oh these buildings--

i remember us as a vacant 
& beautiful building-- 
the kind that teenagers
crawl into the eyes of at night
& sit on the floor to tell 
all their uncle's ghost
stories-- they speak fear
as a for of exorcism-- 
here there are nooses dangling
like intestines from the ceiling--
they try to swallow themselves
but get knotted in dry cob webs--
they undress each other there
after leaving their canvas shoes
inside of the front door-- 
make a home
in our dead walls--
this is where you once
cut the bottoms off
my roses so that they would live
longer in the vase-- where you 
leaned up against the frame of the
window & listened with your whole body
to the chickadees 
in the twin evergreen trees
we never strung a hammock between-
this is where you wiped your feet
on the porch-- where we
kissed collar bones like
shoe horns-- 
put ourselves on each 
other's feet to walk up
into the attic where the floor
boards always sounded lonely-- 
the spaces we enter with
each other are somewhere else--
there is no building for
me to leave my shoes
inside the front door-- no window
to trace a shadow cast by
your body-- knock over the
vase of flowers only 
to find the water itself 
was a myth--
the roses grew from my own 
mouth-- swallow thorns like
cob webs--
i made this building from
pictures untaken 
& the words
we never wrote down--
i won't pretend to remember
in what kind of why you tried
to love me-- 
i won't make this another poem about
love-- this is a poem about the buildings
we leave for people--
the eyes smashed in by baseballs & 
the nooses hanging from the ceiling
where we drank the water from
the vases-- drunk off rose feet--
wear me as shoes next time
you walk up a staircase--
wake up with me in a knot
of lonely floor boards--
we have become one of those houses--
the ones that everyone & no one
has been inside--
where the picture frames are askew 
& you wouldn't recognize this building
as ours if you were to walk by--
barefoot & looking for your shoes--
i kept them here as a memento--
sometimes i wear them but they're
far too big for me to walk in--
& if i'm correct you keep your
own empty building for us--
maybe you even visit there &
behind those walls i am still hugging
you around your neck like a scarf
or maybe i'm sitting in the windowsill
waiting again
for me cue to fall--
the buildings we leave vacant for each
other exist so that when we remember
we have a place to take our bodies
to mourn everything we could never
have saved quite the way it happened--
but after all--
you & only you gets to decide how
you want to remember yourself &
everyone around you--
i like that image of you
in the window-- a shadow-- a boy
who listened with all his windows 
open & his shoes waiting
inside the front door-- 

gasoline rainbow girl--

broke my shins off from licorice
sticks-- red vines strung
up to my knees-- pour me
into a gasoline rainbow--
that's the type of girls we
are-- the type of accidental 
beauty that only comes from 
kneeling in a puddle of
water--i like to remember
how i got to grow up
collecting beneath
truck bellies in the rain--
i learned that my skin
takes bruises & fire.

on the way to taekwondo with
my blue belt coiled & venomous 
in my lap we stopped
at the same gas station every tuesday
& thursday when i was 8
-- crushed rock candy 
& packaged my body in 
a root beer barrel to toss over
the edge of niagara falls--

the ultimate metaphor about human
curiosity is our tendency to
want to throw ourselves from
high places & live-- 

when mom & dad weren't home
you & i would ride the 
couch cushions down the attic stairs--
bruise our knees like echoing puddles
of indigo gasoline--

out of boredom sometimes
i would take out the clear blue lighter
from the top drawer in the kitchen
full of half-opened boxes of 
birthday candles & we would sing
to ourselves before letting years
all loose in the fire-heads
of untimely candles--

what kind of water are we made of
that let's us become such 
dangerous rainbows--?

let's play in the puddles
in the driveway--
the thunder is crying open
the sky in the back yard--

laugh with me like knees
& sun showers--  

we knew we were gasoline
children-- laid down on the 
back seat at a rest stop
on the traditional
five hour pilgrimage
to chingoteague the family
took each july--

you tell me that you
think you like the way gasoline
smells & i agree but we
both know it's weird--

we watch the people wipe
their hands on the thighs
of their shorts as they escape
the matrix of bathrooms, snack
islands, and brochure kiosks of too
many places to travel to--

when i'm alone i think of
us & how we have the habit of
returning to our gasoline rainbows--
sleeping under the bellies of cars--
riding kayaks in faded brochure 
photographs & eating our
own shins on the way to karate--

what do you remember about bruising?
what was it like to drop from the
top of the waterfalls in a 
jars made of root beer glass
candy.

catastrophic waltz

i swerved because i mistook
the shadows of the trees
for bodies dancing in the parking
lot last night--
hips bumping carts in their corals--
laughing with the thin
hair of plastic bags-- they suffocate
each other-- sit in the infant
seats & race up & down
the parking lot as if it were still
the grocery aisles--
their catastrophic waltz
a wish of death by headlights--
it was that kind of illusion of
bodies that reminded me of us
& how so much of our lives
is a collision of our
shadows on a windy night
on the cusp of irrevocable summer--
i have been thinking about
god a lot lately-- i have been
trying
to put a face to an idea--
sometimes i think of them as
the breath that hurtles 
our shadow bodies into each other
through the limbs of the trees--
aligns his spine 
on the double yellow stripes
of the parking lot only when it's
ten o'clock & i'm at the supermarket
in an attempt to feel less
lonely-- he the neck of a street light--
bent orchid-like & full of
light-- he is the silver-dollar
moon pressed into the palm 
of the night sky-- dangled
to stretch our shadows-- taller
& taller-- reach & become
another tree torso waltzed in
the window--
pull out your hair in fist fulls 
& toss it behind the supermarket
like feathers--
the ice cream is melting
in the back seat of my 
chewing gum-green 
toyota but we're running out
of time to connect the dots in
the stars-- i image that it's a sort of
of constellation puzzle--
threading your fingers through the stars
far enough & you can construct your
own vision of god-- 
she wears stars like bells on
her hips & believes in living in
collision-- oh do you remember
when i asked you if you believe
in god? 
i think we all dread the question &
it's unwise to try to love
someone without feeling each other's discomfort
with the brevity of our shadows-bodies
dangled lightly like
wind chimes in the trees--
if i were to be honest i would tell
you that somedays i don't believe
our bodies separate enough
for me to answer that question for myself 
so i ask you again 
do you believe in god?
& our waltz is a catastrophic
evasion of the question--
& god tilted her neck in the street
lamp & god chuckles is the crinkle
of plastic bags--
& the ice cream is melting
in the back seat-- i tell the shadows
it's time to go home & they 
pirouette beneath the belly
of the car--
next time you dance stay out
of the headlights--
i like your body as it is--
un obliterated by light--
do you believe god makes our
shadows?-- stretches them &
uses the window to make them
collide & sway on the 
side street-- 
the ice cream is melting
& so is your shadow &
so are the trees &
dropped is the moon
from a shaky palm god
we both firmly want to 
believe in--

in a tangle of sky--

we broke off in bird wings
caught in a tangle of sky--
the clouds cough feathers
into our lungs--
breathe & descend--
the fibers 
sticky in our mouths--
i have never forgotten
a moment of the summer &
i love the lightning storms
in Pennsylvania 
so much that it hurts--
a part of me most close to 
my spine was struck there--
i sleep in a dream of fireflies--
listen for 
when the they'll snap their 
backs open in a glimpse of light--
they'll make flutes from
our hollow bones when we
finally fall-- we are
the birds who 
dart between the trees--
we are the porch people & the 
lightning rod bodies
who channel our acid-blood
origins--
crack my veins again
in lightning--
feel a body erase in thunder 
rapture--
your tongue was a mallet
to thrum on the 
tympani set somewhere beyond
the sky-- you felt
the toads emerge again
from the soil to eat headlights--
this is road we die on--
double yellow lines
distorted into bolts 
through a cloud--
you felt the grass drink 
with its legs--
you felt my body turn slick
in the down pour--
we drank each other from
the puddles-- kaleidoscope
colored from gasoline--
the best place to 
watch a storm
is from the left bay of the garage 
full of warped bike tires
& lawn mower mouths--
we are the type of bodies
to run out into a storm--
rush rush in the whirl
of water-- the ocean makes 
a home in the puddles &
we swim-sky-bird--
i'll be the first to 
be struck by electricity 
because i've been 
tempting god longer than you--
so when the water stops
falling i'll walk with you
up the street to the park
where the trees make the rain keep
going-- our father will push
us on the tall tall swings 
until we take flight again--
only to singe feather & bone--
i have lightening for
veins & thunder caught
under my tongue--
this is all i have left to
speak--

behead your nightmares

the lies we tell our therapists 
are a different type of truth--
i have learned a hatred
of the pity of couches--
they look at you like stained
glass windows-- glossy-eyed
& brown leather like the movies
she says
behead your nightmares &
the woman in a taught bun
& square glasses hands me a 
pocket knife while
i lay back-- we're here
to cut a circle behind
my ear & look inside--
i don't like couches anymore
so i sleep beneath them--
his voice can't find me there &
i hate the face she makes 
the first time i tell her
i wake myself up in the middle
of the night to begin
my body in a symphony of
OCD compulsion-- turn my
elbows into trombone slides
on the carpet-- my forehead
the bell of a trumpet--
i sleep like the reed of 
an oboe-- restless & unfinished--
& i hate the way she looks at me
because she's handing me
a knife & telling me to
behead my nightmares
but there's nothing to cut
open anyone more & 
sleep is only a memory free
of the strangled cry
of a digital alarming clock
shrieking red into a black room--
so i tell her i don't 
play trombone anymore--
i tell her i count moon
light instead of calories--
i tell her i don't know
why my knuckles have grown dragon
scales-- i tell her
each night i wait
up with the pocket knife
& wait for the darkness to 
fall like an eyelid over my room
so i can cut off it's limbs
& kick it back to the other
side of the moon-- 
i sleep under my bed now--
with the resting on my chest 
i let nightmare undress me--
i hand him the pocket knife
& give him the option to
do what he sees fit
& some nights we take off
my skin & share it like a throw blanket--
other nights we play oboe--
crawl out onto the windowsill
& yearn for the sensation of falling--
i like it when she smiles--
when i lie & i tell her
that i sleep longer now--
when i lie & i tell her i'm 
doing so much better-- & so 
she asks to see the knife &
i tell her i keep it under my
pillow for when i need it most--
the lies we tell our therapists
are the teeth of our fears--
the alien beauty of our 
death under the bed-- the pocket
knife still fresh with 
the blood of trombones--  

reburying my great uncle in the attic
next to his brother--

i can't remember if we found
your mass grave in the philippines
or somewhere in thailand
but my mom found it on
the internet a few years after 
my grandfather, your brother died--
we looked at a garden of
white crosses grown
in a photograph on the boxy computer
screen-- i was four years old
& we kept your triangle-folded
american flag on the bottom
shelf of a bookcase in the attic--
i liked to spin it like a top--
pluck out the box with the
purple heart & pin it on the 
chest of stuffed elephants
& polka-dotted dogs--
the indigo kiss-- a bruise
from god-- the kind of goodbye
letter that sits heavy 
in the bottom of an envelope--
when my grandfather returned from
world war II
his family had moved--
he walked up to his door step
to find a different home
glow from a window & pondered if
all this time he himself had 
turned into a ghost--
he briefly recalled teaching his
brother, you, to kick the coal
off the top of the freight cars 
down by the railroad tracks
to heat the house when cold snapped
in november--
he wondered who was taller
as he walked ponderous down
a back street in south philadelphia--
we buried my grandfather in the
attic-- a jar of ashes & he mumbles 
about the war in the cracked knuckles
of the house as heat rattles
through it's bones in november--
it was our family in the window
on the door step that night--
my brother with a encyclopedia
of military weapons in his lap &
me eating a slice of my mother's banana
bread from the counter--
we invited him inside
but he walked away-- he didn't
want to go home without a brother--
so i'm here-- a plane ride away from
anywhere we could pretend to come
from-- at a white cross in
thailand or the philippines
or your real bones still sinking
into the dirk of okinawa
where we presume you were shot--
i stand there & think of something
to ask you about but all
i know about you is in
the corners of a folded 
american flag & a royal purple
heart-- i ask you if you
eat banana bread or if your mother
forgets to water the herb bushes
she keeps on the porch-- i
sit down-- i packed us sandwiches--
i figured you would eat something
like tuna salad-- no i didn't
want to share-- i ate before
i left-- i wanted to ask 
you if there was something you
left out of the letters-- if there 
was ever something you wanted to
tell someone that you thought about
in the time since you saw
my grandfather, your brother--
you're still taking your time
to answer-- we could chew slowly
because we were dead-- well i was
just pretending to be dead so
we could talk-- 
you didn't want to leave with
me even though you had enjoyed
the change of conversation--
i knew about the family curse of coming
home to a different house--
to find your name has a new address--
this one is a perched on a hill
outside a town called kutztown that
you probably have never heard of--
i told you the house has a painted green 
& maroon porch now & on warm nights
in the summer your brother will
sit outside in a neon blue lawn chair
& wait for you--
i brought you a jar for you to 
bury yourself in-- we're going 
to the attic where unfinished 
letters are written--
i uproot the white cross--
fill my pockets with
the remnants of your bones
on a hill in okinawa-- mixed with
bullet shells & singed grass--
my brother turns the page to his
book on military weapons--
i dangle my feet from the bar stool
at the counter &
we listen to you & my grandfather,
your brother 
unearth your body's ashes 
in the attic--

our google earth.

i told you, mom, i'm coming home
tonight to 2014-- to the stupid
wide-toothed grin of our porch
painted evergreen & a blistering
maroon-- our mailbox's hand is 
raised as if trying to hitchhike 
away from town-- it wants to
join a corn field-- fill it's 
mouth with husks instead of 
junk mail-- years ago the 
picture from google earth used
to still have the two big 
trees in the front yard & long
after we cut them down
their ghosts haunted us from
the computer screen--
i would glance out the window 
from my desk to make
sure they were really gone--
i wonder where i was when they took
our house's picture with none
of us home-- got the big
old doors to smile pretty to 
join it's place in the 
collective collage of street views
for nostalgic children to wander home
to from laptop screens--
uncle rich's grey oldsmobile is
in the driveway--
the one that he got second hand that 
smelled like cigarettes--
in the backyard there's no
tiny christmas tree yet & the pile
of red stone makes a mountain beside the
garage that billy & i would 
sled down when it snowed--
it never seems to snow anymore
& i wonder what google earth
would look like if it would have taken
our picture that night 
in the dark when we built snow men
in that front lawn & laid on
our backs to look up at a hazy night
still laden with inches to come--
you told me we would have a two hour
delay or maybe the whole day off--
or if it would have caught us 
out on the porch that august with our 
pink lemonade stand-- you on the 
reclining chair shelling soy beans
into a sand bucket & me waiving
to the fast cars of noble street
as if they would stop for warm 
lemonade mixed by a 10 year old--
the image google earth chose of us
is starkly empty for everything that porch
has held-- it doesn't seem accurate 
for us & watching it there feels only vaguely
like a home-- 
i can tell it's a tuesday though
because the trash is out on the curb--
i wonder if we're inside at the kitchen
table-- if it's early & a sunday
& you're burning pancakes in  the cast
iron pan just the way i like 
while billy counts his plastic army men on the 
breakfast bar & looks out the window to
see a car pass slowly-- not knowing
it was telling the house
to "say cheese" for the rest of earth
to look back on--
when i knock that the door there
no one will hear it because it's 2017
& i visit home most times only
on google earth-- & i've started calling
this place "my parent's house"
but when i walk up back to 2014 into
the laughing mouth of the porch--
i'm swallow back again--
i'm standing outside a photograph 
of our home-- let's do it again--
plant a christmas tree--
sell pink lemonade to the windows 
of fast cars--
fall heavy in inches of snow--

our unwashed locker skins--

in high school i never washed
my gym uniform-- 
i peeled the grey shirt
free from my torso as i hid in
the corner of a bathroom stall--
sat for a peaceful moment
on the black rim of the seat--
i didn't want anyone
else to know this is where
i went to come undone--
the door was taped on its hinges
like i taped my knuckles
back onto my body each morning
in a choreography of quiet compulsions--
OCD is beautiful if it can make
you skinny-- 
i met him in eighth grade-- the voice 
of a tailor-- who came
to cut off my skin to make
a uniform & fold my into 
the dark corner of a locker room--
a cement box of warm sticky thighs--
i learned methods to
count all the parts of myself--
what's your secret?
everyone asks the fat girl
who took off her skin in the hall
way-- the ultimate strip tease 
is to lose fifty-pounds 
in a month-- you become
a miracle
& i told them that
i run now
but what i meant was that
i run from myself now--
somewhere in the laps
around the gym my legs keep going--
run myself into a vortex-- 
a black hole
shot in the ceiling 
by another boy's ping-pong ball--
cracked like a planet--
i leave her real body crumpled
behind the chipped paint
door of a rectangular metal locker--
0668-- 0668
somewhere in a deep sleep i still know
all the combinations-- 
i could unlock
myself again & wear navy blue
shorts & a grey t-shirt
both drenched in sickly coconut paradise
perfume to hide my own sweat--
i teach myself to 
sweat CVS body spray-- i smell like
a synthetic isalnd breeze--
on hot afternoons the asphalt behind
the school reverberates heat-- 
i bubble in the yolk of the sun--
school seems to lingers in june & so
i pretend the basketball nets are palm trees--
the soccer nets blackberry brambles-- 
the juice or blood running down our arms--
return to the locker room where the
cool tiles on my bare feet 
remind me how thin the skin 
that separates us is-- i'm scared
to look up at other girls changing
because they know i'm a bi 
but i don't want to look at them
like that-- not like they think--
i want to look at how they choose
to take themselves apart--
if they take their skin home
to wash--
if they linger to observe their
naked body in the full length mirror 
at the end of each row--
what parts of themselves do
they count? 
0668-- 0668
come open me & take
back this flesh-- 

at night i feel like my own city

at night i feel like my own
city-- pull the street lamps
off my shoulders to kiss--
let's boy meet girl 
in an island of light--
we forget sleep & go through
the park-- pretend
not to see the foreheads of
the buildings over the trees--
we are wilderness shoes--
sit on the wooden benches
of my thighs-- this
is how my knees say
welcome-- wipe your feet
on me--
at night-- at night
at night i use
pay phones with their tails
buried into nowhere--
i call my grandfather-- 
he too
was a rib bone in the 
thicket of this city-- 
a notch
in a line of houses with a 
gun under the windowsill--
this body--
my body-- the train pulls
in under my finger nails--
i clutch the pillow-- 
dig myself towards 
south street-- my tongue
a taco vendor-- knotted
soft pretzel steam
in my throat-- how could
you learn me this thoroughly?
that is between god & i--
but neither of us have
taken the time
to go walking-- we always
take a bus off 12th street--
sometimes i snip off
the elm trees from
the back of my neck-- their roots
clutching asphalt & undoing
the sidewalks of my collars--
last year i stayed over
night in time square in one
of those big hotels resist
reality-- the best part 
of the whole trip was
sitting at the window
there on the thirty-forth 
story-- let myself fall into
a skyline-- buildings contorting
into my torso--
we become our own city subtly
then in a rush of light--
i couldn't help but remember
the passage from 
Catcher in the Rye when
Holden looked out the hotel
window to discover the anonymity 
of our bodies in the windows--
our separate & secret lives
pulled forward on railroad
track finger nails clawing into
bed frame-- i tell everyone not 
to be afraid to be alone--
feel the street lamps
turn on in your shoulders--
crack your knuckles like
tires clapped in pot holes--
girl meet girl with me 
under a lamp post--
let's become a postcard
we mail to ourselves in the morning--
but for tonight-- for tonight
let yourself become a city
fall out the window
& evaporate in flight

dry blood.

sometimes he remembers 
me like the smudges
of prayer dug into margins of
hotel bibles-- he talks to 
god indifferently-- like
you would 

     a bus seat
that august was a trickle
of dried blood in the 
river bed where the tadpoles
ghosts hung like over-used
commas & the foot notes
tied up the shoelaces
of the psalms-- 
yes god never made 

    enough days in summer
for us to love our bodies
clean of the rest of the 
year-- 

     that june we bled
hard & blue down our forearms--
sticky children of the bellies
of ferris wheels--
this is the appropriate

    time to kiss me--
this is where we unlearn
our acts of contrition--
learn to ask forgiveness
from our dandelion gods
absolve me of

     my sins-- pull out my 
white hair & i'll make
three wishes as penance--
they never had me believing
in reconciliation-- i take 
up my sins with 
the knotted knees

     of the oak-- he's 
grown into a shape of humility--
the body laid out on the pews
for the viewing-- we make
the park bend into a pew
to bend each other's

     human-orchid bodies
evaporating before 
each other's eyes--
phantom as the drying creek--
we huddled in the stagnant pools
to try to get 

     a glimpse of air 
between the fish-- cut each
other loose like kite strings--
we made a honey moon out
of the playground we

     were born in--
you lick your thumb & rub
the dried blood off my cheeks
like the 

     ink smudges on
the margins of bibles--
what were you doing looking
for me there?
you know if you miss
me you just need to

     blow the white
hair off all the
dandelions