firefly souls & impending august

i promised myself not
to write this poem as
i sat outside last night & realized
the dwindling of the fireflies. 
counting three-- their dull light
bulbs-- filaments tired blazing--
the fires of humid late july night. 
there was no one else outside 
so i caught one to talk to-- 
i asked them why it was 
that fireflies have
bioluminescence. fear? escape? art?
did you invent Morris code
with your bodies? they refused 
a response so i searched an answer
on my phone, thinking
about how surreal it is to 
live in a searchable world. 
what mysteries are the firelfies
keeping from us when they fade
out each year. i needed
to tell someone so i told
you about how the fireflies 
are talking-- how they inhale
to control to the flickering of
their bodies. they have no lungs
but they bring in air using 
vesicles. i continue meandering--
pick another one up & inquire
if he'd want to teach me how
to breathe like that-- how to 
turn the glow on inside 
my chest-- i swallowed christmas
lights & tea candles to no effect.
they use their shining to find 
each other. i think about how
come august this most be especially
important, seeing as there's only
a few of them left. rousing at night,
voices hoarse from brilliance.
three fireflies telling june stories 
around the base of the dying oak 
street. they envy the moths whose
deaths are more dramatic at the hands
of the street lamps. i linger &
request to listen to their tales
as well. they don't mind. they want
to know how it is i find the rest of
my kind without relying on the 
gleam of a body & i have no answer
for them. before i go
back inside i stare at the apartment
building & imagine each little room
a dazzle-- are these my people?
the hallways was dark & the door
to the stairwell closed heavy.
is this august then? is this us? 
out the window i watch the whole
field turn bright-- the souls 
of all the summer's fireflies 
gathering to keep the rest company.
i pull the blinds shut-- breathe 
deep one last time-- ignite 
myself with the blue lights 
from the top drawer of my desk.

i've been carrying
around the red notebook
you bought me for my birthday 
last week. i can't bring 
myself to write in it, 
but that's usual for me.

in book stores i'm always drawn
to the shelves of leather bound
journals & pocket notepads. 
it's something about beautiful chaos.
i lack direction, turning page
after page of wordless poetry.

i want to bring you over & 
point to the empty lines saying
this is a sonnet about the softness
of your hands, about how in the end
everything turns out square like
a house i accidentally 
build us on a sleep walk. 
it has too many windows.

the shelves in the book store
would swell, more mammoth than 
the redwoods & 
we would lose our shadows in them.

i'd say 
this is a terza rima about your 
voice in the hall where we stopped
on our first date-- the mirrors 
inviting ghosts-- this time i 
ask to dance with you like 
candelabra's full of cold rain. 

we spill onto a page. 
occasionally i open the notebook
to find us both standing inside--
back to back-- writing
to each other in white ink.
turn around
i whisper, but they don't hear me. 

this is all to say that
i'm keeping the book empty to hold
a space for us somewhere someday.
the little ribbon bookmark,
a red drop of blood or rain
following between us. 

maybe a telephone line. 
maybe a strand of hair. 
maybe a blank like to write on.

narcissus 

the Fleetwood pond with the ducks
& the bull frogs is also the sum
of both my eyes; the algae grows over.
i go green & muck. i traverse the 
rocks along the edge where i blink
& find narcissus-- elbow deep
in the pond-- trying to search out
a reflection again. he weeps so 
i blink & he slides between the rocks--
the seed to a white flower that will
grow vain as the rest of them. 
on other days i've found narcissus,
washing himself-- cupping the warm 
water & pouring it over his face.
i warm him not to drink from
stagnant pools-- especially not
the pond in Fleetwood-- man maid
as it is-- with the bass replenished 
each year for the fishermen; one
thrashes & i feel it in my iris.
i tell narcissus that i don't 
think of him like everyone else does--
that i know that no one stares at
themself that long out of unrequited love.
i stand in the bathroom mirrors--
each of them another pond growing
algae to fall into-- fingers dipped
in surface. if the world goes green
i can at least forget this body behind. 
we want to love ourselves, we think
if maybe we hold on long enough 
the water will warp & give way to
someone neither of us had seen before.
i kiss his forehead-- move back his
long brown hair & tell him that 
my eyes grow algae out of self-defense.
the ducks plant their feathers in 
me like eyelashes-- the bullfrogs 
swallow too much & become stones. 
i hold his shoulders when he leans--
touching his lips to the water. i tell him
there are other days-- i pick a white
flower & tuck it behind his ear-- 
a narcissus flower, of course. they start
to bloom from the drain in the sink--
i pick them each morning & toss the in
the waste basket. what they don't mention
when they laugh about narcissus is that
it ends in suicide-- his will to
live lost somewhere in his own reflection--
i lived like that too-- leaning forward
& praying the ponds have no bottom.
to sink us & disappear out skeletons.
today we hold each other in the soft grass.
he shakes his head
am i so vain? am i so vain?
i press his forehead to mine. the water
ripples with game fish. we kiss until
there's nothing but white flowers
& algae so thick we can't see through.

911

& the voice said to call 911 
if it was a medical or mental health
emergency. i didn't know where it
was speaking from so i felt 
along the floor of my room for
microphones-- nothing. i needed
my glasses. i don't wear glasses. 
where the light switch used to be
there hung a telephone & i pressed 
the numbers-- each button turning
into a black beetle & scurrying away 
as the tones sounded. on the other
end god filed his nails & the sound
of it came through like static. 
no one on the line-- i said 
isn't there always someone there
when you call 911? 
& the voice came from everywhere
but the phone-- a deep hungry kind of
laugh. i think that we will god into
being & i lazy recently & he quit.
took a break & with his fabric scissors
he meandered down east main street 
snipping all the wires to me room.
i reach & there's another phone--
only with one is calling me.
hello hello this is 911
& the phone turns into a boa--
crawls down my throat & leaves
with my voice box which is also 
a pomegranate. no sound comes
out & the calls pour in from across
town-- begging for me to send someone.
when i finally set the phone on the
floor in desperate-- the receiver shook
& out came you-- with your soft
hair & your dial tone eyes-- crackling
in the blankness of the room.
what room? you take me in--
crossing my arms across my chest
before you lay me down, turning
the snake back into a wire where
it came from. before you go i 
ask if you could hold me & hang up
the phone so the electric murmur
in the background can go quiet.
you do & you ask me what the state of
my emergency is & i say 
nothing nothing nothing
talk of the temptations of 
mouths. i will call you 
again when you leave to know that
you arrived home alright to the
little box on the telephone pole. 
there you'll tuck your knees into
your chest to fix. the light switch
eats the telephones, as light
often has the habit of telling
us we're alright. it's not a good listener.
i take the rest of the night to 
braid cords-- your electric hair. 
sparks fly-- each heavy with
a word long ago spoken to god
before he drooped & became a boa
crawling on his belly between
light posts. i trust you. i do.
i suppose i would have to. 
the pillow rings when i put my
hear to it-- 
hello, 911?

quieter rainbows & the dull knife

in my drawer i have one knife with
a chipped tooth & a white blade.
i've used it for the last two years 
& sometimes at night it sleepwalks--
standing up on the counter, cutting
invisible cherry tomatoes in half 
in half in half. i have to pick it
up & tell it to go back to sleep. 

we were standing in the supermarket 
parking lot when i thought of the knife again,
saying how it might be useful for 
slicing the rainbows into bite-sized pieces.
they bent their backs across the sky, 
celestial acrobat with her hair down. 
i reach out to run my fingers through it.
silky, like dandelion tufts.

there were two rainbows, one quieter 
than the other. i imagine the louder 
one tastes more like cotton candy 
& less like honey dew.

we sat in the car a few minutes.
i kept the knife a secret because
i didn't want to you worrying about it
going senile & following me where ever i go.

rainbows kicking legs, dipping feet in
cloud. i feel like the muted one--
the one who trembles at the sight of 
knives-- the one who cups her
palms to drink the asphalt dry.

i invite her to come home with us
but she's too shy & she sees that
i'm carrying a knife. out of custom 
she plucked it from my hands to cut
off a morsel of herself.

i ask, is that why you look like a ghost?

she leaves the knife on the dash board.
you didn't notice. we were talking about
how to coax a bed post into taking root.

alone at night i leave my front door
a jar. i unwrap the sliver of rainbow
& take a bite-- hoping she'll feel 
my teeth & walk inside, leave her louder
sibling tucked behind the ear of the sun.
taste of dried cranberry & water. 
she picks up the knife-- cuts off another piece.

Jacob's well

last night i dreamed of whirl pools.
Jacob's Well aching, lodged in cypress creek's neck.
felt it going a few feet deeper. restless
as all Texas Hill County. chewing  our collection
imaginations-- craving, yearning for us.
i read about the thousands of passage ways,
the quiet birth of underwater caves, i could feel
each fear i had stretching the aquifer--
hard swallow. on the walk home i tested the
earth as i traversed-- wondering if 
Well's like that are contagious-- if by 
letting the thought into your mind that maybe
more might come. the whirlpools like blisters
wild on the back of a god laying
faced down as we step on her body. she goes
deeper. my mother becomes a throat to
fall into. at Jacob's Well the locals stand 
around in red swim trunks & bikinis &
there i am leaning on my car. i drove 26 hours
without stopping to get there but i can't,
for the life of me go in, the locals turn 
into fossils of trilobites & fern-- scurry
back to their places along the lips of
the opening. i think of the bottom of
my bathtub & how i never trusted it-- how
i ran my hand along the plastic surface again
& again. you must demand the ground beneath
you or it'll go cavernous on you. 
i swear i heard it laughing-- either that
or it was just the collective voices 
of all the bodies submerged-- skin to
stone-- the dull teeth of the water. 
finally i asked i the mouth would have me--
tongue gushing water. if she would 
want to make me a fossil as well. i remembered
the stories of dad digging in creeks with his
own father. i hoped that maybe he would 
uncover me-- set me in the wooden chest
next to the rose quartz. i waited for nightfall
when the world was done congregating at
the entrance & i could be alone
with the unfathomable drop. i love the
kind of darkness that water makes-- the kind
of mythology that it writes-- i conjured 
water beasts to eat myself. i stepped
in one foot at a time. water cool &
turning to milk. bones floating to surface,
i go under. 

you tell me that while you were in Montreal you 
all stopped in the biggest cemetery in Canada--
Notre Dame des Neiges: Our Lady of the Snow. 

tell me, does it always snow there, just within
the gates? the ghost of a women with hair made
of stone feet & frost bite come too late. 

i am a person of thresholds & one of those 
is your hands. let's make moths of ourselves 
& give in to acres-- to the archways built
for the dead to feel a sense of purpose again.

what business does a city have growing around
a mountain? like Mount Royal i laid
myself here in your hair-- collecting 
your shop lights & inquiring where they
each came from. i want to know
what the cobble stones are like when
they come apart because we were all up too late.

i want to know 
if we can stop here.

if you'll read the names off the tombstones
to me, the names in French that i can't pronounce.
they wake up-- brush the snow off our shoulders.

our lady is opening another grave with her thumb--

did you find La Pietà Mausoleum?
Laid out before a fountain filled with glass,
collecting reflections to hang in the parlor.
Michelangelo's twin statue: mary with 
the limp body of god across her thighs.

did you ever rest your head on your mother's lap
like this? i did & i asked her to pet my hair--
i melted-- became translucent; dissolved
into the the creases of the sofa.

we don't touch like that anymore.

you get used to the glass in the bath water

tell me, love, will you notice the snow fall-- 
the shovels are to dig us out-- 

tombstones tall as redwoods.

do you ever wake up with moss
on your elbows-- shake the tombstones off
like toadstools. 

our lady, carrying dead seeds in
her pockets-- breathing ice on them
to keep them from telling secrets. 

the first time it snows when you
love someone is irrevocable.

i wanted to be there with you. 

to lock the gate, 
even if only for an afternoon.

after

someone says, again, that the smell 
after rain has a name.
we step careful beneath 
the tree branches. post downpour,
the soil opens its mouth to breathe
mist on the glass; one great big
tongue ululating under flip flops.
the word is petricor & i think that
it sounds too metallic-- like it
should describe the distance between
wind chimes or a sound that tin foil 
makes when you roll it our on
the cookie sheet-- i can't feel that
softness. i say that the smell reminds
me of the mellow under bellies of toads--
their pebbly skin. i'm eight again
in the porch lights as i cup one
in my hands-- his tiny pronged
foot wriggling-- pushing to leap out. 
i open my hands just a crack so that
the toad pushes his face out-- nostrils
blinking-- eyes full of metal. 
the word is too severe, no give to it,
petricor sounds like petrified--
like stunned & still. the moments
after are nothing like that:
the twilight of water where the sea monsters 
poke their heads out from gutters--
faces speckled with condensation--
the loch ness monster peering from
a pile of a damp leaves, great whites
thrashing cracks in the asphalt.
on the drive home i kept the windows
down so that the smell washed over me.
the word repeated itself in me--
like a perpetual fall down a well
growing deeper & deeper. i waited for 
the relief from impact but we all 
kept falling-- petricor petricor petricor
like a summing of a ghost who 
had exchanged it's name for legend.
petricor: petri meaning stone--
cor coming from greek myth, the fluid
flowing through the veins of the gods.
it all flowers through me & outside my
house in the open mouth-- i step
past a row of teeth. the toads scatter.
the lips are my own. they close. 
after tonight i will forget the
words we said & i will write a
story about how the rain made 
the edges of the road fall away. 
is the rain made of metal?

I.
un-thaw in the metal sink. spigot neck leaking
as mom turned the knob. cool water over
the black-plastic tray of shrimp from weis.
we aisle-lingered while mom compared prices in
the white light of the store. 
dad traced his finger up the back of the pawn & said
this is where they remove the intestines from
a loose sweater-cuff string-- the body pulls 
apart. bowed-head pink, mouths sauce grinning.  
i knew nothing of their legs. they were picked off 
as well, scurrying free in the dumpsters-- 
so desperate for salt water that they knocked over 
shakers on the kitchen table. no one noticed.
we ate standing up. 

II.
when i tell boys i'm vegetarian their fingers
turn to cocktail shrimp-- thumb on either
side of my mouth, prying open. he'll find
my jaws full of shrimp legs instead of teeth. 
taken back, pulling them out & tossing them
in the open trash can. what a waste of scurrying.
at least the shrimp are low calorie. he said
if you're vegetarian there's so much we can't
eat together
when i finally bled, tooth-brushing in
the bathroom, i tasted ketchup & horseradish,
spit into the sink. will you hold back
my hair? i used to think that cocktail shrimp 
were raw until i peered in & saw a bin of 
them gone stone grey-- cold granite flesh.
he traced his finger up my back.

painted stones

i've lied so still lately that 
god keeps mistaking me for a smooth stone.
she comes down to paint my
back with the prickly dollar-store 
brushes. i flinch, but i let her.
you get used to the texture of paint.
i want to ask her to paint me blue
or green. we all know she's a tall
woman with brown eyes but i wasn't
expecting her in the broad daylight.
encounters with god are imagined to 
be more dramatic, stage lighting &
the full moon blaring in distance, 
but, there she came around the back of the house
with a sweating pitcher of unsweetened
iced tea-- asking if i wanted mine
with lemon. yes, of course, god
is even welcoming to a stone. you tell me 
that people are hiding the painted
rocks all over the valley. some of
the stones have sayings like 
"smile today" or 
"you're worth something."
you tell me that you planted them 
all along the trail on 
the hike up Glen Onoko falls but by
the time you hiked back
down people had already picked them up.
i go there myself, in god's pocket--
warm against her thigh. she keeps
running her finger across my forehead.
she realized by now that i was a human 
but she let me pretend now
that we'd gotten so far. she took 
me out & nestled me between a patch
of moss & the knotty roots of 
an adolescent oak tree. 
i hoped that someone would pick 
me up quickly, like the painted
stones to planted up the mountain.
i thought you would be confused 
if i asked if you'd checked if
any of those turned out to be people.
i waited until dusk when the trail 
was speckled only with the foot
steps of animals. i have yet
to determine if a stone should pray,
so i stood up-- paint chipping off.
god was still there, of course.
she's patient for revelations.
calm-like, she came up the path 
with her brush ready, asking if
i wanted to be painted again.
we go home. this time i walk &
we pick up a pink stone with a butterfly
sticker & a red stone that resembled 
a great blood vessel. she turned them
over in the dim light of the kitchen
table-- takes out her reading glasses.
we remain quiet. in the morning
she was gone & i stood in the bath tub
while i peeled off the rest of
the paint.