roller rink ghosts 

we laid on our stomachs 
to peer underneath the rink.
there was a legend a man lived there
with a tree bark face & a rabid dog. 
a wooden jungle of boards & bombs.
what are you doing friday night?
the disco ball that came like
a second sun. a new god. 
here the light is faeried
& fickle. beams across your teeth.
i loved all girls on roller blades.
their knees like ripe peaches.
my face, a bowl of soup.
summer had enough hair for all of us.
willow tree with the missing arm.
the squirrels with their girlfriends
in the oak trees. i sat on a swing
away from the thrum of the rink.
swayed back & forth & pretended 
i was a cherry. the pit in me
rolled back & forth. ponytail-lifed girls.
the smell of cucumber melon.
i waited for the park to empty.
baseball field lights casting
long & wandering shadows.
the rink went dark. a husk of spiral.
around & around. i always felt like
a solar system inside there. 
i went alone to peer beneath 
in the july dark. for a moment 
i thought i saw a pair of eyes.
the man or else maybe just 
a lost glance? a pilfered stare 
i wished to cast at all the girls.
their beautiful nights wrapped up
& carried away in ribbons & syrup.
the night bugs laughed. the man 
benweath the rink laughed & 
i took my shadow with me 
to begin the walk home across 
the street lamp lit town. 

seven gates of hell

we took our eyes out & burried them at the entrance.
rust on our fingers. rust on the sun. we came
at dusk looking for a threshold. birds turned
& flew back into them dusks. the soft animals,
the squirrels & the rabbits all put on 
their carnival faces as they followed us.
feeling in the dirt for stones to fill 
our pockets. the legend says a doctor once tried
to build a way into the belly of the world.
worked late into the night. shovel. grit. 
record player howling. the process swallowed him
& in his place, the first gate. then another
then another. an elongating spine. what are we then?
shreds of yarn? skeleton holders. knees 
in the brush. the sound of wind turning into
children. they run & run & then are gone. 
a broom against cement. doors that open & shut.
in the mud, our eyes rest like wintered toads.
a body is a thing that always escapes. go on
& on. we went until the sixth gate before 
everything echoed. limbs fell from the sky.
bones in our mouths spat on the ground.
hell sang like a broken bell. come come come
it said. you took my hand & tried to speak.
your tongue, a salamander. nothing left to do
but push forward but the last gate trembled.
a forest creature said with a voice 
like frozen turtles, "last chance"
& it was enough to yank me free. i took your
& we turned around. reget nesting 
in my stomach. when we came to our eyes 
they were shivering. blinked & saw
nothing but darkness. the forest. 
no street lights. felt our way for the car.
headlights ripped holes in the night.
we tore away quickly. the animals watched
still in their masks. i said, "do not look back"
as you drove & drove & drove. 

growing the piano

we planted everything we could think of.
earrings & the old oboe & my father's
stamp collection, all in the softening 
early spring earth. at night then
we gathered to pour milk into soil.
my father added beer & whiskey.
i kneeled & wept. a daughter is a place
a family stores their sobbing 
& their ribbons. my hair flew away 
as a great red hawk. power lines grinned 
at our work. all we wanted was the piano.
the finally & the forest laden.
watching as the dirt swelled 
on the first night she grew. how in the house
we all ate nothing but blue potatoes.
boiling blankets. the billyard ball moon.
none of us knew how to play a piano of course.
"not yet," dad would say. a song is a ticket
out of history. everything we wanted to sing
arrived in our bedrooms as moths.
ate holes in our vision. thread bare. 
runs in stockings. i was the first to see
the piano bloom. keys spat from earth.
morning sun, a bowl of mardarin oranges.
i tried to imagine ways to steal the piano
for myself. to peel "family" from my bones.
there was no where to go. just the beast
in the same dirt as the tomatoes.
i sat at the bench. too a walk across
only the black notes. it was as if 
the creature was saying, "no more
no more." then, my father came
& lugged body from dirt. my mother watched
still in her night clothes & holding
the cast iron morning sausage pan. 
"this is our son," dad said. "look at him." 

space heater

our old house's bones go song bird 
in winter. barefoot i would 
go to the basement 
where the mice were speaking
of stolen morsels & glue traps.
everything is barefoot again.
the space heater in the living room
i would mistake for a rocking horse.
babies grew like grapes
in the attack. i craved hidden doors.
behind the bookshelf a separate life
where even the cold had gemmed eyes.
riding every horse i could find.
my bones sometimes fell out 
& i would wash them with the wooden spoons
in the pond muck sink. do you ever feel like
you lived years of your life
inside a room only you can see?
often there is a song that spills
from the corners of my vision 
if i am not careful. the room has
a burn pile. the room has a space heater
which is not a heater at all but 
an actual horse. the horse eats 
calender pages. i pull off numbers 
& tell him, "tomorrow, tomorrow."
a arrow through the apple. paper airplane
through the window with a ranson note.
nothing like this scares me anymore.
i know i can just stay here 
& the wind outside will make itself known.
a bus will drive all the way to 
the whale graveyards. 
no one will knock on my door. 
in the spring i will not come out
but i will hear the daffodils ringing. 

hunt

we ate the tails of cows until 
only engines remained. i went out
with my red rubber ball. have you ever
searched for something so fiercely 
that the lack became a part of you?
i walk one the side of the highway 
trying to find a car to dismantle 
& take the heart home. headlights
spit their moons into dust. once,
we lived a life of spines & cellars.
now, everything has a pair of lungs.
time is a spider web without a keeper.
when we crouch & press bolts to our lips
i wonder when the machine started?
a bumper. a thigh's worth of rubber.
we used to drive across the bridge 
& into new jersey. water grinning &
promising a mirror whenever we needed it.
the car barrels past but i wrestle it
to the asphalt. dandelions with their violins
playing from the cracks. a thicket
of goldren rod turning grey. piece by piece.
a light bulb. a glove box.
the creature roamed for miles 
on nothing but america. what a pulse
to follow. gas station watering holes.
the voids in the ground where
tongues are pulled loose. the animals call
to one another as i work. i find the heart.
a golden ring into the beast.
i swallow it hole. i will lie to the others
& i will say it did not have one. 
fill a backpack with guts. follow the foxes. 

without glasses 

i used to see trees like collages of orphaned song bird wings.
waved back & said "hello, how is your darkness today?" 
i always keep mine in jam jars & in shadows drawn long as ladders. 
my hands & their separate lives. little monsters. 
we were standing in a parking lot & i said, "oh my god
the clouds have edges." throwing a telephone out the window.
once your face was a pie crust. another day, a drowned woman.
you held my hand so i would not wander off & become 
a stop sign. i have a tendancy to spin towards the practical.
i love a good rule if it leads to a rhythm. the sun spits
on my shoes. the moon's thumb prints are all over my life.
i can't believe how many eyes a dandelion has. all of them
used to just be blurred beards. now, the colony. the seekers.
when i walk out into the day like this, i know i am 
going to see roadkill. little smudges on the edges of a picture.
i live inside a flip book. thumb daggering forward. 
the frog is a slipper. the roadkill is a rusted bicycle. 

seesaw farm

tomorrow let's wake up & be echos.
i'll return if you run. decapitated mailboxes
full of coupons & a run away star.
i jump rope until you come back
but you don't come back & so i jump rope
until my arms are crowbars. broken computer screen
& we're all weeping. on the other side
used to be our favorite color. now,
the gas station between here & the seesaw farm.
eating stale twizzlers in the parking lot
& knitting a father into my own voice.
in the trunk is a backpack full of stone.
smoothed by kissing. smoothed by toads.
the work is endless & thorned. the work is
a jump drive & jumper cable. greasing the hinges 
of a hiding place. do not come back for me.
echo & echo. we can both be the visitation.
possessions in airport bathrooms.
empty beauitful ballrooms. the piano plays itself.
the car drives itself. the seesaw asks 
"who is on the other end of the phone call?"
i'm picking up a dial tone so that i can
tell you a poem. bad blood between mountains.
the fish in the dried river. i know
this is what i asked for. this is what
i said i would do. there are so many jungle gyms. 
there are so many half love poems 
& this is one of them. 

quilt

my mother made a corn field just for me
before we left. scattered blue & green husk. 
mice in the closet gossiped about you & i 
& whether or not we would last the winter. 
new york stood with crows on her shoulders. 
i never told you but sometimes 
i would watch television at midnight
with the cockroaches. i would tell them,
"my mother is making me a corn field."
we are not farmers but we are hemmed in by them.
horse hooves across asphalt. a broken down car
with a belly full of stray cats.
outside on the street the train went by
& carried with it dreams of the mountains.
i bought a needle from a street lamp 
& began to work. told myself, "i am going
to make her a cornfield." her being you
& your brickwall window. i gathered everything
i could find. coat hangers & twinkie wrappers &
even all my orphaned socks. a corn field is place
you go to feel abundant. or maybe
to believe there is still abundance. to chant "feast"
until the world is amber. kernels dry & ready.
sewing in seeds. here is where the roots 
will grab a hold of us. fix us here with the 
alley way jewels, the takeout box hermit crabs,
& the monsters. how i want to believe 
my mother made me a corn field. i wrap myself 
in a patch of the oldest sky i have.
the mice say, "it is almost over."
by "it" they mean me & you. not the winter. 

hive

i would put my ear to the wall
& hear their gossip. they talked
about becoming a heart muscle 
& where to burry the spirit 
of the old woman who once owned out house.
i considered what it would be like
to be many and one. a hive
is a being of futures. always another
body to sing with. i felt so singular 
in my sadnesses. cracks in the concrete basement.
a dead cat laying on her side 
& becoming a colony. the house had eyes
in every crease. the bees loved one another.
& yet, once a day on the windowsill 
i witnessed a bee as they turned
back into a machine. little skeletons.
my own skeleton, radiant & walking.
in the night, my bones becoming deer.
sometimes, i bought gummy chicken's feet
& gave them the bees. the bees would laugh.
they found dismemberment hilarious.
i was coming apart. found my hand 
on the bookshelf. my throat in the oven.
all the while, the bees were everywhere.
they held mass. light candles.
all behind the walls. i took a knife.
the moon was gone. so was the sun.
just me. just me in the dull bathroom glow.
pocket knife carving wall. you are there.
i know you are there. the bees 
to spite me, vanished. migrated to
the farthest reaches of the house.
they spoke in unison, "you are not
one of us." all of my honey. all of my legs.
all of my bone. 

lemon tree in my closet 

i admit i am a hoarder but only
of small portals of light which i need
to survive the day. tree first grew
when one day i caught a sun beam
with a butterfly net. i fed her pads of butter
until she was content. this was one week
when you were working all day & night 
& i wondered if your body had become
a shovel. still, in between i came to kiss you.
turned you briefly into dough.
olive oil on my hands. how badly i wanted
to be a body again. i returned to the beam.
it had taken root. cracks in the floor boards.
upstairs, the neighbors yelled at one another.
instead the closet through all i could hear
was the sound of yellow. the tree was
drinking every freckle of delight.
swelling. one single lemon. wild & bright.
i wanted to pluck it & bite down to feel
the sting but i waited until there were
dozens of lemons. the branches reached 
the ceiling. ached to emerge. i put my finger
to my lips & said, "you cannot leave here.
you are mine." i know i should not try
to own the fruit of light but i am scared.
people are always accidentally walking
into a car accident or tragic bed.
something must be sacred still. for me,
it is my lemon tree. my rapunzel.
still, i bring the tree butter. 
when she's ion the mood & we're all alone
she speaks with your oldest voice, saying,
"i am coming back." i weep to water her.
my beam of light. bite into the bitter rind.
light pouring from my eyes & then gone.