When the dollhouses become our houses,

or the other way around, when “no” is a ring

around one planet or two or none, when eyes

blink in lava lamp light as though in a solar

flare, when breathing is more than a chest

pumped from remedial paramedics training,

when a tantric sojourn to self-enlightenment

powers up the ingenious puppet, when time

is an opaque decanter sloshing with liquid

that could freeze time or poison our kin,

when love may tear you limb from limb,

there is no hope without beginning or end.

We are occupied by gods. The mistake is to identify with the god occupying you. 

Michael Ondaatje

I.

As in a shootout, bullets crack against brick 

or drywall. You hunker where surprised, 

cheek pressed to a chair leg, body straining 

to disappear into the well of a closet, a desk, 

a bathroom stall. The air thunders with 

ragged breathing. At any moment (it seems), 

you will stare into the matte black eye

of a gun, dry-mouthed with terror. 

You suddenly realize that you occupy 

another’s plan, incidental to another’s

desire. Caught up, you are collateral 

damage. You pretend to be dead, innocuous,

Later when interviewed, you will stammer 

that you don’t remember. It happened 

so fast, even your chance for heroism 

swamped by self-absorption.

II. 

Everyone on the floor, they said. Hands

where we can see them. You flatten yourself, 

cheek against carpet. (This may be the last thing 

you feel, this rough irritation.) You dig your fingers 

into its ungenerous nap, all of you straining, oddly,

towards those above you. You will be asked to map 

this time. Like a choreographer, you will trace 

each step, each combination. Here is where they first 

emerged. Here is where they shot and shot again. 

Here is where some were struck. Here is where 

one fell. You watched his eyes cloud. You saw 

him leave. You want to say you stood 

between malevolence and someone’s 

loved one. Instead, you ran invisible strings 

from each of their limbs to an invisible crossbar.

You imagined them dancing backwards 

through the door-frame, saw yourself spring up, 

all of you, rising from the dead, saved.

III.

Later, you will learn who they were, where and why

they grew disaffected. You will know their names,

grinding the syllables between your molars, writing 

them on scraps to burn. You will obsess about  

how a million chances coalesced, how a handful 

of upflung scraps assembled, sweeping you 

into the day’s news. Suddenly, you will believe 

in exorcism, pay good money to cast out demons.

No more borrowed sugar—

you want the mixer,

the red costly one

that churns my granules,

your yolks, my flour

into upside-down pineapple envy.

You want the oven that heats

your hunger to a blister,

and an extra Band-aid for your heel

hoofing it up our long driveway.

You want the refrigerator

turning its cold shelf to your requests

for perfectly proportioned leftovers, and—

for your son’s Camp Susque show-and-tell—

you want our daughter’s hamster

scurrying beneath the shade

of the hefty appliance,

which we will gladly U-Haul

to your back door,

the one where good neighbors meet

to discuss shared dandelions, lawnmowers, 

power tools, husbands, 

one of which I refuse—in this 

baked-on summer heat—to lend

even to you.

my body is not my body is 

my body seven times removed 

and hungry, I’ve shed 

and absorbed my skeleton 3.7 times 

trying to find the perfect shape 

for myself and they’ve all been wrong—

beauty is Little House on the Prairie 

boasting Father could wrap his hands 

all the way around Mother’s waist and I 

have been preconditioned to starve myself. 

When I’m like this I eat my fingernails 

and the cartilage around them just a little more, 

pretending that since I know I am not food 

this is not eating. My fingers are slim enough 

already I wish I could worry away 

at the soft skin of my belly and the too wide-ness 

of my hips and thighs in the same way, but 

that would be eating and eating is a sin 

I am forced to indulge in; guilty damned 

to gluttonous hell if I do or if I don’t, all I think about 

is what could have been for dinner if only I hadn’t 

known myself too well to fill the fridge. 

I’ve been this way for a while, is this telling? 

Is this confession? It seems a sin to confess this, 

my multi-sin, the sin of eating and the sin 

of not eating and the double sin of both eating and 

not eating and the triple sin of both eating and not 

eating and then having the gall to tell you, 

like I’m seeking intervention or pity or, god forbid, 

attention, the greatest sin of all, but really 

I’m just stating a fact I’m wearing 

on my skin with the excess 

hair you only grow when you’re a starveling 

and the dark bags under my eyes and the way I know  

it’s a sin, but if I can just wait an hour 

or two longer I won’t be hungry anymore. My edges 

will scare the hunger-beast away, he’s a coward 

and knows my edges are already sharp enough 

to cut him, cut me, cut the mattress. In my sleep 

I accidentally consume three geese 

of feathers and dream I am growing 

wings, dream I can fly, dream I am pregnant 

with a host of goslings and that’s why 

I’m so hungry all the damn time—

I’m eating for seven at least.

Four in the morning.

Little bud across the hall

is shouting 

DA-DA

from his crib,

static on the Vivaldi

in my nearly snuffed dream where

a hall of doors

open and shut in unison.

The subtitles are Arabic,

the connection hot-wired

from my neighbor’s apartment.

Behind my couch the line grows

through the wall to watch

the training video, a collection

of scruffy-necked slims

who believe fatherhood,

with its weed & binkies,

is something

that can be taught.

i push play on another scene 

from that movie where your skin

dissolves like a tablet of powder

in the rain there is something about 

distance & the heart growing fonder

always being the one left behind

& never the one leaving i want to 

spend a day not thinking about flowers 

still waiting to be born around bones 

that used to hold other bodies 

inside them… my body is a carnival 

on fire a mouth stuffed with lilacs 

it is hard to breathe in a world full of cars 

that get into accidents run your hand 

through my hair & tell the birds 

to go south forever

do you ever get lonely have you ever 

been afraid to hold on does the smoke 

stay in your clothes like it stays in mine

name this sometimes-unwanted-part of 

me— how a grave & i share the same 

unclean throat like water with a smell 

of the north in my memory tying knots 

as part of a ritual for a lover who had 

lost everything but the taste 

of bitterness & dry bread