We all wanted to be pumpkins
until we watched how they make them smile. 

I painted my hips in the reptilian lips
of a gourd-- built myself a dried steam 
and let all my skin go bumpy and thick-warted--
I didn't care if you wanted me goose-necked
or butternut-- I'll take my own oranges
as a sign that I was meant for porches--
My cheek bones are caramel and apple-stem
and my heels taste like everyone's mother's soup.
I was meant for candles and windowsills
-- I was never meant to be one shape-- 
striped my legs green and walked
across the corn field behind my house--the
field with the dog tooth tomb stones and
the hermit tree watching her own legs decay--
I needed a place pluck myself
from the dry vine-- a nest to die and rot. 
Don't we all want a place 
to pull out each strand of our hair?
Did your scalp grown corn husks or
rows of Indian corn? Did you
weave the husks into dolls or did you drop
each strand one by one into a candle
to watch the flames eat so hungry.
We all had wanted to be
pumpkins at one time or another-- wanted someone 
to carve us teeth-- someone to remove our
centers-- our marrows-- thrust their hands
into the coils of our intestines and 
teach us how to be beautiful-- teach us
how to smile so big that fire would
pour from where our stomachs used to be--
pumpkin spice and saved to rot in pie
crusts instead of corn fields-- just to be
sliced again-- do they every run out of
ways to cut the edges off our curves--?
round us out and burn our bellies--?
Did you really want to be a pumpkin or
did you just want to be held like one?
You don't see them cut the tops off gourds-- 
there's not enough space left to take a pairing knife to 
our chests and make a rib cage into a lantern--
they leave us to the corn husks when we're done
and we tell everyone who rots like Indian corn
that we aren't pilgrims-- we aren't pumpkins--
we are reptile ridges and dog-tooth trenches--
spine like a spattering callous-face tombstones
who forgot their own names in the field behind 
my house. I won't let you carve me teeth--
I won't let you spit ember with my tongue--
my eyes are in all directions-- I don't
see out of triangles I listen from the porch where
I wait-- wait for frost to pare 
each coating of skin my scars built--
smell the pumpkin pie from the kitchen.
lose green to November and sprawl out for December
to turn my seeds to tombstones in the corn field.