manhood

on the wall of the museum of natural
history Teddy Roosevelt etched his 
words on Manhood. He came at night,
as all dead presidents do, propped
a ladder up against the wall & smacked
each capital letter into stone. i held
the ladder steady while he worked.
he read aloud

all daring & courage
all iron & endurance of misfortune 
make for a finer & nobler type of
manhood. 

i wanted to ask him what he thinks
of a man like me, but he was busy
& my father has already told me
at some point. in the mirror

i try to see if any of my bones
have gone iron yet, if the rust
will take action against me,

counting the scars on my forearms,
the wings of dead birds, the broken
strings of an electric guitar
propped up against the wall in 
the attic that my father no longer

plays. inspection by the tiger;
the yellow eyes & brows bent
from other creatures rib cages.

a man of the ching dynasty.

i dress in his wife's clothing 
& hide beneath & old song about 
girls that i am not.  

on the bench before his image 
i knew for certain that there
will always be men who will
not believe me

when i tell them about 
the garage door, about kicking
a soccer ball into it to 
make craters.

i let go of the ladder,
what is manhood but apprehension 
to be in the thick of things

Only those are fit to live
who do not fear to die

says Roosevelt to the apatosaurus 
& allosaurus bones, both still
as iron, both noble men.

there i am again. by chest bond
with iron, my vertebrae angry
with iron, the lion oh tiger

stepping out of the bamboo brush
painting to test me, paw to 
my chest, a crater, a landing

give me more corners, more
harsh boundaries.

give me the iron from my father's
rocking chair & the aluminum 
of his beer cans.

he put his foot on my
head, do you buckle inward like
this?

i tell our president that the
most consistent definition
of manhood i know is the ability
to swallow yourself so far.

i crush the cans into the walls
of the old museum, smell of
hops & highway,

an exhibit of our manhood.

the tiger will want something
in return.

the needles will have mouths
to not kiss with.

what left of the iron?

a finer & nobler kind of man.

i don't feel like i have to write
this poem because you saw it jotted 
on my notepad.

the poem happened
three decades ago but,

for the record, you were the one
who said to marry you tomorrow

& i would but we don't
have any china/

you haven't seen me in december  

have i told
you that you take the anonymity 
out of me? 

did you know that sandpipers 
collect stones to give
their partners,
cull the shoreline for the right one?

you see the stones in my pockets--
in my backpack, on my desk.

the bottom of the sink
& in the parking lot where 
god's been replaced with a red neon sign. 

not all stones can be poems,
but the best ones are.

i pulled up a map of
Tacoma Washington on google earth 
to try & remember 

where the stones in the bowl
on your counter are from.

dropped a pin & said it's where
we'll land when the hand rooting 
through the bowl of clouds picks us up.

will you set me down in a city 
neither of us can remember the name of?

will you write an address on your
forearm? 

will you cull the shore
with me?

teach the pacific ocean our names?

the mother of wands 

pruning sheer under pillow,
i cut the crab grass from around AM.
the snake in the sink, faucet
drip over forehead. two nights
ago we witnessed the moon 
in the sun room window. how she
took up all the space she could.
the yellow room with the green chairs 
& the muscle memory of passing by,
the piano neither of us play.
in the bedrooms i pass you a handsaw 
& we finally take apart the bunk beds,
it's been at least ten years coming,
the snake in the closet, the moon
drying with the other dishes.
bowls of vanilla bean ice cream. 
you moved away to college yesterday 
& i didn't call you. i found the elk
antlers & super glued them
to my skull. will this hold?
i'm asking you because you were
the one i would wake up in the middle
of the night when we were younger
when the dark of the room became too alive,
shaking your shoulder, your eyes: two 
christmas lights. you'd roll over
& let me have the top bunk. let's
take it down, mattress on floor,
in the sink. wet with apricot nectar.
in the bath tub where
the lady moth becomes two playing cards,
queen of spade & heart. completion 
of a cycle, i know you believe in
god & relinquish all need for a mother.
i'm still taking off lipstick 
from the first day i moved into a dorm 
& told that window who i was. did
you sleep well? i hope you didn't.
will the mass be in portuguese this week?
will the bicycle tires remember your name?
tell me, brother, what ever was 
the point of fathers anyway?
what use for a past/present/future
when they all sleep in the same bed
that smells like petrichor?
will you promise me? if you don't
i'll roll the eggs down the staircase,
back to the kitchen where the snake
is still in the sink. where there
are apples rotting in the fruit bowl
& flies like escaped obsidian 
pirouetting again. our father
sweating like a green beer bottle,
his bottle-caps on the floor.
mom un-doing a line of knitting,
taking the walls down. the storm
windows. the yellow & blue bowls.
don't miss it.
don't miss it.

for[XXXX]

for[our Apatosaurus bones]
for[shoulders that become tea cups]
for[the way home]
for[the wrong side of the street]
for[the clock at hempsted station]
for[espresso foam]
for[rain]
for[last night]
for[three days from now when
i love you somehow more]
for[a simplier kind of poem]
for[what is there left
after poetry but the body?]
for[last night]
for[a candle]
for[a gravel beach]
for[god/the whale]
for[the only thing
left to give you being the moon]
for[the moon's resistance
to cliche] 
for[my ex boyfriend's
key on my ring]
for[the hotel bed we didn't
make use of]
for[soap]
for[hair]
for[each one of your tapestries]
for[love love love love]
for[us]
for[mouth]
for[last night]

a sign of god is locked door.
for all that it's worth, i think he's
a man. we did portraits in 10th
grade & i made myself purple, just
my eye & the hem of my lips,
frayed jeans & a plaid hallway.
i take the mirror off the wall
& turn it over, she's there
on the other side, writing
in sharpie across her tongue-- waterproof. 
duck-feather angel, don't feed 
me bread. the keto diet
is a prophecy. let this box
show up on the door step. 
a pile of junk mail: bed, bath
& beyond coupons & the mortgage.
i am worth less than a glass
water bottle & you can't even drink
out of me. all things considered, 
i guess i could fake my death today
& uploading said documentation. 
at some point, it's a wastebasket full of 
gender neutral paper towels. brown
& coarse. the tree lays down,
sideways inside the dispenser.
pull me apart, wipe hands, what else?
it gets better it gets better
it gets better it gets better
it gets it gets it gets
how much thought have you
put into the body cut down the middle,
a scissors starting at the bottom
lip, only i don't have any scissors
so i sit on the tiles. the mirror
turns me over to find where
i wear old faces on quarters.
profile pose. abraham lincoln was
god & so by abstraction so is,
the penny. i dabble, tails-side up. 
sympathetic, digging between
paper towels. the decimal rests
between my breasts. 
oh ring me god. ring me.

hold your breath

orange & orange & orange
& orange-- each sconce: a fist
through the train window. hands
around the the throat, careful, 
the inevitable weight of water.
the fingers, a rat-belly city.
a handful of old hair to run
through like reed. we don't hold
our breath under the lincoln tunnel.
ears turn inside out, snail shells 
inverting, wool sock-- where will
you hide your tongues now? 
beneath the tracks a little girl
sits in the back seat of a blue
station wagon, swallowing her teeth.
they taste like blue gumballs.
instead, we breathe & the air has
rusted ivy. i tell you about 
the old subway system, the one
they built in the 1904, long
since sealed to the surface.
now it rests between stops, an ovary:
pockmarked & black graffiti.
the old clock telling stories
of schedule & blood. i remember the
squeal of rails-- the feet on tile.
how could they all have known
to arrive in the same body? 
i think of my body like this,
like a place to hold your breath 
between, like orange & orange & orange
& orange-- each light flickering 
behind your head, making halo,
making sirius & vega. what does the sun
think of these depths? has she 
relinquished all belief in 
caverns of flesh? given this
over to dark? 
alone in my bed again i feel a train
car hold their breath. i feel
the water above thrush maroon
& feather--each blood vessel a pigeon. 
each pigeon a stop to miss. C train,
collect vertebrae & jax. we don't
reach. i don't point to the old station
out the window & it wears
a cervix like a crown of thorns.
again she returns, too small to open.
a pocket knife for jaw-- slice through
lip & gum. you put your hand again
to the ceiling & down came the blood,
it was only a matter of time before
a necklace bead was devoured on the way in.
i sit in the sealed station.
collect the tampons & the tar. the rubble
& the ribbed condoms, hear the train 
run by on thin shore bird legs. we inhaled
like the air was a ball of orange.

my grey nail polish comes off

crouching down i dipped the brush
into overcast afternoon, drew 
paint across each fingernail & held
mannequin still at the dining room
table while i waited to see you.

& the front door laughed at me for
being romantic, making a fist 
or a doorknob 

i replied
let me have today

the grey, the seabirds came to 
fly across my thumb & my index finger
& i worried you would notice.

the 3rd day we knew each other when 
our teeth were already made of wine glasses 
& your hands touched me as one would
peel apart the lobes of an orange, on that day
the juice ran down the shingles of
the house, the woman on the sidewalk
took plastic bags for a voice.
you left & the seabirds followed you,
the plovers & the gulls.

i tell you another story about myself
& as i do the first edges start to
chip, my mother's cracked windshield,
the sky leaving pieces of herself
in my porch light.

i want to walk you so far
home that your front door is
only a rib cage.

a door knob is only a fist.

the chickadees that were once
all my freckles on the pavement outside
scattered with me & i wash the ceramic
bowl in the sink, more polish
coming off under the hot water,
clouds milky, i save them before
they go down the drain,
i find a jar to keep them in for you.

in the court room waiting
was when i noticed over two days 
most of my nails had come off,

that's 4(?) 5(?) days

tectonic body, oh what of
the ache of earth as she has
to contain us, oh, what
of the segments of the orange
& the first.

today is the 6th day 
that i've know you & only 5 of
my fingers have nail polish left 
on them. 

i harvest, the heaven free
of it's own color. cool grey,
where blue goes to sleep.

i go to sleep in the rind of
the orange, pull the trash 
bag around my body, in hale 
& speak plastic bags.

now the shorebirds 
will find somewhere else,

their foot prints in the driveway,
on my forearms & other excuses for
self harm.

where did you sleep last night?
in what color?

is this where the sand goes
to send her apologies, where

i go to ask if there
are bodies that deserve

each other? if the hands
scoop earth to fill something else,

the sun & the moon two vessels 
pouring the same 12oz of light

between each other. who rolls
the skulls of children in 

snow to give them skin? who
paints the pupils on 

in the last seconds before 
the butterflies are tamed

into eyelids?
this poem is to tell you

that eels are coming out
of the kitchen sink, coiling

in the yellow plastic 
cup your drank from.

to tell you i like the shower
water to come out dry & acidic.

cower & cut the cowl from 
the towel wrack, the shroud of turin. 

the bleach in the well. 
ankles for mason-jar lids,

i cut myself on your absence,
oh, metal pillow, 

chew, taste bed sheets.
aluminum heart beat.

the view out our hotel window

across the parking lot; wendies
red flushed cheeks. the gas station
put on white 6inch heels. the buildings
standing to amble home, the knots
in their neck, that's where they
hold the stress. i pushed 
myself from the window last night
& fell upwards into lightning's teeth, 
yoyo string body.
this is where my long hair went.
this is where you took off your braces
to make a bridge across staten island.
the glass, an artery, open/shut/open/
shut & the rain is a shower head,
steam becoming ghost over skin.
where the neon signs made tattoo.
looking out the window you hold me
& i build a cottage in between
the parking lot trees, their waists
aching in the asphalt. i plant
african violets & tell you a story 
about my mother. my mother is
a parking space. park in my lines,
white & parallel & the 6inch heel.
when we leave we will take it down, 
the cottage i mean, we will load
each burlap brick into the trunk 
& when we leave
the window will account to herself
the presence of our bodies, the humans
with the urge to fall without existing
as rain. on the drive here you read 
me two poems aloud & i saw the words
become six-legged & moth wing.
soft & dissolvable.
you held my hand at 75mph, as fast
as a window. i fall out again.
the other hotel, a hampton, turns
around to glare back at us. the cottage
a box of matches now. this is a certain
kind of home. i will leave an address
here with you, if nothing more,
postcards piled in a parking space.
taking off the 6inch heels &
hurling them. the spotlights ducked,
a subway wrapper teaches itself 
to violet fold. i plucked
it out for you & i'm pressing it
in between the sill & the glass.
can we open it?
no, it's sealed shut.
could have broke it with a 6inch
white heel, instead,
we lingered, pulled the blankets
from the beg & slept again
the cool glass, parallel,
petrichor prism. red girl
oh rain.

twin-size bed

rainfall beneath a pillow & elbow
& elbow & elbow. before we go to
bed i pull off the covers to look for arrows.
let's not hurt ourselves. 
i have slept the last
5 years in twin-sized beds, one arm
beneath the pillow & one arm down
by my side. that's just how is.
& 3 times sophomore year i shared
a bed with a boy who left the window
open in january-- we woke up ice sculptures
& now here's you. i fall luscious & un-asleep.
we wake up in our separate childhood
bedrooms where the rain pulls her fingers
through our hair & we smooth stone sleep. 
you have eyes like smooth stones, 
like pillowcases turned 
inside out. i want to crawl into
you like an attic, like a chandelier 
made of spoons. how cold do you 
like the world when you sleep?
do you know what i mean when i say
that i miss you & i'm holding you
right here? i wrote this poem 
first on the ceiling & now with
you sleeping a room away. i slept
next to a boy in high school & 
he had a king size bed that somehow
still felt a world too small, his skin
turning gritty like wet sand.
i didn't wash up on a shore,  i broke.
each ring you wear makes a planet 
when you sleep. i name them & forget.
to show you i'd have to have
waken you up, so i let you sleep.
the rain falls beneath the pillow,
i kiss your shoulder, your elbow,
an arrow sticking out of the box spring.
i sleep with a girl in a twin-size bed. 
are you rain?
are you rain? are you rain?