applesauce 

we saw a rat crawling below,
between the subway tracks &
you said "look at him
he's not ashamed."
thick coarse brown fur
& glossy black eyes, 
he scurried off into
the darkness where 
the trains make their 
mischief. 

i want to be fed to
the rat, go along
with him & walk 
the hot underbelly
of the city.

help me come apart 
as gently. i want 
to be a palm of apple sauce
for the rat to eat
our of your hand.
soft & topped with cinnamon
so he won't forget me
while he walks.

dipping plastic spoon
in a little cup, a little
girl sits under the city,
eating apple sauce &
talking to the rats.
she got lost on our preschool
trip & now she lives there.

the rat, with me inside,
returns to her & 
she speaks the language
the trains do, clicking her 
tongue to mimic the tracks.

she's me, six-years-old
& feeding the rat her
apple sauce & telling
him a story about
darkness. she lays down
when the train comes
& it passes over
us like the angel of death.

the rat is kind
& take me back to 
the platform where you
have been worried. 

skin still moist,
freckles made of cinnamon,
i get my body back 
together & sit on the bench.

i can't tell you about
her, not yet. she had white
eyes & malleable skin.
she was not me 
but also was. 

lavender disaster 
after Andy Warhol

elect-trick me daddy &
i'll repeat my name twelve times
across a plane. 
your color's 
a cliche you say but i'm dying
for some release, a chess board 
a dollar bill. 
bow my tongue,
it's a present. they do needles
know you know? fill a vein 
with euthanasia; there's
youth in asia & i'm here
your purple-paralytic
prize & prop me up. how cruel
is that? to go without 
a show or some god damn 
repetition? the o-c-d in me
loves the symmetry.
if you're going to use
capital punishment it ought 
to be even, saved for
the really mauve people.
the chair sit overs & over
again in my living room,
gone lavender with waiting.
it's angry color, really, i think.
the straps hold me upright
& the electrodes tongue
at my brain through my ears.
we're made of shocks & 
standing at a distance
from things we don't like.
i watch myself 
get into the chair 
eighteen times, one for
every year i was a girl.
yes, kill her off.
what better way to go?
a lavender disaster 
just like me.
every hair stands on end,
the body crashes 
onto plasma globe. 
hurt me, yes hurt me. 
i want the tingle & the burn,
the flesh gone poultry white
& pork peeling.
becoming wall paper, 
i climb across 
the electric chairs,
find one that suits me 
& the light switch 
is the lever. 
come home
come home 
come home. 

hip bone 

they took photographs 
of my bones with a polaroid camera,
the doctor took a moment
waving the picture so that 
it would develop. 
caution radiation.
he showed the image to me:
a view of a glacier melting.
we watched, white rock cracking,
dropping bone 
into the black ocean 
are my bones
made of ice? 
i asked even though
i already knew they were.

i don't want to
know how much time i have left,
that is an answer only for salt.

the process of melting
involves pocket knives 
stuck in thighs &
elegies to each fragment.
will you stay with me
as a witness?
 
the sea levels rise 
in me & i spit out salt
water on the street
with bits of ice or teeth.

at home you keep me company
& we look up projection images 
of Long Island when the whole
planet is 4 degrees warmer.

we point to all the streets
that will be underwater,
but, at least our street
will still be safe, 
possibly a waterfront.

we'll put our fishing poles
out the windows & catch
ice burgs.

now, i pin the photograph
above my desk &
there's only an image
of a bone:
black background.

the ear of a monster 
a broken sculpture
a mound of salt.

sea water comes
into our bedroom, soaking
the wood floor. you're
asleep so i don't tell you,

i wade in deeper,
amble down the street,
water up to my waist.
   

your order

every friday night 
someone rings our doorbell 
& leaves a white takeout box:
the little metal handle poised up
the red writing on the sides
may or may not say something
in another language.

neither of us order takeout
but it comes anyway & 
the box always feels heavy 
but when we open it 
in the kitchen there's
never been anything inside.

we're don't feel disappointed 
because we're used to it,
in fact the emptiness
is thrilling, like 
the empty Easter tomb.

lining the takeout boxes
on the book shelf, we check 
on them from time to time 
to see if anything has
arrived in them.

occasionally they 
will all smell like rice
or sweet & sour chicken
or lo mein so 
i go to check on them

& i feel tempted 
to climb into, to sit
all night in the clean
white vacant box.

maybe it would make me
into fried rice; eyes
falling out as green peas
& limbs spoonfuls of grain.

& maybe you would smell
food & come out to find
one of the takeout boxes full,
eager you'd plate me & eat.

when they opened jesus's
empty tomb i wonder if
rice poured out, warm soft
white rice.

i think the man with
the empty takeout boxes
is god, who else would it be?
who plays with uninhabited 
spaces like him?

it takes will to not crawl
inside one. i think about it
just about every night.

i think about your fork 
in my fried egg, your spoon
scraping the last bits
from the walls of 
the takeout box.

doors

they stole the doors
off my car while i was sleeping.

i walked all over town
that day trying to see
where someone might 
have taken them, peering
down driveways 
& alleyways.

i posted pictures
of the doors of my car
on the telephone poles.
my signs read IF FOUND
PLEASE CALL [inset 
my number here].

there are so many
uses for a car doors;
wings, planes, plates.

i entertain the thought
that they could have left
on their own, joined
a flock of car doors
headed south for the winter.

i wouldn't blame them,
it's cold here. 

whenever i hear geese 
i rush to the window 
in case it's them.

(i don't often hear geese
but i do hear airplanes,
none of which are the doors
of the car).

driving is an encounter
with wind now without the doors.

i try to be thankful 
for it. doors off:
i pretend i'm flying 
to Buenos Aires 
(or some other
beautiful place i've only 
encountered in 
Spanish textbook photos).

at least there's nothing
to lock anymore. my car

lays open in the parking lot
& i tell her to not be afraid.

the wind moves through her
& the seat belt clinks
against the door frame.

peeling

in the winter, prickly pears 
grow all over my body, mistaking
me for a cactus. they're plump
& full of purple-maroon juice.
bumpy & smooth, their surfaces
are like the bodies of some unknown fish.
i pluck them off when i come home
but they re-grow more vigorously.
fruit is most most wild at night.
contagious, they
sprout all over the house. 
they love desserts & deserts. 
the fruit crawling
up the archways of doors
& up the bed posts. 
they assemble to form a chandelier 
hanging from
the ceiling of the living room. 
they don't get you though, 
they leave you alone. 
is it because you're
not like a cactus? 
the heater makes the house 
into a dry yellow cake
& the skin on my finger nails frays 
like sand, but that's not
why this is a desert. 
it's a dessert because
the sand has always been sugar,
brown rich richer. 
you tell me again 
about the Sonoran desert
as i work, picking the pears, 
you talk about the alien creatures
that scurry across it 
& they come into my living room, 
sidewinders & javelinas,
eating prickly pears off
the coffee table.
i remove the fruit   
from my body as i stand
at the sink, peeling 
the purple-green skin off 
each one, digging my fingers
into the grainy flesh inside.
it hurts my own muscles, 
but only vaguely, 
& i eat the insides 
of each fruit. 
this is routine now
as december walks into
the house &  lays on 
the welcome mat, 
a fallen cactus.
i look down & the skin 
on my legs is bumpy & 
purple-green. i dig in
with my nails, peeling it off gentle 
so as to keep 
the sweet purple flesh
intact. it tastes like
watermelon & gravel.
we share it & wash
off our bloody mouths
in the sink, 
peel off the cactus
skin on the bed
& crawl inside
to become sand
or sugar.

alphabetizing the spices 

i took all of the spices out 
of the wrack, lined them up on
all the counters by the stove.

the house was empty & i asked
each noise in the walls
if it was a ghost & if it 
wanted to keep my company tonight.

the spices with their different
colored heads; red, green, black.
with their different heights;
the shortest like children,
i stacked them on 
each other's shoulders &

that's when they started speaking
all at once, all vying for
my attention. their voices
were muffled, coming 
from the inside of each container.

i opened first the anise
& told it to hush. it told 
me one of the stories my mother
used to tell about baking
cookies with her mother, it
spoke fast & staccato
& i put the lid back on,
giving it a place on 
the spice wrack.

the next i opened cardamom 
& cumin, both who were 
just humming different hymns;
Ave Maria & Kum ba ya.
i humored them, of course,
singing along aimlessly.

they grew impatient,
louder now, all of them. 
i told them i would talk to 
all of them, that i would
try & listen.

they threw their head
on the floor in protest,
the plastic plunking 
against tile.

that was when i realized
that i also have a head
& i could throw mine off
as well.

the three jars of turmeric
(which i can't even think
of a recipe to use that in)
spoke only in words
that people have yelled
at me from car windows.

i wondered how something
so orange could know 
what the word dyke means
& i told them to stop,
that i wouldn't keep
them if they talked to 
like that. 

pouring the spice
out in the sink they
only got louder & now 
it was in the bones of
the house.

i tipped myself too,
i had to know what spice
would come out & i dropped
apart as cinnamon sticks,
each a bone leaving my body,
i bled paprika & pulled
bay leaves from under
my tongue & when i did

the spices stopped talking.
i put in headphones &
finished alphabetizing them,
ending with tarragon. 

173 Sea Turtles

scientists hauled the first
body off the beach. a stone 
with ideas becomes sea turtle;

all covered in cold green weed & muck,
eyes half-open. 

do fossils die?

they removed 
173 sea turtles 
from the shores of Cape Cod,
death makes souvenirs,
hangs necklaces from
their mouths.

i read about them
in bed from the quiet 
light of my phone &
i want to be one of them,
one of the dead sea turtles.

i put on slippers
& drove all the way to 
Cape Cod to stare at
the dark blood water.

the waves were angry & 
begging & i sat in the sand
& tried to reason with
the ocean.

i told the Atlantic 
that it wasn't her fault,
that she had done all she could.
the tide limped back &
the water frothed like meringue.

they say the sea turtles
froze to death, they can't
usually swim so far north,
but the water had been warmer
in the summer. they were
looking for food.

i want to know what they 
thought about as they froze,
i would think about the texture
of my body in the water,

the poetry i should
have written if i had had hands
the songs that existed only
in my body,
my eyes becoming 
pearl necklace beads. 

what did they regret?
was it slow?
did they hope to come
back as another animal?

i hope to come back
as a sea turtle.

first aide on a shadow

when i came back to my apartment 
all the shadows were awry.

some of them were wrong colors,
like the bookcases that glowed
hot crimson on the floor &
the ceiling fan bleeding mauve.

i turned to look at my own
on the hardwood floor & found
it had come apart into thousands
of pieces, fragments 
across the floor like a dropped plate.

this had never happened
to me before. i wanted to call
my mom to ask what to do about
wounded shadows but i didn't
want her to think i had done
something wrong to bring 
this upon them.

i google searched
first aide on shadows
& found unhelpful Youtube
tutorials of people 
getting on all fours & colors
all the shadows in 
with sharpie marker.

the shadow of the ceiling fan
was kaleidoscope colors 
so i shifted me hands through it,
the texture of a bowl of grapes.

caressing gently the darkness
started to come back into
the shadow, so i continued,
i whispered to it

you're doing so well,
you're a wonderful shadow
& i love you.

& it returned back to normal.
i wanted to tell someone 
that i was going to fix everything
but i was too embarrassed
to have let my shadows so 
sick in the first place.

as night fell i stepped out onto 
the porch to stand all in shadow,
my own still fractured all over.

kneeling down, i touched it
with two fingers & apologized 
for not helping it sooner.
i told it that i had been busy. 

each piece felt like slices
of a cantaloupe or a melon,
sweet & wet, i walked
back inside to re-assemble 
my shadow by 
the kitchen light.  

someone else's christmas ornaments

yesterday i woke up knowing
that i needed a christmas tree
for my apartment. i saw several
cars kidnapping trees, firs all tied
up on their roofs. i drove around
for hours & couldn't find one.
i peered around the subway tracks
& in between buildings, hoping
to spot one hunched over &
munching on candy canes. 
i gave up & went to 
the thrift store; the gallery 
of past christmases.
piles of old lights rubber-banded
together & a whole colony 
of wreaths, stacked like 
the coils of great evergreen snake.
in the farthest corner i found
a fake tree in a cardboard box
& a rusted sideways star,
they hummed a mixture of 
god rest ye merry gentlemen &
deck the halls. 
in one aisle they had ziploc-bagged
dozens of ornaments,
i shifted through them like 
discount fruit, pinched & feeling
their surfaces. there were trains 
& santas & plastic orbs of all sizes.
in the bag i picked there was
on that read "to the best dad
in the world, love evan."
i picked it because it made 
me feel less lonely. 
in my living room i laid 
out my assortment. i thought
to myself how much i would
have liked the tree to have
been a real one-- my father
drilling a hole in the trunk 
for the three stand, my brother
hanging all the red ornaments first.
i pretended to be him, pulling
the tinsel off a maroon bell 
to hang when the door swung open.
all the families had found my 
house; grandparents & mothers & moms
& dads & sisters & sister & sisters
& cousins & nieces & uncles & brothers.
i said i was sorry for taking
their decorations & they congratulated 
me, opening up the boxes to help.
one of them brought a record player
like my dad's & played 
sleigh ride over & over as we worked.
they talked among each other, 
about the past year & what the children
had done in school & what they
wanted santa to bring them.
when they looked at me
they smiled, just nodding. 
when we were all done they began embracing, 
saying their goodbyes to their family members,
i had hoped one might
come over to hold me, but none
of them thought to. plugging
the tree in, it lit up confetti
colored, i hummed silent night 
& coiled up on the couch 
with a book.