you make me want to grow thyme in the windowsills.

this type of love poem is irrevocable--
the kind i didn't mean to write
but haunted me like the ghost roots
of the grass-- 
i daydream about you
like potted house plants-- the
orchids that grow into sycamores 
on my desk-- the bonsai trees
whose roots could be no longer
contained by the promise of
a ceramic tea cup-- break the legs
of the dining room
chairs while i sleep--
oh love i want to plant 
apple trees in the floor board
because of you-- let's break 
this place into an orchard--
i don't believe in walls anymore--
open windows--
open doorways-- this place
was meant for seeds--
carpet reclaimed by
soil-- oh let's go barefoot--
you know i don't believe
that shoes have souls but
i think that we do-- 
all we can do in plant them
in other people's feet--
behind their eyelids--
plant herbs in the windowsill
with me--
the basil plant is for my mother
& the african violets bruised above
the kitchen sink--
did you learn about planting 
yourself in other people from your mother--
or did you mimic the roots?
i did both--
pull my legs from the earth each 
morning as thick purple carrots--
you make me want to plant
thyme from every corner of
the house-- let the roots
reclaim the clock hands--
there's nothing you
can cook with the clock hands--
throw them out the window
or snap them into fertilizer 
for the herb bushes--
i want to grow rosemary with 
you-- kiss peppermint into
your cheeks--
wake like a handful of anise seeds--
let's kiss like the buds
of the orchid still
waiting on my desk--
stain our fingers in cinnamon--
the thyme grows into 
a cypress-- roots
tangle into fingers--
hold me here-- i grew
what was left of the hours
& the seconds &
planted thyme so that the moon
would hold still--
a dinner plate laid still
in my sky
garnish me with rosemary--
sit with my on
the windowsill-- 
chew the peppermint leaves--
we'll make the 
roots shiver-- 

my uneaten sarcophagus;
knock me over poltergeist--  
we're running out of food

i teach my body new ways to hide
itself-- sliced flesh from
rib cage under the red shine
heat lamp of this buffet table--
my breasts r ur selection of petit fours--
furrow my fondant or
suffocate under the sirens--
call me call me call me
to the rocks-- this is where 
i've been stacking boxes into
fortress-- into prayer-- into 
silence-- i hide
handfuls of desire in the boxes
i stack beneath my bed--
i tell myself this way i won't go hungry--
this way i'll be prepared 
when we've sliced down to the
bone-- 
make wishes with my carcass--
a brother on each side of a wish 
bone-- eat the boxes haunted 
by my fear of running
out of my own skin to eat--
crock pot my body into soup broth--
i am reminded how
the morning crawls over itself
with broken knees--
i creep out of an archway built
of the lies i tell myself--
i say that i'm getting better
when
i mean i'm building a wall
pantry thick enough so that
u won't think there could be someone
living there--
i removed the self-hate from
my skin to build a city--
lay awake in a measuring cup
with me--
my brothers both
separately wish for rain &
the semblance of what 
they once called a sister   
who is now an obelisk--
if u wanted to fuck me u'd 
have knock over a watch tower
of cereal boxes &
100 calorie popcorn sleeves &
granola bars i buy without the courage
to eat--
what does it take to become
a monument? 
have i enough walls yet
to divorce my body of poltergeists?
when u stand back u can see
i've got a life of dominoes--
kiss me wrong & it's over
because we're already 
running
running running 
out of provisions-- i watch
the steam from the towers
of the nuclear power plant--
the two thick lips of uranium
who kiss us into a bunker--
i'm not afraid of a real melt down
but i'm running out of food
& door knobs
& closer doors to keep my
ghosts in--
they sit on the porch at night
to smoke cigarettes so that
the whole house smells like
chocolate chip cookies i'll 
never eat-- 
watch me-- i'm an architect 
of shame--
this is how the Pharaohs go to 
sleep-- a catacomb of 
uneaten fears--
write my name on the obelisk
i want u to knock me over--
i want to be your haunted dominoes--
your  afterlife archway
carved from my wishbones--

glow sticks & other types of broken halos.

how long has it been since
you broke a halo?
oh-- you firework child
you were the girl we all 
wanted to love but never
had the courage to-- 
the knotted hair & 
the grass stain dress--
blush blue-- dust 
of a cereal bowl-- 
oh firefly do we terrify?
she was the
feeling of dirt-feet gracing 
carpet in the living room--
the bunk bed queen--
i have yet to be as brave 
as you-- 
i didn't mean to stop climbing 
trees--
do you remember all the
finger bones
we snapped on
the way up?
gripped
until the branches 
glowed iridescent--
we glowed to challenge the moon--
i still believe you 
when you said
everything is possible 
if you can still hold a pencil--
you were the girl-body love
who walks waist-deep in 
the creek & never worries 
about drowning--
i feel her in my freckles--
broke halo after halo
to see her room ignite 
handcuffed in blue--
we grew frog eggs in our palms--
untangled the water snakes from
each other--
the prevention of another ouroboros--
but that is what we always become--
i eat the image of my former
self in the twist of a fork
in a nest of spaghetti--
she wrote only on the first page
of leather notebooks--
printed her novellas with
her lips puckered
up against a bubble wand--
when i was 7 i lived
on the bookends of a summer
always coming or going
to blushed pancake cheeks--
she broke pencils like glow 
sticks-- broke tree
branches like goodbyes--
folded old photographs like
dinner napkins--
i turn the light off in the
bathroom before i go to bed.
watch myself snap the halo i've been
saving-- crown myself 
in the mirror-- bite
the tail of the snake--
when they cut glass for 
my stained glass windows
they'll remember here my
halo was blue--
glow stick blush &
the collective memory 
of all the snakes
who've bitten a firework child
only to find their mouths
blue fire--
green flame.

for candle wax girls who play with fire.

1.
altar girls serve so they have
a room to light their hair on fire--
alone in a sacristy is where
i learned i have skin made of wax
& watching myself melt is 
an art form only meant for solitude--
this is what the tile floor
is for-- bleed in fat hunks of wax

2.
my mother braided my hair into a wick--
there's something comforting tugging 
at you roots like the bristles of 
a broom-- we didn't mean to
catch on fire so easily
but there's nothing you can do with
a body of wax

3.
happy birthday & other days
i lodged my feet in a tidal pool
of a vanilla icing-- he made me sugar
flowers to adorn my feet--
step on the marble cake snake--
i can't remember how old i was
when i first felt my blood
grow thick and drip

4.
i'm becoming shorter
but better at lighting matches
beneath myself

5.
self-destruction is hereditary--
an advent wreath crown-- call 
me pink candle & at least
i'll know you'll buy
another body when you burn this
one into a toad stool--

6.
keep lighters in the top drawer
of the desk

7.
i buy matches in case 
i decide i deserve to melt tonight

8.
do you see my hair on 
fire in the window-- i look
out & make a star out of my
wax body

9.
This is divination-- this is 
measuring where the wax falls 
on the pentacle to ask if morning
was something made for you
or if you were a born with 
a wax body to give the illusion you
had some say in how quickly you fade

10.
i never asked you if you wanted
to blow out the candles--
i'm not your wish or your promise--
singed hair & flint tongue

10.
i'm not bleeding for show

10.
i light matches to watch
my own body contort & change--
it's such a shame it takes
fire to shape a body--

1.
strike the match
& sing your body rapture
on the windowsill--
you call me your candelabra--
i burn-- i drip--

black dogs who die walking into the sun.

stick on my fur like a car horn &
tumble down the rabbit hole of headlight--
what better date to die?

when i was seven my mother hit a black
dog coming home from work on halloween
night & still no one else believes in ghosts--

the restless body of a shadow--
four-leg hungry sun-- maybe she tried to
eat the sun in the face of the car--

no, i know you won't believe me
but you will when you face a pair of headlights
hungry & burning to run--

it is only a matter of time before 
we'll all be that black dog--
our body has been saving up our shadows--

to wake up in the two-tone stupor
of the kind of autumn that sulks
of august-- tongue lapping star milk--

no you can't drink your fur 
the color of squozen star-- you
have a contract to deliver a martyr

comeday you'll tell me the legend of 
walking headfirst into a the sun
to bleach out your own shadows--

you'll say it doesn't hurt to
be swallowed by light-- 
i'll believe you but not enough 

to eat a star-- i'll save
the headlight crucifixion for
a day when i'm more desperate

to wallow in the ache of bone--
for now i've broken myself well enough
toss the bones down a rabbit hole

yes-- where were you on halloween?
did you watch the black dog
howl itself into a sun?

my spider legs.

spider legs grow back when
you pull them off--
one by one--
for you it's as easy as
cherry stems--
apple neck-- pluck the tight
artery of a strawberry skull
sway low--
low low-- we watched
them hang themselves
in the spring which is wrong
because things don't die
in april-- you're supposed
to wait till november when the
leaves are ready for bodies--
daffodils have gaping lips
languid with frost bite--
this is me watching myself
regenerate in a mirror--
wait with me while i grow back
myself sitting on the hem 
of another midnight--
i fall asleep wishing i wasn't a spider--
but don't we all? how many 
girls cried when they counted their
own legs-- 
there's so many pieces of
myself to keep track of that
i don't notice when you 
dismember me until i stop
before the mirror--
oh what did god not think
of little boys when he made 
our legs? 
did he not know how much fun
it is to watch a girl grow back
after you've picked her
unripe and blushed in green--
pin her up against your bedroom
door and kiss off her legs
until she is nothing but
a tree torso--
oh there's only so much
you can lose until
you have lost too much to 
still remember your own name--
my father is a cricket
so he named me after the temperature
of an august moon--
round and welcoming as a dinner plate--
he used my legs for guitar strings--
my mother--was a jupiter beetle
and she wanted a daughter
to shine but instead she
fills the trash cans behind the house
with my limbs-- 
i want to blame boys--
i want to blame the fallacy of regeneration
no no no
they lied to you when they
told you i grow back the same 
after i've been harvest as 
easy as cherry stems-- 
spit out my brain-- the gory vein pit--
oh four-leg boy
how sweet are the cherries this
season? did you remember
where you put my legs after you
pulled them off--
tossed them in your hamper
like boxers--
oh boy yes the legs will grow back
but keep the last ones as souvenirs--
a bouquet of my stolen body--
the trophy-- my spider legs--
did i meant i bite back
while you sleep?
oh this is how you love
and still grow back your limbs--

the lights go out one by one.

do you remember what it was like
when we once had light?
trapped fragments of stars--
angry as wasps behind the glass--
we pulled the bulbs from
the frostbite earth from
in between the unborn tulips
waiting to stick out their tongues--
suspend yourself with me
in the filament of another
light bulb-- kiss ourselves into fire
at the flick of a switch--
it was the
lamp in the living room
that went out first-- a dark
blotch in the far left corner
of the room--
it reminded you of the night
in December--
there are few things more irrevocable--
we avoided it--
you said you would change the
bulb when you had the chance--
when the stars came back ripe
enough to steal--
so we forgot about the corner--
the magazines on the shelf
had never been anything more 
than distractions--
their pages now sucked
free of words--
that's what shadow does--
eats words
eats colors
eats faces
occasionally a guest would
get close to the smudge
so we'd warn them-- we'd tell
them
there are creases
of this home that have expanded into
darkness-- we've yet to have
time to fix them--
the hall light to the bedroom
went next 
so thus we gave up sleep
for the fear we would lose more light--
i said
let's buy light bulbs
but you stared at the 
shadow as if watching a wolf 
trot on the parameter of our
yard--
it's hard to watch someone you
love fall into love with an idea 
instead of you--
oh how i mourned you fire-lips--
you said to me 
we never welcomed enough shadows
into the house
it was time 
it was time
it was time
to stop closing the windows at night
i kept a lantern-- turned
myself into an island--
flashlight flesh cut
the darkness--
sliced fresh-- do you remember
my face?
i called out for our front
door
that had long submitted to the
shadow-- she too 
only a memory--
i savored the time i had left
with the lantern 
but like all stolen light
i too 
became part of the silence
of an open window--
is that your hands on mind 
or my hands on my own
your or 
your hands on your own
hands that i can feel through
the unraveling of our senses--
whoever you are
it's easier to touch you 
where it's dark--
we're blissfully
unaccountable-- and oh oh oh
there's still fire in you--
the light bulbs were too
prude to watch us. 

the snow was hungry for words.

blank mouth open--
she's hungry for words-- she's waiting
for another poem-- the snow
is here to claim a piece of our
tongue-- she's jealous of lips--
of teeth-- of whispered memories 
from either side of a bed too small
for either of us to sleep on--
she's laying her body on the door steps--
pleading for our dictionaries--
what can we do but appease her--
i tell you to grab your favorite book
from the glass shelf--
rip out a page from the middle--
the first chapter--
the last page so at least she gets
to know the ending--
thread it under the door--
in a glass bottle-- tell
the snow your free to read aloud--
that's what her plan was all along--
hold us here captive until
we had nothing left to do
but to read our lives into
her blankness-- so hungry she'd
eat the apostrophes from our
eye brows if we weren't careful--
she likes most when we
talk without words--
tries to build herself a body 
collecting at the ankles of
the trees--
she's trying to be sexy--
undresses herself with
cough & flurry-- 
somehow she can only become
more pornographic--
what the snow really wants is
to taste those things we
say without letters-- holds
our vowels
in the ice between her thighs--
the snow is looking for
the one thing that makes us
human-- the scream--
the fracture of all those
words we used to build
a book with--
bleeds ink from pages--
bleeds blood from 
gums-- the snow
wants you to teach her how
she can scream like you--
open the back door 
& let her consume all
that has rattled around within 
your bones-- the memory 
of you past without the alphabet
to chew on-- this snow
is so ravenous you lose
all that was left of your language
there with the door
swinging open open open--
your mother tells you to
stop letting the snow
in the house but you can't--
it is already too late--
you already speak cold-- lay your
body on the welcome mat
& come the grass for
any letters left that you might
have dropped--
you find the first page
of your favorite novel-- 
silent petition the snow
to read to you now-- it's her turn--
take the pages 
in  a gallop of wind--
pluck off each letter--
tossing them one by
one like grapes down your throat--
teach her there are words other
than a scream that make us human--
the-- a whistle-- a sustained hum--
the rocking of our mother 
in the wooden chair by our
bedside 
who tells us it's okay to 
let the snow take our words--
it's only temporary--
everyone deserves a chance to 
speak-- even if they don't
know what to do with the 
words once they steal them.

a collection of keys to no one's back door--
flea market sorcery and 
the search for a world war I bayonet

my father called me 
the antique princess-- throne
of beanie baby torsos & the piled
pocket knives of our dread grand fathers--
we collect doll eyes--
rusted keys to back doors
to no one's houses--
what will you find left of us here?
we're here to find a world war I
bayonet because that's what
you look for when you're 
looking for a way to talk
between stacks & stacks of records--
i don't like jazz but i can pretend to--
my father maneuvers each week
in an act of flea market sorcery--
a hex his tongue trained in talking
away prices-- turning antiques 
into love poems--
the flea market doesn't get enough
credit for being magical--
i practice
how many clip-on earrings 
can i fit on an ear lobe--
gaudy jewel eyes who
watch sun crawl over blankets--
i hide from him in a 
glass 1950s punch bowl-- i fill
it with PEZ dispensers
but the walls still smell
like a ladle of plum pudding
my grandmother might have once
baked--
flea markets remind me that 
there's nothing inherently
magical until you 
waltz in the aisle of it's
soul-- each wine glass
had a name or at least a wife
-- put your
lips there-- right there--
taste sangria on someone else's porch--
citronella candle insinerates mosquitoes &
you laugh about a joke
no one ever told you--
oh father what did we do to become 
knick-knacks?
was i the toucan or another
statue of a child praying by
a bed side?
the flea market smells
like the memories we elected
to part with--
it's the kind of realm where
only my father and i 
transcend-- feel my arms turn
back into a pocket watch--
he tells me that he
likes the flea market here
at Zerns because there are 
corners of the market that still smell
the same as they always have--
i go i go i go
right back  
my father ate cheese steaks on
the corner stool--
that's where he sat--
red stool blushed
from use
and so i take another hand full
of rusted keys--
a pocket of beanie baby eyes
as protection--
walk back outside
to test these keys on everyone's
back porches--
i'm looking for the screen
door to the house we once
lived in that smells different
to me know--
i'm looking for a door frame
made of pizza crust--
i'm looking for place guarded 
by world war I bayonets--
a door knob of clip-on
earrings-- we all become our own 
grandmothers in a flea market--
i'll make you plum pudding 
feed each other stale PEZ candies--
stop our watches--
eat cheese steaks 
from a blushing red stool--

my father buys me a book of poetry.

my father buys me a book of poetry 
& tells me to use it as hymnal
because he doesn't speak the 
life back into a dictionary like
i do-- he says he doesn't understand
my religion but he knows it's the
kind of thing you should read over
the carcass of a dying vehicle--
we remember the blue jeep 
as our shared grandfather--
the hole in the car's frame is dug from 
china & in it crawls all
the ghosts of the toads we didn't manage
to scoop off the road in time--
in it flies the lightning bugs
that burst from my mouth when i was
born-- i came to life in the back
seat of that blue jeep--
my mother was a fist of
dandy lion wishes & my father the
wild august wind rattlesnake-tail
shuttering across the corn--
our jeep is
sinking like the sun slung 
in a soup ladle-- my father taught
goldfish how to swim
in a bowl of chicken noodle
when my fever was high enough
to sit on the roof--
we used the shingles as the squares
of a checkerboard
& my father always let me win--
stacked our kings
taller than the ghost shadows 
of the evergreen trees 
cut off at the ankles--
my father's shadow is permanently
etched in the corner of my bedroom
from the white fingers
of the nightlight--
only my father's shadows has
succeeded in banishing
a demon-- they sleep on my
chest-- eat my hair like
spaghetti to keep it short--
it's to remind me that i have 
been a carcass of a girl
for boys to pull the hair of--
but never to my father--
he still looks at me like
a fist of dandy lions &
rattlesnake tail corn--
i don't need to tell him
i've been raped
for him to know that
my poetry 
is a soup spoon full
of melting goldfish--
queer body-- & our shared
thunder veins that refuse to
vanish after they crackle
the sky-- 
so in the back yard
we each take a hand 
on the rib cage of a rusted
jeep frame--
pull pull pull--
each word never
spoken between us--
my father doesn't speak poetry
but he knows that if he buys
me a poetry book
i'll breath the lightning 
bugs
into a poem & pull
something from a page to sing
over the rust
of the blue jeep--
what color is it beneath
the paint?
we'll pull it off in
chips
to touch finally
it's white bones--
write our names on
the inside of hips--
my father plants
a blue jeep in the 
backyard-- my father
is a fist of dandy lion--
a mouth of fireflies--
holding my poetry
like hymnal.