the radical protest of slowing down.

you tell me it's hard to love
someone so much like a zephyr--
i've been learning how to walk
slower for you--
i'm a humming bird heart
& a restless squirrel's tail--
i knock my head on 
street lamps like
the moths-- you wouldn't
mistake me for a swallow
tail or a monarch--
there's nothing butterfly about me--
i leave moth dust from
my wings--
you taught me to be a fast girl
but i want to fall more slowly--
like the watchful of 
maple syrup--
teach me to thicken my blood
until it becomes shortbread
dough-- roll me in cranberries
& white chocolate--
i want you to melt with me in
the oven-- pull me apart all
hot & knees unbuckling slowly
slowly slowly--
until you leave my in
my monkey bread elbows--
we've all unfurled like a cinnamon
roll-- that's what you 
do with my tongue.
you called me chick-a-dee or
blue jay-- i never liked
blue birds because they're too
quiet-- too much solidarity--
i was born with the hair 
& the black beak of a blue jay
i want to be fast & loud
but you tell me to lay on my
back-- the sky floats
above me like a bowl of 
Italian wedding soup-- i pluck 
comets out of it 
just to watch them turn to meat ball
in my hand-- the pasta pearls
lilt in & out of becoming stars--
you tell me to take the wrapping
paper off the sky
so i pull & pull & tear out
cloud & oak branch & airplane streaks 
until there's nothing 
but night beneath--
yet you tell me to keep shredding,
so i pry the moon hastily from
her corner-- she was only a 
watermelon rind cut in the sink
by my father-- seeds taking root
across a patchy sky--
i roll over to ask
how long it took you to
wrap up the sky like that & you
tell me we should stop listening
to the sun-- count time
in each other's mouths--
you tell me it's hard to
love someone so perpetually
tragic as the moth against 
the lamp light-- i bang i crush
i break myself to pieces--

the house falls away beneath my
brother while he sleeps.

my brother & i are bad dream 
people-- 
we wake up from separate beds
& walk down the staircase
to play black jack together 
at the kitchen table while
we wait for sleep to take
us back-- 
there is no dealer & 
both of us don't take winning
very seriously-- 
he says that
last night the house fell away beneath
him again-- wall by wall &
i say i remember it too--
he lives in the attic where
we used to raise blanket forts &
elope the way only siblings know
how to-- we saved rations
of milano cookies & goldfish crackers--
stole the cushions off the couches to
furnish the interior of
the bed sheet canopy--
lightning storm struck the microphone 
poles we'd used to hold up
the sides-- we are lightning rod
creatures--
thunder-clap mouths--
we are the children who can't
help but run away--
we make bets with chocolate coins
from my uncle's treasure chest
above his fridge--
the foil around each confection
is electric from the rain--
he asks if when i sleep
if the house ever falls
away from under me-- 
& i laugh because of course it
does-- we feel
the cracks along the walls in
the living room--
the eternal curse 
of the rift in the foundation
of the house in fleetwood that
we left to sink back into the
earth-- we carry plaster &
rollers & try to work
to keep up with the disintegration 
of the walls around us--
i make over-cooked 
scrambled eggs & we split them
dabbed with ketchup so
our lips look like they're bleeding--
we love our other brother
but he's younger & doesn't remember
what it was like to get lost in
a supermarket on purpose or
how to crawl under the shelves in
the movie store up the street--
we are the kind of runaways
that are only found when we 
want to be-- & we don't want to be
anymore--
tonight he wins the pot of
chocolate golden coins-- 
i had 21 but i didn't want to win
so easily in the last hand--
it would seem like a dishonor to
the night we had spent by chance--
my brother asks me if the house
ever falls apart beneath me
& so we walk up the stairs together
like when we were young enough
to believe in a fear of shadows--
he holds the edge of my shirt
& i pretend like i don't see
teeth & eyes glow in the dark
& under our rusting bunk beds--
i walk him back up the sleep
while the house shakes & shakes--
i tell him it's only the wind
& the pipes cracking their knuckles
like they did when we were smaller
& everything was an action of
the paranormal-- 
today we ignore the ghosts
so they talk louder-- the woman
inside the radiator & the man dangling
from a single chord from the stairwell--
our house is a mourge of all
the things we've ever feared together
or separately-
close your eyes 
i say
go to sleep
& we wake up in separate
beds with the taste of chocolate
coins & foil in our mouths. 

my summer body & the assumption of our 
figures into the clouds.

are you careful when it's humid?
are you drinking enough water
today? have you ever been a stream?
my body gets hungry for summer
& feeling itself evaporate 
from the back porch-- i drink
lemonade from the powdered mix--
pink like knee cap & 
my father's sun burned forehead--
we are the people who 
brand summer harsh into
our bodies-- pan-fry the freckles
on my cheek bones-- i want to
steam here-- like a pot
full of soybeans pulled up
by the roots-- crush rock-salt
in my fists-- oh you know
it's true that everyone inevitably
falls in love in summer--
you know it's coming--
ready to kiss you in the thunder 
clap of the ran-- pinned up
against the torso of a tree--
drench your body in the 
sobbing & gentle rage of grey clouds--
these that were once our bodies--
i walk down mainstream to feel
my hair beginning to float--
this was back before i cut it all
off-- back when my hair fell
down to my waist-- lifting lifting
& then gone-- taken by the clouds--
& next goes my hands & then
my feet-- turning into beads of water--
this gentle assumption
into the coming storm-- we're all
leaving in such a gentle way--
would anyone want to snow
when they can rain with
the lightning zephyr through 
my un-cut hair--
i am twelve again-- i sit
on a log in the stream & bury my
feet in the silt & the mud
as if to try to tether myself
back to earth-- i wander wander
wander lonely as a cloud
& make a phone call into the
mouth of a daffodil
i call my neighbor & we sit
there & say nothing--
wait for summer to take our bodies
& recycle them back into the
rain again-- i want to fall hard
& break.
i am twenty & summer reminds me
of the back porch & the open bed room
window--
i don't believe in heaven unless
it's summer-- this is when 
it's safe to float--
i feel my hair growing long
no matter how many times i keep cutting
it off-- the dandelions blow
wishes into my face while i
slowly slowly slowly
rise bead by bead into
the clouds--

the telescope & the farmer's wife.

he's the kind of man who loves
too many bodies to be a good 
american boy-- paints on the layers
of his hands with a roller on
the porch each morning-- picks
dirt from under his nails at
the dinner table
when his wife folds her hands
in front of her as if to turn
her hands into the halves of
a peach-- her wedding ring 
is the pit in between them--
he doesn't eat from one table--
takes the soup ladle to the
stars from a telescope out
the open barn door--
picks up the rotting carcasses
of overripe moons
& passing comets so that
he can press them & plant them
in the year to come--
if he waits long enough he'll
find one with the stem still
attached-- pluck it apart
& peel the star like a tangerine--
rind thick & callous like
his own hands-- black
blood
of the night coursing at the core--
& be bites because he
thinks of bodies as something
belonging to the sky-- he
would only wish to write him
& his wife as constellations--
he would make the big dipper
her wooden spoon.
she watched him from the house
as he picks seeds for the coming
year-- she doesn't like
how at night the sky
becomes full of the eyes of all
the stars-- she can't tell
if they're all a different version
of god who has decided to watch
that night-- she puts back on
her wedding ring to do
the dishes-- feels herself turning
into saturn-- orbiting the acres--
waking up encircling 
the apple trees-- plucks small
seeds like more meteors to
scatter out into
the cosmos of the soil-- she
plants her world in potted
herbs by the back window
where there has always been enough
thyme-- he won't come inside till
she's asleep but he meets
her under the Jonagolds & the Winesap--
tells her he's sorry that
he can't stop planting
stars instead of soybeans
but she says she does it too--
he throws his wedding ring around
neptune & laughs with her--
the chickens flourish into 
each other & the pigs kick their
hooves impatiently into
the dirt & hay as they pray
to be assumed with the humans
into the celestial dream
where the farmer & his wife
leave their bodies--
she think the telescope
might be his mistress-- the way
it kisses him again
& again around the rim of his eye--
tells him there are bodies so
much larger than a field--
offers him a chance to 
follow the orbitals
of the dwarf planets--
so far & so cold they forget to
grow when they're supposed to
in the spring--
she stands by the window of her
room-- rests her feet on the radiator
while she watches her husband 
kiss & kiss & kiss the 
night sky-- beyond him
only she can see the field turn
into constellations-- an infallible 
mirror of the sky--

this is a ransom note for my body.

this is a ransom note for my body--
if you ever want to crawl beneath
the sheets of your own skin again
you'll listen to me carefully--
don't worry-- i won't hurt her
in a way you could see 
if you passed her while she sat on
a park bench-- writing her name
in sharpie on the wood--
you can try to take her back one word at
a time-- peeling apart rib by
rib in the commas of your
prose-- your teeth fall out 
of your skull to finish sentences
when you run out of freckles to use for
periods-- i'm asking
you to meet me somewhere remote--
she'll pack a suite case to the
moon-- full of stuffed animals &
baggies of goldfish crackers--
we'll camp out in the tent 
your uncle used to set up in the backyard
where the old red chicken coop
used to sit beneath the evergreen
tree-- we'll be far enough away--
this is not just a transaction--
i'm not the kind of kidnapper who
treats his victims like
poker chips-- i like to hold them--
spoon them in the murky quiet of
summer-- open the window & kiss
the hairs on the back of their neck--
you see i don't really give bodies back--
they have the nasty habit of
coming back & back again-- they like
it here-- they like to be opened up
from the rib cage like a clam--
i crawl inside-- make more space
for myself than her
--she feeds me fist fulls of
rotted apple cores-- a potato roll with
peanut butter & thinly sliced banana like your 
mother used to make-- 
i pull sleep from her hair like
a soft spiderweb spindle-- oh & you
you have always looked so much 
like your own blue suite case--
packed & sitting by your bedroom 
door-- take her for a walk & bring
her back to me-- there is no
such thing as a ransom with me--
there's nothing either of
you have left to give me--
other than your own mouths--
i'll kiss you quiet--
come now, let's not be silly--
there is a tent in the back yard
where there once was a chicken coup--
the night is wailing like
a basket full of crickets
& she's falling asleep here with me--
feed me freckles--
pick up your teeth & put them back into
your skull.

my father & brother in the great war.

i wish him luck each time
before he goes--
i send a telegraph of
thumb prints & necco wafers--
i imagine he recieves it while
sitting on the end of
his bunk-- measuring time
with the unwound pocket watch
of our father--
the one i used to take to 
elementary school
to open the back panel
to reveal where god left the gears of
the universe--
only him & i know everything infinite
is really so so so small--
he opens it & thinks of the grooves
as trenches--
his thick metal helmet tips over his
eyebrows-- thin-wire glasses
perch on the tip of his nose--
my brother was drafted into
the great war again--
it's been so many times
that the family has stopped 
counting-- this time my father 
joined up too out 
of nothing more than stubbornness
& a fatal yearning to find glory
-- he paints
signs for the germans--
seated on an orange paint bucket
in a trench my brother dug for him--
the house has trenches now too--
or so my brother tells me
when he sends me letters--
he's added trenches to the
hallways-- to the kitchen &
all the way down to the basement--
sometimes my mother falls in
& my father & brother pull her
out-- she ignores the
trenches & sets the dinner
table 
as if her boys weren't away 
at war-- i take a sort of 
responsibility for this
perpetual state of warfare--
even if it is the type with
candles in christmas trees
& love letters tied to the legs
of pigeons-- i 
sometimes think if i would
just go back that i could
fill in all the trenches
with a wheel barrow of sand box
sand-- my brother would wake up
in his catholic school uniform
& forget he had ever enlisted--
my father would re-tune the strings
of his guitar--
open the back of the pocket watch
& watch the universe from
his own callous hand--
i received my draft card 
for the great war yesterday--
i burned it over the kitchen sink
& washed the ashes down 
the drain only to look
down & see a trench digging its
way through the middle of
my own kitchen--
we share a contagious sense of
war-- sink into trenches--
open the lid
of the gold pocket watch--
slip safely inside.

i am absolutely nothing like a rose

you ask yourself what you're going
to do with me when my roots don't
fit in the brown ceramic pot anymore--
you think it might be time
to cut me down by the ankles
& turn me into a solitary bouquet--
you want to clutch me in your teeth
& dance in the long floor-length mirrors--
parade our reflection--
that's what you've been taught to
do with a girl-body full of 
thorn-- i'll cut your cheeks when you
bite me-- won't i?
this is how you make 
a lady out of us-- i never learned
anything from a mirror--
when you're finally
bored the water in the vase will
have turned to froth & my
petals broken off like
clementine lobes-- i'll smell
rotting & sweet so you
know it's time for a new
rose to make herself into 
a girl for you-- 
i'm here to announce that
i have never been anything like
a rose nor did i want to be loved
like one-- 
i deserve to be loved like
my mother's African violet--
the one next to the sink
so she doesn't forget to water it--
bruise myself onto the counter top
& open dark green leaves
to clutch fist fulls of sun--
you know nothing about where
we keep our thorns--
we're orchid neck & tulip
frown & knuckles hidden somewhere
in the hyacinths out the front 
window-- 
we sip ourselves 
from branches of honeysuckle--
we're tired of living off
of vase water--
i'm absolutely nothing like
a rose-- i keep
dirt up to my waist & my
teeth in my own throat--
i grow un-apologetically 
in the windowsill
if you come looking for me--
i'll be the bruise under your
eyelids-- the other face
in the mirror on the medicine cabinet--
i had wanted so badly to be loved
i was okay with turning red
& living short & slender
in the glass veins of your vase--
no-- i am absolutely nothing
like a rose-- none of us are--
i'm forgetting to water myself--
chewing sunlight from the porch &
sitting bent over
a toilet coughing up thorns--

the memory of your body
in my lap

press your body 
into my lap again
one more time &
i'll pull your six hairs
through my fingers 
& call you lover--
your stomach all
echo with a song-- i'm
reaching for a note
deep with in your stomach--
you let me dismantle
every piece of song 
you ever try to keep for yourself--
you're a martyr like 
every one who loves too much--
you tell me to finger you 
c-chord again-- without a capo
this time-- you want to be 
open & you like the way
my thumb presses up against
the back of your
neck-- you ask if
i will out-grow you & 
if i love you like
the resonance that
murmured in your hip
bones when i took you back
to the coffin--
laying down you think about callouses
& what it would be like
if you were in love with someone
who wanted to make
a life out of laying with you--
i am a fickle musician--
who buries instruments
in the back yard under
the pine tree--
the crooked mouth piece
of a trumpet haunting
the staircase with a ghostly--
bent-brass version of taps--
the cracked reed moaning of
the oboe-- the same piano
key played on the heads
of the buildings on 
main street that jut out
to leave silhouettes on
the bruised skyline-- i
use your body as a tool
to paper machete love
songs for boys--
i thump your chest with 
the back of my hands
under a canopy of 
firework & untuned august--
falling out of love 
is as loose as your six hairs
slowly lilting into
dissonance-- un tune
with me-- strangle 
yourself with a capo--
this time i'll lay in 
your lap-- carve my
hips out of wood--
keep the chords knotted
somewhere in my stomach
for your to reach in
& yank from my 
six quivering
strings.

& other love poems to girls named sarah

i am the name you write to
when you're too nostalgic to 
write her's again-- 
the place holder
the eternal princess of a 
blank space 
& a name you've been forming
since the first time you
saw someone kiss on a bench
in the park
where acorns fall like
fat drops of rain--
you write me love letters 
like a grocery list--
the enumeration of every
mark on my body you have wanted
to carve out a space
for yourself--
has no one taught you
how to love someone yet?
lately all the love
poems every addressed to 
a girl named sarah have begun to
collect on the concrete back
step of my house--
there's no address to write back
to so i read them to
an open window as a form of
exorcism--

1. 
people can be like windows--
let me crawl through you
on my knees-- leave
the keys under the doormat
i want to come home-- sarah 

2.
i'm sorry, you always deserved
more but i still think about you
when i order grilled cheese
at the diner on eighth street-- sarah 

3.
sometimes i think the cat
is looking for you-- then i realize
that she's just watching the cardinals
out the window & fantasizing about
a mouth full of feathers--
i realize i just wish i had
someone else to miss you with-- sarah

4.
when you're not home i sit
in your chair-- i'll never tell you
that-- sarah

5.
i'm scared it's to late to
tell you i love you after i forgot
your birthday-- i bought you
chocolate-- the kind you like
from the ice cream shop
with the big plastic cow-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
i think about you during
geometry class-- sarah

8.
do you remember me?
i wish you got my letters--
i guess you wouldn't be able
to read them all stuffed in
the top shelf of my desk-- sarah

1.
i knocked over the vase
but i bought you a new to
sit in the window--
it makes rainbows in the light-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
you help me remember the 
Pythagorean theorem
because i think of the exponents 
like your bows-- sarah

2.
i eat alone now
& sometimes i get breakfast with
my brother at that diner--
you always liked him-- sarah

3.
i want to put the cat up for adoption
but each time i try
it remind me too much
of mornings with you-- sarah

3.
i'm not sorry anymore-- sarah

5.
i love you can laugh
at the way i forget you-- 
it reminds me how selfish i
can be-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
i wrote you name & erased it
in the margins of the notes
for the circumference of the circle--
i could help but imagine
with you i could somehow spread
myself so thin that i could
cover the entire face of the earth-- sarah

6.
you each chocolate covered pretzels
even when it's warm & they melt in
the wrapper--
i hate how you like the stains get on
your jeans-- sarah

1.
leave the window open--
i want to come back inside--
i miss the curve of your salad forks-- sarah

6.
i'm sorry-- sarah

3.
i don't want to 
forgive you but i keep writing
this letter to try to be sorry-- sarah

2.
do you still order grilled cheese?
does she have a name or
are you in love with yourself?-- sarah

1.
people can be like windows--
shut & latched & foggy--
you're the type of window with
an electric candling glowing
from a dark room--
i love you more if you keep
the window shut-- don't let
me back in-- i'm only here to
watch for a minute-- 

1.
i want to say your name
& for some reason 
i just keep calling you 
sarah, sarah, sarah
i think that had to have been
your name but
it sounds louder every time i say it

1.
sarah-- this was 
always written for you

dandelion girl.

you mistake me for a flower.
they all do.
i don't want to waste my time 
anymore asking you what
it would take to be one--
i'm a dandelion
& i have no other names.
i'd rather you call me
a weed than a lilac--
i don't have fangs like
a rose or lips you can
press like a tulip--
this little girl who 
killed the grass--
i cut my hair scruffy 
as a worn tennis ball--
my leaves crinkled
dragon tails-- thrashing from
a gap in the pavement--
i break stone-- break side walks
hold hands with another sister
from the other side of the parking
lot-- we were made for this kind
of contagious radical love
whose petals cough sugar 
into the cool dew-- 
did i fool you?
i take pride in confusing
young children who don't 
like it when their parents 
insist that they not
collect us-- 
you don't put dandelions
in the vase son-- 
vases are for
flowers-- the type with
lips & cheeks &
petals that blink to
the kitchen table like
eyelids--
we bow for the belly of a 
bi-plane--
you little boys wanted to
pick us anyway so
i smudged
pollen under you nose--
there was never enough
body here to become a
bouquet-- 
still my roots grew & grew
until driveways
beneath me snapped 
like graham crackers--
churned back into dirt--
this is the breaking of the bread--
this is our dandelion bodies--
this is where
our heads
fall off into the grass--
where we feel our faces
pulling away from
ourselves & we come
apart-- we come
apart in tiny propellers of
the same bi-plane.