graffiti & the garden of eden 

does god set timers on
his iphone?

one to bring the sun
up & one to remind the moon
to feel ashamed of her
white naked body--

does he have one
for how long the earth
is supposed to last
or is he winging it?

would he notice if
we went back to the garden--

in canvas shoes & 
shaved heads--

i imagine him
sitting on the brown
recliner as he watches 

the messiah doing dishes 
by dull kitchen light--

mary with her feet up
on the blue ottoman--

the garden of eden 
perching silent in 
the backyard--

tall sunflower & ivy--

would you
like to come with me?

no-- 
i don't
want to be the first
woman or the first man

i've just always
wanted to make 
mischief against
paradise--

when my mother first
told me about adam & eve 
& all that sin

she was shocked about
how fervently i defended 
the snake--

i crouched by rivers--
flicking my tongue
in the hopes of summoning him--

apples in his mouth--

twisting stems--

the ground rotting
with fallen pears--

overgrown fence--

let's be naked
in the tall grass--

cans of spray paint
clinking in my backpack

& i'm thinking about
the railroad bridge that
hangs over I-76 
on the way into Philadelphia

the language of fat pink
& white letters--

the graffiti artist dangling 
in the night to write
their other names--

does he float?

does he hang upside down
on borrowed spider threads?

i'm thinking of the 
steel beam that says 
"i was innocent once" 

that one always makes me want to 
stop me car in the middle
of the high way so 
that i can try to reply--

i want to find that tree--

the one we all sinned for--

i want to write on the trunk--

just in black--

nothing intricate--

something gritty about
knowledge 

is it vandalism if it
was once our body too?

paint the vines red with me--

i'll get naked & we
can be brick walls-- 

necks of buildings--

fat thighs of a freight train--

i want you to write on
me with anonymity--

eat apples
off the ground--

choir practice 

you used to sing in
saint mary's choir

this was vocation--

opening your voice like
a pocket watch--

like a tulip bulb--

it was march & 
i was fifth grade fat as a 
knotted tree trunk--

& the back seat of your blue jostled
as we drove up past
the air port dinner--

at night you would sit in the sun room
tape recorder praying--

the choir director had recorded
herself because you didn't
read music--

mass happening upstairs
as i sat in the dim living room--

i made communion of oreo
cookies & apple cider &
sometimes a metal bowl of grapes--

your foot tapping made the
pulse of our house--

your guitar ached as it
leaned on the book shelf--

i think i believed in god back then

& maybe so did you--

back when billy & i sat
in the gathering area after school
while you went to choir practice--

we watched you through the glass
windows into the church--

dusky golden glow of
light behind the altar--

the rest of the church 
dull & shadow heavy--

monsters belly-crawling
beneath pews--

sometimes we went outside
& sat near the garden--

the one you had planted
the year before 

with lambs ear & daffodils
& the pinkish butterfly bush
humming mouth full of bumble bees--

the grass turned indigo 
as we swallowed the sun 
like a eucharist host--

knees stained green

we could hear 
every one of your ghost hymns 
as they emptied from 
stained glass windows--

i imagine the skull
of god is something like
those windows--

kaleidoscope & cavernous--

reverberating vaguely of 
your voice

oh father forgive me--

i pinched the butterflies
by the wings to hold them still--

took handfuls of mulch
to feel the dirt beneath my
finger nails--

but always paused when you sang
the canticle of the turning 

it has always been my favorite 
song from church--

it's the only one i can sing
now from memory

grapefruit 

you said your mother made
you eat grapefruit for breakfast

purple-pink flesh--
torn out with the spoon
dip in sugar when no one  
was looking--

juice down your arms--

this is our first lesson
in how a body should be bitter--

should sting as it comes into being--

when i was little sometimes
i would swipe lemons from
the fridge-- cut them in half
& dip them in the sugar bowl--

like crystals off your 
puckering body--

& my skull was a grapefruit 
to be sliced in half--

tart & resentful   
on your tongue--

i miss the breakfast bar
in the living room--

the swivel chairs--

the dead light bulbs--

i miss you in spoonfuls lately--

leaf of basil 
forkful of fresh salsa--

you're chopped--
onions & tomatoes-- 
fierce cilantro

what is to be done 
with the over protective
skin of grapefruit?

worn as an overcoat

when i leave mine 
in the cubby at elementary school--

i learned early 
from you that womanhood
is so much like grapefruit--

like grandmothers
in the sink--

cutting hair--

round heads--
round cirtus swallowed whole--

lemons swallowed whole--

the chairs swallowed
whole

the violets on the sink
swallowed whole

biting corridors of
a body--

you said your mother
liked grapefruit--
sometimes eating it
pre-cut in fruit cups--

& on her windowsill
she had an antique brass scale with
fake grapes & pears
to balance the sides--

each time i would 
walk over while no one
was looking to 
squeeze the plastic orbs--

as if one time
i would arrive & find
them plump & full of juice--

i don't like grapefruit

what's left of my girlhood 
in laid out on scales--

is maybe in your throat--

is maybe bitter &
bruised pink--

i sometimes sleep
in the rinds--

comforted by the smell
of metal knives

& dead light bulbs--

mother, let's eat something sweet

the lemon has two halves--

climb in the sugar bowl 
with me 

let's be women 

daylight savings

let's catch the hour
as it leaves us--

i'm standing on the porch
with my green minnow net

as a stream pours down
from the moon 
like egg yolk--

it's 2 am & there's
muffled voices of
angels as they take 

dead-of-night strolls
in human clothes--

their cold 
shoe-laced barefeet--

where are you then?

are you in bed letting
the time do what it will
to us?

i remember when we used
to have to set our clocks--

red digital blare on 
the end table by my bed--

taking away the hour
before it formally left

i want to fall back with you
but it is march &
a time for taking away--

my father will wake
up at 2:30 instead
of 3:30

i wish that he slept more--

i wish that i slept less 

as i laid awake
minnow-hearted

i decided i would go outside--

i wanted to know
if the hour left like
a comet or a tennis ball--

i'm going to catch it
for us &

when i do it will
thrash in the net like 
a crayfish--

white claws bared--
flashing in moon--

where should i keep it?

the top drawer of my desk?

the empty strawberry jam jar
on the kitchen counter?

i'm going to spend it on you--

i might not even tell you
when i do--

it'll be one of those nights
where we don't have enough time &
i'm supposed to drive home
because i'm scared of
how long it will take to escape the city 

i'll reach into my backpack 
& let the hour free--

kissing the arms of your clock--

the walls of your apartment

& you will move towards me
like a river cracked open
from the forehead of the moon--

hold me-- i want to exist 
in the hours no longer with us--

this is our folklore--

our kerosene lamp--

or i could save it longer--

keep the hour a secret &
peak at it on nights like
this where i don't believe
that you love me anymore--

smile at it's silver
body-- it's fish-eyes 
& sunset scales--

i feel wrong
so i let it go--

but for a second i felt
an hour throbbing in my fingers--

i felt all the red numbers 
on my old alarm clock--

my hands on the back of your neck

my father sleeping
one hour more

counting 

when i was 7 or 8

we would get stopped at 
the train station in Lions 

& you would say

let's count the cars 

jostling-- hand-clapping 
bodies over tracks--

becoming film reel-- flickering 
light between the skeletons
of each train car-- 

locomotion across
our own vertebrae--

did you feel the horn
blare from somehow buried
in your throat like i did? 

stacks of maroon rusted beams--
wanderlust blue & mustard yellow box cars

1-2-3-
i would try to keep count
as they rushed by--

& i would always get distracted 
imagining myself running beside
a car with an open door--

back pack over my shoulder--
gravel grinning under my canvas shoes--

the vagabond in me running--
out of breath until i leap
grabbing a sliding door--

landing inside where the slats 
of the car breath with
a rush of missed destinations--

where do the trains go 
after they pass through Lions station?

through Fleetwood then right?

where we used to have a house
on Franklin street--

where there used to a 
the farm with the camel & the alpaca--

whose street light was plucked
loose from her forehead like
a crown jewel--

today we had to avoid 
main street as trucks dug into her 
asphalt pelvis-- 

i felt her double-yellow
lines aching through me--

but where does 
the train go after there?

does it follow me
back home?

invisible-- 

no--are trains too large 
to become ghosts?

counting, you would
mouth the passage of
each car--

25-26-27

how long is it?

i would ask before you
were done--

& yesterday as we waited
for the train at Lion station

i didn't remember to
count until the blinking
red light guard rails started
to raise--

arms above our heads--

a kind of white & red praise--

i wanted to ask you
if you had counted--

from the length 
i want to guess the
train might have been
30 or so cars long--

the basilisk--
tongue tasting the air 

as March drinks handfuls
of melted snow
from the creeks--

as the cows pay no attention
to our car coming
down noble street--

their stole their
eyes from stop lights--

un-blinking & godlike--

by i am still 
in the box car--

& you are still driving
home with an empty passenger seat--

will you tell them
your daughter ran away?

that she used to count
the trains as they passed by?

gulliver 

i want to build you 
a tiny house--

one small enough 
to fit in the top
drawer of your desk--

i crouch on my speckled carpet:
desk lamp sun--

nanoscale hammers & nails

my fingers are too
big for this--

i feel gigantic 

& i think about my 
brother who read gulliver's travels 

he was most afraid 
of the land of giants 
as opposed to the 
land of small people--

i feel like a small person 
& a giant at the same time--

6 inches tall
with my head breaking
through the shingles of the roof--

glass in my hair--
tooth pick femurs--

you wished
you had started planning
your tiny house earlier--

you wanted to
build one on your own 

but you didn't say where--

i pictured it
like one of those 
HGTV shows 

a wild backyard--
grass ocean-rippling--
mountains framing the 
skyline with jagged 
god-teeth--

do you want to build
yourself smaller?

do you want to
crouch on your
hands & knees enough
times so that you 
stand 6 inches tall?

i'm making the doorway now--

i measure my open
mouth as a template--

i want to be a house
some days--

small & with one back 
window above the kitchen sink--

i want a mantle 
to take off memories on

photographs from
underneath my tongue--

prayer cards from funerals--

i'll leave 
the bed room only
big enough to hold me--

walls of my wingspan--

loneliness is
big & small--

tell me-- did gulliver 
envy them?

with their rare bodies?

& i wanted to know
if you intended on 
keeping company--

i can fit in 
the smallest of closets--

i can be the miniature 
on your end table--

or you can keep me on
the top shelf of your
medicine cabinet--

i mean the one inside
the tiny house--

right now you live 
too far away--

more than a wing span--

when you open your desk
& find me i will
fit in the palm of
your hand--

pick me up gently--

this is an invitation
to be smaller--

this is me with the
leftover bolts & screws--

they'll never find people here--

microscopic us--

our heads of pins--

our tomatoes plants on
the porch the size of aphids 

when you kiss me 
it will be so quiet that
only we can hear--

my father's favorite president is theodore roosevelt 

theodore roosevelt is pacing
the floor of the attic--

always my father's favorite
president with his caterpillar 
mustache & his spectacles
perched on his nose--

i often mistake him for a grandfather--

trapped up there in the same
room as my own granfather's
urn of ashes--

most nights he sits in
the dark-- patient--
gazing out the screened windows
at the alien glow
of a small rural town--

counting automobiles 
as they wing beat down
noble street--

check his pocket watch--

my father told me stories
about him as if he 
were a god--

breaking big business
with a pick axe--

out of breath as 
he swung-- ruptured 
cement & concrete--

i imagined him standing 
at the desk in the 
oval office like
how i stand at mine when 
i'm too alive to sit--

he checks his pocket watch 
that has been dead for decades--
sets its carcass on
a book shelf & pages 
haphazardly through 
one of my childhood picture books--

the hungry caterpillar--

he scowls with the eyebrows 
he left in portraits--

i know he's up there but
i'm always too shy to
go visit him--

what with his stern face
& his pointy shoulders--

i would tell him that when
i was younger i believed 
he was the last good president--

i wrote book reports on
him & always included 
the story about his daughter
bringing a horse into the white house--

i told my own father 
that we could therefore 
fit a horse in our own 
little 19th century farm house--

even now when i've
moved away from my parent's house
i can still hear 

his astray foot steps 

as he ponders what brought
him there--

what forces bound him
to the attic with the green carpet 
& the half-built lego
star wars sets on the shelf--

we all have promised
now to give him any newspapers--

keep him pristine & 
unknowing 

sometimes i do leave
my poetry up there though
in the hopes that the
26th president might
find something of himself in it--

i wonder if as he
stares out the back window
if he imagines the landscape
of yellowstone or cliffs
in colorado--

will he one day cut holes
in our walls like
he did to panama? 

day dream floating on his back 
beside canal boats in
south america--

for now he's just perched on
the side of what used 
to be Billy's thomas
train table--

pocket knife whittling 
away a number 2 pencil--

his face stone-hovering 
on the black hills
of south dakota

weatherman

when will you become snow?

i felt the rain getting lighter

each drop deploying parachutes--
disembodied wings of geese--

whose winter are you flying towards?

wet against my red jacket
under a grey night sky--

stars burning under the 
oily face of the moon--

was that you underneath my
blankets?

hot & headlight melting--

traffic singeing our bodies--

i stood in the 
supermarket parking lot 
last night 

as i texted you 
that i'd gotten
home safe--

i think you were already 
asleep--

the world smelled metallic--
like ice & screw drivers

they're calling for 
4-10 inches

i feel it up to my neck--

i feel like i won't
know if i really love
you till i say it a loud

& i wish i was 
brave enough to be 
trapped inside--

tell me-- 
did you look out your
window to check 
the progress of the rain?

did you feel yourself getting
lighter? 

getting ready to fall--

red balloons & stop lights
in your lips--

i wish you would fall 
into me-- a handful of bolts
& bottle caps--

a downpour of mouths--

your teeth grazing sidewalk--

each ivory sky scraper--

puncture the moon--
bleed asphalt & rock salt--

i keep a pair
of scissors in my
back pack to shatter 

the walls of snow globes-- 

& earlier today when
i talked to my father on
the phone he said that
he wished he was a weatherman
so that he never needed to 
be right--

i want to be a weatherman too--

stand with me tonight
in front of the green screen--

let's predict a cold front--

let's stand in the lawn
& measure the snow fall
with a yard stick--

do you remember that year it
snowed in october?

or that year we had off from
school for nearly a week?

no? sometimes i forget
you didn't grow up beside me--
i imagine us small--
snow to our waists--

i kiss you & we turn
into snow flakes--

i miss that excitement 
that the world could end-- 

even if only
for a few hours--

when i got up this morning 
i opened
the window to listen 

to the clouds rip
out their children's feathers

leave tinsel in the nest--

you said you're allergic
to down-- the kind
used to stuff pillows--

my mother was too--

for you i'm rejecting
the metaphor of snow & feathers--

this snow is glass--

chandeliers snapping their necks--

i wanted to ask you 
if i could be your weatherman--

if you could trust me 
to read your precipitation--

foot prints in your body--

thumb melting through
your collar bone--
i'll guess that someday 
we could be a 
terrible storm 

the kind of storm 
children 
pray to 

i feel you getting
lighter--

dying in street lamps
& driveway--

your body just like
every other snowflake
i've ever loved into water--

where are we going
to put all snow?

one hand 

your mother was scared
of sink holes

she read aloud the 
headlines about a home
in florida where a sink hole
swallowed a little boy--

eight years old

he reached his hand out
from the mouth of a sea monster--

fingers turning red as
he was chewed--

floor board teeth--
grit gravel tongue--

he died 

& there's another
sink hole forming
in your grandparent's  
backyard--

i never got to see
it for myself but
i imagined a whirlpool

a bath tube drain

emptying our bodies
of bone--

i don't think much about
sink holes 

but when i loved you
i worried you would
get devoured by one--

in your back yard
soft from april rain--
barefoot i saw
your ankles sinking--

twisting-- 

the ground planted
with shark jaws

i tried to think 
of what i would do 
if you ended up
like that boy-- hand 
holding onto a piece
of sky--

i would probably walk away
out fear--

maybe i would find
a thrust of courage--
entangling my fingers
with yours--

tugging your arms
loose from its socket--

i think my greatest fears
were realized when 
i kneeled in front
of you & realized there
was nothing i could do
to make myself love you again 

your skin reminded me 
of sand in winter--

of firework ashes--

now sometimes when i 
take walks i think 
see sink holes
opening in the middle
of the trail--

i see the last 
glimpse of that boy
as he tries
to understand what 
could be happening--

did he even know
the earth could do that
to us?

contort-- pucker--
consume us at will--

did he pray?

open his mouth to 
shout to his mother?

i know that it's selfish
but i hope if you're eaten
by the soil beneath you
that maybe you'll
think to call out to me--

maybe you won't know
why or what that means--

i would come--

i'm older now

i would know not to try 
& yank you free--

i would take your hand
& push it deeper--

this is to say that
i would expect you
do the same for me--

if in your own throat 
you feel my name

swallow hard--

god was a bottle cap 

my father makes me into
a confessional

doesn't use a kneeler--
sits down-- hands folded on
the wooden table--

bless me daughter for i have sinned

how long has it been since
your last confession?

when was the last time
your confessed anything

maybe five years

i tell him four 

i really want to know
how long it's been since 
i've talked to him
un-edited

there was of course 
an email i sent last
summer where i said i was
gay but i just said
that because i thought
it would be easier than

i'm a boy

i have made so
many confessionals since
i left home

the back seat
of my car in the parking lot
of the giant up the street
where i light street lamps 

& eat blackberries
like rosary beads

the creek with the 
long black beetles spilling
from moss

the bench where i kissed you

the bottom of the library--
a corner desk-- 

are there lips living
inside my skull?

the ones i use only
to speak to god & 
sometimes my father?

how does he know to listen?

sometimes i confess
in irreverent locations--

behind sales wracks at Target 

eating peanut butter
with a soup spoon on
my dorm room floor--

legs criss-crossed--

i become a palm leaf 
to be knotted in from
the pews--

did you know that
they burn palm Sunday 
for ashes?

oh what does my father
burn for ashes?

his striped ties?
his red & yellow checkered 
guitar strap?

i want to ask him 
where he's made confession 
if not in church--

& i think about
when i was eight 
& we'd go to 
the bottling works-- 

jungle gyms
from cases of beer--

bottles clinking--
drunken windchimes--

dad pointed out the labels--
Pilsners, Yuengling, Stout--

& i would climb--
cataloging the printed images
on each case--

elephants with top hats--fat men 
clutching tankards 

birch beer or cream 
or orange soda 
from the fridge--

we'd end kneeling in the blue
jeep as i gnawed on 
a slim jim--

god was a bottle cap

ping onto asphalt

our confessions
were swallowed

today when i drive
home i say confession 
for him--

i tell god
what he already knows--

that my father makes confession
with his body-- 

his back a precarious mountain
of beer bottles

i'm still climbing 

his hands stolen from
the stone mary statue
in the church garden--

course-- heavy

his mouth 
a rear view mirror--