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.

Enough money from marigolds
to buy everything but the morning--

We could sell these things and make enough
money-- we  wouldn't have to work for anyone

He said in his wrinkled grey shirt to 
his partner in furrow jeans. They were matching 
"Earl's Landscaping" t-shirts-- crows-footed
at the seams of their bodies-- 
They are the kind of people who can 
hear their weed-wackers kicking endlessly at
the asthmatic arched backs of dry grass
even when they lay next to women at night--
At night when their windows breathe
When like flower necks or toad-stool cheeks--
they learn how to hold other people
from their intimate experiences with plants.
Lawn mowers haunt their hallways for how they
became Gods-- crafting the earth
with a pairing knife and telling it to dance.
The men sit on the curb like hollow flower pots.
Big-bellied and lonesome, they wait for mums or winter. 
He would sell the marigolds-- shake loose their 
roots and dust their fire skulls for spare change--
The men don't have children but they know they'll 
arrive someday like dandy lions or prickly-weeds--
to be yanked lose by their fathers leathered fingers. 
The smell of mulch under nails is an omen
to all the women who have ever tried to love a God
-- They think about girlfriends 
and finger nails and dirt and the firey heads of
marigolds-- and they think
about how small God must be to shape the
Earth like them-- peel themselves loose
every morning at the protest of the sun-- lite
cigarettes with the heads of marigolds-- he says
Enough money enough money enough money
in tuna salad teeth mixed with pieces of mulch--
he tells the shadows of sleeping women he will have
Enough money for dandy lions if they could
just sell flowers-- take their
roots from the oatmealy soil bed and
run away with the orphans-- a truck full of a 
kidnapped chrysanthemums and broken-necked
lavender. The flowers try to breath outside the the dirt--
roots naked and snaggly-- intestines or 
garden hoses or linguine. Enough money for paper plates
and name-brand rice crispies and children 
that make you forget about the dandy lions--
Enough money to trace blood into the shadows
of women at night and bake them wedding cakes
from tiers of moss or peat on the sidewalk--
plant them gardens instead of children-- light
candles with the marigolds to banish the smell of
mulch from every hallway-- weed
the dandy lions-- Enough money for filling
in flower pots on the curb with something other
than fire--Enough money
to let God teach the windowsill how to dance like
a candle--Enough money to plant seeds in backs 
of their truck like diamonds-- grow rings
for the blood-shadows of women in their beds--
purpose when it's winter and there's nothing to distract
anyone-- fall in love with something other than a
notion of prostituting the flowers to quit being Gods 
for one morning-- Enough money to buy the morning
and auction it off to the kicking legs of someone
else's weed wackers and pairing knives--
bleed the earth like the wrinkles of a t-shirt--

We could sell these things and make enough
money-- we  wouldn't have to work for anyone

Enough money to work for no one but the necks of
flowers-- exorcise the lawn mowers from the hallways
so the shadows of women can rest easy in the
oatmealy soil of their beds at night-- grow
marigolds quiet like church candles-- blow
them out with the morning-- Enough money 
to sleep through the sun like men 
instead of mulch fingered Gods
haunted by marigolds and dirt and
their own fingernails. 

Ice cream dates with a praying mantis.

I found you like a white oak finds herself 
growing green arms again in the spring--
mistakes them from parasites and scrambles
to tear off the young appendages she sees in
the mirror-- she had forgotten that she 
would be green again because winter had been
long enough to traces thick hula hoops around
her trunk-- counting the years in rotations
of her hips and how far the snow
slide it's fingers wild in her jeans.
I fell in love with a praying 
mantis in September. I think it wasn't
his devotion but his patience. It's hard
to find people with patience anymore 
and he never asked questions and he 
didn't suggest diners so I had to choose where
we went out to eat. He was content on the
wall ofo a coffee shop or
seated on my shoulder-- making fish-tail
braids of my short hair-- I didn't tell people about
him but I didn't need too. I didn't think
that they would understand and they might
just say it was because I was the type
to shove loud boys in my throat to
fill in all the spaces I have no fat left
for-- He climbed the
same white oak outside my house until I came
home. Never kissed any leaves but my shoulders
To kiss him was like biting the top of a strawberry
dipped in brown sugar-- he baked oatmeal cookies
with me when when first close the windows at night--
when the white oak forget she had ever worn 
green arms from her hips in April--
He didn't crack the egg or lick the spoon--
but played with my hair with patient fingers--
slide pauses down my throat so hear
that all I ever wanted to do was have
someone to listen to me sing in the kitchen
baking oatmeal cookies with my cracked-egg voice
that still hesitates to sound too loud
for fear that it might pour into muffin tins.
He doesn't to if I start to trace my hips in sharpie
or blood-- another circle. I knew him green.
I knew him leaf-lanky and shuttering even
when the breeze stopped. I knew
that if I tried to sleep I wouldn't feel him
heavy on my--telling me to sing from my
hips like other boys always have wanted--
Telling me fat girls can't throw-up planets--
they only vomit their oatmeal cookies to count
less rings on their hips in the mirror each spring--
I know he would wait for me to wake up.
He tells me to wear a jacket even if it would
be warm by the time the sun got to a suitable
place on the bruise shoulders of the white oaks.
And when his skin was kettle brown he would go with me
to the ice cream parlor for dinner.
I could play checkers with myself.
He wouldn't tell me what sundaes were best suited to 
my hips-- my preying mantis didn't say much
but he would tell me to eat
like everything was a strawberry dipped in
brown sugar and like we wouldn't be tracing
our hips in sharpie and blood that night.
He told me what I already knew about kettle-brown
skin and November. He told me death preying mantis
grew small and green each spring but they 
don't trace their hips and they don't remember
who they kissed in the fall when everything
was hazy and broken and cracked egg shell on the 
sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor 
when he told me that he was dying and that 
he never said much because he wouldn't have been
able to say as much as a white oak in the course
of a year anyway-- he played with my hair
and told me that if I missed him I should
eat strawberries out of season and stop 
tracing lines on my hips and when fingers
went down my jeans that I was always green-necked
in the spring-- no boy could touch me
wild enough to stop me from throwing up
planets-- hunched like a comma in over a toilet--
no I wasn't fat I was up to my neck in snow.
He told me that I didn't need to pray.
He told me that he had prayed enough 
for the both of us. I asked if we would
play checkers again-- and he pointed out
that I could play the game well
enough by myself anyway-- that I had
baked cookies to the cracked eggs in my own
throat-- that I never needed to stuff my
throat with loud boys-- that my 
voice was strawberries, brown sugar, 
and muffin tins. Come November-- 
So I buried my preying mantis-- kettle 
brown skeleton in a white oak tree-- and boys
still mistake him for twigs
because they're too busy counting
the red-rings round my hips
like hula hoops and Spring. 

 

Toad deities, waiting like cheesecake and midnight.

Whoever worships a God of doves and candles has never 
held a toad and felt it's belly-drum- pocket watch
tell you that it's midnight-- that
no one was ever late to anything. They blink
like the careful closing of a change purse--
wink quarters on the ground for their followers 
and give blessings of rain and rotted cardboard 
smell in the morning when you wake up 
in a film of rain-- scratch your toad skin
and remember when you had wanted to breathe
water like a bullfrog-- Don't trust bullfrogs-- 
They have learned to eat birds-- crush flight
like spilled quarters or the snapped wax neck
of a candle--  I can't tell you when I 
was first converted to believing in Toads--
but it might have been when we lived on Main Street
In the house by the park that felt like a slice
of cheese cake-- wax-paper wedged between the other 
townhouses-- all slouchy roofed from the raspberry sauce 
and the squirrel nests. My father and I sat on the porch.
There was a moth tangled lamp and a red sand bucket of Toads. 
My father taught me how to hold God-- gentle
and patient like the filling of warm water balloons--
counting down the minutes left until midnight 
on their stomachs-- hum to you to hurry up and slow
down before they burst into thunder and morning
-- we forget how fragile God is 
and how much like slice of cheese cake he waits for us.
From the porch we fed them mealworms for sacrifice
or penance for use of the red sand bucket.
I peeled loose jeans that night by the window 
and wondered if the Toads were still there below
the thicket of moths or if they had moved on--
made burial in the lawn like tulip bulbs or
jars of quarters-- more quiet than doves or
candles and muttering quietly beneath the soil
their benedictions for our days to come--
it is the Toads who have always prayed for us.
And the next rain they come back like a Sunday--
far and round and somehow always walking home
-- resurrect themselves with worm-full mouths
and tightly wound abdomens from which we
can count out the minutes left 
till midnight when we forget about the squirrel 
nests and pray to the Gods of rotted cardboard 
and cheesecake ticking in the rain. 

Our attic, plastic dinosaurs and 
other times I felt myself becoming too giant.

My brother and I were attic children--
stored ourselves in boxes-- mildew coffins
with our candy corn bones-- stacked
under slant roofs and blanket forts-- 
we reigned there-- between the jarred ashes of 
my grandfather
and his brother's stack 
of unclaimed purple hearts on a shelf--
a never-unfolded American flag.
an antique telephone-- crammed with missed
calls from the living room ghosts
who steal the rooks from chess sets--
a pocket watch still patiently at 8:32
a jar of rust-tinged paper clips--
Our attic was shoe box.
Our plastic dinosaurs learned to
eat gold fish and fruit leather 
from the hands these giants.
They bite fingers and thumb wrestle in the brush
--the flushed green of the carpet forest
floor between canted ruins of a Lego 
Parthenon-- and ship wrecked death star
beside meandering spilled marbles--
I am five-foot short and I have always
felt like a giant-- skin sown in the
earth from blood spit from clouds by Gods--
Did they tell you how giants hunch
like fortune cookies?-- We cracked
each other open by black windows-- 
plucked T-Rex up by the belly and 
gave him a straw hat and overalls--
no we don't play with dolls we teach 
dinosaurs that giants love is quiet and 
patient like an air conditioner or
a pizza bagel-- or a night light shaped like Mary--
Our attic had a drum set that we used to 
march when we were bold enough to stand and 
make all the dinosaurs scared of our feet--
shake the spine of the house like a Jacob's ladder
so that our parents looked up to wonder
how large their children could grow-- 
if we would still fit in the house--
if we would break through the rough 
and fall hard to the cement basement slab--
rain down the dinosaurs in their 
bonnets and bows and straw hats--
and pirouette of pocket watches-- 
smashed telephone still ringing with ghost
prank calls--
and we got too big to climb the stairs--
tipped our grandfather's ashes all the way down
to the basement where our turtle used to live--
We don't feed the dinosaurs anymore 
but we do answer phone calls from the 
living room ghosts--
we still feel like giants-- feel like shoe boxes
and attics-- Purple-hearted-- and candy corn
hip-boned-- broken fall on the basement floor--
We pick ourselves up in jars of paperclips--
stack back on a shelf 
by the black windows.

 

Breaking open chestnuts with flip-flop feet 
And living in corn mazes alone.

What kind of a boy opens up chestnuts with his
feet-- hedgehog hairballs hurled from the throat
of trees-- lawn landmines to make martyrs 
of our soles-- follow my bloody foot
prints back to my room and I'll teach you
that loving starts in the bottoms of your
feet and follows to your knees-- bend for
me and I'll kiss you with briers in 
my hair-- would you 
bend tree arms for me-- break green necks
and bite the criss-crosses of sampling ribs? 
How many chestnuts would
you break with your flip flop feet to prove
your devotion to a goddex of bloody feet
and corn mazes? They have called me a Minotaur--
and feed me into the labyrinth-- only,
I was lost there too-- no one teaches
the Minotaur where to walk-- they tell
her she is mystic enough to eat men-- they
left me with only embracing corn walls 
and chestnuts in the path for food--
interrupted me in blood from the balls of my feet--
Would you break chestnuts in half? Could you feed me 
right like a man who scared of Minotaurs-- Scare of how
I could decide to devour him there in the 
corn maze-- with my flash light or with my 
mouth that eats chestnut thorns and pulls 
loose the corn husks like hair from the scalp
of a doll-- People weren't designed to
eat chestnuts-- God gave us pink lips
and peach skin. Skin that rots pacing in the corn maze
while skunk mouths keep vigil for our hips to
grow bruised and brown and oozing like 
a flashlight or a cut-heel.
They're searching for the pits-- they
will grow trees to get out of the maze- clamorous
climb past chestnuts to their escape from the walls
into a balmy September night that
only tastes slightly like open-chestnut 
autumn-- if you can kiss me like a Minotaur 
I could believe you-- I have enough chestnuts
what I need is someone to get lost
in a corn maze with-- get lost I said
and notice I never mentioned our exit--
the Minotaur doesn't leave the maze--
that's for the skunks and the boys who
measure love with number of chestnut
shells they've broke for you.  

Rosemary mint fingernails and swept pieces of my
brown hair turning black and blue.

I thought hair curlers were firecrackers,
time capsules, controls to a space cruiser still
waiting for me to land it on Venus-- I crammed my 
jean-pockets with teal curlers. 
I was seated in the pleather
black chair that treated me like a young
duke at Kuts and Karats hair salon where
I learned about beauty through the
way another woman's hands cut me like a shelf
doll-- hair snipped to save in sacks--
salvaged pieces of the closest star--
I don't know if my mother still has it but
one time when I was still firecracker curious I
looked through my parents sock drawers and I found a bag
of my hair from when I was a baby-- Those scraggle clippings 
like legs of a bruised spearmint bush-- foreign fickle strands 
reminded me how I was once like a hunk of wool drawn
forth by the spinning wheel--spindle yanked
from the gaping mouth of God's 
desk lamp-- clicked off the bulb to smell
my hair fresh and sturdy in a mirror--
mint musty with rosemary-- it smelled like
dukes and roses and clean. The same woman 
asked me how old I was while I pretended
to read magazines about how many mint leaves most
ladies should eat and how many times you 
can cut off your hair before you become
a slut or a lesbian-- I was a duke
and I hadn't know what sluts and lesbians were 
yet-- I knew time capsules and firecrackers
and the control station intended for Venus--
I didn't like that she had to wash my hair
before she cut it-- neck crinkled--crooked 
laid back on the hem of a sink drenched
in rosemary mint fingers nails that dug
trenches in my scalp-- set them ready for planting
and fields and wheat whiplash from the 
firecrackers or the pull of the spinning wheel
still yawning out of the moon in eternity--
when I said I wanted to dip my hair 
different-- draw myself from
the soft neck of a river or the swelled
underbellies of each leaf-- punch my
hair black-blue. Rosemary mint and fingernail
sown in the sink with the cut flecks of
stars-- I didn't know I would have read about
myself as the lesbian or and the slut-- I would
call myself a girl until it was black-blue
punched out of my brown hair-- I didn't hate my hair
brown so much as I hated the way you had begun
to see my wearing it-- not like
a girl who controlled a landing on Venus
but the girl who was trying to find enough
hair ties to pull the hair from her
eyes when she punched the rosemary mint
from each follicle-- and the trick of it
is you can't dye the slut or the lesbian out
of your hair so add a blue streak to the bruises
and send yourself to Venus with the hair curler--
wash yourself with rosemary and mint in the shower--
you can be a slut and lesbian spun
from something other than light-- bruise your
neck over the sink and save your clipped
hair in bags to remember where you were pulled
from and what colors you faded and yet
still smelled like mint and rosemary
and clean. 

9-1-1 text messages and other methods to
write in semicolons and in the memory
of cold chicken fried rice and
learning to not die;

I never called 9-1-1; not even on the ledge
of a windowsill or curled like a comma on the
floor of a shower-sweaty bathroom where
all the mirrors turned me into a haze;
pink ghost of my torso; I thought about death
in the shape of cheerios and half-cups
that I used to eat them from; parenthesis
hunched over the kitchen table; placing
each on my tongue like Eucharist;  In the
name of the father and the sun and morning
that breathes in your face like sweaty-shower
bathrooms; place your hand on the mirror
and catch a glimpse of how
clearly we can trace the potholes in the 
topography of your face; all the night corners when 
you have gashed wobbly-ridged finger-nails into
your wrists like tombstones; what did I eat for breakfast
when I was ten? That was when no one needed
punctuation; we were the rapturous run-on sentences
of self love that knew nothing would ever be
wrong with us; lay in fat bathtubs and drank 
sugar-soda like humming birds too plump to hover
but strong enough to straddle hibiscus flowers 
like rocking playground purple dinosaurs; did
you open a fridge like a storybook; If 
you were like me you would have eaten cold chicken fried rice
from a counter; the peas would have tasted 
better than the night before; you would
have eaten the corner pieces left of your birthday
cake; licked icing from a coffee mug; traced 
a heart in a fogged bathroom window; and said that morning
always took too long; asterisk-haired and triumphant;
flip-flop feet wet from the dew; walk to school on
a pig tail until you learn that there is no 9-1-1
to text to on the ledge a park pavilion; I don't
punctuate this precipice I only take steps back and 
ellipsis across a counter top in the spilling of
a container of fried rice I won't be eat again;
there are parts of myself that I'm leaving to the prologue
and parts that I still want to eat again like a 
parenthesis or a semicolon; if you text 9-1-1 from 
your night corner in blanket that reminds you of a shower
or of the corners of your ten-year-old birthday cake
remember that you're sending a letter for yourself
and you wrists and your pink ghost in a mirror;
remember that no one calls 9-1-1 anymore; that 
if you write a poem they might reject it and tell
you that their submission guidelines weren't followed
but that you should keep writing, keep writing
keep writing stories even if you only send them
in 9-1-1 text messages that scream into closets about suicide;
don't close with a period because you and me
were mean for commas; were the inventors of the ellipsis
into the morning; write me poem and leave out the last
line so I can pick up where you left off; ellipsis me
across a counter and pluck me like chicken-fried peas;
wipe the icing on your jeans like a ten-year-old 
and meet me at the counter; be the other side
of my parenthesis and I can hold you there;
we'll pretend it's morning and open the fridge like a picture 
book about purple dinosaurs or 
9-1-1 calls. 

Firefly widowers and warming apple cider 
with a porch light.

July leads the kind of death of a mother--
it takes till September for you to remember that
you can't wake her up in the morning for
chocolate chip pancakes and you won't feel
the coffee machine sputtering before you
wake up again. You become your own
hazelnut vanilla coffee to sip from
her arm of the sofa-- 
Watch a blank tv.
Hear the train whistles from the tracks
over the hill that always call louder
in the cold--
The black screen tells you that the fireflies 
have become widowers-- all of them sitting on porches
and waiting for the frost to click off
the lights still lit in the abdomens--
some of them carve their wives initials into
the apple crumb-cake dirt and train whistle 
songs that remind them of fourth of July
when we were all somehow ten-years-old.
I'll tell them I didn't know their wives
but that I'm sorry never notice fireflies until
they're already starting to die.
We don't see dead fireflies, do we? 
We see brittle grass and broken porch lamps
and an increase in stars--and when
I was ten I think there used to be more fireflies
but I might just have wasted my
sense of wonder on those summers when
catching a firefly was like reigning in a piece of a sun--
they quievered in my cupped hands like the coffee pot
full of hazelnut vanilla coffee-- Now tonight I warm
apple cider by a porch light and it's still
hot and soup-ladel summer but we all know that
autumn is already stuffing potato chip bags
with maple leaves to toss under our feet
in the morning-- ginger-snap through the field  
on twigs and the shells of fireflies
still glowing faintly in between the 
blades-- I'm warming apple cider with the porch light
and sharing it with the firefly widowers.
They share stories about how all of them challenged 
the fireworks on the fourth of July and
how they gorged themselves on trashcan watermelon 
that wasn't melancholy like gingersnaps dipped
in warm apple cider-- the last supper 
of the summer air rasping and coughing like
a coffee pot-- They ask me to shut off the porch light
They ask me if I'll have pancakes in the morning--
if I'd still make them alone for
the sound of a blank tv?
I tell them I won't-- that I'll probably
warm apple cider again and listen for train
whistles and wait on the porch
again for the Sugar Maples to strip for
me and shake their hips bare in the
swirls of their shredded dresses-- pieces 
of their sex in the August when
the fireflies first whispered about death
and realized that
summer is three months deep
and takes four years to dig ourselves out of.
And when she comes back I'll make
her chocolate chip pancakes and vanilla hazelnut
coffee and we'll sit on the porch 
lit by the sun and trashcan watermelon 
and firefly lovers still whistling 
from the night before. 

Hold still while I kiss you with fireworks. 

Kiss me in a gun shot hole kicked through the night sky
-- blow back the corn-wheat like wig hair
and the birds will follow-- they're the crows for my
wedding-- the ones who got dressed in white just
for the occasion. This sad union between a coffee-stained dress and
my body that picks her fingers full of needles and matches--
Darling, I've tried stitching the veil-- blast-bombed-- we'd torn 
the tulle like a lip-- bite-- pull-- seam us into wig hairs--
break these bell-groans with your police batons-- crowd
control of my bruise buttons up the back of my dress--
did you know what it means to be on fire?-- how did we
get away with bursting so suddenly without a fuse?

Come here. Help mash blue berries on my dress 
to match all the bruises I have
worn as shoulder pads or buttons up the elevator of my spin--
Raise steady so we can burn each floor-- but leave my
forearms alone. LEAVE MY FOREARMS ALONE-- no
matter how loudly I say it I always come back there
to a graveyard of my nails dug in as tombstones
therefore rest my red match heads-- 
Bust-blueberry blood vessels. Sprawl in firework embers.
did you check your hair for pieces of the gun-shot stars
we made just to kiss under and pretend that there's no such
thing as tulle or crows? Is there something in fireworks
that make us more prone to love or are we just
heart- beat- hair-pinned fast enough to forget
that we have so many bruises he might mistake for blue
berries-- linger just long enough for a flash-- camera bulb-- 
camera crew who tells you to take off the veil-- no one
care about veils-- we want to see your spine--
we light love like bottle rockets with those 
red match heads--

Please don't kiss me with fireworks-- 
I'll use the dress as a picnic blanket-- 
and we can forget all the times we'd
performed for the crows--

Did he tell you to pour yourself into him? 
Did he claim to be oil or fire? 
He did it so he could eat your entrails like funnel cake-- 
powder sugar in your hair to tell you that you that your skin looked better
like a paper plate-- he erases your forearms with a plastic fork
and tells you how sweet you are and sweeter you
are becoming with all that dusty sugar-- all the gun powder--
all that breaking that only he could make you do

Don't flinch when I kiss you
hold still. 
LEAVE MY FOREARMS ALONE.
hold still. 
hold still.