Let's lay low like pie crusts-- 
we roots. we apple torte. 

Knead me with your dry knuckles
my sisters my mothers my grandmothers
who unravel the skin of granny green
apples in pirouettes-- those dancer ribbons
I once held out the window of a blue jeep 
when I was seven-- trade my ribbons
for purple carrot shavings--
for the peels of red bananas
and honeydew I ate with my 
elbows rooted on the kitchen counter-- 
my feet bare as cinnamon and apples--
we were born in nutmeg dirt
in the blizzard of confectioner's
sugar that was snowing and
snows
and snowed-- 
the blizzard of 96' that 
baked us all into apple tortes
on the radiator--
kneaded my mother sweetly 
in another pie pan from the
seat of a blue jeep still waving
the ribbons of green apples--
I was only thumbprint in crust--
and my grandmother roasted 
butternut squash and the 
fat finger roots of sweet potatoes--
of her own mother who 
also had dirty feet
and elbows that rooted
themselves in kitchen tables.
We were all there
hiding under a blanket of pie-crust--
sugar--butter--flour-- vanilla 
call me the child of tortes and
crumb muffin-- call my body the scone
we name our own--
make love and girl-bodies with me.
make us sweet and dirty like
we were meant to be. 
Live our lives brushing
the sugar from our daughter's foreheads
and telling her that she will
always be inspected for burnt edges
and for the cinnamon and apples she buries
herself beneath-- don't clean your
feet
daughters. My mother-- let's be dirty
like cinnamon sticks and unshaven carrots.
Let's lay fat and bearded in the oven--
we are the bodies of root and gourd knots
cold and huddled in the 
glass sternum of the pie dish. 
We won't tell them that we kiss under 
the dough and under the apples
and under the snow and under the sugar--
we won't tell them that we peel off
the skin for show-- a strip tease--
this burnt burlesque 
we won't tell them that we love most
the burnt edges-- the places
where we failed to be hidden by 
the crust or by the snow.
We pie dish feet-- we flour hands--
we kiss and squash neck.
Lay low with me in the pie crusts--
pour the cinnamon and apples
over our heads-- slice me out of the 
grave plot next to my mother
and my grandmother
and my neighbor who accidentally
had a daughter too. Slice me out of
girl-body-- out of
the veins of the potatoes-- 
dig us each out of
dinner tables.
Oh, Cinnamon feet! Oh soy bean!
Oh porch!
Oh mother and snowed and snowing
and snow.