love poem for aritifical temperatures 

in june, i removed all the dust from the swamp cooler.
the wads smudged my handy inky grey as 
i pulled out more & more. 
the dust came out in the form of worms & grubs
then as pigeons who 
spattered around the room with all their choking-- 
their eyes full of tailisman & syringe.
they were the children of thick air.
i tried to breathe in & out to teach them
to settle & not pay attention to the pollution.
the cool seeped back into the living room
to remind us that somewhere 
seals were eating penguins & 
a snowflake was rising to eclipse the sun.
the temperature laugh its head off.
everyone else was gone from the apartment
& i pretended each day was a new apocalypse.
tomorrow we would wake up with the ocean
in the street & the next all the doors on fire.
i watched nature documentaries 
one after another. i watched them over
& over again until i lived the life
of a national geographic camera man.
i took videos of pigeons in the alley 
imagining them bursting into birds of paradise.
a wave rose as tall as our building 
& drenched me in night. 
i held conversations with the air conditioner
as it chattered with the outside would.
i asked it where it borrowed its face from 
& it spoke in a langauge only it would ever know.
i thought of days in march where the air 
was raw & bearable. i slept 
with my mattress on the floor. i could have been
a drift in any channel of water.
the swamp cooler told me story after story
& i asked for another & another & another
until its voice was my father's 
it he was perched in the window 
breathing cool air towards me.
we ask to often who wil keep you warm--
i want to know 
who will keep the winters alive in my apartment
when the summer is sharp & restless?
the pigeons return with dead grass in their beaks.
i feed them sugar cubes
to pacifiy them. put on in my own mouth.
the sugar cube is really a row house
just like ours. it is our house,
sweet & brief. my teeth turn to dust
the swamp cooler reads a poem. 

calamari elegy 

all dresses are made of calamari.
ring on top of ring. ruffles 
& the swimming. they looks like fried mouths.
mouths inside mouths.  
in high school, i imagined weddings with 
so many people. i wrote our lives together
well past our thirties. 
i picked useless boys with big families
to dissapear into. i stepped through doorways
made of calamari--each leading to a new room
full of doubt. my barefeet burned 
on the surface. i fried my own tongue
before i woke-- let the sun do it's work.
i went to dinner with his whole family
& ate calamari without knowing what it was.
the smell of tomato sauce. clinking forks.
i lay a napkin in my lap.
i remembered to keep my kness together.
i felt both too old & too young for this.
one of his relatives asks if i'm italian.
i say i am because it's easiest.
the whole menu in italian i try to google
the names of dishes. no service.
i ask god for help & he laughs
inthe flourescent lights. when has he
helped me? my boyfriend wants 
steak. he wants any kind 
of meat. i feed him my finger tips
while i'm trying to decide.
i pick calamari in a rush 
as the waitor jots down our orders.
the table goes silent & all his family
stare at me. they ask if i know
what calamari is & reader i already told you
i didn't. but i said yes yes i do know.
they go back to their conversations.
i have admitted to eating squid 
& being a strange girl. my boyfriend
holds out his glass of water
& tell me to go inside as punishment.
i tread water. they give me my own table
for eating squid. it is delicious.
i am sorry. i was vegetarian 
until this moment. i thank the squid 
for their bodies cut into circuits.
the orbits of the planets charted 
in their thick breaded loops. 
i make earrings of the calamari 
& i slip the rings on my fingers,
imagining this boy proposing to me
with calamari. i accepted all the bad treatment.
on the way home he kissed me 
like he was still hungry. 
he dropped me off at home leaving me
feeling called to salt water.
my heart was full of squid 
& their fears & their aches.
i told the squid to teach me how to love
better boys & they pulsed away--
ghosts into a black ocean.

facebook ads know me better than you 

whales can go months without eating.
they travel without stopping across the open ocean.
i can go only a few hours before
i feel like i'm diminishing. 
the truth is, the facebook ads know me
better than i know myself. they know
when i'm hungry & they offer me
cereal in bulk. they offer me 
a subscription to the new yorker.
i think of cat-sitting for professors
& seeing magazines on their coffee tables.
i can't imagine being having all these things
but the ads know i can do it.
i can pull through. there are whales 
right now as i speak to you.
they are huge--bigger than my whole apartment.
when i am lonely i think of them
& consider how they cannot lie down
with each other. this is a mistake
because a whale is not human. 
a whale does not have facebook to know him
or a palm to hold his iphone.
a whale does not dream of billboards
or sidewalks. sometimes i try to guess
what animals think about. a sequecne 
of smells & movements. a whale crying
in its sleep. it wants a sip of soda. facebook says 
i want an online mental health counseling degree from NYU.
facebook says i should take courses 
in columbia's creative writing school. 
i do want them of course, but these are things
for another life when i am not as poor 
or as indecisive. do whales go around
writing poems in their heads?
do they rehearse what they're going to say to each other?
whales spend their whole lives 
thrumming with words. in the bottom of the ocean 
where their great bodies decay
so do their lyrics. the white ghost crabs 
eating fragments of song. whale language 
bubbling to the surface. my hands are freezing 
as i take a walk but insist on holding my phone.
maybe my phone is a kind of whale.
a vessel like i am a vessel & a whale is vessel.
i hope the whales are eating. i hope this isn't
their hungry months. no animal deserves that.
i will fly out to the middle of the ocean
& feed the whales if i can't become one.
facebook tells me URGENT is recruiting people
to teach private lessons. i imagine tutoring someone
on the importance of whales. they would nod 
& pay me generously.

perfect spheres in nature or farewell 

ice is growing in veils on far away moons.
i notice the frosted film all over my body
like a new layer of skin. i think of 
the ice scraper under the front seat 
of my mom's car. all those winter mornings
where i stood & watched her rake the glass.
in all my fantasies i walk outside in the middle of the night 
& become anything but who i am. 
i'm always looking for a new way to depart.
i would not leave a note. 
i would just make a cavernous gape where i left.
after days friends might call police men
& they too would find nothing--
a flashlight tracing the hem of my room.
the atmosphere is thin right now:
a halo of soap. 
i forget to wash my feet most nights
but when i do i feel beautiful.
on jupiter's moons there are 
frozen gesyers & frozen resevoirs. 
i am slowly becoming one of those moons.
i tuck my knees into my chest.
in this city i keep trying to 
take up less space 
which is a lie.
i want to buy an apartment with 
so many windows so everyone can see me.
this a tension between the heart
& the skin. the heart wants to be
the size of a walnut. 
the skin wants more surface.
i rise out of orbit with plenty of warning.
a deliberate & steady journey.
i do not waive for fear of
losing my shape. nature is full
of spheres. think of droplets of water
& bubbles & pupils. the moons
are blinking. wrinkle eyelid skin
encompasses me. there is some great gazing
out here. so much time to look 
& observe. the moons take me in
as one of their own. 
know that i do miss my life on earth.
i dream of car horns & stop lights.
i dream of shut doors & standing up tall.
all of space turns to stare at me--
a body in their midst. 
they threaten to send me back
so i coil up again like a good moon
shivering in her place.
grass grows around my heart
in a perfect sphere.

a brief history of being twewnty-three

strip malls are emptying.
their doors openning & letting out 
great exhales & spiders.
in a dream, there are planets made of spiders.
the spiders circle each other 
& catch wondering asteriods
in their webs. 
the strip malls line the road towards my parent's house.
i think to myself
this is where i took karate.
this was a dry cleaners.
this was a dominos.
they build more strip malls to leave vacant.
soon i will tell people 
i grew up in a world of strip malls.
replace a golf course with a strip mall. 
replace a music store with a tobacco store.
replace a window with a door.
at night ghosts try to sell 
their wordly posessions from the storefronts.
i pull into the parking lot.
all the ghosts are gathered
with their bed sheets over their heads.
holes cut for their eyes.
they put a navy blue sheet over me
& tell me i can be a ghost with them.
i think more about the spider planets.
i wonder if such a thing could exist.
sometimes i feel like that--
like i'm weaving a matrix to try & catch 
fast objects. i hardly ever tell the truth.
the ghosts are in no rush to sell.
they will be dead forever & have forever 
to part with their pots & pan & cook books.
some of them hug me, mistaking me 
for someone else. it is lovely to be mistaken.
i become a farmer & a bank teller 
& a stargazer & a person who sings to themself.
i think this is where i bought 
a softball mitt, a kazoo, a mango italian ice. 
all my trinkets are out there in space
waiting to be captured 
by a spider planet. when i am debris
maybe i'll find myself out there
gathering armfuls of my objects.
there is no where to put anything
& yet so much is empty. a sears closed 
near my college & the windows gaped 
at us all four years. once i peered inside
& saw a cat perched in the dust.
by my apartment i watch a verizon store
turn into a dollar store turn into 
a discount store. i walk by 
& they are selling my childhood toys.
they are catering to ghosts &
staying open late into the night.
it is best not to stop at vacant strip malls
lest you become a ghost too.
i have been so close so many times.
i opened my face up to reveal 
the spiders underneath. i am trapping images
in a web. inside my lungs is all the air.
i was just driving & driving & driving.
the world empties around me.
did it arrive somewhere complete
in all its pieces? i sleep 
in the back seat of my car
& wake up draped in a blue bed sheet.

houses & houses

we tried to play "house."
sat in the sparse grass 
behind the school. recess was a circus
of legs. we were the kids who didn't run.
a scream. the smack of a ball. 
went around the circle saying 
who we would be in this house.
i always though of kate as an aunt 
& jess as a mother. kyle would make
a good father. a house grew around us.
clean & freshly suburban. 
a tv grew in our hearts where we would sit
when there was nothing else to do with our hands.
we grew up in houses speckled all over town.
i loved kate's mailbox.
i loved the flowers in front of kyle's house
& nothing compared to the pond in jess's yard.
i imagined our house near where kate lived
because all those houses were large
& clean smelling. no one wanted to go first--
admit to what they wanted to be.
we were wasting time. soon recess would be over
& soon after that we would be twenty years old
& having to buy houses. 
around the circle
we admitted one by one that we wanted to be dogs
& not people. a house full of dogs.
in the family, the best role is the dog.
there is no responsiblity.
no pressure to achieve any kind of balance.
we ran through our house. we howled.
got grass stains on our knees.
failed to build a fence. 
let the lawn grow wild & the house 
fall into disrepair. a twig 
in my mouth. playing fetch 
with myself. i wished i could go home 
after a day of 3rd grade 
& be a dog still like this.
all the words draining from my mouth.
no answers. no spelling. 
no long division. no sister
no son no brother no child 
just house & houses worth 
of dogs. fed from bowls 
filled by a hole in the sky.
the teacher blew the whistle 
& we all stood up & became children again.
we surveyed each other. left our house vacant 
under the thinner playground maple tree--
watched it collapse into a pile of leaves.
i collected one leaf from the ground
to remember our family. 
i was nostalgic even then.

i'm getting back my original sin 

one apple at a time. all the seeds
tremble in me like jewels. when i die
i might become a whole orchard
& people might walk through me,
pick an apple & it will taste like
a birth stone. my birth stone is ruby
& my great aunt joan had the same.
we talk about apples as if they're red
but even the red delicious are more maroon.
precision is important though buffalo & bison
mean the same thing. so about the birth stone,
i glint red in the right light.
my great aunt joan is an orchard now
though the trees are headstones & 
no apples blossom in spring. the smell
of a fresh cut lawn trickles down from heaven.
i want that sin back. i want to really know
the depths of being human. naked in a garden 
of birth stones wanting to be amethyst like my mom. 
i make many mistakes daily. 
i make a fool of myself. 
the apples are empty of knowledge
& now the truth is deep in our ligaments.
what was god keeping from us?
my aunt was kind to me. her lipstick 
was soft pink, crackling on her wrinkled lips.
i never saw her eat an apple.
she wore clip-on earrings. 
i eat right through the core of apples.
we burried her. we all wore black.
onyx is the birthstone for december.
her orchard is covered in snow.
the dirt is fresh. the mass is short.
the priest talks about her smile.
she thought i was a good person.
she cried at the sight of my face.
what does it mean to crumble away 
from the image someone else has of you?
i think about her hair when she stopped dying it.
it was red but really orange.
nothing is actually red as far as i'm concerned.
most apple's flesh is off-white.
i'm eating alone at a desk. 
my teeth are rubies.

types of cleansing for 7th grade girls

the showers in the middle school locker room
poured olive oil, not water.
we were the warm bodies of chicken
in our plumage uniforms & our fingers
knotted in biology. there are always 
girls with long hair & girls who cut their hair off.
the animal inbetween is a mistake.
i had a bob-cut in second grade & my hair
was slick with running. 
just one huge room for showers. 
i would peer in & imagine myself washing,
preparing for a stove. the glossy rain 
coming down in glisten. oil rises 
to the surface of water like little jewels.
when i think about school,
i think of several processes 
to try & feel clean. i pump pink soap 
into my dry hand. i rub the soap 
on my airpits--terrified of my own smell.
i fill a blue locker with worksheets.
i stuff them down & crumple all the papers.
my backpack swells full of embryos.
in biology we are always working towards
a good dissection. pin the worm to the tray.
the heart is less pure then we imagined:
a dirty bulb underneath the skin.
in the largest bathroom stall i hid 
between classes. i took my own heart out
& washing it in the sink.
the water came out a light copper color.
i am full of maroons.
another class took us by the creek.
we waded into the watet in old shoes.
if no one had been watching
i would have poured water 
over my head. i just dipped my fingers.
crayfish are holy & so are ducks.
i always go back to that shower though.
a huge tile room. it was bigger
than my apartment's living room.
what would it have been like to bathe there?
dripping in sweet bright oils.
finger nails glossy & alive.
i'd splash water in my face.
i'd stare myself down in a mirror
until i my mirror-self morphed away 
from my body. a forced separation.
then, returning to class i pressed the two together.
a face on top of a face. 
the mask metaphor is never quite enough.
it's more like emobodying a conversation 
between all your own internal orbits.
i grew up though which means
i am the same only now no one can tell
i'm seeking a fist of pink soap
& a plunge in a creek. 

memorial 

everyday my iphone reminds 
it's not backed up to the cloud. 
i plug myself into the cloud.
the cloud is thick & the color of jupiter.
the cloud is loud & static & waits 
in places you wouldn't expect.
i'm sharing my memories so that
when i die they can come down as rain 
from the cloud. technology is capable
of wonderful schemes. 
i capture video clips of myself by accident
while trying to take a photo.
filming a the moon i watch it wink
& then turn back into 
a blank needle-point hoop. 
one day the cloud will be the only one left
& the cloud will tell some new animal
about my laugh & how last night on the train
i wanted to leave the atmosphere
& how i cry alone when i am on long walks alone.
my phone is not backed up to the cloud
because i'm too erradic to figure 
that technology out. all my photographs
will return to the moment they came from.
the cloud is listening closely.
the cloud is rustling in a strawberry patch.
it smells like god & lemon.
something clean. a shimmering 
in a breaking rift. it can be difficult 
to tell where the cloud begins & you end.
my brother wants to call me tonight
& i imagine us mixing in the cloud.
we both are electronic bodies.
i don't call him & instead 
i open the window in my living room
& stare off at the void getting larger.
all my contacts will peel apart 
& all the background screens will become
a forgetten wallpaper. my phone itself
will be a shell of screen & wires.
i've always wanted to throw it
& watch my phone turn back into a rock.
the water is dribbling out of a hole 
in my download. soon, the hole house
will be full. you have to understand,
all i wanted was a good storm.
my scars flashing as lightning.
the stetch marks on my hips 
are several gigabites. there isn't enough space
for all of us, just like some religions 
count out the number of spaces in heaven.
at night, i scroll through years of text messages. 
imagine them as a pile of letters to sift through.
phone to my ear, a robot respond to tell me
my identity has been stolen.
i already know that so i hang up 
but not before telling the robot 
she will be alright.

placenta recipes for young girls

my boyfriend was trying to eat me
but i didn't realize it.
he took handfuls of salt & rubbed them 
across my skin. he called me tender 
& full & ripe. he fed me olives from the jar.
i thought he was so kind & thoughtful.
it is so easy to mistake a boy's hunger
for his love. he asked me to put my hand
in the cast iron pot & i did to prove
how loyal i was. in the shower
he turned the temperature so hot
i thought i would boil. i thought
my skin would fall off the bones.
he sometimes wondered aloud
what human meat might taste like.
i told him i thought it probably tasted bad.
he loved pork rinds & chicken skin.
he wiped his fingers on his jeans.
girls will turn their brains to spaghetti
to forget being edible.
the worst part though 
was when he'd ask for a child.
he would run his fingers across my skin
& say he was imagining me pregnant.
he had read you can eat the placenta
for stength after the child is born.
alone, i searched for images 
of a placenta. i considered whether or not
that would be vegetarian.
i never said no to him
about anything, i just braced myself.
i gathered my thoughts towards
surviving another day in my body.
he cupped a breast in his hand
as if to weigh it. he asked 
if i might consider eating more.
in this version of my life i'll say
i got thinner in protest--
so that he couldn't eat me.
i remember him pressing my skin
to feel for my bones.
sometimes i meet him in my kitchen.
he fills a pot with hot oil 
& tells me he's been so hungry all these years.
we have a child made of raw chicken breast.
the baby cries & i hand it to him
to dunk into the oil.
i would be a terrible mother.
i keep track of where my meat collects 
on my skeleton. i sometimes bite my lovers.
they sometimes bite me.
we leave it there.