in sugar

anything can be saved if boiled in sugar.
i want to make candied jupiter beetles 
& fireflies-- slide them into mason jars for winter.
no--i want to keep ones from every single year.
place them in rows on a shelf no one else 
will ever see. when i say i'm missing something
i mean getting older is like coming apart in fragments.
sometimes i feel like my body is getting 
farther & farther from the some truth. the train 
crushes sugar under wheels. when burnt 
sweet smells sharp like perfect fire.
i want to make sweet the earring you left
in my car & the spoon i stole for my parent's cupboard.
i want to caramelize the pens on your desk & 
that candle almost out of wax. dipping a wide spoon
into the white sugar. the hush of sand. 
cicadas in the sugar. ivy in the sugar. 
my barefeet in the sugar. scrubbing sugar
between your toes to make them shine.
processes of transfiguration. i lay in the sugar
& ask what it felt like to have once been green.
they sugar hushes me & i feel where the wind
might have moved through a field. we are all 
so sweet on the inside. a mother candies 
her child's teeth as they fall out one by one.
i dip strawberries in sugar & they tremble 
like bugs. what are we doing here, you & i?
we both know there's nothing good going to come
from feeling each other's mouth like this. 
the cavities burn holes in our tongues.
sometimes i want to be unrecognizable
but that is silly because no amount of heat
could break down that parts of myself 
i need to run from. someday i will make
only caramel. i will climb into the white sugar
& dream of cane. grab handfuls & write my name
in the grains. watch the grains swallow
each letter. a street lamp folds
in on itself as the ground below turns loose 
& sugary. i'm mixing spoonfuls of sugar
into water. i'm feeding the butterflies 
so much sugar they turn to glass. 
i'm telling them to trust me with their lives--
promising to make a display so that people can see
their fear as the sweetness makes stone.
i feed you spiders in sugar while you sleep
they will come alive somewhere down your through
where they will sew sweet silk webs. 
what am i going to do 
with all this sadness?

on melancholy 

a mouth bites down on a corn chip 
& there was a boy sitting on the end like a ledge.
a certain amount of crumbs are expected.
have you survived a number of explosions this morning?
he opens a jar & our comes a ghost thick
as jam. there's grapes whistling to each other
on their vines--they're scared. a nose 
presses into a face until it becomes a needle.
he grows his finger nails out too long.
they start to snag on stray threads. he takes
a scissors & distresses the hems of his skirts.
his fingernails are made of corn chips.
the mouth is crinkling a bag by shaking it
in its teeth. there's something wrong with 
the bananas-- they won't stop coughing. 
the spirits in the closer name themselves 
acetaminophen after the first item they read.
he chants & stirs a pot of chicken & stars--
the stars are real stars & they sizzle & pop
in the broth. broth of melted gold. he is 
doing his best or so he tells himself. the grapes
are doing their best as well but as for
the ghosts, they could always try harder.
lack motivation. the spoons are over achievers.
the boy steals spoons everywhere he goes.
he makes a family of spoons in his pockets 
& they clink together as if they're chattering.
they are good company. the windshield wipers 
simply don't work. they never have. they don't
press down hard enough on the surface
of the car. his skirt is ugly & he knows it.
the boy arranges crumbs like constellations--
a big spoon a little spoon. all the matters 
is spoons & all their carrying. the weight of
salt in the spoon. little stones. eating stones.
sending condolences. sending a wide range 
of tastes from sour to bitter to sugar.
his teeth turn to sugar & the mouth licks
its lips in front of him. he just wants 
something simple like a white sheet cake or 
a petting zoo with only goats. the world is 
so much shivering. he can't believe it.
he can't believe it's all happening. the ice
in his water. the brothers all chewing
on the horizon. a sky full of lips 
each without any lipstick. what's the point
of a blank pucker? the sourness is a kind
of daylight that creeps in between day & dusk.
the lime green sky. the houses becoming
match boxes. he is flammable & proud.
he wipes the crumbs from his mouth. he tells
a story to his family of spoons about 
being sick & looking for a cure. in the story
he never finds it. tries eating all kinds
of plants. the spoons get emotional 
over the story & he tells them 
not to worry that like everything 
it is just a story. the kernels
of his eyes pop. 
night comes out in globs.

wednesday is rubbish day 

so we take our rooms apart
& set them out 
on the curb. everyone is doing it.
we mirror each other. i started
because i saw a piled of broken wooden chairs 
in front of the building next door. 
a truck will come 
& make everything beautiful.
i set out the broken stool but i don't want
the stool to be lonely so i add another
& another & another until i've laid out
all our chairs even the wooden one 
in the corner with the regal arms 
& the bean bag who wasn't bothering anyone.
this is a cleansing i tell myself 
& the neighbor people are working too.
someone tosses their mattresses down
on the sidewalk--stacks them one on top
of another. another person drops 
appliance apart appliance: a toaster 
a blender & a coffee machine--
the glass basin shatters. each glass fragment 
turns into sugar in the air. we all have
too many objects. i witness a man
reach into his mouth & pull out
a trombone & i remember that somewhere
my trumpet lives playing itself to death.
that murky bell a remembered hallway. 
there are children snapping crayons 
& old men tearing pages from books. 
we don't acknowledge on another
but we see what's happening. no one will be
the same after the garbage truck comes
& everyone is looking to be transformed.
i'll do anything for that feeling & 
so will they. what else can we 
rid ourselves of?
one woman takes the inserts out of her shoes 
& another removes the laces. 
all these parts. so many pieces. 
there must be something more
we can do without. light bulbs unscrewed 
& set on the sidewalk--they flicker with light
from all the tension & static in the air.
the trash trucks come from
the sky or at least that's what it seems.
we don't want to stand 
too close so we watch from our windows.
huddled closely as we witness them 
grip a hold of everything with strong gloved hands.
i order gloves to be delivered in 1-2 days.
maybe that's what gives them powers.
we will sleep tonight on blank floors.
something like starting over--
reborn into nothing. all our clothes 
turn to birds & fly out the open window.
the windows push themselves out 
& break on the cement below.
all over the townspeople are thankful
& share stories of everything they had 
that morning. we pray to the trash trucks 
to come again each day. to please
take everything. 
make us clean.

dad & i as stamps 

i'd like to just be a stamp 
pressed neatly in a row of dad's collection.
safe behind a plastic covered page. 
my world measured square. right angle 
by right angle. he keeps the book
shelved alongside photo-albums.
spin crinkles with each page turns. 
the stamps are organized by subject. 
flowers. dogs. buildings. 
vehicles. people.
i asked dad if you had to be dead 
to be on a stamp 
& he said he was pretty sure
you did. all the founding fathers
& their scowls pressed into the page.
the album open in his lap. open
on the floor of the sun room.
in bed with me. i had a few weeks
of loving the stamp collection--
carrying it with me all around the house.
i was looking in each image 
to imagine what existed 
out of frame.
i should have thought 
more about dad-- not everyone's father
presses images into neat rows & 
memorizes where each came from.
if i was one of those stamps
maybe he would hold me even now--
maybe he would trance his finger
around the parameter of my box
& wonder about what kind of
life i lived. 
most of the stamps 
had faded. yellowing & brittle.
maybe he wanted 
a square for himself--
to crawl into miniature. 
a self portrait.
if i could i would place his beside mine
so that in 2-d we might
know each other even if only
by proximity. i would give him
a forest background 
& a full tooth smile. 
i can't choose what i would want
behind me forever. a backdrop. 
maybe just one color. blue 
to fall in. safe, even in my falling
always returning 
to place my body
in that frame.

i lived at the end of a hall of girls. 

i lived at the end of 
a hall of girls. 
we shared two bathrooms in Wilkinson-- 
each with two shower stalls; i would wait
until i heard no faucet or shower-head 
& that's when i would slip
into the tile room. mist on the mirrors 
from other girls. girls coming & going,
girls laughing. girls with headphones in. 
freshmen year everyone was beautiful.
i learned people's names 
by writing them on note cards &
quizzing myself at my wooden desk at night.
my bedroom had one window that looked out
over the whole campus. the best nights 
were when my roommate was gone & 
my boyfriend wasn't there. i could
stand in the middle of the room
as if it were all mine. the sounds 
all mine. the cool carpet & 
smell of clean walls, all mine.
i sometimes pretended to be
a ghost who lived in the building
all alone. i had died here 
my freshman year & never left. i was
eighteen. everyone was an 
adult. there was something
disembodying about the showers.
almost always someone would
enter after me & start showering
in the other stall. i could hear
their shower flip flops squeak.
a bottle of shampoo opening. 
fingers through hair--scrubbing
the scalp. did she listen 
to me? we were separated only
by a plastic divider. 
we were there with bodies
& we were both portioned out 
into segments of rooms. into white 
dining hall plates. into patterns
to & from classrooms. our books
splayed like dead birds on our desks.
we were sharing the same 
staircase. we were on the phone
in the stairwell. my roommate 
had long straight brown hair & 
all her decorations were color coordinated:
orange & pink. she kept beer 
in the mini-fridge.
she called her boyfriend sometimes 
& i put my headphones in so 
i wouldn't hear. sometimes we showered
at the same time. i would try to 
finish before her so we didn't
walk out at the same time. 
that might have been the closest 
i got to any of them. 
the smell of cucumber melon 
& tropical breeze shampoos. 
the hot water pouring 
over our bodies.

my grandmother went to italy 

& brought back only two pictures.
she removed them from her purse 
like playing cards. one of her, 
standing beside the leaning tower of pisa.
another of her made small next to
the vatican. she told us 
she didn't like it there like she thought she would.
it had been decades since she'd gone. a life time. 
i wasn't old enough to ask her more. 
the pictures told a story of how
our homes shift without us. i could have asked
who held the camera for both pictures.
if she asked a passerby. i could have asked
if she had been lonely there-- if she remembered 
the language or if it had vanished over the years.
every word is the ghost of who taught it to you.
a portrait of her mother & aunt hung in her apartment.
the two of them in italy in lovely ruffled dresses.
they would climb onto a boat & become
transformed by water. my grandmother was 
an apostrophe of a woman. 
the wind walked through her. in the rain 
she wore a plastic bonnet. in the heat she flicked a fan.
i can see her ambling on the outskirts 
of a tour group. all of them laughing.
all of them young & forgetful. even the old ones
feel young to her. she said to us
that she didn't need to go back again.
she stacked the two pictures.
tucked them away in her purse & 
i've never seen them since. 
they slipped away somewhere between 
the nursing home & the apartment.
she remembered less & less of italy
until it became a symbol. the world can become
very tight very quickly. the photographs
float somewhere face-up. maybe there are people
who held her camera who hold the cameras
of other lonely tourists
searching for something they cannot name.
i would like to be one of them.
to take just two pictures 
& then tuck them away.

tropical melon paradise body spray 

i kept tropical melon paradise body spray 
in my locker. i picked a locker tucked away 
in the back corner. sweat is cruelest 
to high school girls. the smell of our feet.
our sneakers blushing with grass stains.
i wrote my locker combo on a sticky-note
slipped in my backpack. as the year went on 
the note became barely legible. the note
folded & torn into pieces. i taped the combo 
back together. we played basketball. we played
ping-pong. i dreaded  
step aerobics. the rows of girls
following the gym teacher. she had 
a tight pong tail & defined leg muscles.
all of us in sync performing motions
almost as if we knew each other. girls 
all in the same grey & blue gym uniform. 
my hands would shake after. i would
run brush through my hair. the strands 
gone stringy & greasy from exertion. 
pressing down the head of the body spray 
& feeling the mist land on arms & 
shoulders & back. arm "pits" suggests 
that there's somewhere on the body
where you might fall in. i was 
ashamed of the stains on my gym shirt.
the light grey was unforgiving. 
more body spray. i bought the spray 
at CVS. i knew i needed something 
to cover myself with. it was like
wearing a second dress on top 
of the first one. the spray suggested 
a run away island where girls
lay all over & never have to run laps 
& never have boys stare at them while they run.
the girls on the island pluck melons 
from trees & share the fruit with each other.
they drip with sweat & they love the sweat.
their sweat is sweet. their sweat is
beautiful. other girls would probably tell me
the spray smells "sickly sweet" if i asked
but i love it. during the fall & spring
we play outdoors. in winter we use 
the gym. the boys class wears the same
uniforms. we are separated. we are 
cut down the middle. we play golf.
smack the small white balls into a net.
we go to the weight room. learn what 
our muscles mean. the equipment smells 
like rubber & bodies. i smell myself 
to make sure i still smell like 
tropical melon paradise. i lift
heavier & heavier weights. my limbs ask me
to be a stronger girl. leg lift.
leg press. arm curl. squats. 
we were becoming something between 
seeing each other strain. i closed my eyes 
sprayed my body & for that second
my skin was nectar.

keys to a car i no longer own

i consider becoming a pick pocket
every time i walk in the city.
it's not that i want to steal anything 
but just that everyone is so close together 
& i want to know what they might be carrying.
just a few days ago on my way home 
the Q train got held underground. 
everyone stared up at the ceiling 
listening for the conductor 
like the voice of god.
there was a man holding a guitar case 
& a girl cradling a doll who wore her same outfit.
we were all very small. 
miniatures even.
one man removed a clementine from his pocket
& i wondered if anyone else was harboring fruit.
i sucked on my tongue with hunger.
my mouth was crowded with faint tastes
of the apple i'd eaten hours ago. 
in my pocket i had keys to a car 
i no longer owned & keys to an apartment 
i had just moved out of. if someone stole them
they'd get no where & i smiled thinking this.
another man in a long coat kept his hands
in his pockets the whole time.
i was scared of him like maybe 
he clung tight to a knife or a gun.
i am scared of what i cannot see.
i am scared of everyone's secrets
& maybe i am scared of pockets &
what might fit in them.
at 4:30 when i left the office each day 
the side walk was always rushing.
i'd close my eyes sometimes just to hear
the sound of all those feet.
we were a great machine at least 
for the moment. we were carrying everything.
packs of gum & pocket watches & 
monthly long island railroad tickets.
i almost asked several times if 
someone would please slip me in their pocket
& walk me to penn station. tucked in there
i would feel safe & enclosed for once.
new york is a diorama looking at itself. 
new york is a the colony living
inside the shaft of a telescope.
maybe microscope. how far away is god?
replace god with conductor. 
it took about 45 minutes for the train
to start up again. 
we should have emptied our pockets
on the ground. shown each other everything.
any one of us could have fallen in love.
any one of us could have had the same items.
the man standing in front of me
nearly nods off to sleep three times.
his back pocket was right in front of me
but of course i didn't touch it.
the world is too dangerous for that.
i like to think i was sleeping there
inside his pocket or maybe that he 
also had keys to a car he didn't own anymore.

i'm turning into my dad 

that year he started working the night shift
was the same year we put curtains up
in the living room. they smelled too new.
the upstairs tv played static & my brother 
& i sat in front of it, 
pretending to see stories before bed. 
we didn't have cable yet or a computer.
we wore over-sized t-shirts as pajamas
& traversed the house--stamping it with our 
bare feet. dad worked as a janitor at the factory. 
that's what he told us. i never saw
the inside of his building 
or even the door he walked through 
to enter. i'd lay down
on the bottom bunk & listened
for the front door to close 
as he left each night.
i tried to imagine the halls. did he walk 
with a bucket & mop? did he polish windows?
a circular motion rubbing at the glass.
a circular motion scrubbing the ground.
the only janitor i knew was the one
at the elementary school. 
he had a scratchy looking beard & 
sometimes he ate lunch with us. 
i wondered who dad at lunch with 
& if any other dads brought their children.
were there other janitors? 
i never asked him any of these questions.
i wore one of his old shirts to bed
& waited on the sofa in the morning 
for him to come home. static on the tv.
i memorized a joke to tell him
about the static but forgot it the moment
i saw him. his rumpled blue coat
& his mess of grey-black hair. 
he asked why i was up so early
& i said i was waiting for him. 
the curtains were green & sheer. 
almost like the veil of my communion dress
hanging in my closet upstairs. 
he sat beside me. i saw him
on his hands & knees now
trying to get a stain out of a linoleum floor.
his faint reflection in the floor.
the gleam of florescent lights above.
i asked him how work was & he shrugged.
back then i assumed children took the jobs
of their parents so i was trying
to learn what my life would be like
when i was a night janitor. i looked forward to it.
i thought maybe he got to work 
entirely alone. maybe the plant was peaceful at night.
maybe he could talk to himself
& hear his voice echo around him. 
he ruffled my hair & told me he was going to bed.
the sun peered through the curtains
gold & too bright. 

yard sale 

each april was a celebration. 
we undid our spaces. culled our rooms
for value. i carry a bookend, 
a lamp, & a stuffed giraffe
to the front yard. we're setting out blankets
for the smaller items & dad is pushing
the old mantel out to the grass.
uncle rich manages to lug the piano 
from his side of our house into the yard.
he presses the out of tune keys. 
he doesn't know how to play. he asks dad
how much he thinks the instrument might be worth.
he doesn't think it's worth much because
it's got chipped keys & water damage.
everything is worth less than you want it to be.
my brother brings down a hamper full of 
toy sharks. he explains that each is worth
no less than two dollars. he cries
& says he doesn't want to sell them.
i swallow any sentiments i have 
for the good of the yard sale. cars pass by 
all of them too fast. i always imagined
more people stopping than who end up
actually coming to look at our items. 
these people don't appreciate who much of our lives
we've put out here, i'd think.
i stand at the end of our driveway 
& wave at every passing car. i stay out there all day,
sitting on a plastic folding chair while dad
searches the house for more to add. he brings out
the fish tank. he brings out the stone cross
from the wall of the kitchen. he brings
shutters & the faucets off sinks.
he says we need more if we're going
to catch anyone's eye. i join him. 
i take apart my bunk bed & yank clothing
off hangers. a mound of our belongings.
i price each item in my head.
i tell dad i'm asking only for 
reasonable amounts--that i'm not
going to be greedy. a man 
pulls his red car to the side of the road.
he looks nervous as he sifts through
all our belongings. we are too eager 
& we scare him away.
as he drives off & we remark to each other
that maybe he would have stayed if he'd seen
the coat wrack or the lamp. yes those
are beautiful. yes those were ours once
before we emptied the house.
i tell dad that i want to make just
a few dollars 
& he says that's all he wants too.
the day passes & we contemplate 
cutting the tree in the yard down 
to sell the wood. we might try
laying on the blankets ourselves.
we consider the house behind us
& if it's worth keeping.
dad sells the mantel & helps a man
load it into his pick up truck.
we cry with relief. dad gives me 
five dollars from the sale. the sun starts
setting. bright orange. dad pretends
to buy an old stuffed dinosaur of mine.
i thank him for his business.