DVD player phone call
Oh no really—
Yeah—ya—
I can try—
Yes—now hold on—
There’s a green button
What’s that
Okay
A green button
Go back and hit where the tray came
Out
Hit the black box
The black box
Upper left hand corner
Tell me when the tray comes out
…
…
Okay
Good
Push the tray back in
Hit the green button
Up on the right hand side
Ya see it?
Hit that hit that-
No
Okay but hit that
Got it?
Okay—
No—not that remote—
Okay okay
Honey
No
Okay
Bye bye dear
yes i’ll call then
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--
Robin Gow 