taste buds & artichoke hearts

i love most the things
you can't describe the taste of.
a short list; quinces, red velvet,
& artichoke hearts;
i try to imagine how the artichokes 
might grow & i think that
they might be fire-birds tucked
into themselves, dormant,
waiting to be awakened 
by olive oil & a quartering knife.

the hearts feathered apart in my pasta 
last night. i was 7 again & re-learning
how to enjoy food, wiping oil 
on my thighs. there you were,
older, too old for me, holding
out a fork & begging me to 
put the whole artichoke in my mouth.
you ought to choke me.

& you came inside my mouth too,
fork pointed forward,
finding a plot of loose soil,
the buds blooming all over my tongue;
a romp of wildflowers.

you picked them, making a bouquet,
& i wanted to ask you to be gentle
with my body but my mouth was full
of you feet.

you didn't taste like anything
i can name, only artichoke hearts
& olive oil. 

your plate had a dead deer on
it & i reached out to scratch
behind its ear while you were 
busy taking all the flowers
you could.

the deer opened its mouth
& all of a sudden there we were 
on the side of the freeway,
the creature splayed & limb
as if it wasn't ever real.

when you finally crawled out 
& stepped over my teeth
we were very very lost.

we found a light bulb 
to walk to but it just ended up
being an unprepared artichoke,
still hard & heavy & green
& tasting like the moment
before fire. quartering 
the plant, we shared 
& you took out your fork
again & i took out mine
& we thread the prongs together. 

babysitting you 

i'm strapping you into 
the car seat, again. the harness
fits across your small body
& your fingers are worms. 
we're going somewhere made 
of air fresheners & 
upside down ice cream cones.

are you growing yet?
take your time, we have
all afternoon. let me tell
you a story though.

when i was as small as you,
we lived on main street 
in a house with two sides
& raccoons in the walls.

we had a backyard  
of board game pieces 
& i'm always the blue one.

the neighbors side
of the house was covered 
in  vines & we named 
the stray cats  &  fed
them  bologna.

i bought myself a car seat
today too. i don't fit 
but i can learn from you.

from your hair-tie mouth
& your fingers made of worms;

i lay you in the yard so
they can dig. who is 
the youngest brother now?

dig me a world, brother,
i want to be the backseat child
& when you get there bring
me back a candy bar or
a bag of gummy bears.

this is a steering wheel
that rolls into a dinner plate
that rolls into a bowl
of overripe pears on the table.

you should sleep though,
in the yard. headlights on,
i'll wait here in the car,
i'll buckle myself in, safe.

mom & dad are watching
from the attic, feeding
each other worms they do.

the first time i wanted to be a ghost

have your ever thought
about the pools in hotels?
there's got to be a million,
the inn i'm staying at has
one, a great cement bowl 
of chlorine. i have no bathing suit.
i didn't pack one on purpose,
i was worried that i would
feel tempted to go swim late
at night after the pool's closed
& it fills up with ghosts.
i would want to take you with me
& ask you to hold me underwater
until i'm a ghost too.
no it's not morbid, have you seen
the pool? watering holes 
for drifting spirits; in the water 
they get their bodies back again.
i remember the Day's Inn 
on the way to Maine with its
tiny square pool full of children,
at least half of them had 
to have been ghosts. i stood
& watched from the hallway
through the fogged glass
as they became water animals,
a school of gigantic tuna,
slapping at the tile floor.
there is no bottom to the pools
in hotels. if you swim deep enough 
you find yourself in the pipes,
navigating the bones
of the place, listening
to a dozen twin-bed conversations
& hotel bibles opening.
i know if i let myself swim 
that i would have to be a ghost, 
that i would kick till i touched the bottom,
never coming back. if you're
careful, of course, you can
sit down there without going 
too deep & the ghost
children will make faces 
at you in the water. they'll
speak like whales in morphed voices.
i walk down without you just
to stare at it. i remember
the hotel pool when i was little
& my family stayed in D.C.
the hotel had a piano that played
itself & at night that ghost
came down to the pool
& turned into a manta ray.
as i swam i saw it, its
great wings oscillating 
on the floor of the pool.
that was the first time
i knew i had to be a ghost.

canned  fruit

I.
in 3rd grade mom would pack me small cans
of fruit in my lunch. a kiddie pool of syrup.
my favorite were the peaches because i didn't
believe that they were peaches-- the texture
so changed by the walls of their metal cocoon.
i was careful not to cut my tongue as i licked
the rim & drank the last drops of nectar-water,
imagining myself as a humming bird or another 
tiny fast-hearted animal. these hearts appeared 
in the fruit cocktails as halves of cherries,
which are the best part of any fruit cocktail.
i wanted just a can of wild red cherries,
wonderfully un-naturally red. a stray grape 
in the mix always resembled an eye-ball;
a green sack of loose skin & jelly insides,
i blinked as it burst sweet between my teeth.
II.
i wade, at first, with pool floaties into 
the metal can, bobbing between chunks 
of peaches, grabbing on to one to bite 
& they seal me inside-- the floaties pop.
a dark metallic world where the fruit pieces
can talk to each other & trade secrets
about their bodies. i become a water-logged
hummingbird, furiously pulsing my wings.
i learn to breathe sugar &, like the peaches,
my texture becomes smoother & more mythical.
my eyes are green grapes & with them i can 
see through the can when i want to. i see
the peanut butter sandwich & the apple 
inside the lunch box. i see a girl's pink
fingers as she reaches in. before she opens
the can i work fast to cut my heart
in half several times-- it helps with
the nervousness, in comes the light. 

arachne

all the spiders in my house assemble
themselves into a beautiful girl,
standing on the ceiling, one foot 
in a web. i ask her if she would
like to get under the covers & 
she refuses, scurries on all fours
across the ceiling & into the bathroom
where there's still steam on 
the mirror from my shower. she tests
her hands on the fogged glass,
each print the shape of one of her spiders.

oh, arachne, the curses 
mythology puts us through. she cries
webs & sits on the lip of bath tub,
in my pajamas i sit beside her 
& i tell her that i don't think 
her myth even has a moral to it,
that athena is a selfish gold woman
for creating spiders from her.

i tell her that i want to know
what it feels like & she touches 
my sternum, bursting open
into dozens of tiny black spiders.
i spread. all over the room,
an excitement for new textures 
of feet across drywall & the slick
faces of doors. the fans, a cyclone.

all the while she takes & her knitting
needles & begins to make pairs
of finger-less gloves. the yarn 
pours out of her fingers. she crouches
in the living room. she thanks me
profusely but i'm too busy with 
my new bodies.

i get under the covers, all hundred-or-so
of me, but i never feel warm, something
about the outside skeleton makes me
feel like a doll. i feel, for the first
time, extremely beautiful as spiders.

i wonder if you would love me if you
found me like this before arachne 
changes me back. if you could lay down
in the nest of spiders & know 
something of me, i only ask because
you never know when you will wrong
a god, athena with her golden eyes 
watching from the bay window.

arachne comes back, scoops me up 
in her hands & blows into my spiders
until i form a body in bed again.
she gives me a pair of the gloves
she's been knitting & i put them on.
i help her back into the ceiling 
where she stands & faces the corner,
slowly unfurling back into spiders.

catching moths on the porch,
i toss them up in my room to feed her.

musical chairs

i wish the house would
stop playing musical chairs,
it's getting to be too much & i'm tired.
first with the kitchen, just a few mornings ago,
i noticed a red pleather arm chair at
the breakfast bar that i had never seen before,
i touched the surface & it rocked 
like an egg on a counter top. 
sitting down, cautiously a faint
song began, like a carnival tune
only made of wood. scanning the house
i found several other chairs that i
had never seen before; an extravagant 
emerald throne & a simple
white wooden stool, both standing in the middle
of the living room like strangers, guests maybe.
i talked to them, i said,
i don't know what you want with me.
& only late into the night did i begin
to understand. i wanted to call 
you but i was embarrassed 
about it all, i told you i was
working on having a more sturdy reality
& here i go with all of this.
i called my mom & hung up the phone
when she answered. the house began
to play musical chairs, it had invited
guests & i watched from the door
of my room. all the guests,
old guests & new guests & nightgown guests,
all of them meandering around the kitchen,
waiting for the music to stop.
i knew i had to join them, so i did,
i wondered to myself if purgatory 
would be something like this,
like a cold kitchen with mismatched chairs.
instead of taking them away the guests
added chairs, the brought them 
in through the window. the house
gave life to chairs. everything 
is a chair or was a chair, my mom
was a really beautiful chair, a blue
recliner with grandmom's cigarette ash
as stuffing. i would be-- i would be 
maybe a dining room chair with one
wobbly leg & tasteful red upholstery.
when the guests lose they lay, face down
on the floor. each morning, now
i take the lost-guests out with the trash,
they're light as big plush dolls.
more & more chairs. i try to sit 
in them all each day but it becomes
nearly impossible. the ones that i miss
always go & turn into cats. they scale 
the ceiling. they meow. i ask them
to come down but they just hiss.
i call my mom & tell her to come over
& sit. i recall the rocking chair
in my old bed room, the one
grandmom gave her when i was born,
it rocks like an egg. i want to crack it.
i  hang up before she answers.
there's eight cats on the ceiling
& more chairs coming &
the music stops. 

turtle shell

i made a turtle shell for myself
out of picture frames, doorknobs & gravity,
as i lay on my stomach next to my bed,
i was thinking about our pet red-ear slider
& her body, how she would dry herself
on the rock in the middle of her blue kiddie pool;
her face & shell becoming flaky 
in the heat lamp stare. we kept her
pool in the basement in the winter
& we would forget about her
for all those months. walking
around upstairs with our two-legs
& pink unprotected fingers. Occasionally,
dad would remember her & the two
of us would rush down 
the wooden basement stairs 
to check if she was alive. there she'd be 
scratching at the plastic lip 
of her solar system,
sometimes orbiting the sunning stone
forever at the center. i think 
of the way her greyish skin stretched
at the edges of the shell sewn 
into the structure. i feel that sensation
happening to me in each bedroom 
i've ever existed in, my body
attaching gently to the windows
& door. i ask myself how many people
can fit inside a turtle shell & 
i blink & there i'm standing 
inside the shell of our little turtle
from years ago, there's a chandelier 
hanging & no space for anyone else
despite the room being wide & open. space is
not always physical. i write your name
on the floor & the walls, thinking
of how we could use this place 
for ballroom dancing. i wonder if
you ever feel like this,
the body making a room of you.
the turtle ducks her head inside
& blinks; eyes dull planets: i turned one 
as a door knob to escape &
there i am again. i find my room
full of dried turtle shells,
all the flesh of the creatures
on rotted away. i try them
on but don't look in in the mirror.
none of them are the right size.
i hide them in the basement & at night
when you come sleep over.
i hear the scratching.

swedish princess cake

at night i've been watching baking
shows. it reminds me of sitting
with my mom at the breakfast bar
in my parent's house.

we especially liked iron chef
& whatever else came on before
& after. we wrote recipes on
the counter & the arms of the sofa.

That looks good.
Wow look at that. 
We should make those.

the chefs bodies are frantic, 
they're on a time limit. 
they sweat in their white aprons.

tonight they're making 
Swedish Princess Cake & their
bodies know what to do, 
the measurements like another language.

they speak into the bowl
with 2/3 cups & tongues of teaspoon
& table. they know what a Swedish
Princess Cake by instinct & they move
fingers over green marzipan

i haven't used the oven in my
new apartment yet. i keep
telling everyone that i love
baking & then i come home
& crawl into it

i don't know how to make 
a Swedish Princess Cake.

the oven is cold & metal & 
dragon-like. 

i bring a pillow
with me & turn on the television
in the living room &

watch the bakers move
from a cookie sheet inside 

& they come
out, rushing onto
the tile kitchen floor

they bang pots & pans,
they throw open the cabinets
in search of ingredients
for Swedish Princess Cake,

where is the vanilla extract?
the powdered sugar?
the heavy cream?

i hold still & watch
they write my a poem 
in my cups of flour 

& butter sticks,

melting gently from the heat
of all our bodies in the kitchen.

i tell them i haven't baked 
in so long & they pre-heat 
the oven,

put me inside & i come
out just right.

i curl up on the plate & 
they layer me. raspberry jam
& pastry cream, light & airy
& beige. 

upstairs

my neighbors upstairs 
are loud late at night.
their mouths leave bruises 
on my bed sheets. sucker fish
or fists. i count backwards
from 100 & start over again.
the numbers sit in between their
words like rosary beads or birds
on the chain link fence outside. 
they speak a language 
i don't understand
so i have to make up 
what they're saying. they're
saying beautiful things,
they're talking about
the boy down stairs who drives
an evergreen volvo & takes
the trash out late at night
on sundays. they love him,
they want to invite him
over & introduce him to everyone.
i respond & tell them
that i want to know them too,
put on my grey slippers 
& my robe. it's so late that
the alarm clocks have rolled over.
i stand outside their door 
& they welcome me. they've been
impatient, speaking louder &
louder in the hopes that i
would overhear.
we eat milano cookies &
their children walk on
the ceiling. they still speak 
a language i don't understand,
i let the words ripple over 
me like a cloud of winged insects,
glinting & twitching. 
we sit at the table & 
the man's wife makes popcorn
on the stove & i tell it's fancy
but she also doesn't understand 
the language that i speak.
we eat & everything gets stuck 
in my teeth. sun coming in
the blinds, i notice
they're all gone. i touch
the walls of their house
& discover it is much
the same as mine, crawling
back into bed with the covers
pulled around me, i blink 
& hear their plum pounding
voice again-- the blotches 
in my blankets, their voices.
this time i say they're praying. 

support the troops 

all the troops.
the father troops & neighbor troops
& classmate troops & grocery store troops
don't forget the grandfather troops
(who come back just to chew 
their purple hearts
in the kitchen) troops aren't supposed
to get hungry. naughty troops
all these troops,
look here they come now, the fresh ones,
they're crawling up on the shore
where they lay their eggs 
alongside the sea turtles,
they strain, crying to blink
the sand out of their eyes.
the troops are beautiful
the troops are natural. their eggs
are ammunition-- the sound 
of an air raid siren-- all red-loud.
when the troops are done being being
mothers that's when we get our the gold
to celebrate them. celebrate the troops,
ladle after ladle of fatty bubbling gold
& platinum-- they're hungry so they drink,
greedy troops, lips quivering with metal.
heavy troops, sinking into the sand
the eggs old enough now to ask questions,
to want college degrees, to want a good gun
to be fired from. the troops have eyes
that rolls over & the families come
to the shore & put diamonds in their sockets
(sometimes shells if they're a poor family).
they stick flags in the ground around their bodies,
take pictures & post them on Facebook.
we love the troops.this is a good troop 
loving sunday, yes? what beautiful troops. 
they did a good job. we, the families pack
up the SUVs, put on a TV for the kids 
in the back. eat bologna sandwiches
from the blue cooler.