prays for more white blood cells

when mom's friend was sick
she'd tell us to pray for his
white blood cells. he had leukemia 
which also sounds like a 
very beautiful poisonous flower.
one with pink & petals-- all orchid-like.
in my bedroom the jungle grew thick
& wild. i always used one space
on the book shelf for god. mom's friend
would give me & Billy tokens 
for remembering god: a framed
picture of jesus-- light emanating 
from his chest in a stream of red &
to blue. mom says that's the holy
ghost shining through him. i thought
it might flow like a water fall &
drench anyone who stood in front of him.
he holds his hand up as if he's trying to 
grasp something. i imagine him
grabbing me by the collar & hosting
me into the picture frame that is also heaven. 
rosary beads ivy-growing up walls &
around the bunk bed posts. sometimes
when i try to sleep they clasp
ankles & yank me to my knees.
they want more prayers. there's no 
amount of praying that'll make
white blood cells. mom would remind us
to pray for them & they'd never come.
i thought of them as small round clouds--
almost like packing peanuts or styrofoam 
beads. they'd come in the window & i'd 
share them with everyone who needed them.
even now years away from my parent's
house the beads still find me on lonely nights
where my god is candle-light & 
smoking rose incense. constrictor around
neck-- appeased only by those ten hail marys.
the ratio is 10 marys/1 father--
because we all know the suffering of 
men is with 10 times that of women. 
mom would roll her eyes & say something
like "does everything have to be a gender
reading." i would probably still be catholic
if mary was god too. she does a lot of 
work you know? maybe we should have been praying
to her or mary magdalene who was probably
jesus's wife. she's the one who 
comes when i call-- pulling the beads up
off the walls of my room with weed killer.
she has curly hair & i've never heard
a prayer made up about her. this can 
be a prayer for her. if i were to make
a rosary for her it would be made of
thorns for all the times i've heard
someone call her a whore-- as if women's
bodies exist across centuries for 
men to adjudicate. maybe she keeps
the white blood cells, steals them
from heaven's clouds & fills her pockets.
planting them in the backyard to 
grow more flowering trees. mom's friend
gave us these little bottles
that say "holy water" on them but i never
filled them up. they sat in the god-shelf 
empty. i took them with me to church
a few times but got stage fright
in front of the baptismal fountain.
now i take glass jars to the creek
where the rosary beads grow tall & thick
all the way up to my shoulders 
this deep into summer. mary magdalene 
in there too-- pressing blood cells into
the earth. she puts a finger to her lips
& gives one to me. it's too late, 
but i keep it anyway.

 

1)Blood relationship

where we wash off wounds

where the used syringes swim

up-stream & become amphibian

 

i’m filling up the terrarium with

our blood—letting the filter kiss

veins with air bubbles

 

bursting—

disposable camera flash—

 

i bite because it hurts

to share such tight elevator shafts—

up to the fourth floor & through

the ceiling—where the monsters

make picture frames for themselves

 

the attic with the green carpet

& dolls still in their boxes

 

in this family photograph we

dissolve—empty green sofa &

red chair

 

i tac a map of the world to

the inside of my closet—pushpins

 

up the back of Appalachia

 

Moca, Canóvanas, &

the Tarra River

Loch Ness &

Point Pleasant &

Cape Verde

2) Sharing characteristics or origins

& we find that the monsters are somehow

everywhere

 

our origins recited by tongues

cut off & wriggling under stones

 

sharing red eyes

i sometimes strike matches

in the hopes you will all arrive

 

come find me & my cryptic maps

& my newspaper clippings &

 

take me to the origins where you

all go to be unknown

 

there are prayers that aren’t meant to

be received

just lifted

 

taking care to dispose

of each other’s bones

 

 

to high powered telescopes &
the men on the roof at the house next door
who are all my dad 

on the way to middle school after a thunder storm
i'd pick up shingles from the backyard. 
Texture of a fallen gravel driveway, i'd break
them into smaller & smaller pieces before dropping
them back in the dew-wet grass. it made me
worried that our roof was coming apart &
one morning we'd wake up to a pink tangerine sky
staring in at us. i pull the covers up to my neck.
next door they're fixing the roof 
& i watched the workers as they balanced, 
the shiny ladder wobbling with from a breeze.
i stood by in case someone fell & i could catch them
which i know is absurd because they're all full grown
men with tan work boots & i'm maybe 5 foot on a good day.
i mistook them all for dad pacing the roof--
all seven of him with different colored hair &
ladder that go to higher places-- one leaning
against the edge of the moon now that it's dark outside.
if i found a powerful enough telescope, do you
think i can climb it & help him put the shingles
back on the cheek bones of stars, cosmetic surgery
on the skulls of planets & roof tops. 
if they fall i'll catch them, the planets i mean.
i have a waste basket &/or my hands out-stretched.
up in the top of the science building on campus
is where they hoard the ladders to space-- they're
only suited for people who know math but i'm
sneaking up there anyway. be careful, i'm asking
you, i don't want to pick up the pieces of
more men from the driveway. gravel & wrist bone. 
as i observe they began to set up telescopes,
one by one-- the powerful ones that can see
every divot on my dad's skin. he has sun spots
from sitting on roof tops too much & letting
the rays peel off his skin like shingles. 
i walked out onto the driveway & asked one
of them, my dads, to help me up so i could 
take a look. gripped my wrists & hoisted me up--
forget ladders-- ladders are for men. 
i'm always surprised when i stare into a telescope
& things are still so far away.
i bent down & closed one eye. there was dad 
mowing the back yard-- grass staining his ankles.
i thought i could get closer. as i stood up i
found there were no more men on the roof with me.
alone i sat there with the shingles half-done
beneath me-- tucked my legs into my chest &
rolled down like a grassy hill. i broke on
the driveway but i'm used to sleeping in multiple 
pieces. the next morning out back i picked up
each rib & used the staple-gun to fix them in place. 

 

 

I.
Breakfast at a corner diner with yellow tile walls:
I told Mom that the milk on my Fruit Loops was spoiled sweet
& she took a bite off the spoon. She said it was probably 
just whole milk. I watched her buy a gallon of blue-cap every week.
we ate breakfast as a 1% family before leaving the city. 
It drizzled outside, scattering the lights from 
cars & cabs & signs through water droplet windows. 
Everyone was made of umbrellas (besides us). Sirens cooed.
We'd slept on cots the night before because the hotel 
had miss-matched our rooms-- I'd liked it because it felt like camping. 

II.
I sat in the front row of freshman English so I wouldn't
have to make small talk before class. The desks were chatting &
said: I've been drinking whole milk. Another girl said
she did too, that she drank whole milk until her hair poured. 
She had yellow-cap gallon lips. i imagined myself standing in my bed room 
with a tall white glass. How does one go about un-abridging a body? 
Adding the fat & the unbroken? Gods of vitamins A, C, & B?
I had teeth falling out like folded diner napkins. I thought maybe
boys were made of whole milk, that it was something they carried 
in their bones. Taste me then, I'm offering myself on the spoon.

 

cantaloupes & wishing wells 

i read that his daughter 
drowned in a well in the backyard--
that she leaned over the too far edge 
& fell. how deep were wells back then? 
i dropped a cantaloupe in the grocery 
store & all the pieces scattered 
across the tile floor-- 
sweet orange flesh & green rind.
i tried to clean it all up with paper towels
& i wished dad was there because
he knows everything about cantaloupes.
i've never seen a well 
like one in fairy tales:
big stone circle, wooden basket 
w/ a crank to send it down for water.
if i check in the backyard tomorrow
& one has appeared i will assume
it's a coincidence & i'll probably lean over
the edge (irresponsibly). i know it's naive
but i think i would enjoy falling in.
i imagine the water is cool even 
in june. i think the only think 
that would scare me would be no knowing
what was below me. are there creatures 
that live at the bottom of wells?
maybe on the way down i would 
turn into a cantaloupe-- knees tucked into
my chest-- skin becoming coarse & crater-ous.
i'm waiting now for dad to 
hit my head with an open palm to check 
if i'm ripe & ready-- putting his
hear to my forehead & listening. i don't
know what he was hearing inside melons
when he'd drum them but they were always sweet.
floating in the water or smashing on
the stone sides of the well. there's a well
now this afternoon in my room
on the second floor. it's best not
to question the logistics of god or water.
i washed my face in it & peered down--
spoke echo & was startled by how much deeper
my voice was than before. i reach in & 
find there's cantaloupes bobbing 
in the crisp water. i pluck one out
& drum to summon a grocery store downstairs--
sit in the basket of a shopping cart &
wait to be pushed around-- monotonous 
beeping of check out aisles loom in
the distance. if i did fall in the well
like his daughter i would tread water like
they taught me in swim lessons,
then i would scale the wall-- easier said
than done when your body is a cantaloupe--
fingers round & useless-- do you ever look
at your hands & realize how much they 
resemble honeydew? sitting at the breakfast bar, 
dad slicing a melon to make our mouths &
dropping each pair of lips
one by one in the sink that is also a stone well.
we open our sugar-jaws to breath &
end up swallowing the well's 
worth of water
& drown.

i live on small scales
where newton's laws don't apply 

as we were walking back to my house
dad joked (again) that he's waiting for
the last piece of skylab to
fall from sky & take him.
i don't think you should joke
about things like that when the sky
comes apart so easily. i spent
one night a few evenings ago
collecting pieces of hot rocks
in my pockets but they only burned holes.
i'm still letting them cool off
on the back porch. maybe it's parts
of skylab or just dead stars. i read yesterday
that there are small scales in which
newton's laws don't apply. they never
told us that in high school physics when 
we were learning about his laws of motion
by tossing marbles across the linoleum floor,
finding friction between our bodies
in the back seats of cars & the grass
behind the school yard,
would you like to be objects in
rest/motion with me? if i stay here 
i'd like to see how long it would
take god to reach down with his science
& move me. i'm imagining the locations 
immune to newton & hoping that there's
a possibility that we could make a life there.
did you know skylab was essentially taken down
by a micrometeorite? what if that was one
of us, knees tucked into your chest 
as you orbit the earth & wait
for you blood to spill out from a puncture wood.
if skylab is falling i won't let it hit
dad, he'd be getting off too easy. i need
his red van to help me move all my 
stuff to these small scales. for all of newton's
smarts i think maybe he lied about the laws
to throw us off the trail of these places 
where they can be escaped-- he wrote
on alchemy you know? who wouldn't look
for the philosopher's stone if they knew it
was out there turning all medals into gold
like how i learned to become beautiful &
still in the presence of his hands. there
are objects that refuse to move, like the park
benches despite the flooding that march
where we charted the orbits of imaginary planets.
oh this place i'm making has no doors but
no way in or out-- a library where
the books are in a constant state of falling
& getting back up on their shelves. 
dear dad, i caught the last piece of sky lab
last night when i came down in the body
of a firefly. our very own sir isaac newton
was probably a fag like me, did he think
that alchemy could turn him pure?
this place is for people like us 
who want to move & stay still at once.
the saturn V rocket is taking off from 
my shoulders-- micrometeorites smouldering
across my forearms. dad, we can take
butterfly nets & catch shards as the sky comes
apart, one clavicle, one elbow, at a time.

i left the typewriter
you got my out on the back porch;
with cord dangling between railings &
half-open eyelids.
i shut them this morning as one
does for the departed.
i don't really know what led
to the impulse to leave it out
there but the typewriter had been
sitting in my closet so long
that i thought it was time to 
let it out. i'm imagining 
that maybe in the dark 
(alongside my winter hats 
& stacks of ramen noodles)
that maybe the typewriter imagined
letters it wanted to compose.
inventing a mother & father to 
write home to 
maybe the typewriter
formulated a back story where he 
was from a small town, like me, 
where the corn sighs all summer &
the foxes stamp the tilled soil with 
their tracks. 
the satisfying thuck as the tab button
swings words into a new stanza.
next, the typewriter would 
sign to an ex-wife, 
asking for her back, telling her that
they would be better this time &
it would buy her those hyacinth bushes
she wanted for the front yard.
i have to admit that when this
typewriter turned
on it sounded more like mechanical reaper 
than a device of poetry,
fluttering to life
like an aluminum foil butterfly. 
i hunched on the floor of my dorm room 
as it whirled. the typewriter
electric-blinked, dazed in the white glow
of my overhead light. old-ink faint
from use, it had a pacifist's voice,
gentle as i showed the typewriter how 
i wrote love poetry, there was
something corporeal about the keys, 
the feeling of knuckles becoming space bards
& indents. 
the rain came quiet this morning
over its body. this is a elegy 
to the words it spoke for us & it's own
poetry left deep in it's skeletons.
i hope it's keys come apart 
& scatter like seeds.

To Alex

I watched you last night
when you ambled out onto into
cool Babylonian dusk--
felt the sun collecting heat 
off the earth in 
orange iridescent handfuls. 
It reminded me of our youth 
when our bodies were soft &
malleable like the silt of
the Nile. 
When we thought little of
the Gods and more of 
our bodies. Oh I do not
know myself without you. 
When you first kissed my neck
& I fell like the legs of 
Parthia before us.
Tell me Alex, what does it
mean for men to conquer?
I see mountains aching 
under the arches of your feet. 
I want to kneel down before
you, run my hands up your legs 
like pillars-- oh Alex I know
you are un-sturdy as any man--
what kind of stone is this? 
Do you think of me, Alex,
on a night coming like this?
Do you remember when Aristotle said 
we were 
"... one soul abiding 
in two bodies"
I disagree, because I know
your flesh like my own.
If I had the chance I would
take it back-- all the miles 
& the Calvary cries &
the cold night on the Egyptian
dessert-- I would take it
back & be a boy forever with
you in Pella--
Death has given me the
chance to see all time at once
& I listen as Pella fall
ahead of this moment--
the mosaic walkways will remain
& when the centuries have broken
open from the ground &
water flows forth from
all the rivers at once-- when that
happens meet me there in
the middle atrium where the pillars
still standing like discarded 
thighs-- not nearly as powerful as yours
Seize me there Alex in 
the shadow of the house of Dionysos

**Modern scholars have theorized
that Alexander the Great and 
Hephaestion were lovers 
As is borne out by their own words. 
Hephaestion, when replying to 
a letter to Alexander's mother, 
Olympias, said "... you know that Alexander means 
more to us than anything."**

 

cat birds

you said 
it's a terrifying thing 
to be a biological being
& the baby in the grocery store
sounded like a cat bird/
maybe it was a cat bird 
spitting grey feathers--
mom crouched down on her knees
rocking the basinet back &
forth while her husband 
scanned groceries--
the tiny voice reminded
me of my brother when he was small
& looked like a pink boiled potato.
we would be rocking him back & forth & hoping
he would go back to sleep--
it's terrifying yes with all 
the slimy fingers & little black beaks
all the feathers & the business of
falling out of second story windows.
my friend used to baby sit &
one of the boys pushed on the window
screen & fell out-- he wasn't a cat bird--
when i was in elementary school i thought
that i wanted kids & i would swallow
the stuffing of teddy bears to try
to make one grow inside me-- wads pulled
out from the floor of my bed room where
on the front porch there were robins 
building their nest-- filling the world
with more gumballs-- pink chewy babies--
i'm 21 & i don't think the world is over populated
but sometimes i think that there's
too many birds-- the bamboo thicket behind
the house chirps at me & i can't see any of
their faces so they could be anything--
sparrows & red-headed wood peckers & a cardinal
or three-- maybe babies crawling on
the forest floor-- learning their bird calls--
practicing-- their mothers had dropped off
for an afternoon of peace--
i don't know how my mom put up with
so many birds in the house-- feathers 
strewn about the upstairs hallways where
you can't leave the light on too long
or it'll overpower the circuit-- we don't
own any bird cages but we do own an attic--
so yes, we were talking about wanting kids 
& we don't want kids, yes we don't want kids 
not like this only if they're queer &
come to our back door step looking for
a place to sleep. the idea of being so
far along in life that i have a guest bedroom--
that's where they can sleep at first &
i'll warn them that i am a selfish person
who probably shouldn't be responsible for
pushing someone off the ledge of a nest but
i'll remember the boy who fell & i'll caulk 
the windows shut so no the baby can't go
pushing out the window screens--
the house is too tall-- 
we've become so so biological 
so epigenetic-- 
the gay & transgender 
cells expressing themselves
& making gay & transgender cat birds--
bumble gum stuck to the bed post
rocking chair made of feathers

 

a love poem for Decartes 

this is a love poem for you
René Descartes because i think
after all these centuries you
probably need one. did you
ever write a love poem? i think
everyone should write at least one
if they want to call themselves
a philosopher. we read something
of yours in freshman seminar & 
i don't remember anything about
it other than you staring into
a fire & thinking which doesn't
seem too out of the ordinary to me.
a few weeks ago a professor said
"we have Decartes to thank for
the separation between mind &
body." i wish you hadn't gone
& done that. sometimes i let
my body run away to made up places
like the grocery store 
or the seven eleven-- i always
comes back but we should go together,
shouldn't we? i don't like
to make assumptions but i think
no one must have ever held you
right if you truly thought
there could be those divisions.
do you trust your body? even after
all the times they moved your burial
site from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont &
eventually to Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
with one finger missing & your
skull. i'd like to go visit
your skull someday where it waits 
on display in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
i'll sit down & wait for after hours
when we can really talk & i'll
ask if you can feel your body despite
the distance. why are you so resistant 
to letting me love you? is it the 
language barriers or the centuries apart?
i want to argue with you for
writing Cogito Ero Sum
i think therefore i am 
mostly because i've heard too many
English majors use it in class discussions
as if saying it again & again could
make it true. 
i wanted to tell you 
i think therefore
i am cobble stones &
the stop lights that change too fast--
that i think therefore 
i write love poems to dead men 
whose skulls ran away from
their bodies-- therefore my own
skull rolls in the backyard 
like a crochet ball therefore
i'm tracing circles on the small
of your back therefore i'm
walking home in the fog & thinking
of ghost stories--
it would be too contradictory 
for me to tell you 
i think therefore 
i am not-- is that what you
thought i'd say? 
contradiction makes for good 
twilight talk, now are you
coming to bed with me?
put your head back on, make yourself
decent. have you ever loved 
a man before? i'm going to coax
rationalism out of you. 
i think therefore 
i'm going to keep you awake.