a thank you letter to my father who
taught me how to eat--

bananasplit is how we cut
my hair & spiked it with
a fist full of gel.
my father & i ate
our own boats. we sunk
in a pair of a swivel
chairs at the diner counter--
i was the chocolate syrup
in the black & white milkshake--
this is how you fill a sandwich
with potato chips--
we navigated our own 
banana splits at
the malt shoppe 
after i broke five boards
for my black belt test--laid
out our bodies long on the end of
those sundae spoons-- the type
you could use to 
slide all the way out of
a second story window
& into the front lawn.
my father opened my mouth wide
enough to fit another spoon full 
of chapter that night.
he said to 
bite hard into words &
stop only for air-- one chapter
more one chapter more-- this is
how we ate ourselves into 
other lives--
how we rebuilt
the bodies on the dinosaurs
from fern fossils-- 
how we woke up early together 
& munched on 
weather channel jazz.
i used to eat all the raisins
out of my father's raisin bran
cereal but i don't think he noticed--
my father cracked
thunder on the telephone wires
like the side of a bowl--
swallow us whole-- we slurped
the storm like spaghetti 
from the back porch--
electric on our lips-- 
i watched how he ended the day
in the bottom of the sink
on the rind of a watermelon--
i eat the black seeds in
an attempt to grow a garden
from my stomach--
we were waiting for
the bagel pizzas & it was school
time so that meant my brother
& i were waiting at the counter
in the kitchen--
my father cut my hair again
but this time so my head would
fit better in a kick boxing helmet--
he always told me that i fight
like a boy--
never come up too long
for air when you're caught 
in a downpour of words-- eat 
faster & wipe your mouth only
when you drop a comma--
my father kept spoons we could only
use for feeding me sentences 
from the rocking chair 
next to my bed--
my father taught me how to eat--
tore out the pages each book
& fit the wadded up paper
in his mouth--
we swiveled around on the diner
stools to see the storm 
whisk the clouds into a froth--
we burn in the bottom
on the pan sometimes-- me in
my short spiked hair
getting mistaken for a son--
my father taught me how to
eat-- everything
is better in a sundae dish--
if you break make sure you snap
clean in half--
a black belt boy--
a fork twirled on the porch
in thunder-- chew before
you swallow.
he showed me how
a rocking chair could
be held together
with the punctuation 
of a chapter book-- he held one
open like a bible--
a sundae raft for us
to float down
from the second story window--
we eat rain from
our palms & all the ink turns
the books into chocolate 
syrup--