on writing loneliness so much it becomes a body. i don't want to alarm you but i wanted you to know before you decide to love me that i was the girl you heard about-- --the one who talks to the corners of rooms-- walks into the wall paper to discover a forest full of stiff trees -- the one who holds their hand out car windows & catches shards of fruit snack wrappers tossed from the front seat a blue station wagon -- the girl who pulls up the onion grass by the neck --the left fielder tearing the grass up with a metal cleat-- the kind of girl who needs to dig a tunnel under the house with baby spoons in search of the cisterns to hide in-- that's where my grandfather is sleeping-- my father looks for them too but he never digs-- he knows if he found one he would never come back-- i'm good at coming back that's why i use baby spoons-- i have always been lonely & it's the kind of thing i look forward too-- a rush like standing on a wooden plank above a pool of stars-- i have written so much about loneliness she became her own body-- i don't want to control her anymore-- there she sits riding shot-gun-- rolls down the windows & only eats the blue fruit snacks-- i tell her that's not fair but she only legs dangles her feet in the rushing air-- leg hairs bristling in the wind-- she wears an over-sized grey-hoodie like a dress all the way down to her knees-- it reminds me of the one you used to wear when we watched fireworks-- sometimes she just sleeps & i have to remind her to get up again & follow me-- she's nothing like a shadow-- i already had one of those-- you have to watch her more-- shadows are so much more obedient but loneliness rests up against your shoulder & kisses your neck-- i can understand why it would be frustrating to love the both of us but i hope you can understand that i need her sometimes-- when we go to the movies she takes up the seat to the left but i have two sides & i promise i'll be listening to you on days when i drive off just the two of us she'll play with the radio & she always knows what song to find to make me cry-- i park & recline the driver's seat like a dentist's chair-- she crawls over on top of me & tangles her body in mine so tight that we become one-- i cry about nothing & everything & the things i'll never find at the bottom of the cistern-- i open the door with her arms still wrapped around my neck like a silk scarf-- she laughs in the shrug of the trees-- kisses my neck softly again & again.
Uncategorized
04/10.5
When the moon falls into the steering wheel.
I like falling into a steering wheel and remembering everything
I ever did with you under a moon—licked the plate clean
At the table and tossed it into
The hesitant sky— even
The stars didn’t believe me—
measured out of chicken breast cubes—
You held me until I ate again— but
My body has a way of escaping—
I’m a person who lives
Entirely outside of my own skin—I live on
The sound of a perhaps screamed in the wind chimes—
This is what it is like to love someone made of approximations
of love—I write poems about the birthday cakes I won’t
eat again—always saving the corner piece
with the fate red rose—
you taste like a tablespoon of icing
consumed from a wooden bench at
the park between the swings
and the old roller skating rink they
tore down and poured cement over as burial–
I relive my cut my wrists in circumnavigation—
retrace my steps
Somehow back to you—
Do you remember what girl I was coiled
In a yellow bus seat—
Head thudding—arms becoming snakes
To eat each other—
I write poems because I know very little about myself
Anymore—I like to remember us
Because I felt steady—I felt
Like my life had a back porch to sit on—
A father who craved watermelon in the sink—
We’re all dying in our own ways
And I’m afraid what it will do to
Me to love you enough to share the process—
I hope when people read my poems
For a moment they understand who I
Haven been becoming all the
Way over here—
I love the city because it’s populated
With so many people I get to
Be all of them—I don’t have to choose—
I dye my hair unapologetically
Black so the stars mistake me for
A piece of the sky—
Eat potato rolls smushed with
Banana and peanut butter
Because I’ve been pretending for
So many years that I don’t want to eat that—
You know if you saw me eating
You wouldn’t love me anymore—
I measure my own love
In a porclein bowl
Where it’s safe—but oh love
You’re safe with me—I know
How to teach someone to love me
I practice in the mirror—growl brushing
Teeth—I have been a wife—
I have been a corset—I have been
A prayer in the mouth of enough
Boys to know that if you want to
Love me we can play for awhile
And you can be entirely intrigued by me—
I’ll get naked and you can
Watch how my ribs spread like
A fist of spoons—
I park. I remember how heavy
It is to have bones made of
Plastic straws and
Cookie crumbs off the moon.
04/10
hat boxes of baby photos; i float away on a bucket of hearts you keep my baby photos in the green hat box on the top of the book shelf in your bedroom. sometimes i go there alone to look-- spread them out on your unmade bed & try to determine which ones are me & which ones are my brothers-- the images of myself disturb me-- a fist of dough wrapped in knit blankets-- i don't like to see myself so unwritten-- the folds of my skin twisted like the legs of a balloon animal-- i don't know what my unformed self thinks of me-- it judges-- laughs frilly like tiny socks & bronzed shoes-- sees the freckles spattered on my face-- the craters scooped out of my skin-- the match stick marks on my forearms when i lit myself like a birthday cake-- it sees all of that & responds with a smile big enough to devour us both-- you took a series of pictures of me laid against a painted red & pink heart background-- i look at the camera like one would stare into the mouth of a star-- i float-- suspended in a bucket of hearts-- all the perhaps you saw in my body-- what do you see when you look at me small & hungry & soft? i spit myself out like a peach pit-- flip over all the sets of baby eyes still sprawled out on your bed-- do you take out the pictures when you sit up late at night? do you bemuse over the wad of dough you once could call a child-- were you excited for me? could you have known the words i would write onto my skin? i pack up the hat box & at night sometimes i dream i'm holding myself in a picnic basket-- draped in a red & white checker board clothe-- i set myself to float down the river like moses-- i kiss my own forehead before i let the handle go-- tell myself no to take directions from bottle caps-- float float float on a handful of hearts.
04/09
my brother & i in an april snow. when i was twelve the earth rejected the idea of spring-- frost strangled the hyacinths & made them scream-- each bell ringing while we tried to sleep with the phantom of a snow storm pacing in the hall outside our bedrooms-- spring slept on the cement floor of the basement-- she cried like a wind chime. outside the snow fell in a pillow fight until there was nothing left to remember other than a window & you & i still had overall snow pants-- mine green & yours blue-- the snow piled up to my calves-- what do you know about being full of absences? we felt our skin evict us & crawled out the windows to wash ourselves in emptiness-- leave a memory of footprints-- i put you in the neon orange sled to begin the trek to the school yard hill we would slide down only the snow got thicker & thicker we became the static screen on the television-- opened our mouths only to hear the crinkling of airwaves-- the swish of steel wool rubbed against the belly of the sink-- you dropped your snow boots & said that everything felt prickly-- i said-- no i promised that we would get home-- we traded hands-- breathed mist into each other's red faces-- your hands felt like gloves-- we laid on our backs in the sled & for the first time i remember thinking how easy it could be to die-- i could see our house-- tall & contorted against the heavy grey of the sky what intrigues me most about this memory is that i don't remember how we got home-- i can only recall us with out snow boots kicked off contemplated how long it would take for the snow reclaim us both-- the next week there would be grass again-- you would call me sister & i would call you brother & we would not speak of the time when we both mixed together to become nothing but static-- part of loving someone is understanding how full of absences they are-- if it snows again in april i hope you'll have someone who loves you enough to keep you even when the sky empties you out in bucket-fulls.
04/08
let's tip over the eiffel tower. you make me want to live precariously-- i love you like a mouth full of wind & a street lamp-- moth kiss me goodnight again-- text me when you get home-- i don't actually think anything is going to happen to you between here & there but i want to give you an excuse to say you love me again-- i taught the rain to fall like fingers on a keyboard for you-- tonight i think we should escape from time-- sneak past curfew-- we'll go when the digital clocks aren't watching neon-- outside you can railroad track balance with me-- i'll teach you what it's like to steal corn & throw the kernels like unsprouted stars-- we'll follow the rivers through all the cities we want to make our own-- the places that exist only as ideas-- no one actually lives in new york or london-- they only walk through their frames in the paranormal enterprise of making the ground seem like home-- we'll end up in paris-- knock over the eiffel tower just to use it as a close pin-- hang up the clothes wet from swimming-- wear bathrobes like polar bears & drop quarters in the Seine like a wishing well-- i don't tell you but i wish one of the bakeries was open so we could use their kitchen to make enough petite fours to float home on-- what do you know about the water & how it's always carrying you somewhere-- i don't speak french but you tell me that in paris even the bugs at night tell stories about the girls who knocked over the eiffel tower just because they loved each other-- i laugh hard enough to become a moth again-- the sun pulls us back outside my house only now the street lamps are useless-- we don't tell the clocks we learned how to escape them-- we keep it between us-- set the eiffel tower back on her feet-- kiss her legs-- tell her we think she's beautiful & only beautiful things fall over so easily when the moon is too much like a light bulb & someone once more has escape past the curfew of time.
04/07
my grandmother fits in the downstairs closet. my grandmother's possessions unraveled around her like her own forgetful body-- piece by piece we tucked her relics in the corners of our own house-- filled the closet downstairs with flimsy cardboard boxes of her clothing she no longer wore-- tight-fitting orange gloves & the scarf printed with tabby cats-- stacked layers of the picture frames from the end table in her dismantled guest room --her parlour chairs with ornate wooden arms eloped during our first june yard sale -- the blue sofa still coughing up decades of cigarette sleet waited at the end of the driveway with the blue garbage cans. i know very little about my grandmother. i don't think i ever had a conversation with her longer than a few words -- our love for each other was obligatory-- measured in leathery lips on an awkward fat-faced child-- her love did not allow feet on the sofa & warned you about the precarious edges of her glass coffee tables-- her loved manifested in tiny packages of holiday cookies from Wholefood's bakery up the street -- bunnies at easter-- hearts for valentine's day-- bells around christmas-- our love exchange was ritual-- acceptance of the treat & a kiss & my quiet feast from the backseat of her car as she would scold my plump fingers & thighs for wanting to be eight & thick & unafraid to eat the raisin eyes from gingerbread bunnies-- she forgot me long before she died-- god broke her into two beings-- one stuffed into our closet-- haunting a pile of objects & the other hovered over a white bed in the nursing home- there she rested lightly as one side of a parenthesis-- beanie babies collecting on her dresser-- she knew she was a being of fragmentation-- now at night sometimes i go downstairs in the house i don't live in anymore-- i open her closet--put on her orange gloves so i can try to imagine what occasion she bought them for-- i open a pack of cigarettes & pretend to smoke-- arrange the picture frames around me in a circle to summon her away from the paleness of medical equipment & burning lights in hospitals-- she rises from the floor-- removes her boombox from the back of the closet-- puts a cassette tape of Amadeus-- sways slow from the safety of the circle-- pulls me in & we both wear the orange gloves-- cigarette ash falls like blizzard-- she's brought me a package of gingerbread doves-- break break them in half to share.
04/06
love me as red as a lobster. when you remember loving me do you remember the time we ate lobster? i paced back & forth in the small Maine kitchen-- the tile floor was full of ants-- you got out the pot large enough to boil the rings off the planets-- outside the moon drowsily sulked in the afternoon sky-- she forgot her wristwatch in the bay-- pulled the tides higher & higher-- to try to raise them tall enough to reach her bare belly-- the lobsters strained against purple rubber bands-- kicked their legs in a chorus line from where we kept them in their temporary sacks of water-- you put another rubber band around me to tie-up my arms-- your mother watched & told you how good a boyfriend you were to hold me so tight-- love knows rubber bands-- pot on the stove-- you baptized me in the water floating with corn cob & potato hunk-- introduced me to lobsters we blush red maroon-- broken blood vessels on our necks-- flushing hotter red red red-- the kind of red of a broken nose-- mosquito bite in the corner of a knee-- red head of a freshly struck match pressed tightly to a forearm-- i feel my meat turning juicy & white-- you'll start by teaching me how to crack each corner of my body-- bite me with metal-- kiss the shells-- worship the skeleton adorn me in butter-- this is how you eat love red as a woman-- the lobster eyes keep staring-- boiled dark side of the moon-- she kept raising ocean until the water started to come in through the windows-- you cracked & painted butter until there was no more meat left to suck from my clams-- my hollow antennae once housed the sensation of sound-- close the windows-- close the windows-- don't let the moon see how red you are around me-- save the pot for when i grow my flesh back i'd like to know what i taste like-- dripping in butter-- tight fist of a purple rubber band.
04/05
the ants will find me again & what flesh will i have to hide beneath? there is no where to hide from a creature that can smell the sugars of your blood they sense the sores on the insides of your thighs from where your legs rub against each other-- they know we're always a seam away from unfurling-- the air turns heavy as chicken broth-- pink flesh boiled from bone-- i wanted to build myself a body worthy of wishing on-- snap me in two-- me & you-- you see what the ants hate most is disguises-- they hate how much skin we wear to cover up the syrup we call blood-- they like to help me undress-- start button by button-- the gnarled teeth zipper of my jeans-- then comes the lingerie-- nibble--frill-- with their mandibles-- they gossip that i dress myself like a petit four-- fondant faced & full of sugar-- the ants want you to know what i look like beneath it all & i want to find something to crawl inside so you can't see me so bare-- they always find me again-- they want me naked-- i could wear seal skin or leather or leaves of cabbage but the ants can always taste a lie-- & no i wasn't trying to fabricate this body just so you would love me-- i just wanted to look like someone worthy of unraveling-- touch my blood-- it's warm-- i'm not held together with skin-- i'm held together by the same force that makes all the water flow down-- the ants come in through the cracks in the windowsill this time-- close your eyes love-- it won't be pretty to watch-- the air is broth-- i'll leaving you with the wooden spoon-- if they take me apart there needs to be someone who knows how to stir the air-- ward off the ants by placing sugar cubes by the door-- keep my wish bones in your pocket until they turn white.
04/04
my brother & i in fish tank rewind. swim back wards with me like a nautilus down main street in Kutztown at night when the summer bumps into you-- the Turkey Hill gas station was a chapel & my brother & i prayed our lips raspberry slushie blue-- this was the summer my uncle bought us a giant television to cram into the unfinished living room-- a new portal-- we didn't have cable yet but we had a few select DVDs but my younger brother enjoyed one in particular-- it came with the television-- a fish tank demo tape-- till this day i can't tell you why we watched it but my uncle would feed the disk into the DVD player & my brother & i would fall inside-- swallow bubbles-- feel our faces turning fish scale-- he was always orange & white as a clown fish & i was yellow & pensive-- grew whiskers like the crabs-- & finally the last montage would rolls around & we would swim backwards & backwards & backwards into each other in the bodies of the nautilus-- push ourselves into the television-- build tentacles out of wires-- stuff our limbs in the outlets-- dance lonely in the eternal motion of falling into a previous self-- my father tells us one July day while we're laying on our stomachs in front of the synthetic fish tank that it's nice outside-- that the sun is out & it's not too hot-- he stands at the window. we can't hear him over the churning of the fish tank & even when we do end up outside we feel our fish skin dying-- losing the rich blues & yellows-- absorbed into the sun-- notice our bodies gasping, gasping, gasping for breath-- later in my bed room i turn on the air conditioner & lay on my back in the middle of the floor-- i imagine myself falling-- dropped into the fish tank of my bedroom-- plastic aquarium plants raising their arms around me & my brother is there like me-- trapped in the perpetual nostalgia-ridden body of a nautilus-- i'm still waiting behind the television screen-- drifting in the same pattern-- rewind us--rewind us only to play it back again we dance the same-- my brother & i still live in fish tank rewind some days-- share a look across a living room hold each other by the tentacles-- reunite from the floors of our bedrooms-- float to the surface.
04/03
i think of you when i sprinkle salt on fresh tomatoes. i don't want to fall in love again-- i don't want bruised lungs or to pretend i'm not a dying-girl so you can love me-- but i want to remember how i did love you-- & to love someone is irrevocable-- crawl back up the steps to a tree house full of chess pieces-- does this make me your knight or your pawn?-- eat sour apricots from your garden barefoot & soil knees-- ignite another firework to try to crack the surface of the night sky-- we hunted so desperately for stars-- laid our bodies out on a rooftop & prayed for assumption-- what if love was as easy as sleeping next to each other in a bunk bed? i couldn't write enough love poems to undo the knots in our own spines-- there wasn't enough duck tape to keep putting myself back together every time you took too much of me-- i turned myself into a package of fruit snacks-- an egg sandwich with mayonnaise the way you liked it-- what do you eat for breakfast now? do you still put cream cheese on your waffles? do you pull her hair when she kisses you? do you remember passing fruit loops to each other sitting on a rock by the ocean-- where the sea gulls laughed about how for humans part of loving is a performance-- a candle lit dinner from the bed sheets-- a competition to see how many new ways you can present your body to someone else-- it's hard to love yourself when every part of you exists so much for another person-- i'm a human not a video tape-- pull out my innards like the flicker of a still-photographs you arranged to make a girlfriend-- i knew you long enough to remember how the crease of your back looks in the dark of a bedroom-- the silhouette of your face back lit by lamp light-- we haunt a park pavilion-- kiss me tree torso & monkey bar-- i remember you as our legs entangled in a back seat-- a locked basement door-- & when i stand slicing ripe yellow & orange tomatoes from my counter i sprinkle them with salt like you used to & something about them tastes so much like us.
