The field of skunk cabbage between us
and being heroes.

You told me that you didn't 
see fairies like I saw fairies.
You told me that you shut your eyes and didn't
see anything but black and I told you
that you don't have to close your
eyes to see what you wanted to. 
Do you remember how we played our
own protagonists? Saved ourselves
because there are no savoirs designed
for 6th grade fat girl-bodies and chain-smoking
eleven-year-olds trying to measure
death out of their t-shirts. Do you remember
that we were those children shaken loose from
the orange and red maple leaves
collected in the armpits of the stream--
waded barefoot or wet-socked in the
cold water to the other side of the 
creek where the trees blocked out the balding 
heads of convenience stores and dentists offices.
We crossed the field of skunk cabbage--
Ate leaves like spring rolls or tortillas--
made onion grass voodoo--
And somewhere between the skunk cabbage
and the old limestone temple across the way we 
left our wet socks and our play dough bodies--
shedding childhood like a snake skin--
unpeeled from our freckles like a fruit roll-up.
We didn't have to be anything but patience 
in the thick thighs of fallen birches and 
and sometimes we could be slayers of dark spirits crawling
out of our own wet socks-- out of knee bones
and carved out of the limestone temple walls
where farmers used to burn stone to fertilize
skunk cabbage fields. You told me you didn't see
fairies but that you did see dark spirits--
and I said that we didn't need the creek to see
those-- that we needed the creek to fight those--
fight with twig rapiers, pollen pixie spores,
and hurled dragon's blood we collected in globs from the
gaping syrup sores of the trees--
And you were never just the neighbor boy who I walked
through a creek with-- you were never just early-sundown
night meandered home by each island of street lamp--
you were never just wet June spent making constellations 
out of bug bites-- 
You were the rebuilt bridge of rot-tree limbs
after the hurricane and the flood that
turned off all the lights-- We could be thunder feet
by that creek and you and I and everyone
was something different across a field of 
skunk cabbage-- and I still see fairies and 
I know that you don't need to talk to them like
me. Maybe we had too many dark spirits
waiting for us in our own knees
but I think if I was ever a hero it
might have been waste deep in the creek
across from a field of skunk cabbage-- fat--
thirteen and leaving my child-body skin
on the mashed bones of maple trees
and in the gravestones between each
boisterous head of skunk cabbage. 
        

Filled strawberry hard candies 
and Everyone's grandmother. 

Everyone's grandmother had a jar of candy used
to be an ashtray. Everyone grandmother flattened 
out the wrappers of filled strawberry hard candies
on their lap before they put them in the waste
basket. Everyone's grandmother had a crucifix.
A angel statue. A scrub brush for vegetables
shaped like a bear. A scale with fake grapes.
Everyone's grandmother had teddy bears that
weren't meant to be played with.
My grandmother had a divine order of cats
all named after musicians and it was Mozart 
who ripped my long black skirt and Amadeus
who died so old that he looked like he
was made from piper cleaners and pastrami. 
Wolfgang cut open wrists and went back to the shelter.
Bach tumbled in sun spots and eat only
half a can of wet food. 
Everyone's grandmother
and only my grandmother baked sweet potatoes in
medallions and paged through "Cat Fancy"
like a gossip magazine. 
I do not know if it is my grandmother
or everyone's grandmother who has
an obsession with their grandchild's bodies--
maybe it is because they know they
left pieces of themselves in their 
own daughters-- everyone's grandmother bought
them gingerbread cookies for every holiday.
I ate the eyes out of bunnies at Easter
and licked the white-sugar-doily borders 
of bells for Winter. It might have been
everyone's grandmother or my own grandmother
who glared at me when I licked the crumbs 
of cookies off my lap. 
Well, you're getting 
fat, you're getting fat
you're getting fat
she said 
with stacks of raisin-eyed cookies and jars 
of bleeding strawberry candy 
meant for everyone's grandmother's
coffee tables. 
Everyone's grandmother had a guest
room and bed with cover too thick
to sleep under.
Everyone's grandmother left
your clothing smelling like 
cigarettes and purple candle wax.
Everyone's grandmother saw their
grandchild as beasts-- waist band 
challenging tyrants with lap
of crumbs and back seats of juice
box stains-- eating from buffets with
their pork-roll fingers--
Everyone's grandmother stacked
cookies on their grandchildren's
heads-- told them to walk to the
duck pond and back on the red stoned
walkways. Everyone's grandmother
weighed them on the scale next to the fake
grapes-- everyone grandmother was a 
pipe-cleaner cat and warm porch
with baked sweet potatoes. Everyone's
grandmother hung a crucifix from the chandelier
in their apartment and taught 
their cats to dance to overtures
before the blankets swelled like
children bellies and sweet potatoes.
My grandmother loved me, I assume.
Everyone's grandmother loves them
like filled strawberry candies in ashtrays, 
fat sugar-cookie crumbs, and the 
teddy bears not meant to be played with
tucked under the blankets in the
guest room.

Pizza crust curbs and falling
in love with a reptile.

Let's walk one-way to the end of no street-
Take me-- cold canvas shoes
and reptile feet--
where we warm like coffee mug hands--
where we fold like yellow sucralose packets-- 
where we can duel in check-mates on stale
pizza crust curbs.
Did you think I was a statue or did you
know I was a snake?
We're kissing over chess before the light
turns green and my veins course yellow-car--
We ramble arthritic finger bones--
the loose teeth stones-- of the alleys
where shop windows gawk wide-eyed and 
we watch ourselves ordering lemon tea
and talking about silver tea kettles
and talking about purple cabbage and talking
about where we'll be next Tuesday and
where we would drive a car if we had one
and where or if the street would ever decide to end.
I tell you what I would make of a back seat and a yellow-light.
I tell you where I would keep my wet socks
after the walk--
We watched them dry on the warm coffee mugs
and the radiator keeps talking to itself 
about the ends of streets.
I fell in love with the way you walk 
everywhere like the unraveling of a ball of
yarn-- I fell in love with coffee mug
hands and I tell everyone I love them too
soon because I'm cold blooded and lemon tea flooded
Oh! I live in coffee mug and by crawling
inside your left mitten where I count that
I have three toes and a snake neck. I wish
I wasn't born toad-skinned and four-fingered
and there's pizza crust curb people who will
never see me for anything but oval eyes 
and goose bump gilded shoulders-- I walk on four
legs and I walk on the loose teeth of alley ways.
We play chess and you always win-- I'm waiting for
wet socks and I'm impatient-- and I'm driving
a car to the end of no street to park and look
at evergreens that somehow grew in the city
where we wait for a train to pick us
up like toads or coffee mugs. The street lights
are always yellow. I'm trying to warn you about
loving reptiles-- I'm trying to warn you
about catching colds and toads and girl-bodies
with goose bump shoulders-- I'll give back your
left mitten someday when I'm warm.
And we can drink from either side of the same 
coffee mug. It'll be foggy and 
the street still won't end but
we'll park there by the yellow light--
talk about silver cabbage.
Talk about lemon tea kettles.
Talk about love like unfurled yarn.

Pretzel sticks, lemonade and 
How to ask people if they believe in God.

I learned to dip pretzels in lemonade
during snack time at Sunday school.
We broke God into three pieces
and set a part of him in a hollow
of each space in the pretzel braid.
Pretzel windows to our father, our son
and the dove who coughs on us like feathers
and sets our tongues on fire--
We wiped off salt collected on paper plates
and wooden tables.
We sat in chairs too small for our
knees and sometimes I looked
out the window through the whole class
to make faces at street lamp angels 
and God sitting cross-legged from a branch--
It might work for some people but I'm 
not the kind of person who anyone could 
teach God to. I don't think he's 
really the kind of thing you teach. 
I know God could be just something that I want to 
see in the way tree branches cross
a window frame in strands of scraggle yarn
but I can hear him knitting when I go to fall
asleep and he brushes the back of my
neck with his thumb-- drops a stitch and picks it
back up to remind me that we've all made things
we need to unravel--
Did you know He knits when he's nervous?--
He leaves his unfinished projects in the
in the bushes--
by my window.
A square of a quilt.
The torso of a scarf.
A wool hat for her to wear
when autumn lost all her hair--
And She cried again-- dangle-legged from a wooden bench
next to me. I tried to remind her
that we all lose our hair sometime or
another and that God can knit hats
and mornings and people like us to 
sit next to. He doesn't stop knitting
even if he leaves a lot unfinished outside
my window-- I've had people tell me
I invented a God so that I could
say everything was beautiful even
when it's not-- so that I could think 
everything can be unraveled and re-knit--
It's not just that though-- God
dips pretzel sticks in lemonade like me
and he taps on windows when Sunday school 
teachers talk too much about blood
and not enough about pretzels or doves
or wooden braids--
God is the salt flecks and the paper plate.
He's the boy next to me who doesn't eat
pretzels and watches the clock instead 
of the window.
Carves his name into the long wooden table--
maybe he was sad or bored
or he was mad at God for letting autumn
lose her hair and cry dangle-legged--
I pretend that God lights 
all the street lamps all at once when
I walk home from the library too late
to carry a moon so full 
on my shoulders-- dove breathed feet
as a I go-- 
You've all been a girl of bent snack-time
shoulders and don't tell me you haven't
see all the street lamps light up at once
like lemonade and angels. If you haven't dipped 
pretzels in street lamps-- you should try it.
Sit with her on the bench when she cries
and tell her that she still looks beautiful
even though the hat is scratchy.
Share pretzel sticks with her and tell her
about street lamps and angels and 
all the times you listened to 
God drop a stitch to stroke the bends
in your shoulder where you tried to hold
up the moon.

"Midnight Snacks" and Hail Mary 

1.
Tell your mother you need a "Midnight Snack"
even though both of you know you
aren't hungry--
2.
Hungry: feeling or displaying the need for food--
we were hungry for the crisp edges of night 
scraped from a burnt cookie sheet and
laid to rest on a plate
like shingles toppling from the 
roof in the winter-- I can still hear
my father's footsteps up there
and I know we're all sleeping.
3.
Night is hungry.
4.
Pillows remind you of the flat
faces of pancakes-- cheeks
of your baby brother. He was
unexpected and blueberry.
Brothers make bad Christmas presents
and they don't like sleep.
5.
Did you say your prayers?
6.
Did you think of the saint statues
in the cube on the shelf--
how they always watched you from
just far enough a distance to be
goddesses-- do you believe
in goddesses?
Do you believe in book shelves?
7.
Hungry: having a strong desire or craving--
like how we wanted to feel night 
as easy as skim milk--
Milano cookies and
counter crumbles-- my mother
taught me to soak cookies in skim milk
as a way of waiting
for night to close our eyes-- she withheld 
herself from all of us-- distant
like our shelf goddesses in 
bloody and cookie crumb feet--
8.
I cut myself out like a blondie
square and gnawed on the edges
slow to remain at the counter--
it was the only thing separating us
between the company of saints 
and the cold skim milk behind my eyes--
9.
Our father who art in heaven--
No! I want to say a hail Mary because
Saint Mary stays up with me from the bookshelf
with the snakes burn under her toes.
10.
They cut off Saint Catherine's
head and it only bled milk.
I wonder how they slept that night.
I wonder if they ever drank milk
again.
11.
My father throws shingles past the window 
of my bed room.
12.
My father takes apart the roof
so that the house can flow easily
into the sky
13.
My father prayers to Saint Michael--
the who who burned the Devil
from the edges of a cookie sheet
14.
I never understood Saint Michael
15.
I think Saint Michael lost
because we still can't sleep and we 
still have the devil and Saint Catherine's
neck still bled milk-- it's easy
enough to fight the Devil if you're 
an angle but what about a saint statue
on a book shelf?
16. 
We break the last mint Milano cookie
like Eucharist-- this is my body--
do this in memory of sleep-- 
dip me in milk and drink and forget
about Saint Catherine--
17.
There is no roof
18.
Hungry: causing hunger
19.
A hunger for counter and your mother
and not wanting to say good bye
20.
My father opened the roof
so we didn't have to go into
the night each alone.
21.
My brother was always the first asleep
and sometimes I still forget I have two
22.
Saint Mary is tired of burning 
snakes for me. Saint Catherine was just executed 
again and my mother is asleep in the 
rocking chair.
23.
I can still hear my father's foot steps
on the roof and we don't have a roof.
24.
The Devil is scared of Saint Mary
25.
Hail Mary full of Grace 
Hail Mary who severed the space
between my eyes and the cold
skim milk beneath them--
Hail Mary who scrapes evil from
cookie sheets and puts back on Saint
Catherine's head and reminds my
father that our fathers aren't always
in heaven
Hail Mary who stay up all night--
cutting us out like blondies and 
putting the shingles back on the roof.

Closed oven doors and girls who stay up past midnight.   

One morning I opened the ovens of my
own eyes and crawled inside. 
I had been baking brownies-- toothpick testing 
constellation-connecting the dots on the
crackled-face of the tray. We all have faces
like brownies if we spend too long
waiting for someone to slice us in grids--
I had wanted to be eaten by the handful--
fist carved into myself-- dough sticky 
and underdone-- brown muck of a box
mix from a sleep over we never had--
Did you remember to buy peanut oil?
Peanut oil is what makes the
taste like girls who stay up past midnight.
I didn't have a reason to finish the brownies.
They weren't much of anything
without the peanut oil or blue painted finger nails
bold enough to gouge out each square out
in a glump.
I got on all fours and I pretended
that I was fourteen-- still akin to scamper up the
stair case on my hands and knees--
climbed my bed posts using the vines ladders 
I grew from my ceiling-- I used to wonder about the
walls and how much space there was between the rooms
and how much space there was left
unused-- how much space there was
between bunk beds and how much
I have always felt like we keep getting cut into brownie grids.
So I crawled inside the oven-- shut the door
behind-- don't follow me Hansel 
I didn't enter to become a cake this time--
I crawled into the oven so I could live
in the walls of house that someone
told me was home. The house has the living room
of my house on Noble Street where we cut
down the evergreen trees by front windows 
the bed room is from the place on Main Street with the
green wallpaper and the raccoons in making
themselves homes in the walls, and the kitchen from
my friend's house where she taught me
how to turn on a gas stove to make
grilled cheese and peanut oil brownies 
that can only be eaten with your hands.
I had been right about the walls and the space
that was left unused and the way you can
hear everyone breathe from there. My face was crackled 
from the oven and I felt like a phantom-- covered
my face with my hands and cut my own skin into grids.
I watched the brownie face sputter from the other
side from where I sat safe in the thatched lines 
of the house they said was my home. 
The timer rand like morning through the wall's wide-whale veins
and everyone said it smelled like peanuts and chocolate
and morning but no one opened the oven.
No one opened up the walls-- tooth-pick
tapped holes to see if I was ready to come out--
they wouldn't have found my there anymore--
I would be where the evergreen trees had
gone-- rolled up with the green wall paper and
eaten from the blue finger nails of girls
who still have sleepovers and think call 
themselves girls. 
I crawled out again eventually and somehow
the brownies were done just through enough
to leave the edges chewy. I cut them into 
grids for everyone else who didn't know
anything about how much space we have unused.
They say the brownies taste like girls who stay
up past midnight and knees 
and staircases and closed oven doors. 

Windowsill spider webs in the corners of  
my lungs.

It's always the tiny spiders that 
manage to get mistaken for beetles 
or ants-- I let them build webs in the
windowsill because they're so small and
patient like me-- dangerous and hungry
dressed in their thin-lady-bodies-- mother bodies--
refugees from the bushes-- they aren't the fat spiders--
the teeth spiders-- jump-ankle spiders--
neck bite spiders-- they wish they were born
as ants so they could be squashed under thumbs--
They are yearning for a quiet death
in the nest of their own ankle hair--
pulling loose the strands from 
from cut pony-tails, snipped-tied 
snipped tied and snip-tied to weave
the quilt fibers of a blanket they
knit for their dangerous children--
quiet children-- their construction of 
a matrix to die quiet in-- the cat's cradle of their
beds-- sleep spider-children-- she hangs the hammocks with
her mandibles and knit-needles. I admit I am
scared of the windowsill mothers but
only when I sleep because I can't watch
them. I trust the spiders when I can watch
their legs-- their housewife matrix building--
for children they wish to be born as ants--
they know they have children only to feared--
I tell the spiders to be still and not
escape down my throat as refuges while I sleep.
Stay in the window where I can watch them
and the sun can show off their children--
They try to knit their homes
in the caverns of my lungs-- breathe with me--
bite venom in my lute-belly ribs-- hammer-hammock
in the stacks of sore vertebrae by the legs of the
spider-children-- xylaphone tones from their teeth--
play quiet when I breathe-- 
play careful when I sleep-- I know we all
want a place to be safe and we aren't all
fat spiders-- we need places for the children
to pretend to be ants. We can't all be beetles
but breathing is something I want to do without
so many legs-- was I a spider mother? Was I a
lute or a knit-quilt in the windowsill?
Were you scared of me sitting in the window?
Stop biting me when we breathe-- I'm trying to sleep.
I'm telling you that I understand that you're scared.
I know you're not fat spiders and neither am I.
We can sing like xylophones and lie that
we're beetles or ants even if only
for a night. Sleep next to me-- we're 
refuges in our own skin. Scared of the bushes.
Scared of venom breathing.
Scared of the nests in our lungs--
wrapped tight in the spider blanket--
together as fellow mothers with children
trying to die quiet under thumbs.

Hazelnut mothers and the perfect coffee mug.

One day or another we become aware that
we have always only been our hazelnut mothers.
There was never a change or a calling--
I didn't wake up girl-bodied and braided--
I was born by the side of a warm coffee
pot with two packets of Splenda waiting on my forehead--
We were black coffee blood brewed in the 
sputter of mornings-- her cracked eggs
dashed into a pan for pancakes or ketchup.
I used to drink dark coffee and now
we drink hazelnut. My mother bakes scones
and I don't sit at the counter anymore--
My mother has never been flaky like a croissant
or sugar-toe dipped like a glazed doughnut--
my mother is firm and hair-down-- she puts her hair
up sometimes with an angler fish jaw clip
when she's working. My hair is too short for
clips. I never have seen
my father drink coffee. My father cut off
my hair with angler fish teeth 
and spiked each strand like the prongs of a fork--
I don't know why I never thought
I would find myself hazelnut and coffee mugged--
We don't agree on creamer but we tear Splenda
packets like croissant curls or either side
of an everything bagel with vegetable
cream cream from the the Uptown espresso bar
where the college students left paintings
of naked women in black and white--
I didn't know we all had bodies like that.
I didn't ever think of myself as naked or 
deserving to be naked-- 
We didn't talk about bodies or how
my face looks like my father's graduation photo
and how I got the hazelnut of my mother's hair
and the hazelnut of my mother's coffee cups. 
How I got my father's depression 
and my fathers guitar string fingers and my father's 
broken television remotes under the sofa. 
We were all looking for the right
size coffee mug to be hazelnuts inside of--
the one with the right space left for cream
or for yellow packets cracked open like eggs
in the morning from the counter I no longer
sit on. There is no perfect coffee mug.
It was only a lie we told each other
while we waited for the pot to warm
us into women-- girl-bodied as I woke up
pulled tight and tuned in the guitar string of
my father-- no I never have been a woman
like the ones in black and white.
I have never been a glazed doughnut or a croissant 
curl to be pulled--  
but I do know I have been everything bagels.
I have been eggs. I have been coffee pot.
Cast iron pan. Angler fish-teeth.
And my mother.  
 

I walk on the trail enough 
to know where the dead blue jay waits
and I still look away. 
 
Autumn muck doesn't stop my legs--
the canvas shoed impulse to walk
on water-- we settle for the rain slush
in the banana brown leaves-- melted
muffin skirts pressed thin as if
someone mistook them for rot-roses--
we aren't growing flowers in our forearms
-- it's not that type of rain anymore
-- it's time for boiled pirogues and tree scabs 
all  swaddled up in the gauze-mouthed wind 
-- nothing's hot but the skin we start to stuff
inside wool and wet canvas shoes yearning
for water-- gasping-open-mouthed bullfrogs
who have always eaten blue jays when we weren't
looking-- I forgot that animals eat
each other and don't worry about bones--
Only humans worry about severed blue jays
in the rain-- wonder if they felt death--
if death was something to feel-- if it was 
murky or sharp or wet-socked--
Bull frogs slowly turn into tulip bulbs
cold stone-legged seeds--I am windup bird-- 
molted blue jay without
the egg shell snapping-sky or a throat-- fragment winged 
and sputtering like a top-- flitter jitter
splintered toy that the wind sloshed
too boldly against the maples-- she was only
playing-- I didn't think about how
blue jays could fall-- they have wings
so they don't have to turn into angles when
they die-- birds don't die-- they don't
get eaten or snap or break-- I was
never bird boned because even though
my femurs hollowed out with age I never was
able to make them grow feathers-- we lose
our feathers anyway--
Drop them like pirogues in the center of the
wet gravel trail-- like rot roses for another
human to avert their eyes at death-- snaggle-winged
turning back into a scab to be peeled again--
step over me and don't look back--
Only humans think about road kill and
dead blue jays and what that means about 
how hard it is to die and how even chickadees
die quiet on the ground-- veiled in muffin
skirts and the gauze of the wind.

French fry grave yards 
and learning to move like a colony of ants.

It was never my intention to meet
by the french fry tray-- step over
each others legs in a hunger-jaw
mess where all I could see was
us drones who drop their names
only to the queen-- was it ketchup
or blood where I lost you under
the snapped tombstones of steak fries
baked again in chlorine sun? Say your name
to me but only so I know that all these
six-sets of legs aren't just my own.
No one will sigh and tell you the truth
about how love and ants are all the same--
they tell you love is baked in the corners 
of a box-brownies or hand fed fondue diners--
I like to think maybe we love like monkey bread
you and I-- but-- even then you've left the sugar 
on your fingers-- on the counter-- somewhere
in your hair that dusts it on the pillow at night
-- and there's always the ants--
You can't hide sugar or tombstones from them. 
They will walk for the corners of brownies--
cruxes of backwards knees-- 
You used sugar diamonds and your legs to say 'I love you'
You knew my six black thighes and I knew yours
and we traced the walkways mute feet calliope
over each other-- sugar foot and fierce and 
confused-- bit my neck with your mandibles 
only to find out I was just another asteroid 
of monkey bread we dropped when we were kissing.
We can march thin if you don't think
we should walk two by two-- get pressed under
thumbs and turn into ketchup or blood
to dip each other into-- there is sugar even
in blood and they smell it already before I kiss you
Love is like ants and the French fry spills we
keep meeting by-- marching in graveyards of
sugar and yesterday grease-- wipe
your mute hands on my jeans and we
don't have to kiss-- we don't have
to walk over each other tonight--
just bake brownies with me and we can
each eat a corner-- leave the rest for the 
ants who will find us anyway.