Bone blue prints I write on paper napkins and in the back seat window of my mother's blue station wagon. No one means to fall in love with an architect. I'm sorry you got written into the blue prints but you have to know I'm a poet of fictional floor plans-- I highly intend to live in each of these futures-- grow old wrapped in the cartography veins of another one of my road-maps unfurled on my mother's dashboard-- she drives me to Chingoteague-- holds her breath across bridges-- she wakes me up early from topographic nightmares so I have time to trace our way back home from another psychologist appointment where we read billboards like pro-logs-- I write out the trajectory of my bones with steal beams of simile -- of onomatopoetic assonance-- personify this park bench for us to kiss on someday when I'm too old to say Iloveyou and too old to construct the outlines of beach houses with a blue crayon-- I measure my stories by crafting the shoulders of our walk-in closets-- tape-measuring our porch knuckle bones kneading themselves into cottages and clutched clumps of moss-- these femurs we'll bury with hand-shovels by the lake house of neither of our grandfathers-- lay brick shins behind the eye-lashes of evergreens-- You should know I drink warm mug handles and cup people close to me like coffee mugs-- I start work late in the night/morning each day in a diner that used to hurled bi-planes over the quarry in Kutztown-- I labor over the blue prints for houses no one will live-- I pick them up by their foundations and push them like thumb tacs all over a planet that has only ever sat on a desk for me-- I live with you on the coffee cake coast of Maine-- in a penthouse as tight as a knee bone-- we own an apple orchard and I bake pies-- they cool on the back porch still trembling-- steady as a rib-cage but without as many bars-- I live in a toy shop window and you sew up my wrists even when I burn them again and again-- I write my daughter's name in the fog of a back seat window so she can wipe away and become an architect just like her parent I breath asphalt into the roads that clip belt buckles onto the mountains we will climb To shout new names into the pale face of the clouds-- I finish the day by folding my paper napkins into triangles-- tight as the knee cap of our apartment door in Manhattan-- I tuck them into the glove box of my mother's blue station wagon in case we get lost again on the way to Chingoteague or a psychologist and the the back window forgets her promises. Take out one and we'll follow it like bi-plane tails. I'll hold you like a coffee handle and when your done you can walk away-- wipe your name from the back window-- or hurl it into the laughing face of a cloud.
Uncategorized
11/16
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.
11/15
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.
11/14
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.
11/13
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.
11/12
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.
11/11
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.
11/10
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.
11/9
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.
11/8
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.