sally & valentina

a capsule made of hair--
the earth's gumball & teeth,
what could women know of space?
each stage of the rocket
another leg broken off at the knee.
there are girls up there
i say from between the green
curtains of my bedroom. billy 
has a telescope that we can
never focus right. 

i had thought for the longest 
time that sally ride was
the first woman in space
but it was actually 
valentina tereshkova,
a bulb planted in the knotted
chest of the soviet union,
skin stolen from a textile
factory, her father riding
a tractor across the ceiling
of my bedroom. i mistake him
for the farmer who raises
corn across the street.

i dream of them meeting,
sally & valentina. i would
go too as a witness. bodies
tumbling around each other,
can we be celestial or
are our bones too light,
like the birds?

they should have gone up
together, so they both 
could have been the first
women in space. valentina
went entirely alone &
the closest to that i think
i'll ever feel is when i 
drove on the four-lane highway
at night on the way from 
pennsylvania to maine-- 
counting the red stars

up there, where everything
is quiet, i would ask them
questions. i would say 
what do you do when science
tears you apart?
& sally wouldn't cry but
would recount 
the story of Challenger &
Columbia & the making 
of debris 

& valentina wouldn't
answer anything about space
but would describe the countryside
out a window of a train 
crossing the soviet union--
the blurred faces of towns

i would tell them that
when i was a little girl
they taught me that space
could know my body,
pull out my hair & eat my
name like a handful of foil.

the surface of mars cramps up
& the space ship has
always been a bathtub. 
the water comes down & their
bodies melt & only i am left
alone in a car traveling somewhere

i make saints of them 
as i must. a dashboard prayer
as the night sky sits impenetrable 
above the highway, i point at
it & say-- there's girls up there.

we all know that people
with the same could easily
fall in love with each other.

Catherines; of siena & alexandria
wearing white cowls & wedding dresses, 
one rising, one drying the plates 
i'd left over in the sink.

the purple sponge. siena,
turning her hands over in the hot 
water till they were red,
the stigmata coming off like
ink marker, down the drain,
all the years of bleeding.
alexandria kissing them,
telling her she was 
a good wife, 
she was the best wife.

the wedding bands,
simple gold, 
i ask to hold them.

in high school when i loved
a boy & thought i was a girl
i would sometimes look 
at bridal magazines,
mythologizing a wedding.

it wasn't that i wanted
to marry him but that
i wanted a photograph-able
future, the shapes of dresses:
the mermaid, the ball gown--
pearls & lace

i do,
i tell the Catherines
i do love you 
in a way a God couldn't 

& they start to weep,
only instead of milk or tears
purple streaks down their faces

we laugh & the colors
change, from purple to blue
to red, not a blood red
but a scarlet garnet--
the kind of blood girls
without gods get to have,

divorced women,
the wedding bands down
the sink's throat.

the kitchen floor
dripping with color
like oil spill rain

we finger paint 
their dresses, they kiss
me, leaving purple
& gold lip prints 
on my face & my shoulders

i leave them, holding
each other on the counter

i do i do i do i do

i don't wash the
marks off before bed--

what a mess what a mess

band-aids

i started by sticking the last 
six band-aids from the box on
the far wall in my bedroom.
all in a row, standing tall 
like kills on the side 
of a WWII mustang. my brother 
collects images of war machines
on the shelf. two of the band-aids
are for him. i needed more.

we had sporadic band-aids when 
i when little. 
the bathroom with too many mirrors.
the top drawer there. 
if there were none left
i would put my thumb to the scrape,
again & again, watching the opening
laugh droplets of blood. 
eventually it would stop &
stare up at me like red pursed lips.

it's not that i need band-aids,
i just feel like we should be making
better use of them. 

the next box i bought was 
in honor of all the cardinals who hit our 
back window & broke.
eight of them. bond fires in the grass.
their band-aids on my wall, standing
at attention, i add another two,
only sideways, for both the
times that i laid down on
the double-yellow lines on main street
& no cars came.

they unearthed a craving in me,
another box, another box.
the wrappers coming off like wax moths.

to the door frames, around each crease.
the doorknob, a mosquito bite, 
i covered that too, kissing 
each corner of the house & then
placing a band-aid. outside, sealing
the mailbox shut with band-aids,
flag up & red. 

all this time i had promised
that they weren't for me,
that i wouldn't use them on 
my body. we all know what 
a  band-aid means for skin, yes? 
it means you're bleeding. use your thumb,
i say as i put three on my forearm
where there's still tally mark scars,
how do you measure time? i have
used skin but i don't recommend it.

the last two i put over my mouth.
i see god with his paring knife.
he has too many mirrors & he keeps
a mustang parked on a cloud, 
the engine too loud, even in the bathroom. 

he cuts a mouth for me & the first
words i say are be gentle be gentle.

Delilah 

She says
let gravity take over,
my legs skinned-chicken splayed.
she has a mouthful of orchid heads.
a sheet of wax paper on my bed. 

Delilah came to my room 
several nights ago, mistaking 
me for Samson. she sleeps 
during the day beneath 
the box spring. i feed her
bowls of cheerios & she searches
my shelves for scissors
when she thinks i'm not looking.

metal dusk: for inspection &
curiosity. we trade. she asks
me about my insides & i tell
her about the cervix. about how
doctor's reach for it like
a door knob, all pink & turning. 
she gives me beads that taste
like sugar cubes, puts them
in my mouth with two fingers. 

she only cuts off 
small batches of hair at a time,
keeps the strands in ziplock baggies.

i tell her she can take more
but she insists she's not cutting,
not again. i pretend to be
asleep so she can work.

let gravity take over she says
just like the doctors say every time.
standing at the foot of the bed
put your feet together
gynecology: the study of legs.

taking orchids from under her
tongue & placing them inside me,
gentle, as if i were a cork board.
i inhale, i learn to let these
kinds of things happen.

laying down next to me she
asks what a man is doing with 
my anatomy & i don't answer at first.
she rests her head on my chest &
draws circles on my forearm.

i lie & say that i have been samson
& that the stories of my hair are
lies, that my power comes from 
my cervix, unreachable & dark.

she promises not to try & steal that.
before crawling back under the bed
i kiss her forehead & tell her that
she can always stay here.
i take the scissors & throw them
out the window. 

in the morning she is gone.
i take out the orchid heads
in the bathroom & lay them on 
the sink along with
each baggie of hair, staring up at my
they ask what kind of body i have.

 

cruise control

we became a lowercase animal,
the car & knuckles & knees.
the glove box a second mouth 
where i kept my name. i drove
too long. the terrain taking us. 
all highways lack location; 
a sunoco station & another
& another with it's roots 
all red & made
of gasoline. in new york sometimes
they pump the gas for you.
a man with oil-stained fingers
wipes the windshield clean.
one great big eye, a cyclops we are.
i looked for found more beasts like us,
the airplanes' flukes slapping clouds,
what kind of environment could
the sky be today? the ocean 
floor with the coral blinking green.
small subtle things reminded
me of being human. cruise control
was something my father taught me,
he'd click it on relax his legs
as the creature took control.
i imagine in all our reincarnations
that eventually we all come back
as a cruise control spirit,
a body crouched under the dashboard
carefully pushing the pedal. 
set for 75mph, my father would 
say this was too fast. the climate
of the speed limit. the trees
agree & gave up on us. street lamps,
an invasive species. all the miles
of brake light insects a swarm 
on the tongue of Goethals bridge. 
taste like cinnamon to someone.
i thought for a moment that maybe
there were no more places to stop.
that i would just keep traveling,
my chest filled with axle,
taking the blood out of me for
more engine room, a thrumming 
made of bone. another whale,
another whale, breaching full
of red & green flashing eyes. 
of course you can't use cruise
control forever & especially 
not in traffic. i knew i was
alive because i thought to call him,
ask him where he was while i 
was a road. i worried that while
i wasn't looking he might have
become of a cruise control spirit,
his wide coarse fingers pressing
down on the pedal. of course 
he's not, his in the rocking
chair in the sunroom, the pedal
operator is someone else. 
i thank them by finding 
my way home.

fruit bats

it helps, sometimes for me 
to think of my body as a piles
of fruit. i find bananas clavicles 
& papaya shoulders. the bees
follow me for my imagination.
the handful of grapes i find 
where there were once mosquito bites.
in the mirror, melon teeth,
my father cutting the honeydew 
over the sink. 

i have always had this habit 
of abstraction. in elementary 
school i took to drawing myself
with animal parts, most frequently
giving myself bat wings. i knew
about bats. i knew that they glided
unlike birds. crudely, i detailed 
the veiny skin beneath each arm.
i made sure to tell people that
i would be a fruit bat but also
that vampire bats live in 
the rain forest & 
won't bite you here.

outback by the porch light
my father would point out bats 
silhouettes against a dusk-blue sky
before the stars arrived with their
bowls of fruit on their hips. 
i wanted to be them, so small & 
mistakable. was that one there?
was that a bird? alone in
bed i would imagine myself 
hanging upside down, hugging myself,
the blankets, the rinds,
making sweet flesh of me.

outback without the porch light
i'm older now & still made of fruit.
it helps when you dislike your body
to make believe with it. i find
my breasts to be oranges. i eat
oranges over the sink because
of all the juice. a man with breasts 
can be a bat. i take the pairing knife,
slice the fruit into sixths.
i offer them in my hands, hoping
a fruit bat will come land & eat 
with me. that he'll tell me what 
he does with his body 
to make it bearable. fruit bats
are also only in the rain forest.
i hang upside down, 
lick the pairing knife. 

posable

even though we live near time square
i wanted to take a picture with you
there last night. throw the camera
in the air & let it eat us.
each billboard a cape or a blanket,
hot to the touch. lay down on 
the sidewalk with me, will you?
i want to look at all the posable people
with their posable arms & their 
posable mouths & their posable pockets.
everyone went wooden to me,
like those movable figures you
use for figure drawing, fixed to
the earth by a metal rod. my uncle
used to have one on his mantle 
besides a row of beer bottles &
sardine cans. there was a sardine can
on the bench at the train station where
i got off & feel myself still
posable. i took a picture then only
you weren't there. you told me,
that you can't see any stars in
new york city because of all the light,
which i knew but i preferred to
hear it from you. i begin to think
that maybe each time one shows
up that someone swipes it,
tucks it under their tongue
like a throat lozenge. no one
would notice it gone in the all
photo-taking festival protesting
i wished i would  have spotted one. 
i was feeling wild
& willing to take.
i would have made it into a stud
to pierce your ear with or
would have taken a thread through it,
a button maybe or a necklace.
humans have no right playing with
stars though. i could probably
watch people taking picture of
themselves & their lovers
for eternity if that meant i
could take pictures of you too.
i'm imagining the whole place,
maybe at just one time of night
being empty. we could lay down
on the filthy asphalt sidewalk world,
feeling the unfulfilled footprints
as the passed across our backs.
i would ask you to pose for me.

dear casimir pulaski,

what could i know of 
your home in Warsaw 1779, i imagine it blue.
if you hear me, will you just
give me a one-word description of the city, 
preferably a color?
there were sirens all over
your parade yesterday up 5th avenue, 
lights eating the folk music with forks,
all flickering red & white,
an ambulance driving up the side
of a skyscraper. i have to admit
to you now that i didn't know 
what the parade was for but i should
have. i should have known. 
of all your accolades i want
to thank you most for saving George Washington
in the battle of brandywine.
i bet there's still canons left in the dirt 
somewhere outside philadelphia,
the horses of your ghost calvary 
still searching for their knees.
i found one of their bones in bryant park
& i mistook it for a chestnut &
ate it. we meandered about a room where
every painting was of George & somewhere
a portrait artist is still telling
him to remain still. he crosses
his arms & thinks of you. we all
need a father, don't we? 
what did yours think of you?
a boy of revolutions, first in
poland & then in the states. 
will you, then, casimir pulaski
come back? i think we might need you.
i no longer believe in justice or
all the other words they brand into
the thighs of big buildings. 
maybe this is justice in someone
else's mouth. wooden teeth, obelisk.
ride a horse & tether it to my porch.
i'll let you in. i'm not usually
one to put my trust in dead white men
but there's something about you,
all the George Washingtons watching
your movements from their frames, 
their jaws locked,
their eyes gone dull. will you tell
us what to do? i hope it will
involve shovels to uproot
the old cannons. teach me how
to load a musket. i have to
warn you that the cops flanking your
parade had black semi automatics--
we, of course, have no chance.
tell me, have you ever thought 
you were going to die? i have,
but it's silly, it's all in my head;
the bayonets & the smoking earth.
i brushed up against so many bodies
in the city. maybe maybe one of 
the was you. can i call you 
uncle? a relic too my relatives 
who also dropped out of the priesthood.
what made you leave? was it god?
i can understand that. i think
that maybe god is red & white,
but certainly not blue. 
blue is too easy a color. 
it's not even a sky.

automobile

i wanted to open the hood of my car
to investigate the thrashing
sounds that seem to occur at 
every stoplight. like a smashed-wing 
pigeon of a rabbit without a leg.
sometimes a chirp, sometimes just
wincing. i wrestled with
the hood, clutching a dull spreading knife 
to try & pry it open. does anyone
have a father i can borrow? 
i tried to imagine what men do 
with the engine once the hood is popped.
leaning in, breathing deep the fumes,
hands over warm metal. the car,
asleep & unaware of being caressed.
all the young men gathered around
the skull, an opportunity to 
be tactile animals. something to be
unscrewed. something to be tightened.
finally i managed to prop up
the hood only to find nothing
at all inside. a great big empty 
cavity. i ran a finger along the bottom,
thin layer of black gunk.
the smell of gasoline or oil.
wiping the black off on my thigh
i marked a line from my pelvis 
to my knee, a piston. an axle in me. 
i contemplate crawling inside
despite the residue. i imagine 
all the fathers congregating around 
the car, their fingers made of tools,
chewing pages out of auto manuals,
unlatching the car's face just
to find a small man laying there.
would they kill me & claim
gay-panic? like a vampire nailed 
into his coffin or would they 
climb in too? let's make an engine.
i give in, i get inside, i shut the lid.
i feel like a sliver of canned peach 
or maybe a colony of sweet peas. 
i wish you were with me, kissing me,
pressing me harder against the hot 
metal carcass. feeling along the edges, 
i do find one thing;
a map of the whole country, only written
on a series of brown paper napkins.
i stuff them in my pocket before 
getting out. i was too scared of 
men finding me there. i tape the map
to the ceiling in the car.
when i come pick you up i won't
tell you about the engine, 
i'll tell you i made this map for us.

i mistook a thump in the basement
for the washing machine on its 
last spin cycle. iPhone flashlight out,
i crept down the wooden stairs 
to find St. Gabriel & St. Michael
sitting on the cool cement floor.
they were so bright, all over, 
skin made of neon, only,
less harsh & more like honey.
their hands were full of feathers,
move dropping from their wings.
michael, with their arms cradling
feathers, a dying child,
i brought them trash bags to
clean the plumage up & 
glasses of water because i did not
know what angels drink.
they poured the water on each 
other, kissed necks,
caressed faces. came around me,
pressed lips to my forehead.
bodies the texture of stone.
i invited them upstairs but they
declined, scared of walking earth
where god could see them.
it should be a well-known fact
that all angles are queer & 
god was fed up with it. 
with all the women leaving
there's only so much a man
can take. 
now each day when i wake up
& when i go to bed 
i bring them two glasses
of water. they crawl into
the washing machine & pray