skipping grace

you tell me about our cousin's wedding,
about the dance floor melting into bright
red mixed drinks & the church service
that didn't count for sunday mass (you were
rightfully disappointed). i didn't go,
i made a spectacle of not-going even though,
secretly, i really enjoy the notion of weddings.
i am a lover of a rituals especially when
they distance themselves from their meanings.
white is prone to staining like my pelvis &
i think i accidentally wrote my vows three
years ago on the walls of the park bathroom. 
what makes something a promise, then? i hope nothing. 
you complained that no one said grace & 
i asked if it comforted you to know that
your brother never says grace either. i said
that to be funny because i think i do say grace
because sometimes before i eat alone at the wooden
desk in my bedroom, sometimes i feel thankful for
small things like cherry tomatoes & zucchini
sliced into cubes. what counts as a prayer?
sometimes i take the 1/2 measuring cup
& fit the whole chapel inside. it's a sunday 
morning & i see you in a pew & i'm here 
at the altar of a paper plate where god
will also lay down & become a sliced banana. 
you asked me if you think any
of us will ever get married & i inform 
you that i've been planning the wedding
for years. it's in a tiny jewelry box 
that i'm currently keeping in the trunk
of my car (there's no place for it indoors).
inside there's no church but there is
wedding cake samples all lined up in a row--
wading waist-deep into frosting. i tell
you about my idea for sugar baptisms-- that
none of us Catholics love ourselves enough--
it's part of the deal, a healthy sense 
of shame. you ask if any of us are
going to fall in love like that--
& i don't tell you that i think i 
might have already. i don't tell you 
because you're eighteen-- when you're
older-- when you're older. inside me wedding
there's no rings but there are ivy plants
& the ivy plants grow in loops around
your fingers if you stay still long enough.
i might invite you-- i might. i haven't
made up my mind yet. no, this isn't
that cliche where i tell you that 
the wedding in the jewelry box is 
just for myself & i. i don't really know
what it's for yet. there's not all that
much space though. i don't even know
if i could fit, let alone the family.
i do want to promise you, for certain,
that we will be skipping grace. 
there's too much grace here anyway.

with a black eye 

on all fours, growing out from beneath 
our grandmother's porch, emerge 
the black-eyed susans in their pleated
skirts & pigtails. they bruise easily.
the play in the tall grass & stain 
their skin green as november. what's green
in november? make up something &
move on. i heard them laughing.
they woke me up again-- yellow is a laughing
color & so is orange unless it's
too dark, then it's a blood color. 
i followed their voices-- i had been hoping 
to find a fresh patch of the flower, 
but instead i found all the grass had become
dried & brown & dead. 
grey clouds screw sprinklers into
the spigot out on the other side of the house
& turn the knob until a steady stream comes
down. i'm looking for the susans with 
the black eyes. who did this to you?
whoever it is we can't just let them 
run around pounding their fists 
into the sockets of young girls
(even if they are just ghost flowers).
i baked chocolate chip cookies-- chewy
& with semi-sweet chips. i stacked them 
still warm on a plate & perched in
the shade hoping the girls would come
over to take one but they just multiply 
with each other-- tossing hopscotch stones--
planting their wounds in the soil to
make more of themselves. i asked my 
mom where babies come from & she said she'd
tell me when i was old enough to have my own.
it's only logical to assume that 
i came from beneath the porch-- a bruise
turned yellow in delight-- in rapture--
bruise turning black in it's on pure-joy.
why are none of them boys but me?
you know why. you can grab anyone's neck
& bouquet snap them-- up to my neck
in the vase. you should cut off the 
bottom of the stem, they'll last longer.
they come back every year no matter
how you treat them. i admire that persistence--
my grandmother never had a porch or
a house. i just made this now for her.
she's wearing a pleated skirt, young &
running in the tall grass. i wash her
knees off with the hose-- the green doesn't
come out. i wade into the lawn--
asking them to take me back-- 
dress me smaller 
& let the insects staircase me--
they run away-- they steal my bruises 
for their own collections.to plant in
night's damp earth when i
fall asleep & can't keep looking. 
all angels are yellow.

receipts

dear writer,
is it you then who is replacing all
my grocery receipts with poetry? 
i glanced down at the paper from 
a trip to buy almond milk & there
was a poem i had written in the 8th
grade about brownies. i sat in the front
seat of my car & pressed it open against 
my lap like a dried carnation.
a few weeks ago i stole the same flower
from the center piece at a reception &
i've watched every day as it bleeds
color back into the room-- a dull pink now.

dear writer,
where do you reside? in the mechanism 
of registers? in the earth under 
the supermarket aisles. is
there a pencil where you are?
i see you walking upside
down beneath the check out lanes--
you cover you ears to escape 
the monotony of ringing up groceries

dear writer,
i don't remember this one-- it's
about rib cages. i rolled it up & 
put the poem in the top
drawer of my desk at home-- that's
where i've been keeping them. 
i have the irrational fear that all
my food will turn into your poetry.

dear writer,
i bit an apple today & the flesh
underneath was all type-face
Georgia font. it tasted like a
back porch & a glass of unsweetened 
iced tea-- ice cubes clinking against
my teeth 

dear writer,
are you stealing the transactions--
keeping track of my honey crisp apples
& my unisex razors. do you eat enough?
is there someone there to brush
your hair (with it still being
so long).

dear writer,
the poems get older-- farther away
from me as i read them. i go to the 
grocery store nearly every day 
as a result of habit or possession. 
i eat a handful of grapes in
the produce aisle to tempt you--
i put my palm on the scanner
at the self check out in an  attempt
to touch you.

dear writer,
i liked the poem about the four seasons.
it's funny because i'd never write about
the four seasons now. you had a good take
on it. i hope you keep writing.

dear writer,
i'm hungry & i poured the milk
out into  the grass last night because
all i could taste was the bars of 
a bunk bed-- the springs aching--
the top bunk tired from standing,
knees locked, for so many nights 
overhead. i tried to swallow but 
the acidic burn of night light
was too much for me  

dear writer,
will you feed me again? i keep
hoping there will come a message--
a telegraph back to me. even as i 
write you i feel as though you 
are unbecoming-- loose beads
in a plastic tray. i don't want
to string you-- i just want to know
what you're doing here

dear writer,
no one else sees your poetry. there's
so many receipts now that i went to
dispose of some & my ghosts read aloud
the shopping lists-- the quinces &
apricots-- the baby carrots & cream cheese--
all food run dry.
i see you couched & barefoot, crunching
on the carrots, dipping them in 
the tub of hummus. oh writer
i am hungry

oh writer,
i washed the papers in the kitchen 
sink with the purple sponge. your words
were reluctant as always but the 
groceries came back. i sat on the end
of the bed & consumed a whole bag of
apples. do we taste like apples?

dear writer,
will you come back then, it's been too
long without your poetry. why should
we choose between the word & our tongues.
i lingered by the check out machine, 
receipt in hand-- reading aloud 
light ice cream
spring mix salad 
hoping i could summon you 
& we would reunite

dear writer,
build me a top bunk & sleep 
above me tonight

knitting needles 

metal clink, the same voice 
as claws on tile floor 
i watched you move 
the knitting needles like teeth--
fangs flashing in the thread bound book
of your mouth-- the notebook pages
where you jotted shopping lists &
kept track of stitches. 
i became obsessed with stealing
your needles for myself-- waiting
for your blue car to leave the driveway
in the morning. the canvas knitting
bag sat on the fourth chair at 
the breakfast bar-- the fourth 
sibling. i'd carefully rummage inside
to touched the different needles-- 
the shiny lavender ones & the thick
bamboo pair for the gaping stitches 
in the green & blue poncho. all this time
you were the quiet sorcerer-- keeping
an assortment of wands to yourself. 
i imagined you up late after putting
my brothers & i to bed, feet up on the
coffee table-- a knitting needle in each
hand to conduct the room back to order.
charming the sink into washing itself
& feeling bad about letting itself 
get go so awry, admonishing the 
blue & yellow plates when they let
soapy water slosh on the red kitchen floor.
i tried the same magic alone on summer days--
going out to the backyard where 
the sunflowers passed away years earlier. 
tapping the earth with the knitting needle
the soil gave way to pumpkins & a bush
of cherry tomatoes. i filled my pockets 
with them before they disappeared. eating
on the porch i told the garden hose to
spray a light mist in the driveway, enough
to refract rainbow in the water droplets.
i want to know if you still practice magic 
or if the knitting needles have long run dry--
back then they seemed unstoppable, 
twitching with the energy of our 
tangled green house. do the socks knot
themselves still or is that you up late
by the washing machine? dad mows the lawn now
in long crooked stripes & i tapped a 
knitting needle on the edge to try to 
trim it for him. nothing happened. same with
the kitchen table-- envelopes & magazines 
unwilling to budget even for the demands of 
enchantment. maybe it's me then, i could
be just too old. i sat there at the break fast
counter trying every single needle, even the
ones attached to each other that you used 
for knitting winter hats. 
your car pulls in the driveway. i'm 8 
& rushing over the canvas bag to put them back.
all those years did you know 
that i took them for spell crafts 
in the hazy july shadow 
of the pine trees out back?

this morning you told me that
your pet cockroach died & i felt 
nothing about it. i'd never met him,
you see. to me he's just a metaphor
for Kafka or growing up ugly. 
i had at least six-legs until the 8th 
grade when the hormones did alchemy on me. 
i assumed he had a narrow life,
four windows & all. do you ever
bump into the glass? i don't. this poem
refuses to be nihilistic. this poem
is honest. i don't ask
you but i wondered how you 
got rid of the body-- dropped
in the top of the trash can like
a gum wrapper. i've realized that
death, at least for me, is occasional.
not occasional like, once in awhile 
but, occasional like death only
really happens if it has occasion with you--
if you wear black & all. i'm remembering 
the farewell ceremonies of fish,
the Our Fathers flushed down the toilet.
then, of course, the bodies of
mice & rats writhing & then going limp 
in the glue traps that once lined the wall 
behind our fridge; dad opening of a trash bag,
the plastic black mouth. i resisted the urge to name them.  
during college a boy hung himself
in his dorm room. i had encoutnered him
a few times, stood behind him to fill
up my water bottle, passed his door,
locked eyes for a second or two. i only
remember his first name & it haunts 
this poem like a trash bag. they notified
the school via email. i deleted after 
a few second read, still in bed under blankets.
this is all to say, that the occasion 
was not wearing black-- maybe grey.
now i live in the same building that 
he did in a room the same size as his.
do you bump into the glass?
do you break off your antennae & fold
them into coat hangers? 
i wonder what is different about me & him,
what his father did with the dead mice.
i don't know what this has to do 
with your cockroach but i hope you
made occasion with him. light sage for
the ants smashed against the dining
room table. keep the black dress,
the one with the lacey front (even 
when you're a boy). remember yourself
ugly & six-legged. 
you tell me there's only one
left in the terrarium & i feel him
circling the parameter, stepping
over the carcass. stepping over 
the trash bags. my dad said to me
once that the whole funeral business
is a scam-- that they could throw 
you in those cement boxes wrapped with plastic
& no one would know the difference. 
if i were there i would float the bug's 
body on an oak leaf down the river
sticks, where is the Ganges? 
the one that flows under
everyone's bed at night. did he become
a cockroach, quiet & still?
the glass the glass-- all four sides of it.
if occasion makes death then is
death without occasion unfinished?
i want to be unfinished, tearing plastic,
keep the glass intact-- careful. 
this poem is dishonest.
a deleted email. a grave dug out
of metaphor. glass. 

face paint

i find myself sitting in your metal folding
chair. we're outside at the church carnival 
with your palettes sprawled out on the picnic table
every year you would come to do
face painting, bringing your totes of acrylics,
the artist's briefcase. i read the color
names on each tube: midnight & mustard seed &
flamingo & fuchsia. teal me, navy blue me.
the touch of brush to skin.
is this one of those dreams where you're my uncle
but don't look anything like him? 
face canvas-- i sewed your skin gossamer.
you dip the brush, cool strokes against my face. 
i forget what we're making me. i forget how old i'm supposed
to be. i count my fingers & assume that as an age. 
all ten of them, yes?
outside the grass was damp between my toes. swishing
the brush in mason-jar-water between colors. 
i too painted faces a few times & all the girls 
always wanted butterflies-- purples & blues
& pinks. are you making me a butterfly?
will it make off with my face? i'll leave
the carnival as a dream person who is myself
but looks nothing like him. i set up on
a street corner in the city i've never moved to.
perching criss-cross legs with the sidewalk square 
as a palette, wash my brush in the storm grates. 
will you let my make your face into a fox?
i ask as pedestrians amble by, confused but
compliant, laying themselves down in front
of me. i tell them who i'm supposed to be as 
i draw the brush steady across their skin. 
there is no better surface to paint on than 
the human body. the softness, 
the slight breathing motion-- i paint confetti swirls 
& dragon fire. one school carnival 
i painted a boy's face full of scales & his
mother came back to me asking
what did you do to him what did you do to him?
i'll make no excuses for the paints. they 
do what they will. occasionally kids would ask my uncle to 
paint watches. he loved the details--
the color of the buckle-- the clock face
glossy in the sun-- the time. paint the time
on your wrist-- not you face of course
what time do you want to 
spend your whole day? i think i'd like
7pm at night. that's when i eat dinner
alone at my desk. it's still light outside in july. 
the red hips of the fireflies paint everything
sunset without permission. where do they
make their palettes? i'm hoping you can help
me though, so i found your chair, your metal 
folding chair. just say 
yes i am your uncle.
it will make me feel better for the time being.
i want you to paint & not tell me what you're
making. i will tell you that i like
the colors cobalt & sea foam green. 
do what you will. take your time. 
it's all 7pm anyway.

the timer 

I. 
close the oven door. clang the metal pan. 
white kitchen timer on the counter.
you set it to 3 minutes for the brownies.
the sink drips. the mechanism jostles itself
with each sec clink. the persistence of time
is at least digital. the shortbread living room--
you & i folding into the sofa dough. we're making
we're making: what are we making? you page through
the holiday cook books & leave posted-notes
on the pages of desserts you think we should try 
this year. rosemary & poppy-seed, pecan tassies,
measuring sugar as deep as the high chair.
i don't remember the oven of the house in fleetwood
or the house on main street. click-click-click 
the timer is urgent-- ready to shriek. you twist
it forward, muffling the scream in your palms.
II.
where did you learn time? did you peel it
off the counter or take lessons from the blender
blades-- the ones that cut off my brother's finger.
in my room i'm too many years old & i started to
hear our old timer again. faint, at first. the gentle
first clinks, maybe set for twenty-five minutes.
you can't stop her from using your bed as a cookie sheet.
i find all my miscellaneous vessels full of batter:
the pencil jar, the cardboard box by the door,
the iced tea pitcher. i pour them out the window
& they bake-burn instantly on the hot asphalt outside:
smell of angry chocolate. i'm scared it'll go
off before i find it. frantic, i yank out drawers--
the ticking getting louder. telltale nature. 
you're too busy with the non-stick spray, coating
my whole body. the air is made of oil. the timer
goes off. i open my mouth & the brownies are done.

this is a brief poem to the trees
that grow in parking lots

this is the scenery-- the asphlat
& the two girls dropping plastic coffee
cups in the over-flowing trashcan.
the table behind the shops is where
i sat to read. i told myself aloud
that this, in the ground scheme of
things, was relatively beautiful. 
three different people asked me if
this was the back door to Starbucks,
i nodded. i noticed that the tree that
grow in the parking lot stand two by
two by two, like noah's ark or something.
there's eight in this lot alone, each 
pair halo-ed by cement fences-- reddish 
mulch on top. i wonder how deep 
the soil goes-- if their knees bump
against the hardened stone surrounding them,
like when parents sit at pre-schooler chairs.
i hope they have imaginations. maybe
at night when the only car is the white
security van with the blinking orange-yellow
light, they tell stories about where they're 
going to plant themselves when they grow up.
i'm thinking of my friends & me on merry-go-round 
at the park, laying on our backs & i said
i was going to australia to be a farmer 
& another said they were going to new york 
city to be an actress & another said they 
were going to the czech republic & that they
could tell us how to say chocolate milk in czech.
maybe they have smaller aspirations to live
in the waterworks park up the street where 
they could take big breaths free of back door
grease & car engine. a boy heading into 
Starbucks dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk
& stamped it with his foot before
rushing inside. its guts smoldered & scattered
by a breeze. i come back at night with a shovel,
one tree at a time; digging them up by the roots
& trying to fit them in the back seat of
my car. i have no where to put them, of course.
this wasn't well thought out, as are most
acts of heroism. i ask if they can duck their heads,
all eight of them, if maybe one can curl up
in the trunk. they rub my back & thank me
for trying, they tell me that they do in fact
have each other. pairing off, they take turns
weeping, holding each other. there's dirt strewn 
all across my back seat. i spend the night.
there's now one driving the security struck
with the yellow-orange light-- it's just a phantom
car, making it's rounds. this is a poem 
for the trees that grow in parking lots. i will
come back for you one day. i'll come with
stronger arms & a taller car ceiling.
 write to me if i move away, or send me a handful 
of leave, i'll know.  

bars of soap 

no one respects the windows anymore--
the precipitation has been breaking in 
with all of its forms-- last night, waking
me up with the bluster of snow in july
i went to shut the window & found it
already closed. down/upstairs there was
the clunk of a knife slicing soap.
our bodies are made of soap, you know?
the snow lathers my like two hands 
in the sink. that's you with the lavender--
with the alarm clock slung out the window
like a ladder. the power's out, again,
you say in a voice the comes from the ceiling
& not you mouth. there's no room for soap
when you change houses like pairs of socks.
knotting the door knobs & mis-matching 
front porches. i drive & park on a door bell
& it smells like cucumber melon. for my 
fifth grade birthday (i think i turned 11?)
we went to soap shop in town. around a table
in the back room, passing around oils
to smell. papaya & mint & good karma. girls
make soaps. rubbed in between hands. it's funny
because i sliced your body out to make
myself cleaner-- made the bed/sink 
turned the faucet over our heads while
the rain disrespected the glass window--
soaking us to our bones-- our bones 
bubble & sting. i want to smell like tea
trees when you're done with me-- like 
chamomile & rose. i've spent too many
years playing make believe that this
act was going to clean me-- out out 
damn spot-- as if there was enough 
to scrub all the blood out of me. is this
snow or suds? in the backroom i watched 
another girl slicing soap, thick hunks
like a slab of meat or root vegetables 
for stew-- my mother was there filling
the crock pot with soap & water. i got in
& invited you, but you politely declined.
it was a bit awkward i don't blame you.
i pressed my face to the skin of your
neck to inhale but you just smelled like
a body-- no rain or vanilla or pine tree.
they taught us how to wash our hands once
in home ec class & demonstrated, saying
make sure to get the wrists. you do that 
with me. you get the wrists. i make
the motion of shutting a window even
thought there are non in this room.
who makes a room without a window? i'll
build one of soap so that there's somewhere
to wash myself when your bones run out
in the sink.

I.
two of the kitchen lights burned out & there was only
one dangling by the chord above the counter. he opened the
two slices of bread like a bible. margarine on each page.
i watched dad & he said, "this is it & then we're going to bed."
holding the metal knife to spread a layer of cinnamon 
& then sugar-- margarine holds it all together. he let
me eat under the covers & dropped the beer bottle caps
to the carpet. like sand between the bed sheets. 
"don't tell mom" & i peeled the crust off the mattress
onto the bedroom floor. the inner bark of trees:
the sugar cane growing into grandfather's walking stick.
the embalming begins; learned from mummies, cinnamon 
under eyelids; rubbed into skin. 
II.
under fingernails-- sweet grit; a dusting on the windowsill
where the song birds get spice spackled on their wings.
i'm rummaging under my bed for a kitchen counter-- a necklace
of ants meandering beneath front door. "and then we're going
to bed" & the posts are made of cinnamon sticks & the sugar 
is still in the blue bag by the coffee machine. i eat a sandwich 
at my desk by a string of christmas lights pinned to my wall. 
sixteen shadows & bulbs made of margarine. looking for
the metal knife to turn the bible pages back to genesis 
where the first cinnamon bark was harvest from the laurel tree.
where snake turned to sugar in my hands. where the 
last light when out above the kitchen counter. where sappho 
knew cinnamon as cassia & slipped it into a poem or two;
guarded by winged serpents beside myrrh trees & laudanum bloom.