manner school for eavesdropping girls

the fork goes to the left
of your grief. the knife, well,
you know what a knife does already.
my uncle used to tell me 
if i didn't get manners i was going
to become a mud room. i remember how
my fingers begged to be utensils.
their plunge into a landscape of cake.
frosting knuckles. my teeth were 
wooden staircases into a woman
i would not become. kissing mushrooms
on their foreheads. carrying a dead bird
to a burial. i listened to 
well water's gossip which told me
my uncle would never uncurve his spine.
his hair which grew like brush
around the base of a mountain.
i wake up with strings tied
to every finger. remember you are
supposed to be presentation.
i don't want anyone to be proud of me.
a husband buried under the table.
he counts his days in foot falls.
i over heard him say once
that i was too embarassing 
to take to the moon. i cut a hole
in my window & held the whole moon
with my hand. soft melted butter.
what did he know about the moon.
how to fold a napkin. how to chew
like a prophet. at church 
holding a smaller version of myself
in a metal bird cage. nothing
about me was meant to be holy.
i am a playground for better
or for worse. the manner school 
was first a structure & then
a doll house. vivid in a single bone.
i go there with a dinner bell.
sometimes practice again. just to prove
i could if i wanted to. braiding my hair.
girl's head only for mirrors.
all manners are about being
consumable. the fork always
to my left. here is what i will be
for your mouth. i will slouch.
i will run like fire. i will be
the family shovel bearer
& you will still look for ways 
to swallow bites of me. 

collect yourself

it was lake making season
or else it was the cup 
always placed to catch
the ceiling leak. letting myself
believe in rebirth today
& dreaming of coming back
as a whole colony of ants.
how that multitude might let me
sigh like i can't right now.
i love blaming all my problems
on my current form. what does anyone
make of fingers? i use mine
to scoop handfuls of sand
see how long i can hold on
until there's nothing left 
but one single grain. once 
i asked a boy to love me by
handing him a needle & a thread.
he sewed his name into my shoulder.
i keep as many vessels as i can.
a sail ship in a forever closet
& a cabinet brimming with jars.
you never know just what form
a combustion will take.
i spent a year driving 
my car in circles. wore 
a trench in the road. tires turned
to ash. another time i knit squares
for weeks onend. a tiny dead god quilt.
none of the monsters liked it 
so i tossed the stiches one by one
at passing airplanes. today i am
gnat sized & passengered. 
there are playing cards
all over the floor of my skull.
the first one i pick up 
is a jack. next a queen. 
i want to be clear that this
has never been harvest. that would mean
intention & bloom & sugar. what i do 
is collection. putting the sun
back & reminding him to scream.
voluntarily, i go without words 
for a whole week until my tongue 
is a porch light. in the glow
i pluck earrings from the carpet.
reminding all my corners 
that there is a body they know.
shelter in the wildest blues.
to tell you the truth though
i look forward to spilling.
that exhale & no more. no more bones
or borders. my self-pollination.
fruit comes like blown glass.
i get ready to eat permission
all the way to the wrist.

teething

when i was a shark 
i spit necklaces into my hands 
& hung them from every low branch.
the ocean was a field 
of capture. splitting enough
to snag a man on his way to sirens.
guilt became a red planet.
the pin between clouds. when you have
thousands of teeth, what is 
the loss of one razor? underneath
my pillows i am always the jeweler.
purveyor of sharp children. 
snakes come to gaze. men the size
of flutes on their hands & knees.
dimes ready & pleading. they want
to be dissected by me. want to
caress the edges of my mouth.
i am not all that unlike a pear tree.
visiting the bottom of a bell
i found a whole chapel of blood.
opened wide in the mirror.
saw my father's face at
the back of my throat.
swallowing harder would never
get him to go down. they will
always come with more. 
more rain. more waterfall. more 
chesnuts. for every tooth
another waits like a sibling.
three sons. all of us shedding
our bodies. i keep the teeth
in a shoe box. shake it 
to hear my own volume.
one brother loses hair.
the other, limbs. i plant teeth
in the dirt. slipt them into 
riverbeds. when i was a shark
no one put a thumb
to my lips. i was just a darkness
only a bathtub could hold.
now though, now when i loom
it comes with jars & taproots.
i bury a skeleton of myself.
float on my back in a lake
where old mouths go to remember
how to speak. more teeth come.
always more. 

angel phone call

at the pay phone 
there's a number written
above the keypad in sharpie.
beside it reads, "call 
for any angel" & so i do.
i am at a telephone booth
in the middle of a galaxy 
of broken beer bottles 
& headlines. all around
people are walking their cars
on leashes & i think
"i have to talk to god 
about this." catholcism taught me
to be always a messenger.
passing along a tongue
wrapped in tin foil. the phone
rings & rings until the moon 
goes rancid. spills melon water
all over the street. a stray dog
turns into a shopping cart.
inside the booth i picture
the angel arriving
& scrawling his number quickly 
before moving onto the next haunting.
maybe on his day off. maybe watching
a television show where angels
have to be mortal for a day.
shaking his head he thinks
"this could never be me." i rehearse
how i will answer. "yes angel,
this is robin & i am quickly 
losing." then he'll ask me
follow-up questions. the longer
i wait the more the ringing 
starts to sound like zippers 
or church bells. the reciever itself
pastas into a macaroni elbow. 
i have never been so hungry.
help me, help me please i think
as the telephone booth shivers.
it is not winter but also not
any other season. i have a place
to remember to be. buses are filled
with sardines. every door is a lid.
i speak between chimes. i say,
"it is already morning," when i meant
"i will give up soon." everyone 
should probably give up more 
than we do. humans value persistence
& trying hard too much.
i'm ready, angel, to just
become a walking man. someone
who everyone passes & thinks
"i have seen him before." alright.
i keep thinking "alright."
but i can't let go. there this thought
"if i just wait one second more
everything will come together
& he will answer." he does not.
the city braids street lamps.
you are probably talking
to your plants. i regret everything
& nothing about my architecture.
i hold the phone away from me.
give it three more chances.
nothing. hang up. find a duck feather
at my feet. we are each other's 
evidence. outside 
the city is burning blue. 

canned afternoon

we talked about methods 
of preservation: salt & sugar & vinegar.
pickles in their shoulder colonies.
you laughed when i said 
i wanted to be as green as you.
you said sometimes you scream 
at the woods & sometimes you 
break a dozen twigs until your heart
is a flock of wasps. then, i admitted
i cut the tips off my fingers once
in a rush of fear. i worried there would be
no more periods to end sentences. 
i had decided i would become 
that closure i needed. together,
we filled jars with words like
"someday." i believed we would be
the first humans to live to at least 300.
thus, we had more than enough time
to catch garter snakes & name them
after boys who wouldn't 
love us back. get bit & let the bites
glisten like jewels. the thing is,
everything in this jar is already over. 
we have no more carpet for our bare feet
or window whose light could make
anyone a boy. eating toast 
for the sunset because she had 
no mouth. i won't speak for you
but i think i ate enough salt 
for a lifetime. tied my shoe laces
in ladders to the next planet.
you said when you did die you would want
to be frozen or canned like peaches.
i pictured your body a statue.
your fingers like fits of clouds.
sugar in your eyes. lids rolling down hills
to the lake where all the fish
dream of legs. i said, "i want that too"
even though really i craved 
the opposite. a release. humid hands.
lifted in a breath to the clouds.
no weight left in me. turning pink
in the fading day. blushing 
like i always did with you. 
is this how the sun makes sense
of the moon? i take a fork now 
& eat pickles at the kitchen table.
your porch twists. turns lattice.
remains cured in brine. 

year of honey

we drove through manhattan 
& there was no a single
other car in the world.
every bill board read
"tomorrow" in red. piles 
of dead horses-- their ghosts
feasting on the river.
everything dripped but especially 
windows-- each picassoed
gold on gold on gold. bee hives
flocked like angels. i took 
a spoonful of every corner.
blood buzzed & told you lies.
"i love you-- i will always
love you." what i really meant was
"i cannot eat sugar alone."
you took off you shirt
& let me trace your scars.
black berries populated the night.
every word you made 
had hand cuffs inside it. 
holding hands, we found 
every favor of "please."
please paint my nails blue
& please don't remember this
in the amber afternoon & please
land the helicopter safe.
purchasing a food cart
to sell all the honey,
we offered our fingers to birds.
ate the merchandise. a bite 
for me & a bite for you.
what is love but the parlay 
of waves against waves.
no more water. not at all.
we jumped from buildings 
just to find enough feathers
to keep talking about which one of us
is going to be famous.
i'd prefer it not be me.
the sun forgets her schedule 
& starts picking black berries.
leaves bowls of honey 
at every doorway. often
i trip over them & take the day
to watch gold take over my legs.
you are gone for a long time now
& so is the old city.
my car is a cardboard night terror.
there is a subway flooded orange.
sometimes, i spoon feed myself
a bite of feathers. fall again
like we used to. burst on the pavement
in our old banana-ready dusk.

inside a dead tennis ball

i live ten year olds.
manufactor a brick wall
tall enough to never go stale.
breathing in the green
of it all. tuck knees
into chest & become 
a bowl of fingertips. sweating
like winter tongue. we run
back & forth in the fire 
of a bite. vipers clutch tails
to make collars for us.
wanting to be owned, 
we sixteen ourselves for a night.
then, all our eve shows & we eat
fruit until we're sick 
with spring time. apples 
in our adams. naked under
a layer of low-quality skin.
puncture wounds stiple
or constellation. pick your
deadly or just boy into a new sun.
the one room can be so many.
in a father's hand
a boy can be kalideoscoped.
all my fractions. two eyes
above a single heart.
three lungs above thousands
of follicals. before we played
i wore glasses
until the sun used them 
to ray-gun my eyes to dust.
darkness is its own orbit.
back to myself back to myself.
we walk the earth's mushy inside
& lose our shoes in the process.
no more flashlights for 
transsexuals. i just need
to grin. the swallowed lighter
enough to show a dead leaf's face.
no more. tossed & caught again.
panting in the rubber decampment.
all you need to know about us
is sealed away & slowly
releasing air. 

vine talking

wallpapering my childhood
in the room where i cried
for a glass of light.
i remember a balcony & the library
where you tried to get me
to worship god. how our coffee
tasted like subways. the drive
on the jersey turnpike where
all water became grease.
sleeping in the back seat of
your onward. i have been married
so many times i can't keep track.
most recently to the styrafoam anger 
you grew like mushrooms. before that
was the rocks on the ocean.
bride & bride & bride. i burried 
a squirrel skull in the yard
when i divorced my dorm room.
species can emerge from
the most volatile terrain.
snakes as green as pine
stealing their emerald from 
a jewlery box. writing
"holy is the stone lion" 
on the ceiling while i try to read.
when the moon is covered 
with vines like this i appears
as a pear in a mesh bag
or maybe a captured blue crab.
language is all about who 
fishes & who eats & who cannot. 
are you eating all the vowels & vows?
i am not. at least not yet. 
saved by the uncombed future.
i ask if the moon wants
to be cut free & you tell me
"no that's not what she wants."
you cut off my thumbs 
& plant them in a dummy book.
you say, "this is where 
our bell will grow."

garden

i learn to love trash
in the alley behind stop & shop
where shopping carts
gorge themselves on rotten cantelope.
keep wrappers like the husks 
of children. evidence that once
a ghost fingertipped & feasted.
i have yet to lick the world clean.
that doesn't mean i don't believe
in bliss & the promise
that everything is somewhere
in a cycle of unraveling.
i find a button & pluck it open.
collect scrap of metal 
& call them harvest. in the new world
to forage is to dance with
long dead materials. bike tires
& pen caps & syringes. 
plastic kissing awake glazed donuts. 
i find myself in the garden
pruning the necks
of tooth brushes. i am trying
to teach them how to grow back.
instead they weep. 
each of them an elegy.
they repeat
here is how long you must wait
to return to soil. they all
shake their heads. 
greased shoulders. bottle caps 
blinking away prehistoric moons.
they want to be volcanos 
& diamonds & fern leaves & teeth.
don't we all? often i worry
what it means to exist 
is to wait & wait again.
right now i am waiting for a bus
to tell the garden "goodnight."
until then i water my garbage
with handfuls of broken glass.
headlights polkadot 
our little plot. soon
the morning will come to plant.
seeds of used batteries 
& gnarled aux cords. 
until them the my garden
will be restless. i tell a tin can
don't think too much,
it will help you rest.

flower maker

i lived for years 
in the doe's ear as she listened
for all the green words 
usually saved only for gods.
wrote them on the roof of my mouth
where no one could take them from me.
took tweezers from the medicine cabinet
& learned how to place each petal.
spoke to them softer 
than anyone had to me.
i believe we must try 
to not just duplicate our fingers
but to find their tender doubles.
how, in a repeating mirror,
there is transformation
from image to image to image.
i want to become a tulip
on the other side of my face. i want to
hold up my hands in surrender
like any good lilac knows how.
all my joints where 
a neck could grow. i once 
lived in a world of mirages.
no real flowers. not even 
a lawn. i drank empty water
from a man's pocket. the planter.
with his dry seeds & dust bowl mouth.
there, i vowed to be someone 
who whose shoes petal off. who asks
where the dandelions want
to have their beards scattered.
we have little choice whether or not
our tongues scatter but we do
have a choice of how the new blossoms
will learn to speak. i keep jars
of the oldest sun & bowls of moon water.
crouch in a fox's throat
knitting every single leaf & cheek bone.
not even the angles know
this skill. the patience it takes 
to discover every fold. 
waterfalls of garments. your stockings
cut to pieces. i make your face
in carnations. layers of
your lips. purple as a knee-bruise.
using a magnifying glass
i see every single thread.