we were told that the doves don't
know how to stampeded--

we opened a window last night--
swallowed a sack full of feathers
and watched god light the birds
on fire with the shriek of morning--
empty your pillows out the window with
me-- this is our chance to rid
our bodies of all remnants of sleep--
did i tell you i have always 
wanted to be kissed in the 
flush of another blizzard--
how do we know it's winter
when it refuses to be cold--
all we feel is the heat of the 
burning of another flock of birds--
artificial sun that turned my
windows white--
the best way to fall in love
is sealed inside the hem
of a snow storm-- 
i'm thinking about pulling my
brother
on a sled and stepping out into
a field as an astronaut--
this was a crater ice cream
scooped from the surface of the moon--
i told him we would get home
and take off our wet boots--
i promised we'd keep our toes
if only we kept walking--
our world was a sled--
we opened the window last night 
in the vague hope of holding
onto our teeth like
match sticks-- i strike
a fire from your tongue--
light the feather on fire 
to melt the ice off our toes--
god left us flowers on the porch
to remind us he made snow storms
to make people fall in love--
i'm setting them on the end table
by our bed piled high with downy--
there's something about blankness 
that conjures up a feeling
of want in all of us--
want of a porch
a window
a ledge
a solitary match stick 
a stampede of doves hurling
themselves into the earth
in an attempt to become comets
become craters--
become my brother seated in
a blue plastic sled--
what do you know about
your own toes?
there is a sort of fear that accompanies
a snow storm that is different
than the dark end of a hallway--
it is the eternal fear of 
being swallowed up alone--
becoming blank-- becoming
another dove suicide to cover
up everything that once held color
or flecks of sun--
hold onto me and eat a fist of feathers--
do you feel yourself becoming softer?
kiss me cold and 
i'll save the flowers for you--
paint ourselves against the 
backdrop of dove bodies 
in the window and the yard
and all over the roof top--
i'm asking you pull me on a sled sometimes
and sometimes i'll be as cold 
as wet shoes
and sometimes i'll hold you like
a blue plastic sled--
step out on this moon with me--
i'm waiting with flowers 
on the porch-- 

Tell me where you hide your seal skin;
what you said to me in the black net and 
wrapping these bodies in nori 

i've been trying to find where
you keep your seal skin--
it's not
behind the scarves in the closet
or beneath the doormat like
the house key--
i want you to know
you can stop hiding from me 
i want to go back
to the ocean too--
we're only putting off the inevitable
pretending to be humans--
drinking glass after glass
of viscus air--
we are people who swim even as thin 
as breath but i know
that we can't wait forever--
sometimes 
i have seen you hold
your hands too long under
a warm faucet
you're imagining
that we're under a waterfall
only this time i'm a river
dolphin and you're the hooks--
i have known 
you in all the lives of the sea-- 
shimmer skin--
jostled 
in a vein of tuna--
a throbbing kelp forest-- 
flicker in the tangled arms of
sand roses--
was it you who died next
to me in the black knots of a net--
called me sister-- called me 
cephalopod-- told me
you wished to be born again as
a giant squid so you could swallow ships
and make the waves--
instead we were born 
alien to the air-- a whole body 
engulfed with thirst--
lay here with me
packaged in dry skin
like nori-- hold me
in soft sticky rice-- 
did they make our tails into sushi
so we could have these unsteady legs?  
these days i see
the jellyfish bloom in medusas 
when we flip pancakes-- 
i mistake the windows
for another tank-- punch a whole
in the hopes of a rush of water--
another wait to be dressed in wasabi
i'm telling you
we were chop stick muses--
swam into soy sauce--
now darling where do you keep 
your seal skin? 
i can't have you leaving without me--
devoured by the drain in the shower--
take the house key with you if you
go-- i don't want to remember
sleeping again in rice--
it reminds me too much of a black net
of a door bell--
kiss me like a the medusas of the jellyfish--
a bouquet of bioluminescence--
sweet scales of ginger-- 
now tell me where you keep your seal skin?
i'm coming with you and find
a sea rose to put in your hair--
we'll make offerings for the giant
squid-- and he'll teach us 
how to make a wave-- hold 
us tight as sticky rice--
use your skin as a doormat. 

When i say i want to haunt you 
i don't mean like a shadow;
joining the hallways and 
the possession of an oven door

when i say i want to haunt you
i mean it only because 
i'm falling in love with you--
i promise not scare you
too often from around the curve
of a corridor or
from behind the closet door--
i'll refrain from
becoming the seeping 
silhouette of another maple tree vein
in through your windowsill--
at night i'm just another ghost
in this house with 
glass windows to eat the moon--
hold my hand as a shadow--
i don't know if you're one for 
a lightning storm 
but i want 
to watch the sky crack into 
pieces with you-- watch 
the clouds gnaw holes 
in the night sky with their 
teeth--
this is what i meant when i say
i want to haunt you--
i mean if i were to fall out
a window i would like
to bind my body to this ground
rather than risk a gate--
i think of you like a door frame--
like a loose door knob
dropped on the carpet--
i'm a girl-body of lost keys
so if i walk this hallway enough
times maybe the floor boards 
will change it into a staircase
for us--
the wood bones moan while the 
house takes a breath--
i've been a body for staying
with that is safe-- and
i know these other ghosts from
the foot of my old bunk bed--
clap three times to wake you
up at midnight to remind you
to forget another key 
in the well of a pillowcase--
this is how we get lost from our
bodies--
out a window-- in staircase
-- burned into a radiator--
when i was 10 i was afraid of the
staircase from the kitchen
to the sun room 
because it didn't used to have windows--
it was a perfect place to frame a portrait--
let the gravity weigh your body 
in floor boards--
my parents told my brother and i
someone had taken their life there--
let the kitchen pull
their body 
down
down
into the open mouth 
of a cold oven-- 
aren't we all afraid of hallways? 
but it was me who fell out the window--
i want to haunt you so you
don't use hallways alone-- 
i'll keep the trees from
letting their arms turn into snakes--
the old woman who owned the 
house before us
wakes up at 2:45 am to 
make cookies with me-- she
always forgets the sugar--
so i steal some 
from under the radiator--
possess the living room with 
the smell of a vague holiday
or blushed chocolate chips--
this is how i haunt
your counter top with cookies-- 
the open and close of an
oven door like a picture book--
i'm leaving you strawberry 
shortcakes in
the cupboard when you least expect
it-- and sometimes when you
leave
i'll get lonely 
and throw brownies 
out the window-- water 
your plant from the windowsill--
i tell the old woman
who died in the living room
to stop trying to start conversations
with you over breakfast--
i tell her that sometimes
it's impolite 
to converse with the living--
i'm different because
i don't haunt you like
a shadow--
i haunt you like an oven door
a windowsill--
the sound of the house cracking
her back at night
when the moon is hungry again--
i'm here waiting in the back
of the closet 
under some sweaters and 
orphaned socks
holding another plate of meringues--
oh you won't be alone down
a hallway-- hold hands with the 
shadows
it's only me. 

did you expect to win me 
like a carnival goldfish?

we do our best with ping pong balls
and i was your first lover
in a fist of water--
laugh at the stream--
i'm lost between the kaleidoscope
and 
the carnival--
dropped in through
the water-- i swim with
a jazz laden menagerie
of stars with broken radiance
-- a mouth
of soft pretzels and mustard--
i'm left awake from 
the pop-rock electric shock 
of another sunset in june--
we were young enough to name
each other--
what will
we make of this world together
now that everything is so dry
and we've shared in the ritual of
cheese fries--
carry me in a plastic bag
and name me with the prayer of
a ticket stub destined
to become another gold fish body-- 
tell me again the story of
how you won me that night
with a ping pong ball--
what was i to you and where
have we ended up now?
how did you introduce me to your
mother and did she love me
like you did?
i learned to walk with the
legs you assigned me that night--
a medusa of funnel cake smudged
on the walls of my zip lock
skin-- 
i had requested to be
let loose in the stream
behind the playground--
back where the carnival couldn't
wash my in light--
where the older kids carved their initials 
on the park benches--
the head of a match stick--
the smoldering comet of a cigarette--
the polychromatic kind of
sex that feels like drowning
in a fist of water--
drown with me and we'll sell
my scales as ticket stubs-- 
remove the sun from the gold
and call me a silverfish--
call me a soft pretzel mouth
or the knotted brain of 
funnel cake-- powdered sugar
to remind us to be lighter than
the outside air--
this is an exchange for staying
up past bedtime--
do you think i will learn to swim
up stream or do you think this
was only you and me and the ping
pong balls--
sometimes i like to think that you chose
me from all the others--
i like to think that you meant 
for us to live
together
from either side of a plastic bag--
i know we've come here 
so that i can go back to the stream
and next year you can carve your name with 
a match stick--
garish your legs around a lamp post--
tell me again how you won
me-- i'm peeling off each scale one
by one until i turn back into
a flick of your wrist--
the splash in a bowl-- 
i'll eat the neon for dinner--
shiver like another sunset
thrown carelessly that the feet of
june. 

Let's haunt each other like lighthouses 
in the winter-- read our mosquito-bite 
hieroglyphs by flash light 

what did you take with you
the last time we climbed the lighthouse?
i carried a chunky camera--
the type that reminds you that
you're a thief of faces-- a terrarium 
of a skyline-- and it we me
who said that the whole island looks
like muscles and bruises 
from the top--
lean me over a railing again
and tell me love is the 
space between you and the ground-- 
it was only you and me and the
sun who paints bodies in the 
empty corridors of August
and we said that surely someone
must live in the lighthouse 
all summer to keep the fire
in the top from burning down the sky--
we slept on the stair case--
laughed at the funny faces of the
moon trying to wrap the night
around her like a blanket--
laying there you read my mosquito 
bites like braille-- said that
the insects were drinking
blood for the sake of poetry--
plucked the couplets from my back
and said we made a language 
from all the places we lost blood--
and i told you that your bites
were more like hieroglyphs--
i knew they were a language just
out of reach like a body
in August-- 
how far up did you think
we would climb? there's not enough
stairs to escape a summer
and i always knew i would wake 
up some morning with the light
quiet and downstairs 
seeping with cold-- 
i re-lit the fire in the brain
of the lighthouse in the
vague hope that it would warm
us back into the haphazard knees
of June--
but the front door was
open and so were the bug
bites
on the backs of my thighs--
i wrote down their alphabet to
try to figure out if the insects
knew where you had gone away to--
at light when the moon
swallow gulps of heavy October,
and November and December 
and January-- sweet bruised
clementine the season had
become--
i still slept on the staircase
so you'd trip on me when you came home
and tried to look
at the fire without me--
when a storm comes i pretend 
it's thunder
and i see you when the island 
stretches the sinews in her shoulders
when she wakes up too early in 
March--
i measure the distance from the top 
to the ground in the hoping that
the mosquitoes will come back 
with another prophesy to 
embroider into the space
at the base of my neck--
i want to know how i let myself
become so haunt by a lighthouse
and what is even left of you 
here-- i burn the tips of my
hair in the beacon as a sort 
of offering
but even when summer comes 
back the bodies only remind me
of everything you said about 
the blood of a poet--
i wonder if you still
laugh at the moon when she
tries to cover herself--
i wonder if you see my bruises 
in patches of a oyster clusters--
i wonder if you count
the beacon as a star-- 
what is left of the words the
mosquitoes left for you on
thighs?  

We swam with my father in a can of soup,
conjured bagels into diner stools, and
flew away on a napkin ring--

my mom made our family inside a crock pot--
lifted a lid to set clouds free in 
the kitchen-- 
my father was her serving spoon--
a bowl on the counter after school--
he didn't cook--
at best he could navigate a defrost button
or conjure bagels from a toaster
to dress in a block of cream cheese--
when i was sick home from school
with him we built a day in cans of soup--
a sharp metropolis and the metallic
snap of another lid--
here we entered the
orbit of Italian wedding pearls-
meat ball irises blinked us
into a front door-- and oyster cracker--
becamse gold fish crackers together to cross
another chasm of broth strewn with
endive and escarole--
and some night when my mother didn't 
leave instructions for dinner 
my father was left to pure improvisation
he became the steering wheel chief 
of an empty crock pot-
the summons of Mamma's Delight pizza
waiting on the door step--
a tower of pepperoni breathing
cheese into another February--
but my brother and i's favorite meal
our father made was 
spun on a diner stool--
we learned flight out a window again
and again-- the lift of tiny airplanes--
today the hanger at the Airport Diner 
lays hallow--a gaping mouth
relic of a hive of bi-planes--
the diner overlooked a working runway--
the three of us would take a booth
seat to observe the bustle of the
planes as the ran into the sky--
my father folded paper napkin
rings into planes to coast across 
the table at us while
we were watching a propeller 
grapple with a cloud--
we took our utensils and 
pinned club sandwiches in our pockets
with tooth picks to
board the papers airplanes on
a trip across a black and white milkshake--
and my father told the story again 
about driving to Canada and
seeing the stars how they're supposed to
be-- made a promise to take
us someday and both my brother and 
i imagined travel by means of 
paper planes-- 
my father had flew in the yellow
biplanes-- touched down in a
bowl of Italian wedding soup
only to fish us out of the lumps of kale
and spinach-- i clung to a meat ball--
we came back to earth sometimes 
in the form of the rounded side of
a bagel becoming a diner stool--
a clear glass filled with orange 
juice and a tiny box
of cereal for my brother to 
eat with his hands--
if nothing else my father's cooking
taught me to swim in a bowl 
of condensed soup-- paddle 
with a spoon-- trust 
your existence on the arch
of a paper plane across a table--
we were black and white milkshake
straws and the vibrant frills 
on the heads of tooth picks--

times i lied about my age

1.
of course i told you i was 16--
as unlikely as a maple tree leaf
crumpled into a bundle of unspent nerves
-- drop me into the stream and name
the boat's voyage after my fall--
she was a peach pit--
sailed the body of an island
of diet coke cans--
i counted my ribs as
slim Jim wrappers-- 
you knew i was 14
but it feels better to be 
as improbable as 16 and
fall to the ground
in the carousel of a whirligig--

2.
14 women are enough to teach
us to dress up--
us down-- dress out
this skin layaway--
creep into
the maids costume on the coat hanger--
sacrifice the color of your lips--
hang as triangles--
as pyramids--

3. 
wake up from the sarcophagus
to announce 4,000 years
of being 19-- queen of melting
planets and a river carrying
shipwrecks lit
by birthday candles--

4.
call me the sun God
and strip me of the number 
of times i crawl on my
belly around the earth--
i'm 12-- as old 
as the skeleton of the bunk bed

5.
forget the days
you've measured yourself in
tablespoons of stream--
i want to build
an age out of candles lit
under my bunk bed--

6.
don't catch the sheets on
fire again--

7.
my father eats birthday cake for
breakfast-- cream cheese icing
on a butter
knife and fist of double chocolate 
devil's food cake--

8.
i'm as old as the devil
but younger than 
his breakfast--

9.
laugh when i tell you i'm
16 from the bottom bunk of a bunk
bed in your parent's house--
we hear pots boiling dinner

10.
found the stars in glow paint--
broke Oreo like supernova
like Jesus 
like adoration
like the incense of a birthday candle

11.
do i still smell like 
the birthday cake in the over--
a girl with orchid ears
burning sheets on the bottom bunk--

12.
i told you i was a sun god

13.
i'm 16 so it's time to
rupture the orbit of
another gumball-- click-teeth
kiss me--

14.
days to build an arch out
of maple leafs--
climb the tree with me
and we'll peel off the glow 
in the dark stickers 
in between the stars

15.
the blue gumballs were scarabs

16.
i am only 10 and brave
enough to walk on shallow water
and still fear sharks

17.
i am only 5 and
i eat grilled cheese because it
reminds me of the pyramids
i crawled out of--

18.
i covered the surface of
a moon with birthday candles
and called it a sun

19.
click teeth to make a spark--
light a wick--
tell me how old
are you now
are you now
are you now
are you now
that the pyramids are shrinking
and the sun a candle

20.
blow out the candles
beneath the bunk bed--
i'll kiss you-- and 
forgot how many times 
i walked belt loops
of the earth because you
make me feel like Ra
like rapture
like devil's food--
like removing the lid
of a sarcophagus--
crawling on my knees 
onto the back of a maple leaf--
cross the river Styx with me--
we'll teach the devil
how to break an Oreo
and kiss loud enough to light the sun.   

A good poem should be written like a scar.

when i write i want your skin rise like 
the contours of a topographic map-- 
see the chasms of the Atlantic in my forearms
open and open again-- this is where
we buried the voyage of a grandmother
and an anchor scraped into the silt--
dig me into a row of soy beans-- rake fingers
in mud and clay-- this is where we plant 
our punctuation in the hopes of growing 
a picture of ourselves in a bathroom mirror--
plow a prophecy in a smudge of mist--
run your fingers over the burns on my 
arms where the stars fell and singed me
from the head of a match stick--
light the big dipper bright enough
to stir the alphabet soup of this couplet--
does your blood taste like tomato soup like mine?
i want my poems to make you want to kiss
everyone you forgot you loved--
run a thumb over their scars and smooth
them into the dotted lines of the road
watch scabs turn into pillow cases
to rest a poem on--
they tell me the slip of an X-acto knife 
across the back of my hand made me a woman--
and i'm explaining it made me a star--
was i the apple you meant to cut into quarters?
or are you here to tell me that a scar is only
a collection of words we use to remember skin--
are there enough scars to write about something
other than apple seeds?
i want to know what you plant in
the backyard when the soil is soft enough toeat--
i curled my stomach into a fist tight enough
to become a stanza-- turned my neck again 
as the stem as the volta-- look back
at me and remember something i said
to make your arms feel again like Appalachia--
a rocky ridge to crumple your past
into stones and toss over the ledge
of a mountain-- 
you told me you eat my 
poems with a fork and an X-acto knife-- 
i said 
eat through the plate
the table and gnaw 
scars into the kitchen floor.

walk me home in the fog

i pressed my bare feet
to the surface of a blushing window--
the back seat of my mother's 
blue station wagon-- shy in another
cloud escaped from above the foreheads
of telephone polls--
we broke the bags of tea leaves
like rhapsody-- like the blizzard 
that elected to fall as rain--
Winter found herself too heavy to
pretend to be another crystal--
too heavy to pretend she didn't want
to kiss you through a milky window--
there wasn't enough ash from the coal
to pinch into diamonds-- 
so we forgot about the snow
--tilled the field with 
an ice cream scoop and freckles
of loose tea-- 
we had remembered January as the pale
tip of a creamer-- but January 
has the type of memory 
only left by foot prints in the mud--
the grass soaking into a bubbling
ladle of soil-- we re-learned
how to walk on water-- 
when we were little 
and charmed star fish on a beach
it had been so easy--
but now if i want to feel myself
vanishing i have to think
of you and tying a piece of
yarn to m collar to walk to
the belly of a mug--
have i told you i was to 
to sleep with you like chamomile?-- 
i've wanted to be held the
way you hold a palm of chai--
warm as the mud bubbling
into a cauldron of soup--
share a spoon-ful on the porch 
steps with me and watch the clouds
tip-toe down from telephone wires--
scatter tea leaves like wedding rice--
we're watching the fog fall 
irrevocably in love with 
breath entering the cold--
with steam from a tangled 
braid of pasta-- and the broken
body of a tea bag--
we used the leaves to 
plant strawberries
in the yard-- swam
to the surface of the mud--
harvest with ice cream scoops--
when i say i'm falling for you
i mean i'm falling for you
like clouds who get lost 
and find themselves
ringing door bells on Main Street--
like the mute of a street light
that makes diamond of the rain--
i was too heavy to be a blizzard
so i fell as rain so that we could
grow strawberries
in the winter-- make jam the
soup-spoons and our foot prints--
i don't mind being remembered in a stamp
of mud--   
i want to kiss you across a clouded
window of a backseat
where i've watched the 
sky
crawl back into bed--
shhhh--
quiet like chamomile--
turn off the street lights
so the rain can sleep
and repeat the vows
exchanged by the clouds 
and the air. 
 

Body of relics, antique burials,
and sleeping in the catacombs of the pantry

When I die I want you to take
apart my body like a saint--
No-- not like Saint Clare 
I know my body is already corruptible--
I've already seen my finger nails 
drop like marigold fire--
this is me dying like the tongue
of the flame I am-- 
I have already begun to decompose--
felt my skin yellowing
like newspapers wrapped
around chipped tea-cups--
in the field of antiques 
we peruse to find a lover--
I want to leave myself in pieces
to make you want to put me back together--
collect me in your pantries
and in the corners of your
book shelves and tell your children
about how 
I died and fell into thousands of fragments--
I was never a whole body
so don't bury me like that--
blow my ashes in the face of King--
I'm sleeping in the catacombs of the pantry--
behind the Bisquick and 
the solid bag of brown sugar boulders
we'll break into muffin tonight--
the rocky cliffs of Main where
the ocean's knuckles bleed on the rocks--
I sleep in a 1/4 measuring cup
and wonder if you'll consider
turning my ashes into brownies
or pepper spray--
blind a back alley with my remnants--
these are the catacombs of a baker--
I mistake the dried chicken noodles 
for my own hair-- my own
cubes of white meat--
All the while Saint Clair
is still waiting to wake up
again so she can cut her hair
to fill mason jars-- she sleeps
in a terrarium-- body untouched
and frozen in cubes of white meat--
I saw her on the picnic blanket
at the antique market and wondered
who would have enough money to buy
a whole body--
I wondered if they would
take her apart in pieces--
turn her into a wax
sculpture to put a wick between her fingers--
light these Saint bodies into 
candles--
burst marigold and 
remember the locks of my
bleach-scorched hair--
Don't feel bad about saving my
bones for soup--
I don't want to be preserved 
I want to be part of something
again-- spit me into the soil--
we're not cannibals-- we're lovers
and to love something you
need to take it apart into pieces--
make it into bracelets and 
brownies
and lay my body to rest 
in the pantry behind the Bisquick
where everything is quiet
as the roots of a marigold--
the inside of Saint Clare's
terrarium--
she wanted to be fire like
the rest of us--
So when I die I hope you will
remember me when you
see my locks of hair 
on blankets at a fleet market--
don't spend too much money on
my relics-- they're barely antique--
put my finger nails on your mantel 
and wait for them to become
candles--
don't believe them when
they tell you 
any of us were incorruptible--
I was decayed before my skin
wrapped a chipped tea cup--
I was a puff of ash 
before I knew how to move my femurs--
a tentacle of incense--
to remind you that there
is a God who burns our
hair like wicks--
She is lips puckered in marigold--
she has collected the chips
fallen from tea cups--
she keeps
our pieces her her book shelf--
behind a cliff made
of a brown sugar--
sits and counts our hairs
like waves.