perfection.

my shoulders curl inward
like a brittle winter leaf
I crackle as I stretch my limbs
and I turn ever smaller
over time

You could look for me in every corner of earth
and never find me.
Even if all the world were glass
and the water clear,
even if you and I were the only ones
in a white plane outside of space and time,
I could be in front of you, invisible,
just out of reach.
As you search with arms outstretched,
and I, about to smile my smug smile,
winner of my own game, I falter —
because things could have been so different.

as you wait for the dust to clear
from where your house fell,
fires use its bones as kindling
and bring clouds of dry lightning,
gunshots in the distance,
carbon fogs, nuclear shadows,
storms up to your knees,

and yet you wait