the thief of left socks 
  
if you're wondering where all
the left socks go
i'm here to confess anonymously
that all these years it has been
me all along--
it wasn't an easy choice of
profession but someone
has to do it--
you see i learned mischief
in my father's rocking-chair
stories & i found that i could
live everywhere & no where 
all at once--
i open old yellow phone books
collecting mildew on 
front porches & pilfer 
addresses-- ball them up 
tight & swallow them like wads 
of pink chewing gum--
these places to become my homes--
i follow my instinct of place to
i sleep beneath the restlessness
of another dryer--
why the left one? you ask
because it's the first question
most people ask if they have
a chance to meet me--
i don't have a real reason but
i think that absurdity is
the only & best reason for
action-- on nights when i'm feeling
alone i will take out my back pack
full of all your left socks &
i'll lay them all out under a 
belly of moon--
there is, of course, the polka-dot
tube sock from michigan &
the one with the schnauzers
from illanois &
i line them up in tandem
like waltz partners--
my home state of pennsylvania 
has delivered me many 
white & black fruit of the loom 
with the heel chewed through
from standing or from 
walking up & down a gravel road--
i like to put them on &
feel my own heels 
naked in heavy august air--
summer has the best months 
for sock theft-- people
are more careless-- 
i swipe addresses
off mailboxes while everyone's too
busy finding orion's belt every night
because it reminds them that
there's a waist big enough to
lock them into a night sky--
you wouldn't notice me 
if you passed by me in the 
local library--
i'm always sitting by
the pile of atlases with a 
puffy back pack brimming 
with left socks tucked nicely away
so as to not give away my identity--
i page through book after book
of oceans-- of rivers i try to 
untangle from the pages
& stuff into my pockets--
it's most thrilling to collect
all the places you'll never go to
just like i collect the lives i'll 
never get to live in every left
sock i take from the 
hearth of a dryer--
it's never been out of malice--
i never meant for you to feel uneven
or uncertain but this
is what it take for me to feel human
again-- if you want to join
me i'm spending the night
beneath your dryer in the clamor 
of the machine-- waiting for the right moment
to take just one for the collection--
if you want to trade i've been
looking to part with this toe sock
from new york--
its reminds me too much of sleep overs--
& too much of addresses that were nearly 
too heavy to swallow--
as for me i go barefoot--
i got to feel 
the dew-softened soil beneath my
toes-- dig my whole feet into
the sandboxes & the ocean bites
each of my toes one at a time--
someone else like me took my left socks a
long time ago--
i hope i meet them someday--
maybe i will crawl under the dryer
to find them there too or we will reach 
for the same atlas of middle eatern
europe & blush & pretend not
to know what each other is doing there--
next time you lose a left sock
don't think of me--
this is our secret-- i promise to
keep it safe-- to wear it in honor
of it's foot--
to look at it only by the lonely
light of a moon when i lay them all
out to dance along & together
& so wistful in their emptiness
 

the evacuation plan

when i was in middle
school & trying to find
a way to evacuate
my own body i would 
walk around the block 
past the soy bean fields--
once in awhile
no cars would pass by & 
no one would make rustling 
in their backyards or
populate their porches with
knees & dirt-road feet
so i could pretend it was only
me here-- that everyone else
had found somewhere else to go--
i guess i just wanted to
find a way to tell you
that if everyone escapes
their bodies i want
you to leave me behind--
i want to be the last one &
i would start by just
walking down the back road again
& listening to the naked necks
of all the old trees whose 
skeletons rotted from the inside
out-- 
i feel myself growing hallow
without voices to fill 
the empty corridors up to my 
wrists-- i husk
myself-- scoop out
enough to be used as wind chime
for only me to hear--
i'd pretend the dotted
yellow lines in the middle of
the road were a balance beam &
i would hide all the places i
never thought i would fit into--
crawl inside the fridge & lay face
up on the second shelf next to 
a pint of blue berries
that my mother would have forgotten
about before the evacuation--
inside everything would be bright &
cold.
i'd wonder what it was
like for everyone 
to leave their bodies behind & 
where everyone had gone without me--
i would wish i'd kept you with me--
just you.
together we could repopulate the
earth with the sound of our
bones turning into wind chimes--
fall slowly like the trees who
gave up their bones-- we'd make
the kind of an unpredictable 
song spurred on by emptying 
yourself out the windows--
each sill filling up with voice--
the voice of everyone holding their
breath & waiting for me to give
up my freckles like a handful 
of sunflower seeds--
in the back yard i would listen
to the ghosts of the pumpkins we tried
to grow that one year--
they would make jokes about how
strange a relationship i have with 
other humans--
a limbo desire to be totally
& utterly alone while also engulfed
in a mouth full of every word ever spoken
into a poem--
i want to know if i'd still write poetry 
if it was only me to haunt this body--
just me here walking ghosts back
into the soy bean field--
i think i could keep writing even
if i forgot what all the words
we'd ever shared had meant-- written
in a language of empty femur &
vacant porch my poetry would
fall heavy out the windows
of the house & shatter in the driveway
like all the promises we 
made to sleep quickly & alone--
this is the evacuation plan--
stay with me-- we can unlearn what
all the words mean & i can teach
you how to depart from a body 
& how to trick the soy beans
into laughing like bells--
we'll bring dirt-road feet back
to the porch & wait
from everyone to return--
coming back to your body is like 
slipping down from the second shelf
in the fridge-- a carton of
blueberries in hand--

it's not the kind of thing we talked about

--my mother said when i asked
her if they had picked out
any other names for me other
than 'sarah'
i guess i had imagined them
with at least a sort of
list-- crossing off ideas
until they circled my name--
maybe it took them hours--
i thought-- passing around
my tulip face into a word--
i asked what i would have been
called if i was born male & 
they said my 'william'
which would become my 
younger brother's name-- 
we were each
other before we shared bath tub
water--
what i didn't ask was 
what they did talk about
if they didn't talk about my
name--
i've tried to figure it out
from old photographs 
of them holding me-- a tangle
of clothe & soft skin--
in the ones from my baptism 
my mother clutches me like
a loaf of French bread--
i know you never expect someone &
maybe they were smarter for
not trying to expect me--
they certainly didn't hope for
an anorexic poet who sits in 
windowsills some nights feeling
heavier than a star but
still somehow in flight--
i trace rings around my body--
the orbital paths of invisible moons--
i like to think that maybe 
my parents thought
about what would happen if they
planted me in the backyard
behind the house on franklin street--
maybe my mother bet i would grown
into a fig tree like the ones 
that had grown from 
her grandmother's veins &
my father would bet i would become
a pear tree--
like the fickle one behind my great
aunt's house-- growing
green pears on a whim
& letting her balled fists rot
into the lawn--
maybe they would
argue over a plot of top
soil & resolve not to plant
me for fear i would be neither a
fig tree or an apple tree
or a pink balloon like the
ones tied around the mailbox 
to walk about baby girl--
i don't want to ask more question--
i prefer my answers from 
pictures where i am small
& neither myself or someone else--
maybe even then i knew i had poems--
but not enough words to put
them into air--
maybe i tried & only clumsily 
crumpled napkins with my slimy 
baby-hands--
when i cried i wonder if they
talked about how quiet i would
be if they had let me become
a fig tree or a pear tree--
i wonder if they talked about
sitting me in a window sill or
worrying about me drawing
the moon closer to the windows
when i was asleep in the crib
with the tall wooden bars--
i have asked my brother if he ever
thought much about his name--
he shrugged & said 
it was just a name & i joked
that it would have been mine
if he weren't always late--
he tells me i can have it & 
i laugh because i already have
enough names & still too many 
to choose from--
my parents planted letter 
in my mouth-- held me close
as a loaf of french bread & 
took down the pink balloons 
tied to the mailbox the next morning
when i was soft as a rotting
pear fist & free
of original sin--

anonymous girl & re-gifting the sky 

by the time you pull the 
wrapping paper off the
sky i will
already be someone else--
you will catch the gift tag
when it falls
down from a cloud--
you might mistake it for
a gum wrapper--
it's from
the anonymous girl who
poured the steam off a tea
kettle to make the night
blush grey--
i kept the stars hidden
so you 
would have a reason to 
take me back.
in the city i don't have
to be anyone-- i can
order a coffee from another
notch in the shin of
a sleeping stone body
& pretend like i have always
stopped there-- 
i can put
more money than i should in
the tip jar as an offering 
to the buildings to ask
them to keep sleeping-- we
need a few more thousand years 
to use their skeletons as a city--
i sit at the counter & 
look out the window like
all people who write poetry do.
i'm stuck because
in my mouth everything rhymes 
with your name--
when you go to bed in june
i'll re-wrap the sky for you--
this time with red & green christmas
print paper & when you open
it the sky will turn
to snow around us--
there will be no falling here--
only waiting for the ground 
to stop snowing too--
you still won't know me
& i'll still drop my names
in pennies on the sidewalk
for other people to find--
oh what are we but anonymous poetry 
on the backs of our own hands--
unwrap the sun i left for you--
peel off the rind-- each
smile in a little juicy clementine 
lobe-- everything good
you have to unwrap--
to you we are still anonymous
& i'll probably recognize 
your face only from where
i sit in the coffee shop
i'm pretending i stop at everyday--
i go here to write love
poems for people i'll never meet--
someone has to be no one today--
it's a terribly brave
things to wrap up the stars
without knowing who
might unwrap it &
who might find my name
at the end of a poem they're
accidentally writing late 
at night or in the morning
when the grey june sky turned 
into snow. 

spoon-fed crucifixion

when i was in high school
my mom sent me to jesus 
camp-- but i was already
too far gone-- i had already 
performed my own
baptism in the flyleaf
pages of a notebook--
drank ink instead of wine--
i liked my own skin too 
much to believe in a god
who was disgusted when 
i touched myself-- a throat
full of blanket-- at the beginning
of the weekend  
a priest stood
up in front of our group
holding a thick crucifix &
proclaimed to the men
in the room that if they
weren't ready to give
THAT-- then they weren't
ready to have sex-- he moved
to the ladies & explained
on that we shouldn't
believe boys who tell us
they would give THAT for
us-- if this were true
then none of us would be ready 
to love-- i don't think
love is the type of thing 
anyone can be ready for--
there's not a qualification 
for it-- some of us love 
like nightlights & other ones
of us love like goldfish--
indifferent & staring forward
into the warped face of a 
mouth we fall into--
we played this game in partners
where we each made our own
bowls of ice cream & then picked
a slip of paper from a jar
instructing us how to eat it--
mine told me to feed my
sundae to my partner but only
after they had fed me-- 
the girl i was paired with had two
strawberry blonde pig tails &
her sundae was covered in 
oreo cookie crumbles--mine
with gummy bears & rainbow sprinkles--
she fed me slow & then i followed--
we tried not to make
eye contact with each other
& we nervously laughed at the clumsiness
of each spoon full--
at one point she stopped before
the sundae was done & we sat in the quiet--
the leader explained that love
was like how we were feeding another 
person a sundae-- that the best
type of love would be when
partners fed each other at the same
time & how each different little
pattern represented a different type
of flawed human love--
there was one group next to me
where one person didn't
get fed sundae at all--
that night we shared prayers
& partners & the pigtail
girl said she prays every night
that young girls & boys have the 
strength to stay pure-- i told her
i pray for homeless people because
it sounded like something i should say--
i went back to my room & sat at
the wooden desk-- exhausted & restless
& undeserving of someone to
feed me ice cream with gummy worms. 
i began to write myself a letter--
i thrust my hips into a page--
unwrapped my tongue in letters--
i wrote myself into a body again--
a body deserving of lust--
determined that love wasn't something 
i would be fed by someone else--
love was something i had swallowed
when i was very young & was in the process 
of pulled from myself--
they teach young girls so little
about unfolding & how to 
be your own spoon-- this is my 
self-crucifixion-- the kind of love
with stigmata is the love i eat
while you watch me-- 
this is where you wait while
i am busy becoming untangled 
in blankets-- 
i don't want your prayers for
my purity-- i want your prayers for
plastic spoons & boys who don't
think love his anything to do
with the violence of a god
who loved his hands full of nails--
how many times have
you used the back of a hammer to peel
yourself free?
i sat there & wrote myself into
a letter that i crumpled
& tossed into the trash--
in the morning we met by the
lake with the Franciscans in their
brown robes & prayed old words over
the water--
our father our father
or body-- my body i eat from
a plastic spoon-- 

the june after the bridge floated away

one march
my brother, my neighbor dylan
& i built a bridge across the 
creek behind our houses--
it was a Frankenstein of rotted limbs--
twigs-- rocks & the biggest 
thighs of the trees.
little worms scrawled over 
the backs of our hands as 
we peeled the wood from 
the dirt-- beetles scurried & screamed
armageddon.
foot in front of foot we walked on 
water to the other side
where we mistook the old limestone 
kiln for the throat of god--
this is where we made a shrine
to our childhoods--
strung rosaries out of plastic beads
& mulberries smudged in our
fingers-- wrote on the walls of
the cave with sharpie-- 
we didn't know any profound 
words other than our names & dylan
teased that i had always wanted to
kiss him--
the creek takes time to grow thick--
each weed reaching taller
through the months of spring--
& before summer gets too rampant
we still had time to 
explore in the waning months of
elementary school--
escape into the wet land around the
creek-- 
this was where we swallowed 
ourselves & set all the words 
used against us at school on
leaves to float them back 
down the stream so they couldn't
be used to hurt anyone again--
this was the year dylan's father died
& my brother & i watched
the ambulances congregate outside
his house like screaming beetles--
we learned there
are certain things you 
don't say sorry for
this was the year the thunder storms 
took away our bridge after years
of service-- this was 5th grade for
me & before school let out we 
all watched some man from
the borough plant
a sapling at the edge of the
stream as a gesture of truce
to the nature we
cut
back to build the strip
mall with the CVS in it--
the stream took back the logs
& the twigs-- the thighs of
the trees took burial 
in the mud beneath the water--
& we returned to find there 
to be nothing left but a few 
scattered trunks--
it was just dylan & i
so we baptized our feet in the mud--
left our socks on a the shore
& waded up to our hips--
on the other side we sat 
on buckets again
in the throat of god--
dylan coughed his mother's cigarette
ash & there was no where to
be swallowed to--
growing up isn't a moment--
a come-of-age-dream
where everything aligns & you
are on the other side of
it all--
growing up is crossing the 
creek with a bridge & watching the
bridge float away
with the words you left on
dead oak leaves &
growing up is a process of
taking no one with you-- letting
yourself get swallowed & learning
there are times to apologize 
for nothing just because someone
has to say something--
i want to say sorry to dylan now--
sorry to my brother for
not building the bridge
stronger-- i was oldest--
that was of course my job--
somewhere there is a neck of the stream
where all our leaves are still waiting--
their backs covered in bruises
& somewhere the beetles returned
to the undersides of tree
trunks we dislodged & they 
mutter to each other about
how desperately humans try to
make everything they
make last forever--

what is the storm running from
this time

what is the storm
running from this time
on those
thin lightning-strike legs
that kick at the skyline?
our houses turn into bowling pins--
knuckles of balanced dominoes--
each footfall is another
step closer to our chimney--
the artery-- a telephone cord we
pulled from god's throat
to pray into--
we talk like radio show hosts--
god doesn't ask questions or pray 
back to us--
i have never been scared of 
thunder & lightning because
she is more scared of us
than we are of her--
spends her life time speeding-up
in an attempt to escape
her own destruction-- watching
the ground evacuate under her feet--
she wonders what it is about
her that makes everything shutter--
sometimes i feel like her--
a storm with unforgiving feet--
it's not her angry electricity--
it's the frantic sprint
& catastrophic qualities of
my own escape-- my arms 
spread the length of the road--
i connect my house
to the quilt patch of soy bean field 
tucked 
behind the water tower--
i fill the space under my
bed with my organs before i 
go running in the grey-- wrap 
them around bed posts-- try to
stuff the pillow--
i always need more space--
i'm making space under my skin 
for worries & metal spoons
-- there's no more
room for stomachs or
veins-- i take 
them out on the bed room floor
while my wrists snap like 
distant thunder-- here i come again--
thin legs kicking at the earth--
strike down the crooked rooftops--
shout into the chimney--
here i am as frightened 
as the storm running from herself--
looking for my places to hide my
veins where they won't just
become blue static in the hair
of the willow trees along
the edge of the farmer's market--
look at my hands full of
earth & husks--
my bed post
was also my chimney-- all four of
them--
don't be scared of me please--
i fill so much of a room
it's hard to keep me company--
i know my legs are loud--
i know it's hard to listen--
count the seconds after the flash
& that's how close i am--

1999, for carole
(maybe to arouse an awakening for poetry)
-love tom

this is a different version of 
the story-- in this
life i fold
chocolate wrappers into
the tightest squares on my 
end table but never toss
them in the waste basket--
in this story i nod to the titled
hat of the night light 
nearest my half
of the queen sized bed--
i eat books like 
fun size milky-way bars or 
cream filled hershey's kisses
only when i'm alone & not
attempting to fold myself
into bed with him--
during the day sometimes 
i take a moment to lay on
my back in the middle of the living
room & i imagine it as a biplane
falling from the ceiling towards
me-- i re-write my will
in my head & i leave the jewelry 
box to you-- my mother left 
me a necklace with one ruby
missing & it reminds me of us.
i don't wear the necklace
because he says he feels
like the remaining two rubies
are glaring at him & says i should where
the necklaces he bought instead--
the one with the sapphire & emerald
in the shape of some sort of
"forever" heart.
i hate new things.
i want to rust 
like old poems crawling free from
their silver wrappers.
i wish you would stop leaving me books
& writing in the front cover.
i think if he saw your handwriting
in all the red ink
he would know i'm irrevocably in love
with you.
i don't want to be careful--
i want to be precarious.
i want to have to wash
the pillow cases when you leave.
i live by looking forward to 
other people's birthdays-- 
i distract myself-- this year
my michael asked me to make
those chocolate lava cakes you
like-- you know they're from a box-mix
right? i keep telling myself
i'll try a "real" recipe but
i don't want to disappoint anyone--
maybe he'll change his mind
& we can have cupcakes--
i love candles in cupcakes even if 
they are box-mix--
if i make enough birthday cakes 
& light enough birthday candles
this year we can skip me turning
older & pretend
you're giving me a book of poetry
for no occasion at all--
just as a lover would 
on made-up anniversary--
i tuck the book under my pillow
& unfold myself like 
the edges of a reese's cup wrapper 
while i wait to share the bed again--
he gets in & takes the light from half the room 
if you're going to keep reading--
do it downstairs
-- he says
so i click the switch on my own lamp
& lay facing the other wall--
i was just paging through 
--i say
& close the book again--
i regret to say i find it hard to
read much.
the first page of most books is
good enough for me-- i like
to imagine an ending-- the endings
we imagine are always better
than what someone else can write--
oh you don't know what it
means to be awakened, tom,
it is a sensation that only grows
when i turn off a the lamp
& your words on the inside cover of
my books turn into the branches
of veins up your wrists
when you wrap me up like your very
own hershey kiss--
next time write in black ink
& we'll awaken together in
the rusty mouth of a dead poem--
he reaches over & touches my arm 
& i flinch because for a moment
i thought it was you--

a thank you letter to my father who
taught me how to eat--

bananasplit is how we cut
my hair & spiked it with
a fist full of gel.
my father & i ate
our own boats. we sunk
in a pair of a swivel
chairs at the diner counter--
i was the chocolate syrup
in the black & white milkshake--
this is how you fill a sandwich
with potato chips--
we navigated our own 
banana splits at
the malt shoppe 
after i broke five boards
for my black belt test--laid
out our bodies long on the end of
those sundae spoons-- the type
you could use to 
slide all the way out of
a second story window
& into the front lawn.
my father opened my mouth wide
enough to fit another spoon full 
of chapter that night.
he said to 
bite hard into words &
stop only for air-- one chapter
more one chapter more-- this is
how we ate ourselves into 
other lives--
how we rebuilt
the bodies on the dinosaurs
from fern fossils-- 
how we woke up early together 
& munched on 
weather channel jazz.
i used to eat all the raisins
out of my father's raisin bran
cereal but i don't think he noticed--
my father cracked
thunder on the telephone wires
like the side of a bowl--
swallow us whole-- we slurped
the storm like spaghetti 
from the back porch--
electric on our lips-- 
i watched how he ended the day
in the bottom of the sink
on the rind of a watermelon--
i eat the black seeds in
an attempt to grow a garden
from my stomach--
we were waiting for
the bagel pizzas & it was school
time so that meant my brother
& i were waiting at the counter
in the kitchen--
my father cut my hair again
but this time so my head would
fit better in a kick boxing helmet--
he always told me that i fight
like a boy--
never come up too long
for air when you're caught 
in a downpour of words-- eat 
faster & wipe your mouth only
when you drop a comma--
my father kept spoons we could only
use for feeding me sentences 
from the rocking chair 
next to my bed--
my father taught me how to eat--
tore out the pages each book
& fit the wadded up paper
in his mouth--
we swiveled around on the diner
stools to see the storm 
whisk the clouds into a froth--
we burn in the bottom
on the pan sometimes-- me in
my short spiked hair
getting mistaken for a son--
my father taught me how to
eat-- everything
is better in a sundae dish--
if you break make sure you snap
clean in half--
a black belt boy--
a fork twirled on the porch
in thunder-- chew before
you swallow.
he showed me how
a rocking chair could
be held together
with the punctuation 
of a chapter book-- he held one
open like a bible--
a sundae raft for us
to float down
from the second story window--
we eat rain from
our palms & all the ink turns
the books into chocolate 
syrup-- 

how you fall is no one's business
but your own--

am i enough pieces
yet to be your stained glass
window? 
my tongue shattered on
the open mouth between the curtains 
& when the sun comes up
in the morning
(tomorrow)
you will look down my 
throat like a kaleidoscope?
when i lay next to you
on the roof i am reminded of
how in wind storms the
shingles would break off
like fish scales & scatter
in the yard--
my father would tell me to go
find them & i would
pick them up to fold them in half--
my tongue wore a halo
so the brave people in the first
row of pews would know 
everything i've had to do
to bring the color
through my skin-- these
bruises turn me into 
a catastrophe of light--
my favorite type of stained glass
windows are the ones that don't
try to tell you anything--
the quiet ones full of
different types of broken--
the ones whose patterns
take your eye out of your skull
& spin them to the dark side
of the sun--
this is where i go when i'm
tired of being marveled at
for how i break & how
i have broken-- this
is the place where the colors
of my body are quiet & there's no
one to notice the glass
stuck in my tongue--
i try to speak but something
in my throat turn all my words
to red & green & blue
as we lay there is scratchy 
prom clothing-- your tuxedo--
my puffy dress--
your bare feet-- my heels-- knocking
free shingles onto the lawn
like a storm--
how you fall is no one's business
but your own-- i'll put
myself together from my windowsill
so when you wake up you'll think
of no colors you found in me--
i don't want a lot of time--
i just want to be able to 
pull out the ribs that felt good &
keep them as a place
out of context-- a place for the
sun come back to &
light knocks on my front door
with a mouth full of halos--
oh sleep quiet & alone if
you want to keep any colors to 
yourself-- this stained 
glass body was never yours
to look through & there will
be mornings where you see the
sun come through your window
in a storm of glass--
knock the scales from
your back-- i'll toss my shoes
from the roof to find them
later & snap off the heels--
how you fall is no one's business but
your own--
let them think it hurt-- 
hide behind the sun if you have to