My lamp light sternum and 
how i came to love watermelon rinds.  

i hope i die like the lamp light in the
corner of the living room. 

i have always admired a lamps
ability to listen. it listens
like watermelon rinds or
the thick belly of the sink.
it's the only one that
waits for me to come home from the
slumped couches of you high school boys
who still wear my skirts as a joke
or a wrestling trophy or a poker game. 
oh you boys who break the waist bands
of my underwear-- boys
who think girls are baseballs-- call my body
a girl or a home plate-- either
way you're thinking of it as a score
board-- finger-fumbling 
me into a rubix cube.
your best bet is peeling off the stickers.
call me "darling" call me "sexy"
call me "love". call me with
only your hands that turn
me into a lamp post to be
swung on-- dance in the rain with
me in yellow rain coats and red umbrellas
that hide my naked bones--
sing in the rain
sing in the rain
what a glorious feeling
singing in the street lamp light
living room lamp light-- light
in the ceiling of his side room
that made me feel like a watermelon
rind in a sink-- 

i had always been so unprepared to be naked
until i took off my dress in the lamp 
light. strip-teased myself and 
thought how much i was a honey dew--
a bite mark of sugar-- a green spine
wrinkle-rind watermelon
carved by the methodical chops 
of my father's dull kitchen knife.

i felt like a portrait. 
like a memory. 

they have always found some
fault with me.

is it the way the light
paints dull waves under each rib?
the bluff of my stomach around
my hips? my watermelon rind legs
left sprawled in the sink?
was there something missing 
without the pink fruit? 

did they only ever
eat us like porches or rubix cubes?--
pink and red and white seeds
what was i but a sink belly.

i will sleep on the watermelon rind
of the couch. totter on the crescent moon--
cut like a scar into the cheek bone
of night. 

i will tell it all by
lamp light and it won't ask any 
question. i'll eat the green rinds
in the sink that taste vaguely of 
soap and my father's hands.

i hope to die like lamp light.
quiet. listening. without
anything pink left about me. 

the white seeds won't grow
another one like me.