This Wednesday 
Democracy reported the hate crimes 
Democracy named her rapist.

Show me black lips and 
star spangled bright bruises.
Today
we we walk to 
hold high 
the underwear our rapists thought
looked like packing tape--
Try to ship me past boarders--
package me again and again--
you can rape me but you can't rape
democracy from this country--
We paint your walls with rainbows 
and Trans-pride flags-- we climb 
your brick borders
in crowds of ivy-- bare finger blood--
-- we speak
Mexican-- we speak 
Muslim brother--
We speak trans sister 
we speak black-- we speak queer--
we speak love-rainbow-stonewall-broken-
police-car-window
We speak for naked Ellis Island 
who washes her face in a park bathroom--
Lady liberty on her knees
naming her rapist for the first time
to herself in the dark of her bedroom--
face lit by the hourly passing
of the Staten Island ferry
all the bodies push against the ship's
railing and sing-- we believe
you we believe you we beleive you--
We speak for burning Los Angeles-- 
We speak louder than the NYPD gunshot
that finally broke the liberty bell 
in two halves--
You can rip me white stripe and
cut me like blood
lines dug by slave knuckles--
shoot me 50 times for each star
these white men stole from the sky
to pretend they could count freedom--
count freedom in black body wounds--
count freedom in a night club
in Orlando where we thought
we were finally allowed to be Queer--
Show me burned forearms 
and write your slurs on my forehead
in sharpie-- in switch blade
in confederate bayonettes --
This dyke
This slut
This whore
Call me call me call me 
Call me your rape doll-- your hate crime craft project--
AMERICA ELECTED BACK KING GEORGE
AND THOUGHT THIS QUEER DYKE WOULD
EVER ACCEPT HIM AS MY PRESIDENT--
My president will denounce racism
with her foot steps--
she'll hang flags upside
down as a distress signal-- echo 
the voices of the centuries 
of oppression that reverberate
in all our blood lines
I refuse to listen to another
white man tell me what my body was
for-- I refuse to be his desk doll-- 
And to my father 
who voted for HIM
your vote tells me you want to 
decide what your child is
name me "daddy's girl"
and call it a day--
Here's a memo asshole 
Your child is a proud
strong queer poet who
wore black this Wednesday
and until these fathers learn
how to spell something other 
than toxic masculinity
other than racism
other than white fragility--
On Wednesdays I will wear black--
On Wednesdays we will speak silence--
On Wednesdays we will
not let this country forget
that we witnessed her rape-- we will
not stand by while they write
racial slurs on her front porch-- together
wash our faces in the park bathroom
Wear black. Wear black. 
Wear the underwear we were raped in.
Democracy wears black with us 
this Wednesday.

I teach Boys how to eat through 
the core of an apple and speak poetry like a snake.

Oh! Did you think you'd get away 
with just calling me Eve?-- kiss
the poetry from my lips and speak
it like your own history?
Don't waste your cat calls
in  these forty days and forty nights 
of rain-- Don't try
to utter her name like it's pretty
like seduction--I am the
girl-necks you twisted like
apple stems-- Winesap-skin 
pinched dolls pinched from
the trees where our father filled
our heads with too many words--
too many footnotes-- too many
definitions for what we were allowed
to call rape--
Do we fit for definition--
did we have enough seeds to 
grow more pies for your kitchen tables--
don't name me Eve  if you 
want to learn to articulate these apple-cores--
I guess if it's all that suits you 
go ahead-- call me Eve-girl
or apple daughter-- or say what mean
and call me original slut--
the applesauce cup cunt 
who couldn't keep their damn mouth 
shut-- 
I don't take a offense because
I can be temptress but I'd rather you
call me serpent-charmer--
the snake lady under the lake--
Yes-- yes-- yes fine call me Eve
I know that's just what you name every girl-body
you see but I'm not a girl-body
I am cold blood--
and apple cores-- no I didn't
take a bite from a Golden Delicious 
just to stand here and let you call me
Eve--
I eat through the apple-- 
the seed the sinew the vein--
I eat words and I eat poetry--
I eat stems and the necks of all
the girls you hung from the tree 
to name Eve--
What do you know about scales
and what do you know about 
kissing someone like a page turn?--
No there will be no apple
left for you if that's what you're
afraid of-- the rattle-snake skank  
kept them for them-self so
you can keep eating peaches 
--cramming confessionals on your knees--
No! Boy Adam-- that's what I'll call you
if this is the game we're playing here--
No! I will feed you no words
that you do not know how to ask for and 
you'll find no applesauce here 
if you're waiting just to 
call all of us Eve-- and here's the 
secret Adam boy-- You stem rapist--
you apple voyeur-- you McIntosh misogynist--
You can't just sit around and wait for
the snakes to eat the apples
and tell you what poetry they all found there--
that's not how it works anymore--
this is isn't another Eve--
This is what it's like to call
someone snake-- throw your Adam name
into the lake and drown your 
Eve-body thoughts in the cores
of apples-- yes Adam can speak poetry 
too if he can get drunk 
on these apple cores-- feel
the scales-- shout
SLUT at yourself in the mirror--
ate through the core and don't
share your apples-- this is poetry 
this is re-building with scales--
We bury Adam and Eve under the tree
today and plant apple seeds
in their eye sockets-- see poetry 
with our mouths-- yes kiss me
like a page turn-- like a serpent--
page turn me mouth poetry.

Distortion peddle baby 
and un-learning how to play a guitar--

I was born in the crack of a distortion peddle--
and they had to pull
bar chords out of my hair-- capo
on my neck-- this acoustic noose-- 
and I spoke
in the flower bud language of Sex Pistols
My second name is Eleanor Rigby 
and I could mosh-pit before I could walk.
The first time I held my father's
black and white Richenbacker the
strap bent my shoulders and she told
me to plug her in so she could scream--
but I played her on tin-string mute--
and she cried quiet and kissed my
finger tips with red lines trying
to bud into callouses.
I performed in a John Lennon t-shirt
that came to my knees-- hair wet from 
the bath tub standing on the stage
of my parent's king sized bed--
I taught her chords she didn't know
her frets could hold and there's nothing heavier
than your father's electric guitar
on your shoulders-- carry me lithium cross-- 
I playing with plastic ponies 
from bar stools and drinking sprite
from Manhattan glasses-- I told
the bar tender-- On the Rocks
when I just wanted to munch on ice and
pretzels
I watched my father yank words
from her mouth-- braced for the
for snap of the distortion peddle--
my voice-- my gravel throat-- 
her voice--
I was raised a Creep
A weirdo 
A Day Tripper through the 
fret boards on the railroad that howled
past our house every night like
the ghost of guitars my father sold
to make more spaces on the walls
for his children to mark their heights 
--our walls were his fret boards--
stretched our house taller with his
callous fingers--
I was always too small for an electric guitar
and always too nervous to let her play me--
I was trapped capo-neck child--
umbilical silver string cutting
my fingers red-red-red lines
--rose callous and Sex Pistol--
and Gows don't read music they
scream it--but guitars have always
bent me over the ledge of another
mattress stage-- I made her sing for
other boys-- made promises on 
her railroad tracks-- I made
her sing love I never knew and
capo strangled her mouth-- and
now all I can say is I'm sorry
and I left my plastic ponies on
the bar stools-- tangled
myself in guitar straps and pretzel
legs and rose callous kiss
my fret board--
I became the abuser-- the
reason why she slammed feet
on distortion peddles-- I have
been a terrible lover of these
guitars who muted herself to 
teach me how to hold something heavy--
She stretched and un-untuned each string
under the pressure of my grip
that loosened and loosened until
until she shed capos and rusted her
hair-- snapped in the percussion of a bar-chord--
Shaved her strings naked for me
and wrapped the strap around my legs
to make stay--
she said
Distortion peddle baby 
why don't you play me play me play me
You were Sex Pistol
You were Eleanor Rigby
You were meant for mattress stages
and somehow you unlearned loving me
And I coughed up the bar chords--
cut capo around my neck--
I told her I should have warned her
I was a fickle fret-board lover
and that guitars were always too
heavy for me--
I howled like the ghost train--
-- sat naked without strings-- 
 kiss me rose callous--
sing me scream.
  

You and me in the Marianas Trench.

I didn't expect to meet
you here. This was supposed
to be final. I had prepared
for this reverse-assumption--
return to mouth of my mother
Mariana with her hips widening 
deeper and deeper with each tectonic 
trepidation as the earth
makes love to her in fire--
I wanted to be
submerged-- to be quiet as the 
triggerfish--to burn holes in my
forearms over hydrothermal vents--
I opened the window to my bed room 
and set free all my blankets--
took my stuffed animals to the 
pier and taught each how to sink with me--
contorted my lungs in to crucibles--
held my breath in the bathroom
sink-- counted 42 extra seconds
everyday until I could
spend the whole night-- face submerged
in warm sink water-- breath
hand soap and tooth paste foam--
float and dream of angler fish and 
Xenophyophores in my hair--
The ocean came to find me-- clown fish 
and seahorses wriggled one by one
from the throat of the sink 
called me-- sea nymph-- called
me sister--
and I knew it was time to go home.
I left nothing for you but
my oatmeal and pillows--
chained all the books 
I've ever read around my ankles
to help bring me down even though
I knew I was heavy enough to 
sink from my suffocation bones alone-- 
You weren't supposed
to meet me there-- 
this is me--
this is my space and silence--
my place to be eaten by the crustaceans
like sea jelly skin--
I wanted to talk to angler fish--
grow teeth and look up with the
crustaceans at a blue water heaven
without morning or night--
refuse the air from my bones--
There I could
re-read every book and let the ink
melt into bio-luminescence--
blank page nightlights--
this girl-body who went deep enough to look
up at the monsters under their bed--
all blue and sauntering 
breathing soap foam between dagger
tooth brush teeth--
I wanted it to be quiet enough
to hear ever wave clasp its hands desperately
on a shore-- crying lover-lover-lover
I have always known you.
Why didn't you just let me sink?
You came here with your
oxygen tanks and your seaweed hair.
You were here like sea horses in the sink-
and I asked you how you could
be heavy enough to meet me in the 
mouth of my mother and you reminded
me she's everyone's mother and everyone
wanted to sink home some nights
but that clown fish play games
and sea jellies are jealous of 
lungs-- you told me breath with me
and I said I was happy enough with soap
and you taught to eat photosynthesis 
again-- combed the Xenophyophores
from my scalp and together we re-wrote
every book I ever read in water-proof
ink so we wouldn't forget what the poets
had taught us--
wrapped my forearms in sea weed from
the hydrothermal hemorrhages
and spit out salt water until we
both sat dripping on the pier next
to all my stuff animals-- you had brought my
blankets you found set free
out my window-- dryed my skin--
dried my hair-- talked like angler fish
--like the clasped hands of the waves
and the shoreline.

My poetry is 
birthday candles, acolyte arson, and
match stick forest fire.

God struck me hot like a
match stick-- set my head 
on fire called me a TOM BOY--
Because it's okay of boys
light fires-- burn
off the limbs of trees
to make canoes-- cross
a river and fish for blue gills--
blue-girls-bluelip--blueblood
mix me into your gasoline stove--
Blue-hair boys call me until
they get too close
and I ignite--
How did you know I wanted use you
for tinder?
the first time I played with matches 
I burned an orchid behind
my ear and renamed myself
in the language of scar and blaze
-- melted each finger tip
down in green and blue wax
on the white face of 
another birthday cake I didn't
want to eat-- do we bake
our own skin into birthdays
or was this all another fire
chronicle? I learned about
burning from your forced
combustion kiss--
you blueblood--bluelips
I learned 
from how God strikes inferno 
on my tongue every time I
ignite in another poem-- 
We swept up the ashes around
the barber stool and everyone
else blew out my birthday candles--
Sung me seventeen--
sung me baby-- sung me into arson--
told me it was beautiful to see
me turn into a match-stick
woman at the age of five
-- a shaved skull of
fire-- to the boys who
ate my hair like birthday cake
or spaghetti I thank you--
to the sacristy matches I used
to light a church-- we learned together
that God smells like sulfur and 
incense-- did you see the 
holy spirit's smoke-tail--
did you see me as the bell acolyte--
who rings three times at the call
of another man's hands-- 
Did you burn off the limbs of
the trees and leave behind forest fire?
Escape to the other side
in a canoe filled with bluegills--
bluegirls and a bluemoon to bake
a birthday cake-- Have many 
match-sticks old am I?
How many times did I want you
to kiss me? I ask because I've
had so much fire I'd rather
be kissed than swept up in ashes--
this is burning-- this is howl--
this is blue hair
this is how age and how
I ice birthday cakes only
you're the one who counts the candles--
writes my name is green and blue
wax-- 
My church has six candles
if you count the hair of this acolyte.
If you county the forest fire
of my forearms-- if you 
count self-harm as self-reclamation--
these were my tree limbs to
make into a canoe-- these were
my blue gills to kiss.
Now boys, it's my birthday so
save you kisses for me
and we can spend the next ten years
figuring out if I ever wanted them.
Your mouth with be seared 
and my tongue will be embers.

8 years later and the pizza boy chronicles 

We pizza when I was twelve.
This was when I had one brother 
and shaved my leg hair with my father's
used razors-- When my mushroom feet
rejected socks and when I didn't know
there were nicknames for vaginas.
I sat on the porch-- legs open in a pleated 
black and white skirt with the telephone
in my hand. The pizza place knew
our address by my father's voice.
so it was surprising that the pizza
never arrived. I called back to the
hollow hum of an empty phone only moaning
about the distance between so many people.
My brother and I ate porch potato rolls
with peanut butter and I snacked on
the bag of grapes-- fed myself like
the dirty mushroom-foot goddess I was
and wondered where the pizza boy went.

--

1. 
434 Noble Street 
Kutztown PA, and I'd been there to deliver
pizza before.
I drive a 1996 dusty-bruised Oldsmobile.
They have a chubby girl with
black curly hair and a boy who thinks he
is as small as an apricot. The father
wipes paint on his shirt.
Somewhere between the fire station
and the mouth of the corn fields
I missed their green front door
and the car kept going.

2. 
I always thought about them too much--
I know it's just pizza, but I wondered
about them. 
Every now and again they ordered
Italian hoagies and the girl 
got her's with mayo--she was sometimes
on the porch drawing pictures 
of their neighbor's tree at different 
angles. I wondered if she was
looking for something with the pencil--
the boy arranged army men
in rows set for a war never intended
to begin. She wore
pleated skirts like pants.

3. 
I passed their front door again
and again on Fridays--
banged hard on the glass of the 
car window. I haven't left yet--
the vessel seems set for some 
predetermined destination-- I only wish
I could stop passing their house it
makes me feel guilty-- I wonder if they were
hungry or if they shared fruit on a porch
three years ago. I wonder if they
still get pepperoni or if the 
uncle orders pineapple.

4.
The car stopped this year.
Parked itself in the middle of 
a corn field-- only this corn field
wasn't in Kutztown. I couldn't see
the bald heads of the silos or the
industrial city of the battery factory
always lit up and dangling
in the night sky like Christmas.
The pizza was still warm but I wasn't hungry.
I wondered if the family ever got a dog
or if they still ate pizza
or if the mother worked late
or if they ate pizza at the beach.
I sat on the hood of the car-- warm
pizza boxes on my lap and counted
the stars-- there were exactly
434 every night.

5.
The car started with me on the hood.
I clutched the pizzas tight and flung them inside
the open front windows of the car--
the hull was full of 
lightning bugs and I shooed them away
to reclaim a seat. I sat shot gun.
I wasn't going to pretend to drive
anymore. The lightning bugs kept
trying to carry the pizzas away.
I waved my hands wild as if they were mosquitoes--
The pizzas were still warm through the box.
We passed the house again.
There was a wreath on the green front
door and the house's eyes were wobbly
like candles.The girl was shaving her
head in a mirror and the boy
washed his hands in the sink.

6.
This year I only passed drawings of
the neighbor's tree. I never noticed how
thin it was and how much like a girl's body.
I have grown accustomed to the warmth of
pizza boxes on my lap and the way the
headlights have began to flicker as they
plow through another night in the
mazes of cornfields bleeding into the
celestial skirt hem all around.

7.
I wanted to open the box very badly
today. I'm guilty enough to be seven years
late-- let alone to peek at
their food. I wonder if they'll hug me
when they see me-- bare feet on a porch--
I bet they will have forgotten about the
pizza. I would. I mean I would have forgotten
too if this weren't the only thing I could think 
about. The headlights went out last night.
It makes me think that I might be close to getting
there. Passing the house doesn't mean anything--
but I think I'm getting closer.
Next week will be eight years on Friday.

8.
The car stopped at the end of the driveway
and I couldn't help but look before I handed it
over. I felt something for the pizza. I felt
like it was my friend and at the same time
like the house was my house
and the girl my daughter and my sister.
The father-- my father-- my mother
drove a blue station wagon full
of discarded Wendies bags--
and my son and apricot brother
who must have been as round as a peach--
I had to look. I knew it was empty.
I had always known it was empty.
I left it on the door step.
I kicked off my shoes and sat on their 
sunken skeleton of a couch.
No one was home and it was Friday.

--

And sometimes on Fridays
I still find empty pizza boxes
washed ashore
on the back step of my dorm room.
For some reason they're still warm.
I collected them in piles under my bed
when everything is cold in November.
I think about the girl body 
of my neighbor's tree
I think about the paint stains 
on my father's shirts.
I think about folding pizza
and grape goddesses with porch feet.

Ave Marie, drowned unicorns,
and prayers to the oatmeal goddess 

I don't know when I began to
pray to the oatmeal goddess because she's
not like Jesus-- she's not like
rapture or forty-day flood
or drowned unicorns or 
wiping lips off a wine 
cup of blood--
She waits quiet in a white bowl
like knee-singing 
Ave, Ave Ave Maria 
Sing like Aves like 
white bird like red candle--
like purple robe altar--
like lamb blood welcome mats 
and honey locus dinners--
She waits to 
give birth-- loud and unafraid
in the mouthpiece of a microwave
-- pew-bruise
hips-- 
She's just Ave Maria 
She's never been gold but
she has been naked just like
all of us-- she's been
maple and brown sugar in between
her toes-- she's walked to
burn her lips on another rim
of a cup of her father's blood--
She curled into herself
and waited as a fetus 
in a white bowl-- lay in oats
-- microwave
for 40 seconds and forty nights
and eat 
with a soup spoon-- dinosaur egg
mother and cream peach pew knees--
incantation circles around a bowl--
Ave, Ave, Ave 
Ave oatmeal, Ave eat me, Ave 
I can eat again and I tongue of fire--
And I Ave Maria
In herself she grew cranberries
sewed the blueberry thicket
where I ate my palms purple
and naked 
and planted mustard seeds in the rocks--
The white birds grow in place
of babies--from the cranberries 
made me a believer in kneeling
in front of microwaves for rebirth--
I wash my hair in her raisin seed soil--
The oatmeal goddess is sneaky.
She doesn't tell you to pray
she gives you a tongue
and uses it to sing her body
naked and as beautiful as
an empty mirror-- my goddess gives
me penance in the form of mustard
seeds-- washes my match-scarred forearms
in oatmeal and tells me that we
all have to curl into 
bowls and grow white birds in the fire--
that we all are naked
we all are Ave Maria
Wipe our feet on lamb-blood door
mats-- say our prayers in packets
of maple-apple-crisp-peach-walnut-sugar
kneel before a microwave and pray by accident--
pray haphazard-- pray naked and empty mirror--
pray to wipe away our lips from cups
father blood-- father who drowned
the unicorns-- Ave Maria 
who planted the blueberries
and taught me to kneel.

An open apology for everyone fed doughnuts, democracy,
and pints of their own blood.

They opened the box of doughnuts for
us at the polling booth-- curly-hair
smiled-- told us to raise our voices louder
louder louder louder
with the chocolate glazed and powered
truck tires revving down our throats
told us how sweet it was to live in 
a democracy with boxes of doughnuts
to let us know that our vote was 
worth something sugary-- 
put voting stickers over our eyes
and spun us around three times--
pin the tail on the King
because there was only ever-- 
Kings for us to vote for--
Kings and royal rape-collectors--
our parking violations for these vaginas 
They
laughed and told us vaginas 
look like 
Doughnuts-- like cream Boston 
like filled jelly gypsies--
Giggled about all the ways boy-kings
invent to eat our ballot bodies--
and when we asked if
they heard what we were saying with all
the doughnuts in our throats
they told
us to proceed
Proceed to the polling booth-- the
throne-- blood pressure cuffs around
each arm-- electric chair style--
take another doughnut and this time
measure out the worth of your
organs against the blink of voting
booth lights--our pulse--
our filled jelly blood-- they didn't tell 
us that it would take needles--
didn't tell us that we would
sit there and slide democracy into
our veins-- cold and chocolate-glazed
and searching for your cream Boston
for your rape joke grins--
Isn't voting funny and cute
like powered doughnuts and knees
and rape?
We couldn't see the needles with
the stickers on our eyes-- 
Flinched and wince:
I vote-- I vote-- I vote
I vote blind and doughnut tongued:
How many pints did they take?
I didn't see-- I couldn't keep
track between the doughnuts they
fed us one after the other
told us we could ever rise above
misogyny
above glass ceilings where
we see our reflection--
the beeping of the booth--
did they watch?
Did they peak behind the curtains?
Would it have mattered? 
Did we even vote or did they just
use us for blood?
I'm O negative and AB positive
that democracy was another doughnut--
and empty hole--
This is my apology for us. I'm sorry
for the doughnuts they fed you--
fed us-- 
This is my apology for 
pinning the tail on another
King 
This is my apology for what we thought
was democracy and was really just
another harvest-- another transfusion--
Let's eat doughnuts and take
back our ballot bodies-- 
Walk out of the polls with
a back pack of doughnuts as reparations--
hold our blood in our hands--
This is the tax collection for
our identities.
This is our apology. 
I'm sorry I put all of my
queer-- rape surviving-- anorexic--
blood raptured-- poetry transfused--
cat-called-- boy-groped-- vagina 
bearing body into a button.
I'm sorry that wasn't enough.
Eat doughnuts. Bleed jelly.
Collect our brothers pints 
in backpacks-- pull curtains 
over our closets and 
peel off the voting stickers
from our eyes.  

Waiting room birthdays and what
the fishes knew. 

Let her eat cake!
they all said.
I had hoped they wouldn't
do it in the psychologist's 
waiting room-- all decorated 
with sun faded pink streamers
they had saved from my 
arrival home from the hospital
when everyone decided
IT'S a girl
IT'S a girl
white cloth
over the coffeeless tables--
My family had even
put party hats on the ferns
and taught the fish in the 
aquarium to play plastic kazoos
to congratulation me
on this new birthday--
They re-named me Cured
and wrote it in RED
icing on the glaring face of a 
yellow square cake-- white frosted 
and buttercream rose ankles--
candle wax counted me
as only one day old--
One day:
Fixed, Remedied, Mind-medicated
Tongue-fire forehead-- sugar ribbed 
speak to me like a leper
and hold me down to feed me cake--
The fish knew it wasn't my
birthday-- they felt sorry.
Let her eat cake 
said my parents from the 
arm chairs next to me--
laughed and tossed tissues 
on the floor-- they  
joked and peeled through 
waiting room magazines
to find me what my new smile
should look like-- white frosting--
buttercream chin on the face
of another girl who could
eat cake with her fists
and still be
white and Cured and thin--
Happy Birthday 
Sing Happy Birthday
to your ex-Anorexic girl
who tries not to 
count the petals on each rose--
laugh and paint her lips
yellow cake
laugh and toss the tissues
in her face-- she
doesn't cry anymore-- we don't
pay for that. Cure her face
of eating and 
Let her eat cake 
for you
Leper, leper, and leper
How many psychologists 
words did you have to swallow
before you decided that you'd
rather name yourself Anorexia?
I am
E.D. Queen and Waiting Room Goddess
No one asked you to deem 
me 
Cured.
Don't tell me I 
look alive--
I've only ever eaten cake
for boys and for
the chant of waiting room.
You're wondering if I'll get fat again.
No-- My name isn't Cured and you
don't love me if that's
the only word you want to devour
-- eat me frosting shaved
and hungry-- eat me apple cores
and burnt candle forearms--
I'll set your streamer on
fire-- melt these magazine
smiles out of every page
and talk to you with my sugar
tongue of flame-- talk to
you goddess 
talk to you lepers who pretend 
to read waiting room magazines-- 
the fish were right-- the fish played
kazoo and cried when I ate buttercream
roses for you-- for you
boys who wanted me Cured and skinny
and pink streamers--
Love me your Anorexic goddess.
Let's celebrate days without scars--
put candles in the apples
and sing
Let them eat party hats
Let them eat magazines
Let them eat tissues  
Let them eat--dream--love--kiss
Let them call me candle wax
and love me for my sugar ribs. 

Spilled cereal bowls, geode scream,
and the obsess compulsion box of my brain.

Did you have to spill me and
the box of Cheerios this morning?
You know how many pieces I come in
and how many strings of 
cereal it takes to wrap three
times around these wrists--
tie me tight and make
me watch all the little Cheerios 
crawl on each others faces--
bend knees-- dirt crumb and 
and obsession scream--
stuck--the geode in my throat--
shout loud enough to crack the diamonds
into cereal on the floor-- 
Don't wake me shaky palms 
leave me alone my torment brain--
this box of haunted numbers--
count me-- add me-- remember me 
this bedevil chant inscribed
in the flaps of the cereal box--
written in the cheerios arranging themselves
on the tile floor-- chant 
consume us this plague-brain--
crack the compulsion geode--
my fear of all the little
circles rolling and rolling and rolling
and disappearing into this tile floor--
and the boxes fell into themselves
on the shelf-- coffee drunken 
and laughing at the way you make
my hands shake when you tip me over--
slowly slowly-- make me 
compulsive like a waterfall
obsess over me and how far I scatter
when you tip me over-- skin scurry 
crowd me into another bowl.
Like this-- like this you know what my skin does--
you knew I scatter like
ants-- beetles-- crinkle in
the knees of centipedes scatter--
Snap the geode on the side
of the cereal bowl like an egg--
you see I don't lock my knees
when I fall so I drop myself nice
and pretty and diamond throat shriek--
Go ahead-- I know you want to
shake this cereal box brain full
of possession plague-- geode fixation
of the shimmer crumbs all smiling across
the floor. Oh how
you spilled me-- and Oh how
I counted myself again
and again.