i pull up to the window to get my order & this isn't a mcdonalds or a burger king-- this is a house with really big nice crystal windows. this is maybe a neighbor but i can't quite remember. i placed my order in my head & repeated it until i got close-- i was saying tree of cheeseburgers tree of cheeseburgers. i knock on the window gentle so i don't wake anyone up. at any time of day someone is probably sleeping nearby & thinking about eating with the hands tied behind their back. in the front lawn of the house grows a tree of cheeseburgers-- each branch a skewer holding the burger aloft. i know i can't eat burgers but when i was small & had a face round like a window i would order this at a diner nearby. i removed the burgers from their perches & they coo like morning doves. i pet the soft buns & decorate each one differently: ketchup & mustard smiley face-- pickles as great green eyes-- purple freckled onions like great cosmic rings. i wish i had someone to feed them to. i ask some people walking by if they might want a sample but everyone this morning is on some kind of diet where they won't eat cheeseburgers. they're all watching their figures. they're all power waling & trying to burn extra calories. i can see the calories floating above all foods-- that's my super power. i see everything as energy. i am hungry but i only eat mustard. the cheeseburger tree mocks me with each dripping patty. the cows who were once the patties are grazing in the front yard of the drive through that is also not a drive through. you have to understand people do this to me too-- knocking on my window at night & asking if i can make them happy meals. i always say yes & then they complain, saying these are sad--these are so so sad. every night i invent new games to trick myself into falling asleep. this is one of those games-- decorating mini cheeseburgers from the neighbor's tree. i just need to get someone to eat them now. i offer them to the moon & even she is vegetarian now. i offer them to the mirror & i have no reflection-- so hungry that my body took to eating all likenesses of me. i disappear from photographs & drawings & portraits. more burgers grow on the tree. someone's van pulls up to my window & knocks, pleading for more.
Uncategorized
07/21
the sign at the saucony creek says "don't pick the wildflowers." i walk the creek after school with the sky turning bold orange almost like a highlighter & the sound of a soccer game happening behind a row of trees. a whistle blows--someone yells. all the coolest kids play soccer because they're fit enough to run back & forth for hours. i'm inclined to moss caressing, climbing the playground's old maple tree, & dandelion wishing. today the wildflowers are bold. i sit on the bench & the gnats waltz with near by. i tell the wildflowers i'm not lonely, i'm just waiting. the bloodroot are the first who start to beg me to take them with me when i walk home. they open their white mouths & cry with high pitched voices. i scratch them under the petals like you might pet a dog but they still cry. i gesture to the sign & they say they don't-- that the flowers should make the rules about what happens to themselves. the buttercups are less straight forward they tell me they would make wonderful gifts for a crush. they ask who i have a crush on. i tell them my crushes are all impossible-- that i am a chubby girl who doesn't know how to wear eyeliner right just yet-- who prefers a walk by the skunk cabbage-- admiring their purple & green rubbery skin. i'm persuaded though & i pick up a buttercup & put it to my ear. i listen to the sound of other girls laughing which i hate because i always think they're laughing at me. i ask the buttercup to say something else & this time it sounds like a train whistle: loud & startling. the most tempting of all the wildflowers is the blue violet. they threaten to turn into butterflies if i don't pick them all-- every last one of them. i ask what i would do with all that indigo & they say everyone at some point has to be overwhelmed with colors. i tell them i'm not ready. i ask if i can come back another day. the crowd at the soccer game is cheering-- it sounds like someone is winning. the boy i likes plays soccer-- i imagine him winning. he got the goal. he's made of trout lilies & he's yellow & he's walking towards me to tell me he also caresses the moss when no one is looking. the violets insist & so i work all through dusk & into early evening plucking purple by their necks. they ask me truth or dare questions. they insist i must have been in love at least once so i make up a story about a playground romance i didn't have. i insist that i'm only twelve & that all of these flowers are too much for me. i gather them in my arms & i amble the few blocks home. in my room the violets glow lightly & want to talk all night so i put the buttercups in my ears to fall sleep imagining i'm laying on the railroad tracks.
07/20
my grandmother has a plastic lawn & the lawn men come to mow it twice a week & she sits in a floating arm chair while she watches them work out the front bay window. they have hair on their arms. they have great muscles. my grandmother has a feather dusters & she dusts the busts on her mantel-- the head of athena & the skull of her mother. she wants to be reminded that there's a long beaded necklace of mothers. she sneezes from the dust. she plucks feathers out of the duster & sticks one in her hair to feel beautiful. my grandmother grows plastic flowers on her porch. they're non-specific: blue & purple. a plastic bruise on the porch. they don't drink the water so it just spills. some nights she feeds the plastic flowers-- cutting her meals on wheels side dishes in half & dropping them with a fork on the flower's petals. she want to feed the men who mow the lawn but can't bother them because they're working. my grandmother died a few years ago & this is a different grandmother-- one almost everyone has but doesn't visit because she won't remember them or she lives too far away in a box on the moon. on her kitchen table is a bowl full of plastic grapes & when i was little i used to pluck one off & slip it into my mouth to chew on. alone at the table she does the same-- gnawing on the purple orb-- wondering if maybe she chews it long enough it might become a sweet morsel. outside the lawn smells like burning rubber. the man is gone so my grandmother crosses herself & sighs, remembering his large company. she goes back to feeding her flowers & says eat up, you want to grow up to be real flowers.
07/19
i imagine an attic where i am warm & yellow by dusk at the playground i'm there eating an apple the size of my baby brother's head. i'm biting into the fruit to find stray seeds-- this one is full of the zebra texture sunflower pods-- a blurred slide of black & white film. the sunflower is the most contagious of all plants despite what they might tell you about dandelions. the sunflower will learn how to grow from the carcasses of peaches & plum & acorns & yes sometimes apples. the sunflower shoots up tall as the monkey bars. i think about the seeds i find under my tongue at night & wonder if they want to make a sunflower out of me. i wouldn't be good at it. i'm terrible at standing still & i don't know how to eat light. though, it is true that if i could i would feast like plants do instead of all this nonsense of forks & ovens & plastic grocery bags. i would kneel, yes, & crawl in the beams & feel so full all day. then when night would come i would be tired & content & taking spoonfuls of the vanilla bean moon from the icebox. i spit the seeds out in my hand & toss them at the hopscotch squares & the squares shutter, alive, the scales of a mammal. i step in its back & it grunts as i bounce from square to square. i am too old for all of this. i should have been a sunflower so long ago. the hopscotch squares turn into patches of grass so soft i have to sleep there. the playground all exists in the attic this apartment doesn't have-- this playground is reverting to sunflowers-- rows of them & more tearing through the skin of each apple sitting in the bowl on the kitchen table. hopscotch squares spreading to the walls. i toss seeds in all dimensions & in mid air a few turn to stone.
07/18
prayer/ song to harry houdini tell me about the first time you had a lover put your in a straight jacket tell me if you let them pull your hair or if you writhed like a garbage bag of birds. i want to know all your favorite spots on the body to feel pain-- i like the teeth & how they ring like a ceiling of bells when they're hit. i like knuckles because they trick me into believing there are walls possible in me. you once slipped out of a giant's mouth without him knowing but came back to do it again & again. teach me captivity. teach me spectacle. i want to draw a crowd. i want to hide keys in my throat & hold my breath so long underwater that the onlooker will know i am part octopus. there are so many different kinds of locks-- each with a cave you once lived in feeding only off the sound of mouth wings & the turning of other locks. you once climbed into a box with chains around your ankles & your assistants threw you over the side of a ship. i practice this same trick only i stand on the fire escape out my apartment window & count cars on the street below. harry, there are different kinds of running water. harry, did you see locks or mouths? i want your hands down my throat. i want you to turn until i open. is this love? this might just be worship. did you ever pray in the midst of a show? did you feel that pin-pick of desperation that turns all of our bodies to questions? this is why i am speaking to you because i think you might dream of escape just as much as i do. you might make languages out of mirrors. you might be hiding-- slinking from closet to closet pretending each door opens to a room full of people. i am a room full of people i want you to bind my hands. i want you to hang me by my feet upside down. i brought locks for us of all sizes & i want to put a collar around your neck & swallow all our keys.
07/17
the hearts of small animals pink leaking pink, soft tissue; hovering organs hung out of a green clothesline. i used to see bleeding hearts flowers as proof of god, wondering how nature could know that, despite all evidence, humans believe hearts look like paper cut-outs. there used to be a bush outside the old church where we had girl scouts & each april afternoon on the walk there i would stop & fill all my pockets with the flower's hearts when no one was looking. i knew they must be the hearts of small creatures: butterflies, toads, or maybe even a rabbit-- i could see them emerging from the bundle of trees at the back of the graveyard at dusk to pull their flower-heart out of their mouths & hang it there as a fair well similar to the graves they spent their lives weaving between. closest to the church were the oldest graves some of the stones illegible names & dates smoothed away by the rain. i planted the hearts in the dirt by those worn stones, pretending the animals could share the plots with these humans. under the dirt they might trade stories about what smells they miss most on earth-- the small animal might try to help the human bones remember their names-- guessing all through the night all the wild their flower heart rebuilding their body again. i used to hope i'd by buried in that cemetery someday in a plot with all my family. sitting between the stones with my pocket full of the hearts of small creatures i would grin thinking how one day a toad might visit me & try to remind me what i was called.
07/16
in a costume closet full of dresses i picked the white one: layers of frill doilies kissing each other the gills of a communion wafer filtering out dust collar like a dinner place-mat i hung forks from my ears & bit a knife in my mouth. i was young high school didn't know better. no one told me. the fins of a cloud shark steam turned fabric cauliflower sliced impossibly thin. i walked around all that year pretending my face was a slab of meat loaf bread crumbs mushed under skin & ketchup in veins-- this kind of dress was made for a play no one remembers this kind of dress follows you for years after you touch it. talks to you in lists of small pure objects: cork, thimble, glue, pillow case even now a week from my 23rd birthday i see the dress from time to time, folding itself carefully beneath a layer of shirts in my drawer or standing tall from a hanger in the closet it just wants to be touched but it's contagious i have to put it on go all the way in-- escape into that hallway of luster-- pretend my body is food swaddled in tissue paper: angel food cake white chiffon meringue peaks. i walk around the house at night like this where no one else can see a boy in a white dress asking to be eaten. the bugs come out & i tell them to be gentle-- to take what they must just don't let me watch. i put my hand over my eyes. last night i told all my friends that one morning they'll wake up & find me completely devoured.
07/15
room with no windows jay's mom said she once stayed in a hotel-room with no windows. i think to myself that if i can pretend this is a hotel room for however long i live here that i will get by without those shades of light i miss-- the orange of morning & the greyish blue of early dusk. at this hotel they made a fake window with curtains sewn to the walls & a row of lights to imitate day. she was unaware there was no window until the first night she flung open the curtains to find the lights. i imagine what it would be like to fling open all curtains to find the same row of bulbs instead of the street below or the skeleton of a tree by the house. i bring curtains into my room & i don't make just one window, i make as many as will fit on the walls-- small windows large windows windows in the shape of pentagons & small thin windows. i cut curtains to fold across each of these shapes & lights to hid beneath them. before bed i turn some lights on & some lights off. i pretend my windows are each open to a different place i've never been but want to go. this room is a hotel everywhere. this room is world of curtains. this room is where i will sleep & wake up somewhere different each day. forgetting this all i'll sometimes step up to a window as if to look out & i will remind myself that just like a hotel i'm not entirely anywhere.
07/14
a forest is eating a ferris wheel teenagers still try to climb up into the baskets to kiss-- peeling vines off one another's bodies-- watch nameless white flowers unfurl from their lover's ears & nostrils. the rusted seats wince as they rock-- neither considering how precarious this all might be. the forest thinks of the ferris wheel like a thicket of pretzel sticks-- the humans there like glinting crystals of salt. the forest is jealous of the humans though because they get to hold each other. the forest hold onto the ferris wheel & pretends it could be a knot of trees-- that maybe by clutching it the trees might ascend from their rust & replant themselves in the earth. the couple considers the clouds & whether or not they would support the weight of their bodies. they laugh & one reaches balancing on the ferris wheel, catching the edge of a cloud. the cloud is coarse as steel wool & so they let go & decide that the only place they can be in love in the ferris wheel & they will stay there for the rest of their lives. they regret that this isn't a carnival & that the ferris wheel has no light & there's no thick sweet funnel cake smell. the forest makes a carnival of itself-- light bulbs swelling from the necks of trees & flickering with brief electricity. the forest pretends these humans aren't in love with each other but rather are in love with the depths of the trees & the green all around them. the forest finds apples in the chests of trees & wild blue berries tangled in the thoughts of bushes-- dropping the fruit around the ferris wheel. the couple eats by feeding each bite to the other-- berry by berry. they are young & carnival music naturally comes from their warm skin. they kiss with tongue like neither of them have before. mouths full of candied bone-- calliope tongue. the forest tries to make itself a body, casting shadows in all directions, none of them becoming flesh. the forest churns the ferris wheel faster until the couple is dizzy, stumbles back onto the earth where they fall out of love instantly & leave going separate directions. slowing the ferris wheel down the forest sits with itself-- flicks the carnival lights on & off
07/13
someone's birthday cake flat white-icing playground-oceans all lined up in the open supermarket fridge like a map of square states. at the Weis bakery it's always someone's birthday. red icing balloon--red icing rose-- sweet thick yellow cake. billy & i hover over the fridge & take guesses about what people might write. i make up sad things because i like the idea of icing holding phrases like farewell & i hope you come back someday. the hopeful sibling, billy wants the cakes to say hello & guten tag & i'm so lucky to know you & let us thank god you are here on earth. i imagine a future where my brother & i only communicate by sending each other messages on cakes. right then i would hand him one that says i wish i saw you more. we open the lid of one of the sheet cakes & step one at a time onto its surface. a great wide sweet expanse of land. i say we can build a fort on the far corner near the burst of icing flowers. together we trek there & i tell him a story about how one birthday dad & i got up at 7am & no one else was up so we went to the store right then & got a cake for breakfast. billy asks was i there? & i can't remember. what is a family but an exchange of faint stories. what is a brother but someone to sleep beside on your birthday cakes. we pretend the icing flowers are a garden & we eat them in handfuls. billy says that he used to never want anything for his birthday because it seemed selfish. i do remember that-- years where we kept celebrations small & just with family. i ask him if he regrets it & he doesn't. i wish i was more like my brother. when we leave we put a sign on the fort that reads: gow brothers just in case it's there still when we return. i ask my brother if he remember my birthday & he doesn't. i know his, october 21st, though i'm not sure when i learned it-- there had to have been a moment when i committed it to memory. i tell him july 20th & he repeats it, saying i won't forget this we write that on the cake: i won't forget this. i won't forget this.
Robin Gow 