Build me a ginger bread girl-body--
What my grandmother taught me about cookies and
eating the peppermint wreath from the front door.

Why would anyone 
waste molasses on men? 
Make me a ginger girl-body
in a cardamon cardigan-- we can
brave this winter white of teeth-- 
taste sugar on my sleeves
and lick me clean of icing until
I'm just naked and baked light
blush-brown-- and cinnamon cheek
-- we pierced our
ears with red and green
sugar spheres and 
walked along the crinkle heat of a cookie
sheet-- skate burn crumple feet
and press together 
our dough-hands in solidarity--
we oven bound sisters--
sliced from the cookie-cutter
fragment of another man's rib--
My grandmother said not to
bite out all the raisin eyes
but I couldn't eat a gingerbreadman
with him staring so intently--
I never thought I could feel
so naked in front of a cookie--
she told me I always eat them too
fast-- who can be patient for
molasses and whole family
brought together by ginger--
Mother,
how many daughter did you
have all at once? 
and where
will we live once all the walls are 
eaten? 
We can paint each other 
buttons and bow ties-- 
and maybe even a skirt-- slather
on scarves across
garbled dried-grape mouths--
we wait for men to build us
ginger bread houses-- display them
and tear them apart tooth 
by tooth-- while we watched--
everything that ever was
has been
held together by nothing more
than royal icing and the prayers
read from the flaps of an advent calendar-- 
these corner stone candy canes--
the chimney was
always the first thing to go--
and the spearmint leaf hearth
filled the living room with fire--
what have you done-- you have
to eat all at once or not at all!
Don't take your time when
you decide to devour our walls--
Oh father take a mouthful of the roof again!
I don't want have time to remember
how the sun looked in the gumdrop windows--
My grandmother mailed us a house each 
December and we packed ourselves
in peppermint pinwheels-- baked
our pink-flesh with molasses and 
ate our way out of a cottage through
to New Year when we could
eat our bodies too--
save the eyes for last--
oh ginger girl bodies-- what do 
we do with our eyes?
They've already seen everything there
was to behold before we were 
forged together by an oven-- they 
already know what we look like
without icing-- so what's the use of 
eating the raisins-- plant them
in the ground and grow gingerbread trees--
eat the gumdrops from the windows and 
sleep in the dark of a brown-blank-house--
I'll eat the peppermint wreath from the 
front door so you know it's time to 
gnaw free from walls-- remember what
I said about raisins and 
never let cookies look at you 
like just another manifestation of molasses--
we ginger girls know what it's like
to eat through December-- bundle up--
it's going to be white teeth
and it's going to be candy cane sleet--