a recipe for the whole kitchen & guide a blade across the tops of measuring cups to level them off. the walls of this house are made of cook books that need to be performed. i go page by page & i pretend i have helpers. i direct them to cup walnuts & to dice the dried pineapples but nothing moves because there are no helpers here, only the flies that sneak through the slats in the air conditioner to lick sweet surfaces. a siren outside tastes like those red white & blue popsicles shaped like rockets, i wonder if they still make those. baking petite fours & cupcakes & macarons. the mixing machine is telling stories about when it grew up. how its grandmother would make lemon drop cookies. the mixing machine doesn't exist, it's a wishful thinking. a wooden spoon will due or whisk. the walls stir. i set all the confections out in trays as if there's a party. yes, happy birthday, but not to me or anyone else i know. Google search: whose birthday is it today? Response: John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy (1404-19) so i say, why not invite him? he'll probably appreciate this consider it's his birthday & he's been dead for a considerable amount of time. he'll probably be surprised anyone even remembered. i tell the mixing machine to tell John the Fearless that we have been planning a surprise for him. the mixing machine asks who is "we" & i say well you & me, of course which made the machine turn back into an armadillo & crawl off the map. i didn't chase him, i know he'll be back someday. cook book after cook book. the best recipes are the ones in different languages & for those i just trust my fingers-- i pinch spices i half fruits & pluck out the seeds. i knead the dough-- a mound of loaves, the loaves into fishes or was it the fishes into loaves, either way mine turn into salmon & swim up the staircase & i cook every single book from cover to cover, sit in the mound of creations. i wonder if this is what god felt like when he made the earth. no, i'm not comparing myself to god, just to how lonely i must feel to make small beautiful edible things. i wait for the John the Fearless guy but he never comes so i make a fort out of all the treats. i tell them stories & sometimes when no one is looking as if anyone is ever looking i eat one. i eat very carefully & slow. i feel badly when i do-- like i'm eating children, like they're asking for forgiveness for every powdered sugar corner & icing-ed forehead. i tell them i'm sorry i made so many.
Uncategorized
05/27
cutting my own hair on a sunday afternoon i flick the clippers on & they shutter-- jittering the bones of my hand-- this shivering femur this quivering species-- as if they were a small mammal designed to browse our skulls & eat the hair off of them. it's strange to be holding clippers myself after all the times someone else has guided them over my head. i'm back maybe six years ago standing at the oval mirror on my uncle's side of the house he's saying "look down" & "tilt your head this way." the buzzing combines with the sound of horse hooves clopping up our street toward the meeting house. must have been a sunday. today is also a sunday but i keep forgetting it is. i mouth to myself in the mirror it is sunday. i have no calendars pinned to the back of a door-- i have no wrist or watch & no one else is home to ask if it really is sunday. it is sunday. there's something original about dark brown hair falling into a white sink-- like it might have been an action god performed on us & we all forgot. i pause between swipes of clipping to rub the clumps of hair between my fingers. it's thick & seems like the hair of a woodland animal. i picture a raccoon curled around my head. i look in the mirror & i've only cut three patches-- each distinct little territories. i touch kiwi fruit skin or maybe the fresh cut lawn when the grass was all yellow & dry in july. short-- a familiar texture. i have been shaving the sides of my head down this short for years but it always feels loud like this when its fresh cut. i have a few beats where i wonder if i can actually shave the rest. i want to ask someone to help, not because i can't do it but maybe because i don't want to alone. i don't consider this hugely symbolic, i'm always a lonely person whether there are people at home or not. no one else even knows i'm doing this. the impulse to cut my hair is unpredictable, but immediate & demanding. still, i can't cut more while i'm thinking about what it feels like to have someone put their hands on your skull & guide a blade across.
05/26
when i was younger i used to think a sea monster ate the titanic this 3D printer makes ice bergs. i'm walking on a wall of water call me jesus's sister a parting of ice. a drifting under finger nails. i'm prying finger nails off like icicles in search of the bergs. yes, now spell ICICLE & let the bicycle go off the side of the dock. a pedaling towards the ice berg. steering done by the big wooden wheel not connected to any steering. model sail ship crumpling into a knot of hair. a little boy asking a dad if he can wear the captain's hat. they frame menus of the titanic. the 3rd class ate ice & then drank water & water & water while the ship bit the neck of an ice berg. the printer runs out of ink & resorts to using water-- each sentence wilting the paper. the bicycle hit the lamp post & turns into a sea monster. police are called & they shine their flash lights in it's eyes-- black & glossed over by the hoods of old vehicles still driving underwater. i see ice bergs everywhere ever since i was little-- a tall thin one is waiting behind the lamp post-- there's another in the closet & i keep a lighter ready to melt it. the printer is sending off more ice bergs & calling them sons. the sons are cold & tired & need someone to run into them. they crave collision. in the morning after fucking i like to make the ice bergs grilled ham & cheese sandwiches. the ice bergs are so grateful & they tell me that jesus has a great sister. i shower in hot sauce. i rub cayenne under my eyes to keep me awake as the machine makes more ice bergs & sends them to circle my mattress. my mattress lays on the floor because the frame as suspect of being an ice berg so i threw it in the alley & called it a liar. it was really a sea monster. it might have been friendly but who knows. i love ice bergs, in fact i need them. without a good strong ice berg to find what is a girl-boy supposed to hide from-- supposed to hunt. i take apart my old blue bicycle & toss the pieces into the street, letting them roll. i crack the ice cube tray over my forehead & listen to the cubes sizzle & pop as they touch my ready skin. there is a one on the horizon & we should steer away. the cars park on the bed rooms windows. the bed room has no windows, just a door crowded with massive blue bodies, each scrambling for a place to spend the night.
05/25
collages i'm taking daguerreotypes of this up-side down banister a slide made of wheels each turning reliably as eyes turn over in a skull each hour. my ears scamper down the dark hall back & forth like the soft feet i would imagine rabbits have. i used to want a rabbit-- scrap the "i"-- we used to want a rabbit we bought a cage & everything-- filled the floor with vegetables great for nibbling but the rabbit never came & the windows were a great metaphor waiting to happen but they shut. take a pen & break the plastic seal. take the plastic seal & use it to preserve yourself. if that doesn't work they say that salt can do wonders for a pair of fingers. the banister is being slid down by a pocket watch that is also an organ-- that unnamed organ that keep track of what hour it is with only slight accuracy. fingers weighed at check out 2.99 a pound. a capsized bed room-- a hot whirling in the garbage disposal. check. there's no garbage disposal just a nest of teeth down there. thank the teeth for watching over this house. feed the teeth strips of raw chicken & ask the teeth if you've been a good collaboration of photographs. this is a collage of people who've had their pictures taken. the plant on the windowsill is dying & there's nothing we can do but watch. when you fall asleep i want you to stay still to get the right image. yes right there, that's it. ring the doorbell. tell the rabbits you've been waiting for this night. promise the rabbits. tell them they can eat the dead plant & then the plant won't really be dead. i ate all the photographs of myself as girl because it was easier that way. i tasted like apples & raw chicken. now when i open my mouth it works like a projector a slide show of old images. yes, that used to be me.
05/24
recess is fifty minutes if they haven't yet i hope the girls put their teaspoons down-- they're carrying the spoons in their mouths to balance uncooked eggs. they walk cautiously across the school yard & there is a teacher with a whistle teasing them & telling the girls to trip. recess is fifty minutes which is much shorter than it seems-- not even long enough to dig up the roots of the tree. they want to capsize it-- they want to see the tree laying on its side-- tentacles dangling with dirt. a boy has a knife in a Tupperware container & he shows the other kids-- he says that his mom uses the knife to cut legs of rotisserie chicken. the sun is a foil-wrapped rotisserie chicken-- the smell dripping down on the pavement. no one tells on the boy with the knife because they're scared he'll use it-- that he might get up on the jungle gym & take a stab at the sun. the kids like the sun. they want to keep it up there in the clouds even if it does smell greasy. the girls imagine boys carrying teaspoons in their mouths & they almost laugh to themselves because it's clear that the boys wouldn't be able to handle that kind of gentleness. the girls see a sidewalk covered in broken eggs. they imagine the yolks getting on their sandals, those unmade chickens glowing yellow. the boy is curious about what that's like, to hold a teaspoon in your mouth all recess. he puts the knife in his mouth & walks back & forth across the jungle gym bridge-- imagines the knife as a beak. he is a bird that he thinks might go rotisserie. recess is fifty minutes long which is much longer than it might seem. the girls don't know what the point of recess is. the teacher blows the whistle three times & the knife falls out of the boys mouth & into the mulch. he runs away from it while the girls walk in a neat line teaspoons in mouths. just inside the door they take the teaspoons out & don't know what to say having spent all that fifty minutes in their own heads. one of the girls almost breaks her egg on purpose, she thinks about how the egg would ooze on the tile floor how the whistle might tell her to spend next recess up against the brick wall. how from there she could watch what the boy does with his knife.
05/23
somewhere my body is still running there are legs growing up from the dirt so i do my job & put socks then shoes on them. i am not sure whether or not these are my legs so i treat them like they could be. the legs are ripe with running & they want a great big courtyard to practice in. i put my ear to the dirt & there is a great big singing-- a kind of opera but opera isn't in season so it must be something else. i wonder if the legs are attached to bodies that are singing but that's silly this is a museum of legs & nothing more. i put bracelets around their ankles. i put flowers in between their toes. i am sick with sleeping & no two legs make a pair. pushing ibuprofen into the dirt i tell the legs that this will make them feel better. i've been walking on my hands this whole time & i recognize some of these legs & they might belong to my family members or maybe just someone in very short shorts i took notice of. this is my role i take care of the legs. i run my hand up calves & thighs to check their density. i tell the legs they're doing a good job. i tell them how far they should run in their own minds & then i lay down in the soil to do the same. i run seven miles per hour. my legs ache with sidewalk & weeds. i tell myself stories as i go: i'm running from a school of tuna i'm running from an angry man i'm running from an avalanche i'm running from some kind of unnamed fear. the cars on the street are made of legs. the legs on the street are made of telephone wires. i ask someone to please see this beautiful field i'm tending. the light changes to green. the car horns are blooming. i ask my legs to go ahead & plant themselves if they haven't yet.
05/22
edible a real house has an ice cream scoop in the utensil drawer. we had two & i would take one in each hand & dig in the earth outside in search of antiques from the civil war or the revolution. i wasn't sure what an antique would look like but i new that one needed to dig to find one. i practiced my technique to get the dirt to come up in dome-like scoops. if we had a box of cones i could hand out dirt ice creams. instead i just tossed the soil all over a splattering of earth. antiques looked up at me from their burrows & i rubbed my fingers together like you might for a cat to try & get them to come out. i was determined. i was going to give these antiques to my dad who loves antiques. he might even pile them on a metal tray in the oven & make an antique dinner, filling the house with the smell of roasting old book pages. i feed the antiques from the ice cream scoops, dollops of frozen yogurt. i bring them my favorite flavor, black raspberry & it's melty in the heat of the afternoon. i wonder what the antiques when they're alone with each other & i realize i'm probably disturbing them. do you ever want to put something back together when it's way too late? do you ever dig holes in the yard & try to put the soil back. i think about how in the graveyard up the street you can always tell which plots are fresh because they look like trays of brownies. the dirt has always been chocolate ice cream which is my least favorite so i don't think this information is especially helpful. the antiques cry & dig themselves back where they came from while i use the ice cream scoop to swing at passing comets. what do comets have to do with a kitchen? if you leave the window open they'll fly right in & hatch. a comet hatching into screws. trying to close the window when it's too late, trying to scoop the dirt when it's too late, it's already melting. i find ice cream scoops in place of my forearm bones. i use ice cream scoops to dig in the fresh plots at the graveyard. fill a bowl with soft warm brownie. pull up the coffin full of antiques & spill it on the kitchen floor for when dad gets home. i'll say look what i brought us.
05/21
starting a family of the oak trees all i can say is that they were also wondering if there's anything sturdier than a bag of dusty onion at the bottom of a kitchen cabinet. i know my parent's house is real because when i look for a jar of raspberry jam i find them, the onions, lazy in all different stages of peeling. i tell the onions that they should come lay on the floor of my house & gossip about other vegetables with me. i don't use onions, not because i have anything against them, but because i don't actually cook. the onions make fun of me & they hiss saute saute saute. i take one & put it in my pocket to quiet the rest. i tell the onion i will take it home & make a wonderful feast out of nothing else, just the onion. on my kitchen table the onion removes small sections of its flaky brownish covering, tossing the flecks at me. i tell the onion to wait while i get ready. i imagine the onion sliced into lovely perfect rings, translucent in the bottom of the pan sparkling with oil. i will get into the pan with the onion, wearing the slivers like hula hoops. on the hard wood floor of the kitchen i hear onions rolling, a distinct kind of thump. then, i hear them in my pantry banging their skulls on the doors. there's a 7 year old version of me standing on a stool at the counter & he-she is crying as she presses the knife down on the onion & his-her mom tells says it's unavoidable to cry when you chop onions. i bite the onion on the counter & in the hopes that it might make me cry but it doesn't. instead the onion itself cries, shaking & sobbing as i hold it. i tell the onion i'm sorry for not having patience with it. i tell the onion i should have looked up a real recipe. i ask the onion if i could bring its friends next time a whole bag & if they could please lay on the floor of my bed room just to talk all through the night, tell me stories about the circles in their bodies. tell me if they wish they grew on the tall oak trees that peer in the window judging us & the ways we make do. tell me what they think makes a real house.
05/20
put me inside a light bulb tonight beside me at the park, is nothing but folding cool wind & the chirps of distant animals. i watch from a picnic table as a girl scales a lamp post, spoon in her mouth. dusk is coming like a bowl full of overripe tangerines. citrus melts in lobes. i don't tell the girl to get down because that sort of advice is often not wanted. i observe as she reaches the top of the lamp post & smacks her spoon on the glowing light bulb releasing a small bright bird. the bird darts away into the shimmering branches of an oak tree. the trees sing a low hum to welcome the shadows into their hair & the shadows are good kind creatures who go to the park to sleep. i don't know why i go to the park & i ask the tree but they're busy. the shadows don't notice me as they come out to snatch the glass of the bulb, breaking it into pieces to share among themselves. i don't know why i have to go to the park at night i contemplate eating a bit of glass to see if i belong in the wild branches of the oak tree. stretch out my hand & a shadow drops the glass sliver. the glass cuts my tongue & i spit out the shard. the shadows scold me for being wasteful. i tell the shadows i want to be one of them. the bright bird comes back & i remember the girl had been here too & i pace the walkways until the sun is so deep in the sand box there's little to see beyond each remaining lamp. i wonder if breaking open the light bulbs was something she taught herself or if perhaps she learned it from a shadow or maybe just happened to witness one light bulb break. i spend a moment in each lamp's glow to tell the bird i'm thankful for its work in the park. i tell the birds that if i could i would crawl into the light bulb & be bright & contained while they did whatever they wanted in the dark branches of the oak trees.
05/19
tree swing on my back a tree grows & i tell someone to tie a swing to one of its branches. yes, pick a good sturdy branch. maybe the limb stretching toward the neighbor's house as if to pat the house on it's head, good dog good dog the tree is saying. my brother spends all summer swinging & doesn't even realize it's me, his brother beneath the tree. his bare feet collect the yard's dirt. he tries to go higher & like all young boys imagines that he will be the one child to swing higher than any has before. possibly touch a toe to the sky which he knows feels like kitchen tile. maybe he thinks by swinging he might be able to shake the tree loose from the dirt & free from my back. i curl under the earth like an aquifer or a seed of which i am both or neither. some days he doesn't swing. he just sits there dangling. those days are my favorite. i feel just weight, not his body'd weight but the weight of all the wants buried deep in his body. i want to tell him to be careful of letting trees grow where they want. i think about my first tree swing & how it was tied to my father's arm. i swung & swung & it was me, i was the boy who grazed against the sky with my toe or maybe that was just a steady breeze. at night i adjust myself & thus the branch rustle & the birds in them beg someone to untie the tree swing. the animals think it's unnatural the animals wish humans would develop better means of communication. the cardinals burrow in the dirt with me & the squirrels hang upside down by their toes. each day i tell myself i'll leave but he loves the swing so much. i try turning into water. i try turning into soil. i try turning into another swing. the tree stretches its arm even further towards the neighbor's house as if to try & steal the doorknob to their house. i say no, stay to the tree & the tree crosses it's arms & my brother comes out in the morning to find the tire swing limp on the ground & goes to bury the remnants which end up in the dirt beside me.
