Colonization of Mars:
The gravity of zucchini bread 
and other ways I remember 
our weight on Earth.

Here is a picture of the garden
I grew for us here-- I know it's only
rocks and dust but sometimes you 
have to grow what's left of love--
take shovel to the iron oxide and
dance wakeful for rain--
They told us we would die on
Mars-- not a sudden death--
we'd grow old with the small planet's
disgruntled flushed face-- 
Turn frustrated and dusty like him--
leave foot prints stamped across 
the blushing terrain.
Had I told you how I spent the first days
trying to find
another life form to ask
why Mars was always so restless?
I dug with my hands until
they were bloody in the soil--
There are no zucchini on mars
or other vegetables for that matter
but when I go out for a walk in the 
afternoon I pretend I'm in your garden
again-- the one your father taught you
to make-- you hand me a peach like a fist
and we're tart and green--
These anxious Earth bodies aren't held by
the weight of the air-- 
We're finding ourselves in the same
orbit-- same walks looking for a place
to planet the zucchini--
You see humans weren't made to be so red--
and the face of Earth stares like
the pit of a peach calling for April--
calling to us traitors-- the red people
without gardens or lovers to send postcards to--
Some nights I hover just above my bed
and wonder if you slept better
without me asking you to hold me--
if it wasn't Earth that kept
me tethered but some force that
you kept hidden only in your arms--
it wasn't fair to have made you a planet
but I couldn't help but notice
that there have been few people in my 
life to have made me as heavy as a moon--
and you were one of them--
At the time I signed up for the 
first colony on Mars I had suspected 
we would all die red and war-like anyway
I figured it was worth the change of location--
You told me you loved me once
under the pressure of planets 
dangling by strands of yarn on a clear
night when we sat on the porch 
and we baked a loaf of zucchini bread
from a recipe on the back of a bag of flour--
we sliced it warm and heavy-- gooey
on our fingers without forks--
you know the soil here feels like that bread--
feels like your sticky fresh hands 
and sometimes I even
imagine there is warmth sewn in the Martian dirt.
I didn't tell you I was leaving because 
I knew it would ruin the zucchini bread
and that you wouldn't look out a window 
the same way you open an 
oven to check on the bread before it's done--
tooth-pick fingered and anxious
enough to float out of Earth's April grasp--
Maybe I left so we could feel the pull across
the stretch of space I'm sending this letter
across-- maybe there was never any pull from
a planet or a peach pit and we only
imagined it to help us all stay in love
long enough to bake bread and 
wait on a porch for the planets to 
come out of hiding-- 
When you sleep remember we have two gardens--
one is red and rusting and the other
I hope you still keep. Bake for me
even if it only tastes like gravity. 

Vigils of roof top snowmen,
my father boiling clementines, and other 
ways Santa Claus finds our house.

Pecky the snowman made a pilgrimage every
year with my father-- they drank beer
with each other our on the cold
porch around the glass table--
Pretended it was July
and tossed bottle caps off the roof 
like sleet or hail-- they laughed when 
my brother and I mistook the 
their sound on the drive 
for bells-- bells or quarters--
I asked my mother if she heard them
and but she was too busy lighting purple
advent candles only to blow
them out again and again--
never enough of a flame-- when do
we light the pink one? when do we 
stop pretending we don't hear
bells? When we we start counting 
the caps of beer bottles instead
of making them into bracelets
--she read prayers from
the flaps of the chocolate calendar--
as my brother and fought over the candy--
I have always said and believed
I heard bells on our roof-- 
but it took me till I was thirteen 
to know it was only the bottle caps 
and the knuckles of the house cracking
in every pipe as the flowy skirt 
of winter kicked frost in our eyelids--
I taught myself to sleep to the sound
of an alarm clock calling me "fat-girl"
and calling me "sugar-cookie face"
Our house swaddled us in couch stains
and space heaters while my mother tried
to knit a blanket big enough to
hold December together without more
lost mittens-- we are a family of 
lonely gloves and coat pockets--
My father scrambled up the gutter with the plastic
light up snowman on his back--
landed on our roof and clung to shingles
to establish our families beacon--
our offering to the fat God we dressed in red and white--
Wrote letters asking for less beer bottles 
to trip over in the living room--
and less ribs for me to keep track of--
There was a time where he could find me what 
I wanted--- plastic Brachiosaurus
alien print guitar straps-- 
Santa Claus knew if my father when the 
house would smelled like clementine and cinnamon--
No-- not home after work-- I mean home--
like he felt at home-- our house is a
building full of people that waited
till December to try enumerate a home
from the structure-- my father built 
the walls with brown bottles
and diet coke cans that shivered when 
the wind is too strong-- my mother 
still trying to keep an advent wreath
long enough for us to listen to the 
approximation of a prayer 
or the sound of bell-- all the while 
the snowman on our roof tottered 
back and forth and blinked his light
to signal a landing-- he called snowflakes
onto the walls of the living room--
oh yes my father and the snowman knew
so much about each other-- more
than I ever will because I have
never braved a November roof top
with him-- I was too busy trying to figure
out if I could Santa Claus or my father
or an advent wreath for less bones
to search for under my skin-- this flesh 
that has only grow more and more
like sugar cookies-- I'm scared of the
milk chocolate of advent calendars
and I'm wondering if my fat God read
all the letters I pleaded into the 
mouth of a mailbox-- did my father climb down
my chimney only to realize his daughter
wrapped up in a corner between space heaters--
counting her ribs as her mother counted
the advent candles-- lighting the pink
on as promise and undoing another
line of stitches in our blanket--
he boiled clementine peels but the house
still smelled something like all of
our fears-- and the nervous cracking of
our knuckles in the walls of this building
we were building into a home--
Now I don't live there but in the morning
it still smells like clementines and cinnamon--
my father still climbs down my chimney
and wraps up apologies for what my
skin has done to me-- apologies for
the bells we made on the driveway and when 
I drive home Pecky looms from the rooftop--
sulking with the dim flicker of his dying
light bulb as he tries to signal S.O.S.--
Save our Sun-room: 
for the aluminum tree 
and the color-changing light-- I'll be there
I'll be there stronger than a lilting advent wreath--
And my mother always manages to make some 
sort of a blanket even if it's only out
of tinsel and mason jars--
I'll be there 
I'll be there for our worship of our
two Gods-- 
one in white and red
and one who put the snowman on the roof-- 

Build me a ginger bread girl-body--
What my grandmother taught me about cookies and
eating the peppermint wreath from the front door.

Why would anyone 
waste molasses on men? 
Make me a ginger girl-body
in a cardamon cardigan-- we can
brave this winter white of teeth-- 
taste sugar on my sleeves
and lick me clean of icing until
I'm just naked and baked light
blush-brown-- and cinnamon cheek
-- we pierced our
ears with red and green
sugar spheres and 
walked along the crinkle heat of a cookie
sheet-- skate burn crumple feet
and press together 
our dough-hands in solidarity--
we oven bound sisters--
sliced from the cookie-cutter
fragment of another man's rib--
My grandmother said not to
bite out all the raisin eyes
but I couldn't eat a gingerbreadman
with him staring so intently--
I never thought I could feel
so naked in front of a cookie--
she told me I always eat them too
fast-- who can be patient for
molasses and whole family
brought together by ginger--
Mother,
how many daughter did you
have all at once? 
and where
will we live once all the walls are 
eaten? 
We can paint each other 
buttons and bow ties-- 
and maybe even a skirt-- slather
on scarves across
garbled dried-grape mouths--
we wait for men to build us
ginger bread houses-- display them
and tear them apart tooth 
by tooth-- while we watched--
everything that ever was
has been
held together by nothing more
than royal icing and the prayers
read from the flaps of an advent calendar-- 
these corner stone candy canes--
the chimney was
always the first thing to go--
and the spearmint leaf hearth
filled the living room with fire--
what have you done-- you have
to eat all at once or not at all!
Don't take your time when
you decide to devour our walls--
Oh father take a mouthful of the roof again!
I don't want have time to remember
how the sun looked in the gumdrop windows--
My grandmother mailed us a house each 
December and we packed ourselves
in peppermint pinwheels-- baked
our pink-flesh with molasses and 
ate our way out of a cottage through
to New Year when we could
eat our bodies too--
save the eyes for last--
oh ginger girl bodies-- what do 
we do with our eyes?
They've already seen everything there
was to behold before we were 
forged together by an oven-- they 
already know what we look like
without icing-- so what's the use of 
eating the raisins-- plant them
in the ground and grow gingerbread trees--
eat the gumdrops from the windows and 
sleep in the dark of a brown-blank-house--
I'll eat the peppermint wreath from the 
front door so you know it's time to 
gnaw free from walls-- remember what
I said about raisins and 
never let cookies look at you 
like just another manifestation of molasses--
we ginger girls know what it's like
to eat through December-- bundle up--
it's going to be white teeth
and it's going to be candy cane sleet--

Agora poets, our baklava bed sheets 
and your body in the Aegian Sea.

I'll sit up by a moon and ask
you if you remembered to paint every
layer with honey this time--
brush steady the syrup to
hold you and I between these
sheets-- lap sugar over our thighs
like the tongue of the ocean teaching
femurs how to speak-- we
laugh in waves and coatings 
of dough-- 
you & I were always
tied up by everything that's sweeter
than the shadow your spine
articulates in the water
when we both become triangles 
in the sea--
we speak over the bones of Sappho
who cries
Oh my mountain hyacinth/
honey flower and Aegean-mouth
who I learned to kiss only
soaked in bed sheets and rose water--
What can/you give one who/has 
everything,/
like Aphrodite?
When did we learn to only eat
Baklava and fill our bed with
remnants of star and wave--
Neptune felt his shoreline melt 
in granules of nectar--
I ask you if we have enough syrup to make
this bed into an agora--
If our voices could meet
there in the morning
when we're sticky and sweet and
piled high enough to dip our
coffee mugs into a night sky--
drink stars like sugar walnuts--
cup the pistachio and hazelnut
from the caramel pools
of another market place 
where I try to find your over
all the poets calling 
loud and soft for lovers 
they intended to meet there--
we build a constellation and name
her Venus-- kiss her between 
us in the crowd take her home
and stick her between
our bed sheets-- lost in shore rubble--
I'll
read
you a poem as tall as honey
and wash our lips with oranges 
and rose until we no longer
taste so much like where we sleep--
tell me that it is time.
Tell me we didn't brush each 
stratum candied and melody
only to call other women
hyacinths to curve like
a spine under the blank stare
of the moon
sleep heavy and light my love
and listen to the ocean kiss
outside the window--
hear the poets still stumbling 
about the agora
What can/you give one who/has 
everything,/
like Aphrodite?
I give her honey.
I give her poetry.

I joined girl scouts to
ring door bells and take
thin mints to the mausoleum.  

We all knew I would make 
a bad girl scout.
Instead of
badges I liked to collect 
rips in my jeans where my thighs
were too big from Boston cream
donuts and box
birthday cake breakfasts
with my father-- 
I was an icing witch you know?--
a peanut butter spoon child
capable of devouring the troop
reserves of thin mints or caramel deLights--
that was back when I wore my skin
less like a sleeping bag and 
more like a camp fire-- 
I licked flames off black marshmallows
-- finger painted with shadows--
wrote stories in crayon on the 
rectory walls--
The other girls didn't really
know what I was--
Watched me out the window
as I perched on the tombstones 
even in November-- 
Resonate chiming of church bell
or door bell or acolyte bell--
They believed I could be
a scout or a spirit-- 
Some thought I was the calculated
infiltration of a boy in a plaid skirt--
I never remembered to
wear my vest to meetings-- chewed
holes in the collar of all my t-shirts
so I resembled a crumpled
piece of notebook paper--
Some earned ghost story badges 
devising stories about me--
Said I had crawled out from the basement
between boxes of gnarled crayon thumbs 
and it was the troop leaders who
suspected I was born in a mausoleum.
That's where I sold my
cookies to-- what's the use of
selling cookies if you only 
go to people you know?--
I converted to a girl scout to ring door
bells and gobble stacks of thin mints 
between tomb stones.
At midnight my alarm would go off
by my bed and I would shove a plastic
backpack full of peanut butter patties,
Thanks-A-Lots, lemonades, thin mints,
and even shortbreads-- clamor through
the back alleys of Kutztown till
I made it to the graveyard--
face paled by the pale and the veins
of the tree at the top of the hill--
knocked four times
at the gate and sang 
Make new friends but keep the old
one is silver and the other's gold 
--latch would flick open and the 
soil would shift eagerly as the 
spirits crawled forward-- church bell
hum-- door bell shout--
knock gentle on the faces of stone--
they sang back
a circle is round a circle is round
as I placed cookies on their foreheads--
they hailed me the peanut butter witch and 
plaid-skirt boy and midnight scout--
We ate cookies together
all in the mausoleum-- told
ghost stories about real girls 
and craft time-- and sewing on badges--
they laughed and asked why I was 
a girl scout and I told them about
the door bells-- 
In the morning I was lonely again between 
empty boxes and sleeping corpses--
the troop always blamed me for
eating all the cookies myself-- 
I tried to explain that ghosts don't have 
money so we have to be charitable
sometimes-- I sang
the other is gold the other is gold
And they left me to sweep up the crumbs--
told me to sell to my parents next
year or not a be a fatty
left me to the mausoleum where 
I could smile to myself
alone to count rips in my jeans--
night came heavy again in another
milk-glass moon  and the bodies
sat up and asked why I was crying--
wiped away my tears with burial clothes
and fed me their last tube
of cookies one by one singing
the other is gold the other is gold
Our peanut butter witch-- our midnight scout
what would we be without you?

Red pepper hummus, 
our bodies as book ends,
and the quest for the perfect hamburger.

Would you think to call me your bookend?
Sitting back to back with pages
between us. I can try to read
to you across the distance of novels
but the words would get lost
somewhere in the grumbling of
Mark Twain or wander lonely as
a cloud to be smothered in 
another index of Romantic poetry --
Are we going on a quest 
for hamburgers again?-- I don't remember
what hamburgers taste like 
but I have decided that to some
people hamburgers could be like books--
I know you claim not to be a poet
or an artist or a writer but
we all were be and will at some point--
We make these bodies into art
however we can and 
When art gets mixed up together we call
it bodies-- we call it 
touchcoffeedatelovemelovesay
thatIwasmorethanloveorsonnets
orwhateveryouweretryingtotellme
byorderingahamburgerkisskisskiss
lettucebedandfuckmelikearedonion
tomato-slice of a sonnet-- 
How is it?--I say
I eat words not sesame buns 
but you know what I mean-- I don't 
don't just mean food-- I mean
this art-- this body sandwich
between walls of books--
I mean I want to know 
if art is something made by
love or if love is something
we can come to call art--
and if mayonnaise could mean as
much in a mouth as a simile--
Have you loved me in roasted in red pepper
hummus or was it was always
at least 300 pages away?
Lend me your dust jacket
and pass the pita triangles--
So.
we walk the crooked back of 
the Village and write hamburgers 
in graffiti on the subway walls.
Only you and I knew what
they were supposed to be saying--
but that's gone now--
When I go
back the pictures
just look like menus items--
Do you ever feel like a menu item
for someone to love?
We haunt the MoMA with the smell
of french fries and ketchup--
keep napkins in our pockets to 
dab away the saunter of grease-- 
Come home to warm each other 
from bookends--
Do you like hummus? I say
and I mean 
Do you like me?
You can teach my how flip a burger
like a volta or enjambment
I'll read to you from The Bell Jar 
because I
once cheated on you with Sylvia 
Plath-- no we didn't have sex--
There's just something about her
words that I thought about loving 
more than bodies-- I felt her
art inside my art-- we ate
a poem together from a diner booth-
I guess loving me isn't very much fun.
We always had to sit back to
back anyway--parceled between
the mouths of dead poets
making me french fries and slicing
tomatoes thinly or jaunty in
awkward chunks--
I'm not asking you to read to
me but everyone who ever truly 
loved has at some point read to 
to me-- I guess it's what I 
do instead of of eating--
I'm sorry I shared hummus with
you-- I'm sorry there were candles 
and the books slouched on the shelf 
for a night-- I forgot
that a everyone's body has too many 
ways to write a poem and too many
ways to let itself be broken--
Descend from a book shelf--
To eat with me is something holy
I hope you understand-- I've forgotten
how to love myself and food and
I've been repulsed by hamburgers 
but never by you and hamburgers--
I learned that together
me and you were roasted red pepper hummus 
and soft
triangles of pita chips
and square tables-- 
Our bodies don't have the same
art as they used to and I don't need
them too-- Because I still
have book ends and I assume
you still have hamburgers
and we both can remember hummus.
I'm learning how to be less
of a picture on a menu and more
of poem in a mirror--
Sylvia Plath told me I have a 
mouth to eat the world--
and I laughed because 
I only want to eat a few
pages everyday of my own verse--
turn around and let the books
slouch for another body--  
Lite a candle on a square table--
make red onion--
slice tomatoes-- read 
to me-- read to me
read me-- mayonnaise or
metaphor.

My raisin eyes, the lure of angler fish street lamps
and being eaten in the dark

Was it you who told
me that people are like
moths-- only we can swim 
a little better-- hold our
breath while we sink deeper
and deeper-- bend gills and
peel off cellophane skin to
reveal the Halloween faces we 
were born with-- we weren't made
for sidewalks or legs--
do you remember worrying about
the bottom falling out of the
kiddie pool? Were you swallowed you 
underneath? We are
born with a fear of water lungs 
and yet we eat enough stones
to sink even with these 
legs kicking and thrash 
to be human.
To be human is to tread water.
We are mid ocean. We are fished by 
King crab nets-- thrown back with 
the swordfish. Make love in a kelp forest
between the images we meet of ourselves
entangled in thighs of kelp--
I have always
found a home among night lights--
making shadow puppets across
a dim bed room wall while
my father kept watch so 
that I wouldn't turn back into
an angler fish again before I went to sleep--
we kept holy water on the book
shelf next to the saint cards
and tired rosary beads hanging
from the trees of kelp--
You told me you once met
an angler fish from your
windowsill. Told me that
she would come by after Thanksgiving
when your mother started baking for Christmas.
She liked the faces of the gingerbread men.
Ate the raisin eyes while no one was looking--
You told me she's lonely down there.
She mistakes the shadows of
porcelain coral for her past lovers--
follows ghost crustaceans back and
forth and back and forth over
the same abyssal alley way--
kicks coke bottles and gives elegies 
over the occasional whale carcass--
And only she can hear their 
thick water born throats
calling "dust is dust 
is dust is sand is water"
She lights candles with her lamp post
to mourn for their bodies and the 
crabs who gnaw away at their flesh--
tells the crustaceans that she's hungry 
but doesn't want to eat them--
Tells them she'd rather eat a human--
she had learned from the gingerbread men
that humans are sweet and unnaturally dazzling--
carry the sun flecks in their eyes--
The crabs don't run anymore and 
they just embrace her bioluminescence--
mistake her light for their own mothers 
or for a tiny portal to enter into
the body of a human again-- they imagine
legs and being able to tread water-- 
imagine raisin eyes and Christmas.
She thinks about other angler fish
and wonders why they all decide to be alone.
She wants a human for a lover
and I elected to sink for her-- and for
her alone. This is not self-sacrifice--
this is where I was always meant to be--
they couldn't keep the kiddie pools
from turning into trenches--
I gave my legs to my father who
had already walked so many nightlights 
to keep me human-- this was inevitable.
They always knew I was a lesbian 
but they didn't know that I 
would be caught by the lure 
of angler fish girls--
met her underneath a street lamp--
where she told me I smelled like
gingerbread men-- asked me if my eyes
were raisins-- if I was made
from pieces of the sun--
She told me what the whales
said when they were assumed into heaven
that dust is dust is dust
And I agree. I agreed that all 
anyone ever wanted was a nightlight--
she said she was tired of it because
nightlights mean nothing without
lovers-- 
I told her she could eat me but
only if we did it in the dark--
this was not a nightlight 
kind of love-- only the abyssal alleys
know reverence is measured
in the throats of whales-- 
If she was so lonely she should
have stayed by the windowsills--
the good thing about Christmas
is that it's round and always
coming back-- a nightlight
to paint shadows on the kelp forest--
she ate my body-- sweet and 
ginger-- ate my legs I left with my 
father and stalked the windowsill
that December when she
was still so hungry-- empty
belly of ghost crustaceans.

The sandbox eats dinosaurs;
Let's build a castle with water fountain buckets

I told you the sandbox eats dinosaurs 
and you didn't believe me. 
You said it was where we were
always meant to live-- waist-deep
in fallen granules of our own sun--
you said it was where we could run away
to-- blue shovel and red bucket
for water fountain water-- let's
escape into a castle just to break the
walls bare feet--
It was you who always used the sandbox to
build yourself away into 
another body-- did you recognize
my bones there or was I plastic shovel
and terrarium pebble?--another shift--
another arm lost beneath the
pile, pile, pile of particle--
did you know that each speck
was once a planet that grew smaller
and smaller until it resolved
to become only a fragment of sand?
a humble resting place where the solar
system sends tired stars and comets
gone around too many times so that
they can be laid to rest as castles--
that's what we all want isn't it?
To die in a castle and kiss
someone else clean of sand? 
You told me that the twigs would
do well enough to serve as flags
or grave markers so that our family would
know where to leave flowers and where
to find plastic dinosaurs in bored August--
Assemble these mulch palace walls--
Erect a statue in honor of water fountains--
The sand pit grew 
damp and soaked with April by the time
we finally constructed the fortress wall
calling oak hands and picket pine-needle 
fences-- we walk out in the morning
with blue plastic shovels and dig
ourselves a new grave next to the 
dinosaurs-- stroke the heads of another
Apatosaurus and tell them to be patient--
because castles are patient 
and no one ever erected a mausoleum
with blue plastic shovels-- what 
was the water fountain for and did 
you try to wash off the sand? I told
you the sandbox eats dinosaurs--
already had a taste for bone
and building a castle is just another way
to ask someone if they love you back
as much-- no one ever loves even
and everyone in love dogs each other's 
resting place-- oak leaf
and water fountain water to wash
the sand from your hands-- if
the sandbox eats dinosaurs what made
you think it wouldn't eat us too?
It's got the teeth of comets-- burned
supernova from our shovels--
What kind of fortress do lovers make--
One of sand-- one of sand-- one of sand 
one of teeth and dinosaur burial
and oak leaf windows that peel off 
when it rains. Drink water fountain with
me and we'll live here in blue plastic
shovel mornings-- dig in and out each day--
only to bury each other again--
this is life with love and sand and
trying to escape with someone else's
body-- there was no where left to dig 
and at some point you 
always hit the earth-- the sand box
eats lovers-- that's what I meant to say--
lovers and shovels and dinosaurs--
washed with red buckets of all the
pieces of stars that followed us
here to watch our funeral. Leave flowers
for the love we hid in the sandbox--
get eaten with me by planet-teeth and mulch. 

Strip tease poetry and
The scars left
by the thesaurus--

I take books back to
my bed room like dog-eared boys--
like bent binding and 
sun-worn page-- No I don't
want to code you in Dewy decimals--
tattoo numbers up and
down your back so I know 
where to find you again--
I don't borrow books like everyone
else you know? This is dangerous--
I'm thief and I'm here
to tell you that the only
way you can ever love something
is purloined and peeled free 
of numbers-- 
Your place is under my pillow
or stacked neatly
on my shelves-- call me
your bookend-- and I'll
hold you sturdy-- I don't care if
you've lived your whole life
as a dictionary-- oh I can
make love with any piles of words
even if they're insisting 
on being alphabetical-- I've fucked
enough thesauruses to be done with
trying to find a new way to say things
I frame my anatomy from whatever 
your pages want to share with me-- 
I'll touch your torso in trochees
and make iambs across
your forearms if you want 
to read-- I don't just take pages--
I take cliff hangers and
last words-- make them into
the first lines and epigrams 
another free verse on a rain arrested
windowsill-- 
unroll indexes from the backs
of old psychological guide books--
they can diagnose me accurate enough--
hysteria-- obsession-- neurosis--
I'm compulsed to steal your verse
-- unthread it from
the pages and drop couplets
in tea cups-- my synonymatic sugar cubes--
I know the teeth of thesaurus 
sometimes make me illegible
but love can only exist in ambiguity--
This is a strip tease for you-- I'll
let you see what dust jackets are for--
loving books is an act of self-harm--
And we were all possessed before
we became a possession-- a pocket
full of dead white men words
I keep trying to use to make
this body a love poem-- read the code
on my spin-- Yell my name as a call number-- 
take me back to a shelf where
I sleep between 1950s almanacs--   
I can't part with a paged
I've already kissed again and again--
and these words are my words now--
even if they're scarred over and
over in red margin ink from
what the thesaurus did to pervert me--
Did we ever own a word or were
we just speaking for someone else?
retelling and retelling and retelling
the same poem body in new line breaks--
read what you will-- I don't mind
being a library-- there is
no find for leaving me outside
in the rain-- I want word
wrinkle-- I want bleeded ink--
I want someone to read without
intention and make a new poem
of whatever words you find on my
skin today when I strip for you
next to my bookshelf-- this is
peeling off each others call numbers 
and finding all the words we've saved beneath.
I won't catalog you but I will
steal your rhyme scheme if you're not
careful-- I told you I'm a language 
thief-- I don't want to own
you but I want to write down
the words that make up your body
in this instant-- never mind the scars--
everyone has been wronged at least
once by a thesaurus--

This is how you love me
three mint chocolate chip scoops tall--
don't forget my brother's birthday

Age is a thing measured
by ice cream flavors and 
our finger smudges
on the glass case at the 
Premise Maid Creamery. 
My brother and I believed
in ice cream cauldrons--
Believed in cones for birthdays--
Imagined white back rooms with wooden
spoons-- They needed 
step ladders for 
the elves who mashed tasty-cakes
with their hands long after
midnight-- shaking the
walls with bells and candied
pecans-- grew rainbow sprinkles
from tiny clay pots like the other
herbs- spearmint and sage
each scoop shimmered with 
crumpled fairy finger nails 
and gold shaved from goose
eggs. The ice cream was guarded by 
the dark eyebrows of nut crackers--
Marched back and forth behind the
counter to protect the clerks
in paper crowns-- The nut crackers were
the only ones who knew the recipes
by heart-- kept instructions 
painted beneath their uniforms--
They took snack breaks
and fed waffle cones to the geese
It was my brother's birthday so 
we held candles above our ice cream cones--
wiped icing from our noses--
what about the flavors? and
will you read them to me?
Everyone who has ever truly loved
me has read me lists of ice cream flavors--
Down every label until something
caught me-- strike me cinnamon bun
and kiss me cherry garcia--
I always found my way back 
to mint chocolate chip--
I used to believe it tasted like
places I'd never been but that I wanted
to go-- like winter windows and comfort 
in the knowledge of Santa Claus--
knowing he was keeping track of everything
with a quill pen and a parchment scroll--
gun-fire spritz cookies and the 
gingerbread house the aunts sent
us to live in until we peeled
it gum-drop bare and royal icing wrinkles--
crunched down walls as a family of
Allosaurus after New Years--
You ask me how old I was and I'll
tell you I was Georgia peach--
I was Peanut butter tin roof sundae--
part of me is still mint 
chocolate chip your little girl-body
stacked three scoops tall--
and I hadn't known my ribs  
would stop me from scooping
December from a ice cream cauldron--
There is no fat in fairy finger nails
I can't measure my age in ice cream anymore--
it's meant for the winter windows 
and tongues that recognize
the consistency of gold goose eggs--
It's still my brother's birthday-- 
Do you believe only fathers 
understand a banana split?--
because mine father sure did--
and I could never learn to
stack myself outside of a waffle cone--
We waited for the
Toll toll toll of the chocolate clock--
cracked by the teeth of another
two-year-old girl learning what
December tastes like-- learning
how to spell her name on the labels
of the freezer case-- plucking
sprinkles from the herb pots--
I would mark my height in three
scopes of mint chocolate chip
ice cream-- my brother would
eat birthday cake from a cone--
and the nut crackers would take 
their snack break to steal ruby cherries from
our father's banana splits--
Yes everyone who has ever loved
me has known my name in ice cream--
what will you call me? Wait.
Let me read you the labels--
I'll start with cherry garcia
and tell me to stop when
I get to you--