Piñata body and hearing the gun shot.

Most people CUT their wrists, so they say--
And when they find me crumpled and clean
they'll be confused and so so proud-- they'll
say that I'm a good girl because I know
how to die quietly and not make a scene.
I know how to die like taxidermy. Like
the deer head mounted above your uncles
pool table in the basement-- her eyes still listening
for what a gun shot should look like--
perks her ears to smell her own blood
and falling like jar of marbles on the kitchen floor--
is she beautiful?
They make me hold out my wrists out as proof
that there's no scores. No lacerations. No wound--
check my palms for self-stigmata
If only they knew what matches are for.
Forearms are for counting your flaws in lines.
The folds of hips make the cuts into gills.
Breathe in blood and milk--
accordion my body music-- but what
they expected least was for me to lock
myself in my room and begin with paper machete--
each strip of newspaper fused ink with my flesh--
my forehead was a headline about Syria and 
how many stuffed animals they lost
to matches and gasoline-- I paste the "want ads"
across my breasts so I can be flat-chested like
a good dyke-- use the comics for my forearms 
because there's nothing more funny than 
cutting yourself open to find candy-- used the
sports section to wrap around my waist 
because that's all the boys read anyway.
I started with tootsie rolls and moved on to
root beer barrels-- one by one down my throat--
closed my eyes like a deer-- swallowed and stuffed
in my gills-- strands of licorice-- jelly-filled strawberries
bricks of crackle-chocolate and taffy and
ruptured bags of skittles like marbles on the kitchen
floor-- no one suspects a girl to be a piñata--
What a great way to die quietly 
and loud at the same time
Hang yourself by tissue paper. Wait for your birthday.
Invite your friends. Bob for apples. Take up sticks
together to tear holes in the seven-sides
of yourself as a star-shaped piñata-- confetti
tasseled and ready to bleed blow-pops and
tootsie rolls. They won't know it was you.
Too busy with the candy-- they've already
checked your wrists anyway. One of them will
see the headlines on the inside of the piñata-
carcass and wonder if Syria has piñatas
or strawberry jelly candies
or if they wanted to buy an accordion from
the "want ads". They'll look up and notice
the deer head-- still waiting to see the 
sound of gun shot. They'll wonder why
the candy tastes so much like milk and marbles
on a kitchen floor.

We all wanted to be pumpkins
until we watched how they make them smile. 

I painted my hips in the reptilian lips
of a gourd-- built myself a dried steam 
and let all my skin go bumpy and thick-warted--
I didn't care if you wanted me goose-necked
or butternut-- I'll take my own oranges
as a sign that I was meant for porches--
My cheek bones are caramel and apple-stem
and my heels taste like everyone's mother's soup.
I was meant for candles and windowsills
-- I was never meant to be one shape-- 
striped my legs green and walked
across the corn field behind my house--the
field with the dog tooth tomb stones and
the hermit tree watching her own legs decay--
I needed a place pluck myself
from the dry vine-- a nest to die and rot. 
Don't we all want a place 
to pull out each strand of our hair?
Did your scalp grown corn husks or
rows of Indian corn? Did you
weave the husks into dolls or did you drop
each strand one by one into a candle
to watch the flames eat so hungry.
We all had wanted to be
pumpkins at one time or another-- wanted someone 
to carve us teeth-- someone to remove our
centers-- our marrows-- thrust their hands
into the coils of our intestines and 
teach us how to be beautiful-- teach us
how to smile so big that fire would
pour from where our stomachs used to be--
pumpkin spice and saved to rot in pie
crusts instead of corn fields-- just to be
sliced again-- do they every run out of
ways to cut the edges off our curves--?
round us out and burn our bellies--?
Did you really want to be a pumpkin or
did you just want to be held like one?
You don't see them cut the tops off gourds-- 
there's not enough space left to take a pairing knife to 
our chests and make a rib cage into a lantern--
they leave us to the corn husks when we're done
and we tell everyone who rots like Indian corn
that we aren't pilgrims-- we aren't pumpkins--
we are reptile ridges and dog-tooth trenches--
spine like a spattering callous-face tombstones
who forgot their own names in the field behind 
my house. I won't let you carve me teeth--
I won't let you spit ember with my tongue--
my eyes are in all directions-- I don't
see out of triangles I listen from the porch where
I wait-- wait for frost to pare 
each coating of skin my scars built--
smell the pumpkin pie from the kitchen.
lose green to November and sprawl out for December
to turn my seeds to tombstones in the corn field.

I heard the sky orange and saw the feral cats whisper
beneath the kitchen.

We used to be so mean to the cats that 
slept in the crawl space between the red-speckled floor 
of the kitchen and the masoleum-slab basement where rats
spread poison on saltine crackers to share--
they told each other stories of winter passing 
and laid down in front of the radiator before
they slept with their poison bellies and
heavy electric chord tails--
We waved our arms and watched
the cats scatter and find the under bellies
of mushrooms to creep under-- watched their
eyes turn into quarters-- glint with death
and five fingers tight holding them down--
their backs raptured like garden shovels--
We thought it was a treat to see that something
could be more afraid of the oranging sky than us-- 
I listened for the blue, for the indigo of
August and we all went inside when it started
to sound orange-- buzz orange in our ears--
chased the cats to the corners of the yard
until everything was too loud outside to think--
If it was loud for us I can only imagine
how loud it must have been for them with their
potato chip ears. I know they hate the sound
of orange--
I pressed my hands to the windows of the house--
beat the glass with fists-- watched their paws
run into marrow of the house-- we all stomped on the 
red-smelling floor of the kitchen 
to shake the crawl space. We sat at the kitchen table
and saw them whispering under our feet--
We tried to play red poker and black checkers
while the orange came to pass but everything
looked so loud from there and the cats were
playing prayers-- they found the rats still
sleeping and told them it was better to sleep
through the orange then have to listen.
And I'm sorry I thought myself better than
a feral cat-- 
I hope I'm born again underneath
my kitchen as a feral cat-- I hope short
people with waving hands shoo me away
in blaring orange and the chess
set replaced with garden shovels to dig deeper 
deeper and deeper and deeper until 
we go deep enough that everything only feels
Indigo. I hope the feral cats like the kitchen.
I hope they eat saltines and share with
the rats in their electric chord tails--
sparking blue and indigo--
Keep the poison in the cabinet sealed
away to protect crawl space colonies--
crawled on our knees to fit in the crawl space--
prayed to the rats for forgiveness
and shared saltines before sleep.

SIT LIKE A LADY for Mickey Mouse.

We all grew up hungry.
Fruit-snack fingered. Granola bar mashing.
Goldfish chomping. Pie-crust peeling--
hungry creatures-- who took three
years to learn how to open
kitchen cabinets-- who believed 
that pockets could be a suitable place
to store doughnut holes. Taste-graced Gods  
who knew nothing about how girls order
salads and how girls eat slowly and
how girl don't wipe their hands on
their thighs-- spread wide in a plaid skirt--
SIT LIKE A LADY.
I folded pizza slices like airplanes and
I didn't know I was supposed to be
a girl so I used to brag that I could
eat THREE whole pieces of pizza in one sitting. 
My friend Patrick, curly hair and
cinnamon-bun-cheeked 
said he could eat the WHOLE PIZZA-- but I didn't 
believe him. Boys always say they can eat more--
We all started to learn about
hunger on our knees-- fumbled in the dark
for cabinet handles-- read the back of boxed mixes--
baked cookies without baking soda
just to scrape them off the tray
with a soup spoon. Milk swim with the crumbs--
Stirred macaroni like an iron chef and 
added spices that sounded gourmet like curry
and cumin and coriander.  
Learned about microwaves and the faces 
that marshmallows made inside them.
Learned grilled cheese and tomato soup.
Learned brownie batter and sour dough buns 
and chocolate chip sandwiches.
Learned licking muffin skirts and the bottoms
of bowls of butternut squash soup.
Unlearning food comes faster than the 
dark-kitchen fumbling years of warm 
and knees and blankets and snack-bags--
They only needed to start telling me I was
a girl SIT LIKE A LADY.
FATTY. girl-with-ripped-jean-thighs
TUBBY. girl-with-bare-feet-and-walnut-ankles
FAT. girl-with-cinnamon-raisin-bagels-cream
cream-cheeks-wraps-her-hair-in-Caesar-dressing--
-still-believed-in-garlic-bread-and-pecan-swirls.
Mickey Mouse watched me try to eat a black and
white striped finger cake across the buffet table
in Disney World-- it was full of raspberry jelly
I remember knowing what a calorie was.
I remember how heavy the cake felt and how big his eyes 
were and I remember hating my tongue.
I leanred how to half finish pasta with artichoke hearts
underneath robot dinosaurs. Learned to scoop cups
of cheerios and cut them in half. Learned donuts cut in half.
Apples cut in half. Grilled cheese cut in half
Mickey Mouse was always watching to pick up the 
uneaten pieces I started leaving in the corners 
of plates. Mickey served Gelato.
He roasted sugar-almonds so that every street
smelled like hungry-- He performed at the Hibachi grill
and threw fire in my face to try to roast
my skin like PIZZA cheese. Mickey Mouse could eat
a WHOLE PIZZA-- box and all and wipe raspberry jelly
from his chin and mash granola bars in his gloved 
hands. He laughed because I was a girl-body
and I forgot to cross my legs SIT LIKE A LADY
DON'T lick muffin skirts-- they'll know you
want to kiss girls and cinnamon raisin bagels
SIT LIKE A LADY and unlearn hunger. 
Learn the language of labels-- count the
heads goldfish while Mickey Mouse watches
you unlearn how to eat pizza. 

Hanging over myself like a front door wreath
trying to remember where I left my body.

When I attempt sleep I crouch  
creased beneath my blanket-- 
pirogue boiled and sealed-- glued butter
lips that slip from dough-skin--I wade through
chive-cream and mashed potatoes to find where
I last left my body-- avocado cheeked--
and plum kneed as I come.
Where did I leave the body?
Where did I leave the skin?
Who last put salt and pepper
on my nose and called me dumpling?
Roll over like a cinnamon bun between it's
sisters. Roll over like pumpkins-- lopsided
and drowsy. Roll over like egg rolls 
hugging themselves in sunflower oil--
I blink into the street lamps. Creep from the
sauerkraut follicles strewn out of the edges of
the window-- poured from loose door frames.
My covers are a welcome mat
with HOME written in black letters-- wipe
your canvas shoe grooves here and I'll collect
the leaf skeletons to make them 
into weather-veins-- follow the wind 
up stream where the water turns into
oatmeal all the way up to your knees--
where I left the body, where I left the body
I told them to wait there while I found
sleep coiled and hung on the front door as a wreath.
A crown of holly berries and untimely Christmas
in October when no one even remember snow or
mashed potatoes--
I watched myself walk back inside--
wipe my feet on the welcome mat-- break
leaf skeletons-- I count the time I have
left to sleep on my ribs. As each hour passes
I break off a rib and slide it under
the loose door frame to pick back up
in the morning-- I'll tape each back into place with
butter and cream and boil myself
again while trying to remember where I last
saw my body and if I left the keys
to my rib cage under the welcome mat
or there was ever a key at all-- I'll 
make a new one from the skeletons of
the leaves-- un-hinge myself from the 
grip of the mouths of pirogue pillow creases.
I dream like I'm awake and I lay awake
like I dream. I have a tendency to walk
without my body-- move slow in a river
of oatmeal-- pass raisins and holly berries 
on my way back to the front porch again
where the light spread itself thin in
strands of sauerkraut--
Flip over the welcome mat and see all the
ants that were hiding there-- cover the word
HOME with your canvas shoes and don't wake
up the body-- let it sleep-- let it boil
until we hover over ourselves again--
walk out the front door-- wipe our feet on the way
out-- leave our bodies where we can remember them. 

The Back Door.

We'll leave the back door swung open when
we leave. Drop acorns from our
skirt pockets like buoys in the grass-- landed
between the fireflies floating on their backs
each blowing out the candles 
in their bellies. We bring backpacks
and blankets and a thick metal flashlight
to we pretend we finally stole the moon. 
We walk out up the street like it had a place to 
take us. Like we could end up
anywhere but under a street lamp in Paris
reading each other's poetry to the Seine
only to throw the verse word by word
into the water until all that was left
was our ears. My wives know poetry.
I would ask if any of us knew enough
French to find Picasso or a crème brûlée
ponds to rest our espresso spoons in--
unbuckle our pants and unhindge kissing mouths
of bra-wires in the cream-- we are
smooth dusk that doesn't take our pens.
Together ice each square of the sidewalk
like a gingerbread house-- wipe sugar from
our shoes as we go-- use coffee mugs to 
scoop away the eaten trying to eat
the alleys from out between buildings--
we built this street suspended in the cat's cradle
of phone wires we use to make love--
Not bra-wire love, not Picasso poet love,
We hold up love like picking back up poem words
thrown into the Seine-- spooning feed
each other crème brûlée-- 
cat calling from the sidewalk:
 fat and loud
and short and bird-boned and slut
and whore and prude 
and vixen and harlot and
sex-puppet and floozy and quiet 
and shy and anorexic and emotional
and dyke and faggot 
and everything Picasso found 
to describe a woman body-- 
heard all the way from the the back door
we left wide open.
Our house knows knows our poems--
it waits with
lazy lamp eyes-- awake to make sure we come home.
It knows our wrists and forearms. It knows 
the walls we sink into like shadows 
of women-bodies behind wallpaper.
When I was eleven I was a member 
of Sargent Pepper's Lonely Heart's club band. 
My father cut my hair and taught me
how to use hair gel.
I wore two different colored shoes. 
I wasn't cold in the winter.
I still cut my hair short like Picasso.
I use hair gel. But when boys call me
a dyke I laugh only because they think
it's an insult.
We are the happy sluts.
We are the people who stole the moon--
our back door isn't left open for
you to enter but so that you know
where you never belong--
They should have known I'd have wives.
I'm cold in the winter.
We have blankets. I'd rather
the back door left open. 

What I want to tell her about cereal 
and how we all want to die from a windowsill.

I want to tell her that living on 
windowsills is something she'll never
have to do again-- to say that the shingles
she sits on are only flakes of cinnamon
toast crunch-- to say that we were only 
dreaming when we woke up on the roof of
my house in Kutztown where times
moves in the breath of wind across corn
and street lamps waking up one by one.
It was night time and we both wanted
to die. Me and her and the leaves
in the gutters.
We wanted to fall with the potted willow tree.
Cry our pollen and break our cinnamon
limbs in half--
The cereal star sky was nothing more
than a sugar bowl over turned on
our heads-- shake the crystals 
from your hair and pretend snow
tastes like Splenda-- our split cereal skulls
that wouldn't let us sleep-- 
we were worried about falling
in love with windowsills at 3a.m.--
Again again-- I say again girl-body--
and cereal bones-- you measuring cup muse--
We were worried about dying on our
own terms-- worried about what 
cereal they would eat before our funerals-- 
Worried about the potted willow tree that fell
out the window before her--
I want to tell her that skin
burns like the water it's made of.
I want to tell her that she's thick
and smells wet root tops and spilled
potting soil. I want to tell her that
she won't have to cast out a fishing line
from anymore bedrooms-- plopped into the
sweet milk street lamps to lure
away a passing car
-- fishing for white eels--
delving into the corn-wave--
soybean field sea
for a phone call--
I want to tell her that people
would eat waffles with strawberries
before our funeral 
and talk about the willow tree 
in the driveway and wonder if he
loved us and if HE loved us and
if boys put girls on windowsills
to pose them like white eels or
if girl bodies put girl bodies on windowsills 
and if everyone has felt like
they wanted to die when they severed
themselves open on their backs--
dissection table for the moon light--
cereal spoons dipped into another
bowl of potted willow tree.
I want to tell her that we laid there together--
that loneliness is something you can
share with yourself and page of poetry.
I want to tell her every freckle
on her face was only cinnamon.
I want to tell her she might sit on more
windowsills but that she never has to land
in the driveway like the willow tree.
I want to tell her that wanting to die
is something cereal can always fix
and that we can lay open to the sky
and wake up next to each in the morning--
nail the fallen shingles back on the roof.
Pick up the pieces of the willow tree pot
from the driveway.

Candy corn offerings for the rats 
and other signs I was born a witch.

Turn out the lights like a bell
over a candle-- closed eyes--criss-cross-- 
cardboard box yourself into 
the witch's den--legs on attic carpet.
I'll telephone our dead grandmothers 
and ask them how they found their paths 
to our tea lights--
I was a creature of October anticipation
and believing in ghosts more
than wind-- a child summon from
a spiral of dry oak leaves--  
Look into the mirror and tell me
that you see yourself before you 
fade into the face of another spirit
in the dark of a bathroom-- who doesn't 
want to be scared of candles or
demons? Keep holy water by the bed.
Train your lips to speak the
OUR FATHER when you breath-- mouth full
of dry spider webs-- chewing on 
murky-- rain-haze dreams
-- No holy water could banish what 
we think about before we fall asleep
-- I count my ribs like
spider webs and think about stop lights
and air bags and the smell of hospital 
hallways. I wiped mushy leaves off
my forehead, born into the shivering
acorn heart of late September--
my family believed in Halloween--in 
the statues of rubber rats we worshiped--
offered up our candy corn 
penances for their feasting at midnight--
MIDNIGHT the witching hour when
rats thrash their pink tails--roll 
their white eyes in the collective
bone-breathing of a house dead and alive;
Collecting eye balls in the corners so that
we're always watched-- always at least
gossiped about by the jack-o-lanterns--
Swing slowly the silhouette of the man
who never hung himself in our stairwell--
Foot steps of my grandfather who ate
peanuts and threw the shells on the porch
to crunch like bones or maple leaves--
Raspy-whispering under the kitchen sink
-- spine-trickled down to the 
cracked basement floor--
My brother and I wrap ourselves
in black cloaks-- lay on attic floor--
my brother is scared.
We're vampires and we don;t know it yet.
He asks "Are there ghosts?" and
tells me "Don't leave me alone."
I laugh and tell him that our house
is a ghost but that I would always haunt him
if he wanted me to.
We made candy corn fangs with them 
still in our mouths--
fell asleep before our grandmothers 
could answer us. They each ate a handful
of candy corn before the rats came
to claim their offering.
Our tea lights burned all night--
and still swung the ghosts of 
our own changed faces we'd tried
to carve out of the bathroom mirror. 
"Don't leave me alone," I repeated.
"Don't leave me alone." 

Carving out your body from Birthday cards.

We all cut our hair and scattered
it like a decade's worth of birthday cards.
We had felt too guilty to throw them away--
flapping to escape like lost geese behind
the garage where the pumpkins broke
and cried their seeds-- bleeding on the damp
oak leaves and smell of roasting autumn 
in the rain-- how old are you now
how old are you now that no one
sends you birthday cards? They mistake
you for your father in your short hair
and ink-stained wrists-- 
You've written too many get-well cards
to yourself-- post marked two years
until maybe we can piece together
a creature from decades of birthdays
that have found their way sleeping
in the garage-- they lay in pumpkin guts--
There's people who only know us 
by our birthdays-- card signatures
cousins and glitter balloons-- twenty dollar
bills that say 
I should love you or 
someone says I should love you
I don't want to be a birthday card 
mixed in with my cut strands of hair.
I decided that there was
only one person who could own this body--
Only one hand to roast pumpkin seeds
--carve out a girl-body with me--
I want to be a pumpkin.
Let's keep everything. My innards.
The seeds for salt and nutmeg.
The stem to remind me that I had brown
hair and that I had birthdays
that were worthy of dancing
dinosaurs on cards from aunts
I've met maybe twice. They don't
know how queer I am and how short
my hair is but they know
they're supposed to love me
and isn't that enough for anyone?
I want you to think you should love me
because I have love you for
all the hair you have cut in these
last years and how many piles
of oak leaves you've imagined jumping
into to hide your own ink stains.
I'll send you a get well card today
so you don't have to. We can eat pumpkin
seeds on the porch. The pumpkin gore pie is
in the oven and we don't have
to eat it if you just want to decorate
it with candles and frosting--
we can make it a birthday card 
or just an omen-- we can be fourteen
and cutting our hair in front of 
a sink if you want? You could touch my
neck with oak fingers?
I want you to know you have been
a gift every time the calendar turned for
you like the carving of geese wings 
in the rain or broken pumpkin stems screaming
to be noticed from behind the garage--
I noticed you before your birthday
and I wrote you a card every time 
you wanted to smile. Roast pumpkin seeds
with me over burnt birthday cards 
while in cut hair
and pumpkins
we carve out our bodies. 


 

Sun-boiled Macintosh girl.

I've left my skin out under the trees--
scavenged by the bees who know that
they all will die in October. They 
trick-or-treat for the rot-flesh--
open wounds where I wanted to 
grow myself into a pie--
caramel glaze down my forehead--
wet-leaf and twig-knuckled bed to rest  
these limbs that peel like clementine 
skin. There was always too many of
us to be eaten. Too many stems--
too many skinny legs trying to be
pretzels-- trying to be the sticks
of caramel apples-- drip-dropping in 
the grass-- too many bright red 
cheeks on greeny Macintosh faces-- 
My mother was a Mutzu and I was a Macintosh
and we snapped and Winesap-ed
until we felt golden and delicious.
We wore sweaters and took them off 
in the sun. We were still the kind of
cold that only October knows for
boiling bodies-- melting-- shifting sauce-- 
into the frost morning. Where did all the apples
go? There were too many for pies and never
enough for all the caramel in the silver pot--
dumped into the yard so that the bees
could at least die fat and tired
and slow. Last supper of the hornet--
And the bees knit sweats
and danced over apples with me and I aspired
to be something other than a pie--
Pink lady thigh and Jonnagold-hipped is where
autumn nudged me-- pulled the corn
husks up to my ankles-- my socks--
leaf crumple knees-- told me that
it's HARVEST-HARVEST for our bodies-- our
skin-- sun broil-- char-- freckle fired--
because there's always too many apples
and too much of my Macintosh boiled skin.
Did I remember to say goodbye to all the
bees-- mouths full of sugar and waiting
for sleep-- angry in the sun 
over our bodies that will never 
become pies-- cross-hatched blanketed 
cinnamon crusted shoulders--
rest with me and don't forget the 
Macintosh girl-body that melted
into the leaves-- never November
was there an apple left. Did you dance
like a bee or gala-braeburned and seeded 
into the frost lick soil.
We can sleep here under the ghost hum
of the bees-- make peace and cool
until we can open our eyes as seeds. 
Macintosh mother-- Jonnagold hips 
I sweet sing-- I cinnamon shoulder
I grow in October-- I sting--