susanna cox & the smoke

driving home, i mistake the
burn piles for fallen airplanes,
columns of smoke billowing from behind
silos & red barns. they're killing 
susanna cox against next week up
at the fairgrounds. i blame
the fires on her, angels nose-diving
into the Oley countryside. they shatter
just above the clouds from the humidity 
or grief. angels often combust in water.
she's break off the oldest trees at the base 
& tossing them into the flames. 
it's been about 200 years now since
they hung her for the first time.
what is history but a series of 
trials & juries over vulnerable bodies?
they're summoning me to the stand & i
plead guilty because i already now
they need girls to keep the first going. 
i see her on the side of the road,
she nods because she knows she can 
trust me. she's holding an armful
of hay like an infant. they killed
her for murdering her newborn. 
illegitimate: unlawful, not in accordance
or acceptance-- what kind of body 
can be born with the law wringing 
its neck? i sometimes wake
up with course thread around my throat,
i cut it off with a scissors i keep by
my bedside. i'm telling you this because 
i trust you. if you find me from the ceiling
know there was a due process know
that there was a verdict. at the fairgrounds 
she crouches down in the hay maze looking for him.
She whistles & doesn't know what to
call a boy with no name. rustling
the hay she names him after the sound.
i help her search even though i know
he's not there. they used his body as 
a brick a long time ago for the pavillion
where they're reenacting her trial again.
i'm 15 & were skewering the ox. i'm in
the bonnet & long red dress. 
it's body becomes black & chard from 
the coal under its hooves. it was dead when
it arrived but sometimes i still 
think i see it shake it's head-- blow smoke
from its nostrils. that was the first
time i saw susanna cox. she took a pocket
knife out to cut slivers of meat off
the animal's shoulder. i never told on her.
she's cutting off her hair & 
watching each strand contort
in the fire. i ask her what she's doing so 
far from the fairgrounds today & she
says that this year she doesn't want
to watch them hang her, not again.
one too many times. i take a handful of
hay from her & rustle it. the boy wriggles from 
the earth like a toad. he has a book of matches
in his teeth. his mother strikes one
just to watch it smolder & blow out.

collecting 

i've been collecting footsteps--
round & melon-like heavy in a basket 
like the one you used to use
to hold potatoes at the market.
they roll on top of each other--
some gone bad in the sun-- rotted
skin & sun baking smell. the yellow-jackets
come to eat. they land on the soles of
my feet & i shoo them away before 
i start walking again. if i get stung 
you'll have to take over for me. i started
picking the foot steps up because i was hoping
i'd find all my old ones. i want to 
put them in the bottom of my sock drawer--
slice them up when i run out of apples.
if i'm thorough then no one will be able
to say that i was here-- they'll come
through this small-town years later 
after i've long moved away 
& they'll find all of these impressions-- 
the old man who walks his bassett hound-- 
the two women who hand out jevoh's witness 
pamphlets by fifth avenue & the man in the
lime-yellow shirt who gets up 
to run even in the snow. everyone's 
taste different. some sickly sweet 
like overripe mango-- the small prints
of children by the graveyard & those
from couples as they both sit on 
a bench by the park pavilion. i'm not
going to tell you about this project.
you would probably tell me that it's 
neurotic-- that there's no use in retracing
all the steps i've laid in the last 
five years. my room fills up, i have
to be careful to not leave more 
marks while i'm collecting the old ones
so i wear bubble-wrap on my feet. i'm already
packed to leave. the UPS man sometimes 
picks me up & i shake my head & gesture
to my lack of postage. some footprints
are, of course, hard to find. i spent
yesterday by the bamboo thicket where 
i kneeled, running my hands through 
the scraggle blue night-time grass. 
this was from that night i ambled
out of the party to be alone, tucked
my feet under myself & took bites
out of my heel which tasted like the
rind of an unripe cantaloupe. when i find
the prints they're syrupy & the juice
drips down my face with each bite. 
sometimes i can't help myself-- i have
to eat them right there. i don't want
any help. i do want you that to know that
you can come see the ones of yours 
i've been picking up along the way. 
i know we haven't talked in two years but i
have a shelf in my closet for you. 
your impressions  taste like tomatoes & sometimes
a fresh fig. don't worry i'm not keeping them
for myself. these are yours. when my room
is emptied out & there's nothing left of
me around here you can still go back.
i'll leave the door unlocked. in the closet
will be my old earrings from when i was a
girl & the pile of every step we took
together. ripe & soft-skinned. do
you still like peaches? 

weight watchers

the ice cream sandwiches in the fridge
were worth 3 weight watchers points which
meant nothing to me as a 7-something-year-old.
the sexy "skinny-cow" sprawled out on the box with
the measuring tape snaking around her waist
like a constrictor. i woke up in the middle of
the night to check on her, to ask her how
she managed to pull her waist in like
a draw-string bag. Jean, the woman who started 
weight watchers, would gather meetings in
her living room-- desperate women in a circle,
a seance to summon the sugar out of their
bones. i'm fascinated by her with her plastic
black & white barbie hair. i imagine her
husband as a door frame, her up at night
giving sleep-less manicures to the doorknobs.
she's smiling in photographs, big, like a 
slice of moon. i see her in the kitchen. 
she hides mallow-mar bars in the cupboard--
eating frantic over the trashcan. they used
to make these tiny chocolate cakes that were
worth 2 weight watchers points & i'd peel 
the numbers off before eating them--
wrapper crinkling in the sink. you are sitting
at the kitchen table asking
again if you doing weight watchers made me 
anorexic & i'm trying to convince you that it didn't.
there's the lovely Jean with her weekly
recommended slab of liver-- stuffing the organ
in the blender to make it go down easier.
she had two husbands (as one does)
& the second was a bass player like my brother.
i see him in the corner of the living room,
walking the instrument-- two fingers thrumming 
string. he lets his wife work. she's openning
all the windows downstairs to call the women 
inside-- they've been moth-smacking against
the windows, all in their nightgowns looking
like moths. the shelves in the living room 
are lined with  weight watchers guides & i used
to page through them mindlessly. here is how
to determine the point value of a slice of
pizza, a roll of sushi, a cup of tikka masala.
Jean starts reading from it &  i cover my ears.
you tell me to go up to bed but the staircase
closes like an esophagus-- tongues flicking
for steps. her first husband is here now,
begging for her back & you cover my ears 
& tell me not to listen. in the living room
the furniture all turns into ellipticals
& you get on. Jean tells us that it's never
too young to start getting healthy. she picks
her mouth off the end table to smile. 
how many weight watcher points is this worth?
i ask the wall of food catalogs & they flush 
like butterflies or geese-- flapping mad up into
the attic. this isn't your fault. this isn't
your fault. the pumpkin pie in the oven 
spits numbers on the kitchen floor. you make
it every year & it's my favorite pumpkin pie
even though it's a weight watcher's recipe. 
Jean's there to pick the numbers up & press them into
the crust. i don't blame her-- i don't blame her.
i see her ghost crouched in a full-length mirror--
running her fingers across the soft skin of 
her stomach. i ask you to help me break it
& we toss the thing off the side of the deck--
glass all over the driveway. we eat two ice cream
sandwiches. leave one in the ice box for her. 

15 business days 

i'm on hold on the phone when it happens.
the desks goes & starts growing lysol-flowers.
i can't really describe them other than that
they had a purple smell & they looked like
morning breeze, all blooming from the surface
to the chair to the lamp & across the walls.
i set the phone down to pick them up.
they're probably masquerading weeds. you shouldn't
trust flowers. i don't know what fancy restaurant
i was at but there was one place that used
edible flowers as garnishes. i'd put the whole
thing in my mouth at once-- like eating
a dress. i felt powerful until later that evening
i'd get home & feel the plant weeping beneath
my chest. the flowers tasted like posted notes.
the "on-hold" song is the texture of an elevator--
even edges & buttons all across. i pushed one
& the room starts going up. i never said i wanted
to go up. the machine is not a good listener
the machine performs the task without a thorough
conversation. i don't own a vacuum anymore but
if i did i would use it to get rid of all
the dried of flower bits. they keep growing
& drying. they have a short life cycle like a 
house fly. in the bathroom there's three perfect
fly corpses-- they're laying akimbo with their
legs up towards the ceiling. the white counter-top
is their operating table & i tell them to count
backwards from ten. they're so much like 
knots of needles or rendezvous of aluminum can-lids.
i'm calling my surgeon to ask them how
long they're going take to come & fix me.
i imagine her at the door step right now-- breif
case in hand. she rings the non-existent door-bell
& lets herself in. she laughs at how
many flowers i have in my room. i'm openning
a trash bag & dumping them in saying "i was
just getting rid of these." she says there's no
way we can operate under such conditions
so we go into the tile shower room. dotted
ink lines across my chest. cut-here.
there's flies falling around me-- some the size 
of horses now-- legs all rigor mortis & crooked.
the on-hold music crescendos & i don't know if
that means someone's going to pick up.
i eat an apple from above the fridge &
i comes out tasting like posted notes. 
you can't eat after midnight the night before.
i'm tempted by the flowers-- as they grow in
my mouth i pluck them out-- tissue-tossing
them on the floor of my room. pick up
pick up pick up. the song continues on
speaker phone as i put on hand on each wall
of the room & push. when they do pick up 
i scramble for the phone, the flower smell
turning blue. they tell me that i have to
wait another 15 business days to know 
if they'll be cutting me open & the surgeon
who was leaning up against the opposite
corner of the room, cigarette in her teeth,
put the smoke out & singes the carpet. 
she pulls off her rubber gloves & flings
them at the trash can, missing. i make
her a bouquet & tell her not to leave.
i promise to be a good boy, the best boy
she's ever had. she doesn't talk. she shakes 
her head & makes fifteen dots on the 
calendar before leaving out the front door.
i remember the flowers beneath my chest 
& weep for them. my, a posted note.

the first time we had sex 
you put Grease on in the background.
i tried to pull the movie up to write
this poem, but you have to pay 2.99
& i don't think it's worth that much.
half the things on Netflix
are there just to use as background noise.
last semester i'd leave on Anthony Bourdain 
& pretend he was my father. i'd be there, standing
in front of the microwave while he sat 
at my desk opening a bottle of beer. 
we'd end up in Copenhagen.
4 months later i gave another guy 
the password to my (my parent's) Netflix account 
because i felt bad for not wanting to go on
a second date with him. he watches 
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
which i never thought was funny even
when i tried to. 
i only remember the first few minutes 
of Grease
with the ridiculous ocean fades in & out.
it reminds me of when this girl
i was friends with in middle school told
everyone she had sex with a boy on a beach
in Jamaica. back then i thought that was gross. 
the next summer at the beach in
Virginia i tried to flirt with a boy
on a skim board & ended up just sitting
in the sand & letting the waves smack
some sense into me. 
i thought maybe i was a lesbian because
i kept thinking of making out with that girl. 
you told me you liked John Travolta
with his black slicked back hair.
i don't want to unpack the irony of
two men fucking to Summer Nights
on a evening night in November. i do 
want to say that i don't
like Danny (John Travolta) or any boy who
wears a black t-shirt & thinks he's hot shit.
i remember wanting to shut it off
but you were kissing me & i was
trying to figure out if i liked it. 
i feel bad for Sandy (the blonde)
because i get like her sometimes.
get so wrapped up in the idea
of a person that i start to try to be
what they're looking for. i'm trying
to get better with that. i think
you wanted me to be a girl. 
i know i wanted you because i 
like boys with slicked back black hair
& girls with pink ascots. this is my
poem i can contradict myself. 
you were good at kissing. in that
opening scene i remember Sandy saying 
(before an obnoxious heterosexual romp)
i've had the best summer of my life & now i 
have to go away--it isn't fair
it isn't fair. the changes aren't fair.
i guess what really kills me is when
she asks is this the end?
& of course he tells her it's not.
i feel like that every time i start
to have feelings for someone. i'm standing
on a beach saying is this the end?
is this the end? i don't know 
why i wrote this poem to you but
i wanted you to know that you're better
than that Danny guy but not much better. 
Anthony Bordain, is this the end then
for the both of us? 
the microwave bleeps & he's in Sicily
& i know now that he's not my father
because dad doesn't drink wine. 
there isn't a sunset to hot-rod ride off into.
i don't have a black leather outfit.
this is, in fact, the end.
i'll touch your hair. i changed my
Netflix password so that guy couldn't use it
anymore. there's a girl somewhere 
kissing someone on a beach.

the choreography

you tell me you think it's inevitable 
that you will move to a town like the one
you grew up in-- the tiny main street &
the street lamp all coming on at once--
double yellow lines of the street like
one-suspender on a man who laid down
to watch us grow like onion grass
in his chest. encountering fireflies 
in the day time i shoo them away-- i unscrew
their lights to use as spare bulbs in
my bedroom. i tell you i need more lamps.
i've started to believe in the choreography 
of it all. it's not beautiful. i mean 
i think they're printing newspapers weeks
in advance-- there's a big vault beneath
the city where everything's been decided.
maybe there's a mail man who goes down there--
trembles in front of a plastic wrapped door
before he cuts it open again with a pocket knife.
i tell you, of course, that i belong in a city
that i have always belonged in a city.
i think i'm so adamant about this because i'm
terrified of waking up in the bed room
of my parent's house. i'll be forty-something
& despite living in a far away city,
maybe as far as berlin or madrid, nowhere will
be far enough to fight to design of it all.
i've been reading a book about living in 1980s 
AIDs crisis. David Wojanarowicz says that
living under Reagan was like having a pillowcase
pulled over his head, looking at all the 
little threads woven together & feeling entirely
powerless about them. he says that it's a kind of
feigned deafness under the wings of a helicopter.
i'm thinking of the time that at the diner 
overlooking the tiny airport
my dad told me that he was scared of
helicopters because sometimes they go off kilter
& decapitate people. i was scared to leave
the building because one was hovering, ready
to land. i'm hoping this will lead
me to the vault beneath everything. every city 
has one. where they tape the news & make paper machete
police officers. how far in advance
has this been planned? will you go there with me?
i don't want to feel choreographed alone.
there's a girl tap dancing on a linoleum floor 
& she's me & she sees herself in the mirror in a line
of young girls all doing the same. the leotards
don't fit. where do
you keep you pocket knives? i fantasize about
knocking main street down like a pile of wooden blocks.
i'm sitting on the floor with the broken glass
giving me away. they pick me up & fold me length wise.
they feed me onion grass & bent street lamps.
they tell me to close my eyes & let it happen.
when i wake up i'll start walking again, out of
my bed room at my parents house & up the highway 
towards the city, on her knees crawling
away from me. a wounded ant.

folding the flag

we had a whole unit in 8th grade
about folding the flag & 
flag etiquette. our teacher was 
a vietnam war vet & on days when 
early america wasn't interesting enough
he'd tell war stories. the only
ones i still remember are about
a man whose draft number was next to his--
he said they were standing in line
to get guns & the officer would toss
the gun to soldier to catch but the man
next to him refused to catch it--
each & every time the man would
let the gun hit his body. our teacher
shrugged & threw up his hands, expasterated
& said "a pacifist."
around the room there were portraits of
the founding fathers & they scowled as
we'd fold the flag with a partner in front
of the class. first length-wise until
the flag was skinny & then the one doing
the folding would make the triangle--
folding over & over again until the 
whole flag was turned into nothing more
than one of those paper footballs. our teacher 
said that this would come in handy the
next time we were at a veteran's funeral 
& no one there knew how to fold a flag--
that we would impress all our family by
folding the flag & handing the flag to
the man's wife. you're supposed to say 
"thank you for your sacrifice" which we practiced
at the front of the classroom & george washington
locked his jaw & refused to smile from 
the far corner next to the clock. andrew jackson
ran a hand through his grey wispy hair, staring
forward manic in a war flash back from
Horseshoe Bend where his troops gunned down 
lines of the Creek tribe. i knew there was no 
one in my family who would have a flag draped
over their coffin. we practice again & again until
i began to believe that maybe the moment 
would arise where the skill would be useful.
this went on for weeks, getting up at the start of class
& finding a partner. he told us a story of
the toys vietnamese children made from crickets--
tying a string to the creature's waist &
tugging on the rope while it struggled & spun.
he described using one of these toys not long before he
saw a small girl run towards them with a
bomb strapped to her chest. over & over &
over until there was a triangle-- i wanted
to ask what it was about a triangle that 
made it suited for the flag-- what was it
that made the fold holy & what were we folding?
i went up to the attack where we still have
uncle freddy's triangle flag & i considered un-doing 
it with my brother-- asking him
to let me show him how to fold it. the edges
were hard from decades of holding shape.
the flag shrunk in my hand to the size
of a piece of paper & flung itself out
the window & onto the pavement where i chased 
it in the October wind. it mixed with the leaves 
until it was no where to be found. i never told
my father, i folded the flag & this time lincoln
turned around in his portrait, not wanting to
look at me anymore & the teacher told
us a funny story of his friend searching for a place
to go to the bathroom on a stormy night & accidentally
peeing into the wind-- thunder cracking in
the background. i didn't think it was funny 
& i imagined a boy on the edge of cliff, his body
silhouetted by the storm. in the lightning i can
see the smallness in his face. he makes
triangles out of the clouds out of shame.
i folded my blankets for bed
into triangles, napkins at the diner,
everything i could get my hands on. there was
a man throwing a gun at the wall. there was a doorbell
somewhere. there was empty frames where a room
of furrow-brow men were staring. i fold alone
on my knees & there's the popping noise
of a cricket with a string tied around it's chest.

sometimes i feel like my poetry is going dry:
cracked july creek dry like when the rain goes static & stubborn,
& the frogs turn into stones/pressed flowers. 

i get melodramatic will i ever write a good poem again

words become gnats in my mouth-- 
i swallow because that's what you're supposed to do.  

stick postage stamps to my tongue
& let a eagle come to eat it out everyday at
high noon like prometheus's liver

it grows back of course

i've been coming up with words that the F
for sex on my license could stand for  

i don't want to change it mostly because i'm
stubborn & my alliances will always be with
the F in me

that's what i've been saying at least

this is me filling up a plastic bucket
from the spigot & dumping it on the parched steam basin

tadpoles turned to apostrophes in the dirt 
they come back alive only this time
instead of legs they grow feather wings &
turn into eagles  

i wish i didn't feel the need explain everything

F for Fight
for Flood for mud & the blood 
i keep to myself

if i could bleed again one more time
i think i might 

if i could make a barter with god
(or is it Zeus now?)
that on the second week of the month
i would bleed like i used to, like a Flow
of clay

in my driver's license photo 
i have my eye browns colored
in with a water-proof black eye liner pen
from CVS

i think of them like leeches, wriggling 
off my face

this isn't a good poem 

she's pretty you know? really pretty
does anyone ever tell her she's pretty?
all alone in front of a blue screen
at the DMV

& the rest of the place fades away
it's just her there 

the flowers on her head are actually real now--
they waited so long in this photo that they
converted their plastic petals into plant cells

checked out library books & tutored
each other in photosynthesis 

that's how i learned sex ed anyway 

stone-grey is the color of the dress
she's wearing & it hardens into statue when 
she's not careful-- this still happens to me now
when F stands for Fugitive 
for Figment for love 
spanned nano-seconds across the room 

stands for Furrow: the long trench of
dirt dug in her scalp where the rose bush seeds go

stands for Forget-me-not-s which are actually
tiny blue flowers

none of this will grow, there's no water

a bucket stands for Forest-fire

she's too pretty for you, 5 foot 2
you don't stand a chance

making real

there was a man playing guitar
with an open case on the corner by
the court house where two feet away
a woman with red hair argued with a 
cop while eating handfuls of sour cream &
onion chips. the court house has marble
teeth & a paper tongue & sirens on east airy st. 
have legs; they rush by, kicking down stop
lights & a fruit cart full of mangoes. 
walking up the street i passed a corner store 
named after our lady of Guadalupe &
i prayed to her out of habit. she kicked the
moon like a c antelope rind.
they metal-detect me & pull the scissors 
out from underneath my skin. i lie & say that
i use them for arts & crafts. the police
bite the edges of their badges like oatmeal
cookies-- chew plastic gold. i was sneaking 
in the scissors to cut holes in the foundation, to preen
the buttons from the elevator walls. 
all tuesday morning keep wondering around & i don't want to
ask for directions because i'm convinced 
that this is what it's like being born. i'm wondering
what it is about this building that can make
us real-- some sort of a talisman buried deep
in the foundation? the court rooms changes places 
& sometimes suck you inside. on trial they ask me 
now why would you want to get rid of
such a pretty name & 
they call me only by my finger prints--
speaking the language printed into my thumbs
that only judges & stairways can speak. 
the atm in the basement only gives out 20s.
how much do you cost to make-real. three times
i pass a conference room where a family 
is talking to a lawyer & i make up a story
that they're also all changing their names--
trading with each other-- they're playing poker.
i take the elevator to the 9th floor,
the one above the building where god makes 
the sign of the cross on your forehead &
quarrels with you for being arrogant enough
to not think your baptism name was good enough.
i get back inside & my grandmother leans by the
buttons. she asks me 
up or down?
& i tell her i'm sorry for getting rid of
her name-- she just repeats
up or down?
i say down & i stumble out of the court house.
i had wanted you to come with me but i
wanted to make myself real. outside a woman 
takes off her heels & holds them by her side--
a man carries three brief cases & hands me one.
i ask him what the court house is doing for him
today & before i can finish he's getting chewed up
by the marble teeth. 
the man is still playing guitar & he closes
his eyes & tells me
i never go inside, no. that place is
not for me. 
he takes out his name & drops it
in the open case like a dollar bill. 
i have no name so i drop in my thumb prints
& tell him to call me no-one

chlorine 

amphibial & face up:
i'm laying in my father's pool,
waiting for him to fish me out with
the green-mesh net. this is at the house
before he lived with mom, with guitars
hung on the basement walls. chlorine
soaking in to skin-- the filter coughs
up mouthfuls of leaves. my grandmother 
is sitting on the porch & tapping off 
the end of a cigarette, she coughs too
until the world shatters & i'm sitting
in the shower as the pool-smell washes off
my body. i sit criss-cross on the 
tub's floor as my mother washes
her face at the sink. i sit on the water
edge with my feet dangling in, pop out
my eyes like pearls & plop them in the water
one by one until my vision is warped
& blurry from chemicals. my father doesn't
notice the frog, face-up & drifting in
the artificial tidal pull. above ground,
a coffee mug placed on the edge table, my mother
measures spoonfuls of sugar into the water
until it turns brews brown & hot, leaning
down to drink. you bring me back my eyes no
matter how many times i toss them. 
you are a good brother & i am the bad one.
later that evening when the water is dark 
& the pool no longer has a bottom, i slip inside
to see how far sinking will take me. my hair flails;
grows long-- water pressure pulling more &
more from my scalp. deep down there i find myself
as a little girl-boy pretending to be an anchor--
blowing bubbles from my nose to empty myself
of air. i have the impulse to pull lovers under water
to kiss them. is this siren in me?
the chlorine in my blood stream? my father 
looming at the edge of pool, not plucking me out,
watching the frog's body thrash. the boy told me 
he pulled girls underwater
to kiss them by surprise & i never want to be 
like him, but here i am with someone on the hem of
the pool, kissing their neck & moving aside the 
dead bugs on the surface of the water. when i get
home tonight & i'm myself again away from 
the threat of water i will have the urge, i know 
i start digging in the carpet of my second-floor
apartment. i will have to make a pool. i will
have to fill it with chlorine-water. i will
wait for you to come sit with me, you the frog 
with the chemical skin, you the drown
jupiter beetle, you the blue tiles at the bottom.