scales 

there was a scales
in the upstairs bathroom
of the aunt's house

the bathroom with
the pink tile & 
the monogrammed towels 
all in a row
F, J, M

i went up there
first out of haunting
curiosity 

open all medicine 
cabinets if you have
the chance

the scale was one
of those old manual 
ones with the dial 
that sprung alive
with my weight

i don't remember 
how heavy i was but

i remember being startled
by the concrete evidence
of my body

i blame gravity

afterwards they cropped
up other places

mischievous & greedy 

making numbers of me

on the winding gravel
path in the park

in the shower

at the window
of my bedroom where 
a books lay on
the floor peeled open 
like clementines

i'd feel the texture
beneath my toes
the bumpy surface
of the weighing device

this has nothing
to do with stomachs
or fat 

this has to do with 
the steady increase
of gravity since we were
children 

have you noticed it?

how the air 
is getting viscous 
like butter on
the counter

my father gives in

he keeps a scale
in my parent's bedroom

checks himself every morning

measures his soul by
the notches of his
belt loops

i know that they're 
contagious & that it's only
a matter of time
before the whole floor
of the house is scales

they emerge on
walls & beside light
fixtures

beneath the pillow

how much do you weigh
on a day like today 
when the earth is pulling
us in so tight?

i can feel the tides
aching--

the scales washing up
on the shore like 
horseshoe crabs

i peel them off the floor

hurling each out the
window into 
the front lawn 

where my father runs them
over with the lawn mower

this isn't about
the anorexia 

this isn't about the 
violin shape of
my old torso 

this is about the 
becoming of numbers

we're both like this
my father & i

& the button-up shirts
of hist that i'll 
never fit in

prone to quantities

afflictions of measurement

while he sleeps
i sometimes sneak 
into his room & tear

all the number out
of the scale

sucking them out like
venom spat onto the carpet

next with the alarm clock

whose angry face
stares through the walls
of the house

each number hot
as summer asphalt
as i pluck them out

i sneak back into
my room & sleep with
the light on

weigh myself unintentionally 

the scale laughing 
as big as the whole room

i'm sleeping
on the floor of
the pink bathroom 

using the aunt's hand towels
for blankets

if i don't
check the number

i can be as dense 
enough to make my own
gravities 

as light as the dried
clementine skin
on the counter 

the books blown open
on the floor of my bedroom 

oh number us, please 

 

cursive

speak 
to me in cursive

i want "o"s around
my wrists like
handcuffs

tie me to your tongue 

we learned cursive 
on lined paper

my second grade teacher
who pulled words from
our fingers like 
cassette tape ribbon

speak yourself undone

if i could take back 
what i said to you
on that night 

the words i typed
& deleted from 
a text message as i
sat in the driver's seat
of my car

the lot 
made angels in empty 
parking spots

shadows of gigantic  
"Q"s & "Z"s

the letters
i've long forgotten
how to hold hands with

when we hold hands 
i feel like a necklace clasp 

& i think of asking
my mother to clip my 
red beaded chain behind 
my neck

what are the occasions 
you assemble yourself 
in cursive?

do you fall into 
the yarn bin & 
dig fingers into spools

soft navy blue &
coarse brown like 
the blocky winter coat
she would make that december

i save cursive for
love poetry 

only i don't leave spaces
between words

don't let them come up
for air

hold their heads down
in the bath tub

while they thrash &
spit & cough water
from their noses

i write words 
so desperate for air 
that they only know your name

what should we do
with our lined paper?

i'm waiting for
the train to come 
& knock it all down

smashed snakes on the tracks

tails writhing

leaving their "L"s 
flattened & graceless

i love the cursive letter "F"

it remind me of a
man with a curly mustache 

there was one who used
to give communion 
at church & he put
the papery-wafer into
my hands 

while i imagined him 
as a letter

knotted in on the 
train tracks

will you pull the lever
& send the engine
the other direction

i don't really have
a signature anymore

i just scribble
& it's as good as my name

i used you write
boys & girls names on the back
of my math homework

upside & in cursive

hang the world by
its feet

entwined in the branches
of the willow trees 
up next to the flea market

that way no one could
read them

we're still hanging there
you & me

i'm twisting 
our shoelaces together

to make a word

 

Relics

Relics:

 

surviving from an earlier time

 

do you keep your finger nails

in mason jars?

 

your hair across the tile floor

becoming            corn husks

 

artifact—cadaver

 

all the field flattening at once

in a great             crop circle

 

you’re landing   on ancient ground

 

will anyone keep pieces of

me like they did with the saints?

 

tangible memory

 

the right forearm of saint stephen of hungary

the head of saint

thomas aquinas

 

these are first class relics

because they were part of

the body

physical

 

the foot bones of travelers

 

when the times comes

that there’s no flesh on

my heels

 

will they be worn down?

 

could they be counterfeited

as the soles of saint peter

who walked until he was crucified

 

a basilica              sprouting

from his rib cage like a poppy flower

 

years later they would dig into

the roots & find his bones[?]

when does the body

belong to the church?

 

it must never be divided               further

keep the bones from     scattering

 

at the end of times

they’ll have to find each other again

 

when souls climb back

into bodies &

we go up like mary

 

who left no thigh bones

for us to rest our heads on

 

braid my hair & slice it off

with the pairing knife

 

i can see finger bones

 

traversing canyons

 

ribs         disentangling

 

from the roots of sycamores

 

scrambling for wholeness

 

god won’t take you

any other way

 

so I gave up a long time ago

 

when i first lost my baby teeth

i swallowed two

 

another fell out in the grass

& grew into a dandelion

 

so that I could scatter myself further

 

use my clavicles for coasters

on the night stand

 

fingers bones for the steams

of pears

burst 

below the deck
we'd blow bubbles

billy with the 
yellow bottle
& me with the blue

divine &
dollar store scavenged

crouching on
the red metal doors to
the basement

wands to lips

each sphere a small
planet with orbits
& moons

whirling 
in wind chime gust 

sometimes we'd play 
a game where
you had to keep the
bubbles in the air

save them from busting
on the pavement or
our bodies

it always made me
feel volatile

like everything that
would ever touch me
was bound to rupture

slippery fingers 
wiped on our thighs

we'd play until 
the bottles of bubble-soap
were run empty

pouring the last remnants 
onto a dinner plate

making a circle with
our thumb & index finger 
to send off
the last minor stars 

i wonder if this is 
how god feels when he made
life all those years ago 

if he sat out
on the metal doors
to the cellar & opened
his mouth to blow 
souls into bodies

floating until we found gravity

are you a planet
or a star?

i think i'd like to be both

we've already established 
that worlds combust against
my fingers

on a night as clear
as this one i can 
look up & see all of them

they make a ring almost
like saturn

just outside the domain 
of clouds

all the bodies that
god has yet to breathe 

glossy twisted-rainbows 
pirouetting
inside the flesh 
of bubbles

do you ever 
find yourself with 
skin translucent & 
colorful-- eating 
bruised-peaches 
sunset?

& when all the bubbles
were popped 
we would sit
there a few minutes longer

mourning the hundreds of
citizens we watched

their brief lives 
stained on the cement

we should have
built headstones

hundreds of them

small & intricate

what if that's how
dying worked?

where ever you fall
god sends an angel 
to plant a headstone

thousands of rows 
up the street on the
hill that watches over town

revolutionary war soldiers

digging their skeletons 
into passing bubbles

knees tucked into
chests 

their skin is softer
than they remember it

drifting above
the roof tops 
on noble street

they sight see

trace empty maps 
on the back of their
own forearms 

before bursting 

somewhere around the 
old lutheran church steeple

my brother &
i aren't 
there to catch them

 

neon tetra

i am a plastic bag of
neon tetra

10 or 12 all 
darting between 
each other

glass house world

this is the car ride
home from the pet store

waiting on
the knees of bigger
humans

a little girl with
freckles scattered
like strawberry seeds
in her cheeks

she has thick fingers
that rings never fit on

walking in the grass 
on the way home last night
there was just one
dandelion

white headed 

my great sitting
a row in front of us 
at church

i blow her head 
to make a wish but not
all her hair comes off

& the remaining 
seeds i peel off with my
thumb & index finger
before crossing
main street

a sudden loss of gravity

& she's un-doing
the neck of the plastic bag 

what is the difference
between clear air & water?

the sky making soup
of itself

condensed in the rear view 
mirror with chicken & stars

i think dandelions 
were made so that you
can't ever really blow
off all the seeds

emptying my lungs

plastic bags in my chest
to be filled with more
goldfish

i liked my pet neon tetras
because they glowed
like the sign in
the beer store window

where my father &
i listened to each other
like bottle caps

i am dispersing

swimming out the window
of the car as it 
turns into glass on
the high way

break green bottle
on asphalt & don't
wear bare feet anymore

blue light hips
like cop car sirens
only intended on
floating

i can't keep track of
myself anymore

all my gossamer fins

i'm visited by
the ghosts of every dandelion 
seed i ever exhaled

they ask why they were
born & if they were
mistakes 

& i tell them that
i don't think that 
there is such a thing
as good intentions

i kneel with
them to plant myself

the earth is cool
& still getting over 
january

fish eyes freezing
like grapes 

like eight balls rolling

down the pavement 

oh she's growing
a face of berries 

breaking the skin 

she'll probably attract
flies if not boys [even worse]

i tell the dandelions
that i don't actually
remember what i wished for

& they weepy thunder

we're back at our
house on noble street
as a storm breaks 

& we all rush upstairs 
to close the windows 
in all the rooms before
the rain fills the house
like a plastic bag

those aren't raindrops 

those are the bodies
of neon tetra

a eerie glow congregating 
against the mesh screens

i step out onto
the porch to find that
everything is
in fact water

disseminating 

fingers

break off like 
kit kats 

bones clattering 
on the cement 

snapped wind chimes

all that's left of
me is swimming 
between lightning bolts
& dandelion seeds

don't try to catch me

fill the bag with
water at the window

find new fish &
give them the same names

 

loch ness is
the bath tube at my parent's house

my belly protruding
from the water like a brush
covered island

i was seven the first time
i discovered the tiny men 
in suites sitting
on the shoreline 
cameras slung around
their necks 
taking pictures

they pointed in awe
at the size of my elbows 
my giant-squid eyes
blinking away soap suds

i submerged my
whole body to get away
from them

i could hear 
billy brushing his
teeth at the sink

faucet squeak

he stood on his tip-toes
to lean in closer to the mirror 

& i sank deeper & deeper 
into the muck & stones

there was no kelp 
or sea grass 
to conceal a body 
as big as mine was 

the loch ghostily
empty-- a vacant womb 

all monsters are in someway
man-made

even if it is making
ourselves 

i hoped 
the real loch ness
creature would meet me

her long neck a
cat's cradle string 
tied to my bunk bed post

i found myself
tangled in her

my own skeleton
re-arranging itself 

bones smooth &
coated in algae
 
a prehistoric shadow

above the water my
brother called 
something 

probably my name 

only i had lost all 
words under stones

feeling around 

hands becoming mythos

i never saw her

but in the distance
i felt a body aching 
to be proven

isn't that what we
all want?

if asked for evidence
i would take everyone
to the bath tub
& ask them how
far down it goes

at the bottom of
the loch i searched until
i finally touched 
the smooth rubber 
hips of the drain 

yanked free

all the water
in the world down
our throats

do you drink soap?

did she leave with
the water?

safe somewhere
rushing under kutztown 
when it thunder pours & 
the run-off thrashes 
down storm drains 

there's no more loch ness

i took it with me

when i moved 

& now i only take showers

i search for empty tubs
to lay in

 

plastic bag

out the car window 
plastic shopping bags 
take refuge 
in the bare-bone 
bushes 

making ghosts trees

do highway spirits
use them like
hotel rooms?

pulled over their
heads like bonnets

my grandmother
always put a plastic
bag over her hair 
when it rained so
that she the water
wouldn't mess up
her perm

her ghosts reaches 
from behind the storm gates

her thin wrists
& red finger nails

some of the ghosts 
tie the bags
around their neck 

inhale until the 
bags get sucked down 
into their lungs

i make myself
new lungs out of them
when my old ones run 
out of air

punctured by red finger nails

she was never gentle

when i was younger
& unpacking groceries 
my mom told me that
you can suffocate

if you're not careful 
with shopping bags

strangling down
a throat

alone on the living
room carpet i tested
the theory

cautiously exploring
the inside
of a shopping bag 

the ceiling light
dull & muted from 
the inside

breathing slow
& measured 

inhabiting ghost skin

crinkling in 
the torrents of passing
tractor trailers

the highway is 
a homeland where they
all feel called to return 

is this my ghost
looking for a bedroom?

shimming & tearing 
themselves around street signs 

the knuckles of trees

i feel myself
becoming one of them 

opaque white flesh

eyes ground in under
the heels of tail lights

under my grandmother's
pink & green church shoes

aimless with their eyes
crushed like grapes

fumbling for each other's

spectral bodies

rustling translucent leaves

we're just finding trees to
hold us

bags around wrists 

my mother bringing in
the groceries & setting
them on the red speckled
kitchen floor

a storm cloud made entirely
of wind 
& our bones swishing outside

open the car window 
i want to pass through

fist of mouth

ghosts growing angry
with not enough room 
to make skeletons of me

so many in one bag

pulling in every direction
we didn't know we had

i want a body of my own

is this possession or 
prayerbook?

eating plastic from
the floor of the living room
when my mother catches me

walmart blue bags
& yellow from giant food mart

i'll let 
the highway have
it's say about me 

 

i figured if i didn't
eat for long enough
i could reduce myself into
a legend

what do myths like
us have mouths for?

i open mine sometimes
but only for kissing 

tongue slid beneath stone
beneath wet stone

it rains behind 
Hoffman's ice cream parlor
& we are the neon-lit porches

i found myself 
on nights like
this resting on my
back in the cool cave 
floor of my own ribs

where the fish have
no eyes to see us

are you this kind
of hungry?

when i was growing
up sometimes we fasted 
for god

fridays in lent

now i wonder
if we can learn to feed ourselves 

if maybe we can take
our realness back 

un-blur the skin

i don't want to always
wake up on
the old cellars of
the ammunitions factory silos 

gunpowder on our lips

make sugar out
of soot

lingering in the alley
behind the ice cream parlor
in the brisk march downpour

our coarse hair stuck
to our skin

do you think it
would be better if
we had the
monstrous teeth they
say we do?

mine are crooked
tongue over stone over stone

if we starve ourselves 
long enough will
they believe that we
mean no harm?

that these creatures
have yet to learn 
how to eat

the waitress with
the blonde pony-tail 
takes the trash out
at 8:47 on the dot
almost every night

we'll wait then 

safe in a shadow

it's a thursday

do you still keep track
of days of the week?

i do but only
because i like thursdays

the dumpster is green

help me bite open
these trash bags

there's bound to
be an ice cream dish
only half-melted

aurora borealis 

you said that that
northern lights are 
better in photographs 

that in a picture 
they can capture all the
fractures & ribbons 
of light

i've always wanted
to see them

i feel like that's what
you're supposed to say 

you're supposed
to have always dreamed
in green & pinks hues
meandering through
navy blue sky

is that the foot print
of angles?

god's exit wounds?

the memory 
of blood evaporated--
entering orbit

when we sat on the rocky
beach in maine 
you told me that sometimes
they come down that far-- 

that sometimes
you can see them on
the right clear sky evening

& we leaned on each other's
shoulders

boulder on boulder

the sky's birth marks

never showed themselves
so you burst the blood vessels
on my neck to show
me what aurora borealis 
is supposed to look like

like scars turned supernatural

like the memory of
fish through water

backstroke across the moon

i guess i've never
seen them

do photographs count?

what else is better
in photographs?

most recollections 
are best when secured
in picture frames 

where they can't get away

i'm watching 
me & you turn into 
watercolor hemorrhages

into green-purple blush

into celestial stretch marks

into a streamer

ribbons tying back the ghost
of our long brown hairs

tuck me behind your ear
like a daffodil 

travel farther north
in your silver toyota

the one we where
we kissed in the back seat
in your uncle's parking lot

drive all night 
till you cross
the boarder into 
Canada 

till there's nothing but
forest & asphalt road

is this my leg hair
or the back of
your knuckles?

get out & 
search for them

take thousands of
pictures even if the sky
seems tired & 
wanting to be left alone

you took 
a picture of me
naked at the foot of 
the bed
on that night after
we tired to pry 
colors from above
the black ocean water

i wonder if you still have it

i wonder if there's 
northern lights written
into my body

am i better now
in a photograph?

 

collapse of the Silver Bridge 
& the death of 46 
how did the omen stitch
itself into your ribs?

& the death of 46
in your body black as pitch 
itself into your ribs?
save bodies in the mountain ridge

in your body black as pitch 
you wanted to warn them
save bodies in the mountain ridge
oh there's fire in bethlehem

you wanted to warm them
how did the omen stitch
oh there's fire in bethlehem
collapse of the Silver Bridge 

Mothman sightings all seemed to culminate in the collapse 
of The Silver Bridge on December 15th 1967. 
Many similar cryptids and creatures have been seen worldwide. 
& seem to be heralds of impending disasters.