chiffon cake

her hands were cold on
on my breasts. in a tall mirror
at the corner of the examining
room i glanced & saw another
angle of us. i thought 
this is another person &
how strange he is.

in the mirror i also saw 
saint Agatha sitting in 
the folding chair by the bed

& when the doctor exited 
she came over to also 
feel my chest.

her own breasts torn off
with hot pincers by 
a flock of unknowably 
angry men

she carried them with
her on a golden plate:
two chiffon cakes;
beautiful & un maimed.

as she touches me she tells
me that she understands,
that making a body feel alive 
is a process

we each eat one of her
breasts, mine tasted like 
strawberry angel food &
she said that hers tasted 
like peach nectar,
but also that they're 
always different,
eat day another confection.

wiping crumbs off on our
thighs we trade stories 
about our chests & about
men taking handfuls of them--

she asks if we can lay down 
together on the examining table
& presses me into it.

the crinkle of wax paper
made me feel like an orb
of hard candy; butterscotch maybe.
her tongue dripping across my neck,
taking handfuls of me like cake.

i whisper to her about 
how sorry i am that i want
to cut off my breasts & that
she had no say how they 
ripped off hers.

she kisses the apology out of me
& leave before the surgeon comes back. 

oh to know another mutilated body. 

we love george washington 

we love george washington,
his skull growing cherry tress
from each tooth's nest.
so so many, all of him,
all the george washingtons
across the country, portrait 
neck up, portrait tall,
portrait face, portrait with mary,
cannon bloom & crossing the delaware;
the water: viper cold & stinging.

your family loves george washington
& so does mine & so does everyone's.
what's not to love about fathers?
leaving offerings: bowls of bayonets
& gun powder & folded federalist papers

all george washingtons came down 
from their frames tonnight, 
statues blinking & stretching their ankles,
testing their bodies. i notice, so 
i follow them, all of them
gathering in the backyard, why
my backyard? they won't all fit.

in 7th grade my teacher said 
george washington wasn't a good looking man,
he said that his face was scared & he 
was gangly & too tall. 

the george washingtons compliment 
each other, they hold arms up, 
touch chins; they inspect. they tell 
the same war stories we love 
love love george washington.

because of the crowding
i march them to the bridge with 
their name. they ask why there's 
nets on the sides & i explain 
the impulse to jump. before i could
finish one had already gone,

arms out like a goose, falling
heavy & without a sound. all the cars
on the two levels of the bridge
still rushing in & out, we love
george washington we love him 

but they kept dropping, kissing
each other goodbye, i regretted
showing them, i told them to stop,
to stay, i said 
george washington we all love
you, we love love love you
the impact in the water inaudible 
over tires & car horns

the last one was half my size &
he lingered, pacing for a moment,
a smaller likeness. i told him
that my father's favorite president
is george washington.
he wept, the largeness of it
all was too much, i didn't try 
to stop him.

he sent back the scars
across her face like slugs--
like the V-shapes of birds
falling into a direction. 

we take ball point pen & number them;
a catalog. 

i show her mine on
my forearms & she asks 
why i hurt myself 
so many times.
i tell her:
a catalog. 

in the backyard 
she shows me how she
used to arrange
the forest stones
into crosses

she says 
i don't know now what 
to make them into

so we scatter them,
perch on top,
feel deliciously small.

i admit to using her
name at confirmation &
all the oils spill in
the kitchen, the olive 
& the canola & the vegetable--

slipping, we hold onto
each other

she asks 
what was it
like to love nature again
after you realized how
much your old self
haunts each scab of moss?

i don't answer.

we trace the pinkish
lines on each other's
bodies, her face, her arms 
my hips, my ankles, 

her shoulders, i stand on them 
to knock the holy cruets over

praying, 

un-anoint,
i want skin. 

i knew you first as the ghost sunflower.
yellow planted & forgot to water.
we leave zebra seeds; salt in the shower.
please, green hot love me; soil for altar.

yellow planted & forgot to water.
bucket, girl-garden, pour me june over. 
oh green hot love me; soil me, falter,
a clover & clover & a clover.

bucket, girl-garden, pour me june over. 
i love you solar-mouthed & corn husk dry 
a clover & clover & a clover.
you haunt me; orchid teeth & eye.

i love you solar-mouthed & corn husk dry 
we leave zebra seeds; salt in the shower.
i want you; orchid beak kiss & magpie.
i knew you first as the ghost sunflower.

10 minutes

clementine heart,
i think of myself
as the smallest chambers 
as we lay together
& i'm reminded about 
the limits of loving 
someone. about how 
no amount of closeness
can make one body.

we take trowels & 
dig into the box spring,
spitting the pale seeds
into the sheets. i have
three tonight, we count 
them aloud.

will there ever be 
an appropriate time
to tell someone else 
you're thinking about death?

about layering dirt
on top of yourself &
waiting to become 
a tree full of more 
orange-faced fruit.

when i eat citrus 
i dismantle. sprawl
all the lobes on the plate.

i crawl inside the tiniest one
an embryo, a chicken yolk.

inside, i wait ten minutes
before my alarm goes off.
in the nectar you kiss
me & i want to tell you

that i'm sorry that 
there's not enough hours.

an hour is a unit of
bodies. AM a holy hour where
we brush the dirt 
off our chests. 

the big shovel is in
the closet. i use it only
when you don't stay over.

i plant my watches.
i plant bone-white seeds.

i clementine myself,
sleeping bag & sugar. 

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.