Penn's woods

crossing the state line 
into Pennsylvania i spotted
William Penn. he was waving 
like a Miss America with his wrist.
i was surprised other cars
didn't see him,
what with the lush hair,
big black hat, & the frilly 
scarf thing men used to 
wear in the 1700s a cravat.
i pulled over out of respect
& he hopped right in,
folding his hands in his lap 
& toying with the radio.
How do you know what a radio is?
i asked & he didn't answer,
just kept turning knobs
& buttons. 
It's broken
i explained & he sunk
back in the seat, grumpily
rolling the window up & down.
i admitted to him
that i didn't really know
anything about him 
other than that Pennsylvania 
is named after him &
that he was a Quaker.
i say 
We learned about you 
in 3rd grade, i know we did.
At a roadside diner i help 
him out of the car.
i had been hoping he would
ask to get off somewhere
but he showed no 
indication of parting ways.
he finally spoke when 
we ordered food,
just a bowl of oatmeal.
i tell him that i like
oatmeal too but he doesn't listen.
i ordered a toasted bagel
with grape jelly.
i say 
You're not very good
company are you?
& he speaks with the voice
of young girl, answering
You didn't pick me
up for company.
he draws plans for
Philadelphia on the back
of a brown paper napkin.
he points to the streets,
just nodding at me.
finally he asks
What brings you home?
i shrug & take a sip
of coffee, looking
out the window at the cars
on the freeway. 
Family, it's a holiday, you know?
he nods. there's 
probably dozens of routes 
from New York to Pennsylvania
but every time my GPS
takes me a different way
so it feel like a different trip,
not much like coming home.
he takes my hands & says,
This is going to be 
a beautiful city.
as he points to the napkin.

i'm most scared of you when 
you say i don't love you.
it reminds me of my first boyfriend
who smelled like gasoline 
& the harder he loved me
the more i thought of fire.
i became fearful that 
the static from a blanket
or a sweater might send
us both up in flames.
i wore plastic clothing.
i ate cold food. 
up all night, i would 
scour the house for the source.
i knew all along that 
it was him
the gas
smell bloomed everywhere,
i felt it in the corridors
of my bones where marrow
is supposed to be.
& with a marker 
i would write 
i love you 
i love you
i love you
on the back of his
hand so that if he thought
of hitting me he might remember.
you are not 
a gasoline boy
but sometimes after 
a shower the house smells
like that.
while you're
asleep i find myself
searching for inflammable 
fabric to make myself
a body.

i called my parents to tell them i got home safe

the fridge was full of nothing
but garlic cloves & they fell out
onto the floor when i opened 
the door, hitting tile
& coming apart into cloves.

this much garlic could 
only be the result of well-kept
secrets & crying alone,
each clove a tear that found
flavor & grew skin.

i ask my family what has 
been going on while i've been
away & my mom rubs the dirt
off the potatoes & the celery rot,
as she works they 
also turn into garlic.

they ask me to taste &
i don't want to be rude 
so i do, i put a few cloves
into my mouth & hold
them under my tongue
until they turn to liquid
again & i swallow the saltwater.

we cut the garlic with
a butcher knife because
it's the only knife
we have left that's 
sharp enough.

the inside anatomy 
of garlic is curious, 
heart valves & finger bones
all joined together,
as i work the smell 
creep under my finger nails.

at home after dinner
i smell them & feel like
i should have asked more
about the garlic.

i open my own fridge 
& a few bunches fall out,
i put them back frantically
& open the cupboards 
to find more garlic inside.

i sit at the breakfast
table & start eating,
it's the only way to get 
rid of this much

as i chew i think of
my garlic bread phase
& the sauteed mushrooms
i made with just one 
tear drop, sizzling 
in the pan.

i finish & i check
the fridge to find just
one new bunch sitting
on the shelf.

swallowing it whole,
i feel the garlic make itself
into an organ, nestled 
somewhere in my ribs,
it's where homesickness
comes from & 
of course cravings 
for garlic bread.

spider farm

all day i pace the house
with a glass & a piece of paper, 
collecting the spiders from all 
the corners of the ceiling.

i ask them what they want
to be when they grow up
& some of them say assassins 
& some of them say bakers
& some of the say writers
(& i laughed about that one)

none of them said they 
wanted to be spools of thread
but i continued anyway
because i wanted to teach
them the lesson that
you don't always become
what you think you will,

i use thumb tacs through
their legs to secure
them to the wall like postcards.

in come the scientists;
it turns out i wasn't
the only one who has tried
to harvest spider silk.

one scientists,
Bon de Saint Hilaire
tries to sell me his
pair of gloves he wove
from spider thread in the 1700s, 
they are brittle, coming apart
as he puts them on & 

assures me that they're
the soft & revolutionary,
even as they come apart.

another, Paul Camboue,
assembles his contraption,
a special machine for pulling
the glossy silk
from the Golden Orb Weaver spider,

he tells me he doesn't have
any Golden Orb Weavers 
so i should get in,

& all of a sudden i'm
small & eight-legged, saddled
in the harness as 
the contraption whirls

who knew i had so much 
to be pulled out of me,
the thread comes out course 
& wool-like.
the scientists shake their
heads at the coarse texture
we can't use this

& as the scientists work
i apologize to the spiders
on the walls & i think
they forgive me.

when the scientists leave 
they take the yarn with them
& i pull the push pins 
out of the wall one by one,

spiders dropping to
the floor & hurrying away
on their crushed limbs

you can be whatever you want
i say

optometry

all the little boys 
want to be fighter pilots.

they take their green nets 
& stand in the yard 
waiting for a falcon 
or a hornet plane 
to fly over.

i watch them from 
the kitchen window
& i remind them that 
they will all need to
have 20/20 vision 
if they want to 
have any hope of flying
for the army.

the optometrists
arrive & set up
shop in the living room,

great metal
eye contraptions &
charts with letters
that get smaller & smaller
until they fade into 
abstraction, 

i ask what the point
of such tiny letters 
are & the optometrists 
speak in unison, they
say that the most
minute letters are actually
types of fighter planes.

i squint & see the osprey 
& the mustang-- their
propellers moving on the poster.

the optometrists 
all have only one eye
between them & it blinks
which lets me know 
i should bring the boys inside.

opening all the windows on 
the second floor, they crawl 
inside with their dirty knees
& plastic army men 
in their teeth.

they have no slept for
days, trying to catch just
one plane.

i ruffle their hair 
even though i really
want to pick them up
& tell them that they should
be boys for a little bit longer.

the boys punch each other
in line to get their eyes checked.
i think they do this out
of love for each other.

the optometrists tell
boy after boy that their 
vision isn't perfect but that
they could still maybe
be a commercial pilot.

this causes them to 
grow up instantly,
not teenage boys, but old boys,
smoking pipes in corduroys 

some of them don't take
it as well & they just disappear
into a pile of sand.

i sweep it onto the porch.

only one boy's vision was
good enough & the optometrists
took him with them,
they had brought a uniform
along, helmet & all 

i tried to ruffle his hair 
before they left but he hissed.

the old boys went back
out into the yard again
with their nets.

i wanted to ask them to
check my own vision
but i was too afraid. 

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.