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

why aren’t my hands pot holes

to hold rain water
after it falls?
so that boys in rain boots
can splash murky waters
at the girls who pretend they
don’t love it.
so i could look into my hands
& hold everything
in a missing bite of earth--
god built the atlantic 
slowly by chewing away
at the dirt until his
mouth was full of fish
when I needed to pour
into new places
i’d spread apart my fingertips
to let the clouds drop
hail like glass eye balls--
but my hands are dry from space heaters
that cough me into raisin dried-sleep
& I feel like bent branches
that once held a girl who
was going to climb 
to the top of the tree
snow takes deep breathes
but somehow always drops
through the hardwood floor

*

i've been googling the galaxy

sometimes i think it's all so small--
all the clouds of star & comets
who always slither themselves
away like the decrescendo of a snail--
yes i guess it's all far away but
in a picture a being as small
as me can stand back at it all--
a pot hole in the road-- 
a stagnant pool of tadpoles who are
actually meteors chasing the bones
of allosauruses who burrowed
beneath the craters that would 
become lakes-- that would again become
oceans-- a scar above 
god's left eyebrow when the
moon stone-skipped on the
surface of his face
i've been googling the galaxy 
in an attempt to feel larger
but we are so small--
i reach out to extend to the walls 
of my room-- a fist of saturn--
my hair in the eternal fires of 
mars-- wrists wrapped in 
andromeda 

*

the rock store in search of planets

my father keeps a wooden chest
where all the planets have come from--
some of them sleep in beds of cotton 
coffins-- pockets of galaxies
where the suns are quiet for now--
sleep & uninterested in burning--
fern fossils that were once 
the scales of my neon tetra
fish-- the ones who ate themselves 
to death because my brother
& i didn't know to stop
feeding them pieces of saturn ring--
we went to the rock shop when we
wanted more planets-- you can
never have enough planets
just like planets can never have enough
moons-- enough children
to keep in their own dark
cotton galaxies-- the wooden chest
that waits in the attic 
for us to take our planets to--
the ones from the shelves of the rock shop--
the tyrannosaurs teeth from us who
would be king-- the bite of a memory 
of we carnivores  

you can travel too--

my mother says because that's 
what mothers are supposed to
say to their children who
tell them there is so 
much to see between
the corners of their room--
i google mapped to see
how far away you are &
it tells me there's no walking
directions from pennsylvania 
to berlin-- it makes
you take a plane but i think
google maps has little belief
in the will of humans to
walk across water for their
brothers--
it tells me if i were to
take a plane from the philadelphia
airport this afternoon
i could be there outside
your door in ten hours &
ten minutes-- 
don't ask me where the ten minutes 
came from-- i'm assuming it
is acknowledging my tendency to 
get distracted on street corners--
maybe it knows i stare too 
long out airport windows--
maybe it's guessing i'll get lost
in berlin without a knowledge of
their language beyond being
able to count to 7--
it's not that i don't want to
walk across an ocean--
i do-- 
it's just that i feel
like i'm too big to travel 
that far-- i'm 
already filling up this room 
so much with the sound of my
fingers across my laptop--
this is keyboards turning 
into rain--
this is another night when
the moon tries to 
come in through the window--
i tell her she's too big
& i'm too big & there's not 
enough space to store anymore
planets in here--
but moons are impatient & she
finds her way in by breaking 
the window from & tossing the
shutters to the side like 
stiff eyelids--
i have a habit of letting 
her do this-- so i stay away
with her until she falls asleep again--
she tosses & turns until she's
warm in a black of star & 
darkness-- i'm not sure
anymore if the night sky is the
ocean between  us or
the sky that i would walk on
to visit you--
i am a tourist of my
own bed room where
i talk the moon
into going home-- 
i'm a nomad down
the same sidewalk-- i watch 
june draw the night
around us like a lid over
a pot of tomato soup-- our mother
is making on the stove-- & the 
house always smells like the spice
cabinet crashed in through the window--
i'm a pilgrim on the front 
porch-- & there's a home somewhere
that we come back to but it's not
a place--
it might be where the moon
finds us or it could 
be anywhere we travel to--
i am the door knob sightseer--
i am the ten minutes on
a street corner in one of our two cities--
i am feet on an ocean &
the persistent belief
in my own ability to 
fill up an entire room
before the moon comes crashing in

fountain hunger

sometimes a poem 
only has a title
so the author can 
pretend that they
meant something cohesive 
by writing it.
i make a lot of poems without
ever writing them down but this
is one i'm writing down & 
also throwing away on the
face of a penny-- this
is a poem written on abraham lincoln's
nose-- so small you can't see it--
i've been thinking about
the fountain at the mall
i used to go to in high school--
the one with the pet store
where you can hold puppies
once you get a driver's license--
with the food court on the second
floor-- chick fil-a behind
bars on a sunday 
between taco sensations
& subway--
down below right outside of
boscov's is a big
fountain with a wooden bridge across--
i've dropped so many pennies there
& i wonder if they're still waiting
to become a wish i've long ago forgotten--
i've concluded there's probably someone whose
job it is to collect them-- angel or
maybe a janitor who works
the night shift on the first weekend 
of every month-- they keep bags of 
everyone's fallen copper desires--
do they buy a taco upstairs with
them or spend them on a sundae at
dairy queen outside the front door?
if it were me i wouldn't be able to part with
them-- so many relics of people who
all wanted to take out a piece of themselves
& throw it into the fountain--
-- there is a certain
type of empty hunger
that makes people throw their change
into an artificial blue
body of water-- a sort of hapless
type of hope we give to our children--
my uncle was the first one to
teach my brother & i to toss
pennies into fountains-- eagerly
he stopped us on the bench
next to the bridge & pried open
his leather wallet-- dumped
a handful of pennies into his
hand & split them between us--
confused we watched as he tossed a few
as examples-- a spurt of water
following the satisfying plunk
of each as they descended--
i remember asking when the wishes
would come true & my uncle had said
eventually
eventually we all will take
our hungers by the handful &
throw them away to drown--
i have kissed several boys on that
bridge above the ghosts of people's
pocket dreams-- the fountain is a graveyard
& an open mouthed wind--
an ocean-- i'm writing this
poem because i have wanted to walk
into the fountain for a long time--
take off my socks & shoes at the edge
& wade in-- water to my calves--
i want to catch the wishes as people
toss them-- hold the coins up to my ears
& tell the presidents to whisper--
tell me all the secrets we can stuff
into a pocket or the bottom
of a shoe-- i want to know
what parts of you believe
enough to throw your change in a wishing
in the artificial fountain 
outside the boscov's at the mall--
i want to collect enough pennies
to buy you an ice cream around the corner--
sit on a bench & talk about all
the boys we've kissed on bridges
& all the pennies we've dropped
into the fountain as a resolution to
a hunger that filled us up
far past the depth of the 
blue water beneath our knees--
this is one of those human places
we don't have to understand-- this is
the bridge where you're allowed to forget
the details & it's sunday remember
so chick fil a is closed up stairs 
& the fountain cleaner is coming tonight
to fill a bag with pennies & use them
to buy himself tacos for dinner
all alone right before he locks all
the doors & stands on the bridge
alone-- only to repeat the process
by tossing his own pennies
off into the water-- 
sometimes a poem tries to describe
a feeling we don't have words for--
i'm calling this the hunger of
fountains-- a purely human endeavor--
a type of modern baptism 
in search of a god who would
grant wishes-- 
we built
a fountain

trick or treating in june--

ring the doorbells 
of the lamp posts 
& we'll fill
our pockets with lightning 
bugs in candy wrappers--
you ask me how many more months
it is until halloween 
& i laugh 
& tell you that it's tonight--
i can tell because of the way 
the moon is following us
down the gravel pathways through
town-- 
the ghosts stir
in the teased hair of the maple trees--
the cockroaches are walking
into the veins of the houses
on main street--
so we sit on the front porch 
& carve a jack-o-lantern 
out of cicada melodies-- light
the fire in it's belly
with the flicker
of sun flame burnt on to 
our shoulders--
the lightning bugs
push free from their wrappers &
fly out of our pockets to bang their
heads on the lamps & fly
higher to the stars--
bang their heads into Orion's belt--
we ring more door bells & 
no one seems to have stocked
up for the night so we buy
a bag of candy corn
to plant in the backyard for 
next year--
we're going to grow a maze to
get lost in together between
the stripes of white, orange,
& yellow--
we put on our costumes
even though it's thick
& soupy outside-- after all it
is halloween--
you're dressed as a witch &
me as the grim reaper from
when i was eight & just becoming
fascinated by death--
plastic sythe in hand
ready to collect the souls
of a the crickets who chirp
out the temperate & the spirits 
of the cicadas who 
wait for us for 
sixteen years underground--
we sit under the street lamp 
again with empty pumpkin buckets
& i tell you i had been
hoping most of all to score
some Twizzlers & you say you 
would settle for 
any type of chocolate--
you make me want to kiss the orange
into the leaves on the trees
for you but instead i ask
to kiss you & you say yes--
i love you like cicadas who 
become jack-o-lanterns & 
our front door we imagined in the torso
of the street lamps--
i love you so much the moon
followed us home & got stuck
in the hair of the maple trees--
i love you like halloween in june--
unexpected & too early
& too late-- bright like
the sun fire off our shoulders--
bright like the open
mouth of the jack-o-lanterns
we carved 
on the front porch--

a god who grants blue bicycles

i would make a terrible god
because i'm bad at saying 'no'--
i would give people 
whatever they prayed
for (not because
i thought they needed it)
but  because i'm bad at saying 'no'.
with as god no one would ever die &
the rain would stop & start without
warning & sometimes a night
would burn longer than the moon--
there was a boy at children's mass
who said he was praying
really hard for a blue bicycle--
we all used to walk 
two-by-two to the rectory 
during the homily-- our
children's crusade-- an exodus
from the big warm belly of
the church-- 
i used to sit
on the grey carpet
& wonder what the adults
did in the big church without
all the children--
i imagined them pretending
to crucify different people
each week-- a role playing procession
around the church-- i could see
the priest painting on
stigmata on the hands & feet of 
our parents--
today the thought is absurd to me
but it troubled me from
the back of the children's group
where i thought mostly about 
eating doughnuts in the gathering
area after mass--
we were learning about how to pray
& the blue bicycle boy
didn't seem to get it--
he kept saying that he was praying
for a new bicycle--
a bright blue bicycle but it
never ever came--
i imagined a shiny two-wheeler
waiting on his porch--
a silver bow around it's handle bars
& a tag would read
to bicycle boy from god
shut up & stop praying for
the bicycle-- i heard you already--

our nun tried to be patient
you shouldn't pray for things
like toys
she said & she added
unless you pray for them for
other people

the boy nodded 
i'll pray for one for everyone

i didn't raise my hand to
say anything as we
talked more about praying
even though 
i usually liked to have the right
answer-- 
i didn't have any right
answers about praying--

i prayed like someone
would count the rotation
of a bicycle tire around
its orbit-- a spoken
memory of our mother's
mother's mother's 
rosary beads that smell
like roses because they're
made of roses-- there was a cross
on the wall in my bed room
i would hold to pray the our father
when i was scared of ghosts--

i told the bicycle boy
on the walk back to the main church
that my mom's friend was dying
& the when i prayed it didn't help

he told me the story again 
about the blue bicycle & how
he wondered how god would
bring it to him--

i told him my mom's friend was
dying & how i wondered if
my praying was making him sicker

& he told me the god would leave
the bicycle 
on the back porch next to the recycling
while we were all asleep

we didn't say anything else

i imagined god as an old man at a wall
of ringing telephones-- each with another
glory be or hail mary--
a penance--
a prayer for a dying friend--
a mouth full of incense & rose petals--
i would walk down the line & cut
the wires of the phones--
no more prayers for this god-- 
the answer is always yes--

save your friends from dying 
for once & eat jelly doughnuts
in the gathering area every morning--
walk two-by-two while our
parents reenact their own 
crucifixions--
& there is a blue bicycle
on the back porch
& there is a blue bicycle
on the back porch  
with a silver bow & the faint
smell of roses--

where do you keep your endings?

i keep mine in a ziplock bag
at the back of my underwear drawer--
they're there next 
to the bag of thick brown hair
my mother saved from my first hair cut--
it wasn't the last time i would
use scissors to feel lighter--
i keep my endings on the head of a match or
a blue birthday candle--
i keep them on dog-eared pages
of books i haven't been brave enough 
to finish & in my pillow case
at my parents' house--
i've befriended the em-dash
even though it reminds me of a
coffin-- open casket i climb into
as a form of protest--
i've never gone to an open casket
funeral & i hope i never have to--
i'm trying to live 
in resistance of punctuation
& i don't believe much about endings
or what people
say they remember best about
you when you're dead-- 
let's face it
everyone has a nice smile--
everyone dies too young--
everyone's outline in chalk never fails to
look like a question mark
asking god where their body is
going after all these years of ending
sentences & turning off lights 
on the back porch-- 
i'm the kind of body who
lies restless as a semi-colon--
awake through the
night my eyes become
hole-punchers-- weighty circles
attempting to make a collage of
street lamp & half-eaten moon--
when i die i hope to return
as something with less punctuation--
me & you we could be street lamps--
the type with brachiosaurus
necks-- jaws opening into streams
of light-- 
be a dwarf planet with 
me-- be a sun so we can 
die so extravagantly we destroy
the mouth who spoke us--
i traded my periods for freckles--
i stole a handful of 
stars & forced them into the poetry
i've been writing for you that's
never done enough to read aloud--
let's meet here again 
across the sidewalk from 
each other on a brilliant diagonal--
i'll pretend i don't see you until
we flick on at dusk--
blink moths out of our eyes
& meet under street lamps
that are also the necks
of dinosaurs--
if you could keep your endings somewhere
would you keep them next to mine?
would you bury them in a shoe box
like our pet turtle or would
you put them 
on a coat hanger so you wouldn't
forget where to find them-- 

exo-skeletal

i've been living 
on the outskirts 
of my own body where
my tongue gets caught in gum wrappers
& rotisserie chicken bones--
i use a pay phone to wake up
& to remind myself to consume
something other than air--
use the chicken bones as antenna--
my heart runs on a backwards
bicycle chain-- i count my legs--
this skeleton of
a dead spider folded lawn chair--
this is where all the beer bottle
caps of my father have
rolled to-- where they fell from
the porch like cut off
thumbprints-- this is where
all the uncounted calories
turn into cheerios & crawl out
of my mouth on their eight legs
while i'm sleeping-- 
living with an eating disorder
is like existing as your
own exoskeleton-- 
i am my own suit case-- 
i carry these femurs & 
my pelvis warped like 
a gramophone bell-- this
is where i go to sing
to the bus station-- i'm packing
diet soda & these shoulders
made from plastic measuring cups--
this has been the process
of unlearning my own body--
i grew extra legs-- antennae
& now every sound has a color--
you are so yellow--
as anyone ever told you that?
we all have stepped on
beetles accidentally on purpose--
i snap like a popcorn
kernel under the heels of my own shoes--
i have spent so
long on the outskirts
of a body that i don't know
what it feels like to 
live within one-- break
off my extra set of legs 
& use them as match sticks
to light the last candle on
my own birthday cake--
how nice it was of you 
to join me-- to want to
be my body again--
the prodigal stomach--
i'm hiding underneath an abdomen--
i'm eating through the wire
of a pay phone--
you hold me by the suite case handle--
call me from the pay phone when you
get there--
i'll be here-- picking up
the bottle caps from the
drive way & dislocating
my shoulders to measure the cheerios
into my mouth before
they turn back into lady bugs--
i don't want to be an exoskeleton
of a human anymore--
i want to be red blood & warm blood
& bone-- i want to be
more than a belly of spoons--
more than a pay phone call--
i'll unpack the suitcase on 
the bed--
& i'll tell you to at least 
stay the night-- 

on summer ghosts--

before our 
youngest brother
was born my brother billy
& i had summers
that still 
exist on a different plane--
a realm of microwaved 
marshmallow experiments 
& green hallway 
doors that open
all by themselves--
it was us who haunted this house--

we heard our father start
his blue jeep in the driveway before
we were out of bed & my 
mother dove into
a hot mug off coffee
& creamer--
this was back when 
billy & i thought coffee
was gross & we drank pomegranate 
juice with our still frozen 
toaster waffles--

left unchecked by adults
the house would morph--
a face in a dark bathroom mirror--
bloody mary bloody mary
sofas stretched & the doorways
turned into teeth-- chewed us
into the living room again--

a murky television screen
was left turned on so that it
could hear it in every room--
we drifted without feet-- without
walls-- in the attic
we built caskets while
our grandfather's ashes watched 
from the corner--

i knew i shouldn't make us
watch those ghost investigation
television shows but i needed
advice on how best one
could best become a poltergeist--
billy would whine on commercial 
breaks & suggest something
like nick junior but i stared on--
fixed on the screen--
this because of my desire to haunt
my own body--

& from the screen emerged all the summer
ghosts who would visit to inhabit
my bones for years after-- 
the opening of the
closet door-- the moan of
the floor boards of the attic--
the gentle evaporation
of our skin into mist--

on a foggy morning we could
easily slip out through the screen
in the window & never ever be heard 
of again--

in summer i still feel my
body getting
haunted again-- my skin turns 
into cellophane-- rice paper
girl too empty to hold
herself inside windows--

but this was only the beginning--
this was only our introduction
to haunting-- this was when we
were in control because
what children don't know
is that a haunting once in
motion can only grow--

between my brother & i 
our house on noble street
has two faces-- the one 
with the evergreen & maroon
porch-- the one with frozen
waffles & coffee stains 

& then there's the one
with the face in the dark bathroom
mirror-- the one at the foot
of the bed-- a smudge of a body
telling you to

wake up--  

i want to be treated like a library 
when you decide to love me--

walk into my shelves--
i take out the due date
stamper & press it on the
back of your hand-- this is 
how long i'm letting
you look at what pieces
of me you want to check out--
do you like to look inside atlases
or are you searching for a book
of old poems whose pages
smell like january leaves
peeled page by page off
the sidewalk--
i like atlases because they teach
you to walk anywhere & that sometimes
Antarctica can be pink & i imagine
me & you suspended in pink snow--
eating hunks of cotton-candy earth--
& sometimes the best poems
forget their authors & sometimes 
an atlas is a poem & sometimes
you read to me from the
coast-- the names of mountains-- cities
& rivers we could go to
if we would leave the library--
take me from the stack of call numbers--
302 RAL-- 302 SAU-- 302--SAX--
the book spines left on
my knuckles-- this is what it
feels like to have to walk
aisles of book shelves 
for a first page-- your
first kiss with me will be a printed word
& what the library teaches
us is that there are stories on the
fourth floor-- how much do you 
want to read & how long
are you willing to forage
of an answer?
this body of mine has had
pages torn out to be eaten--
cracked book backs--
dog eared pages & jackets
chewed by dogs--
marginalia mouths of
these gods-- what have you used
for a book mark lately?
we find napkins & hair ties &
notes passed in trigonometry
class where people decided to
stop reading the backs of
my forearms--
dog-ear by pelvis-- photocopy
the index printed across my 
lower back--
what is your favorite book
you'll ask me because you might
not know any better--
so i'll tell you i keep a library
of a body so i never ever ever
have to pick just one--
do you want to read with me?
i'm stamping the due date
on the back of your hand--
let's walk up to the fourth 
floor of my body & pick out
something new-- a book
with a musty jacket & a title 
neither of us can read--