I’ll dip

myself in

the yolk of each dawn

soaked into the crunch-crust

veins of greasy toast

skylines– wrapped

diner

napkin

silverware–

I’ll be the soup spoon

if you’ll be the fork and the

knife– we’ll eat evening

with out fingers

and thumbs.

I won't have to tell you we were only horse shoe crabs.

I won't have to tell you where to meet me on the shore
because WE already know-- WE have always known.
WE have always had the moon carved into the back of our
skull by the fingers of a God who etched in blood blue--
he wrote our names there Xiphosura 
and all of our mothers were
swallowed by a wave-- children of the round
abdomen of the moon and clasped hands of a wave--
we never had a father-- but God did make our heads 
thrown on a pottery wheel like bowls to fill
with constellations muddied by the last eyelashes of the sun.
I won't have to tell you that WE are older than sea shells
older than bare feet-- that we have seen the tide come
in like a bed sheet and come in like forty lashes
until the coast was bloodied and bent-kneed.
I won't have to tell you that WE were never more than
pottery but we climbed the shoreline like oil painters.
Don't move on without me-- I will be waiting on the shoreline--
I won't have to tell you where to meet me
WE just know. Do not walk with me back through the thumb
prints of our mothers-- WE will meet again
when she sets out stars like bread crumbs--
follow them with me and love me there
and then fall back into the sea--
serve soup with me from your cranium-- cradle
soft knees and channels of salt water blood--
bleed the sky and don't look back. 

"Humans-- they're like a disease."

--said my boyfriend at the time. He wiped
a dark smudge of oil or some sort of grease 
on his pant leg as we rounded a corner out
of port authority bus terminal. He never
liked people. He looked at them with
the scowling eyes of a gosh hawk-- 
felt that everyone was parasitic--
parasites of food, of love, and of rivers.
I think I've always wanted to prove him wrong--
no just him-- but all the people who
think humans are something so distant
from creatures just
because we learned
to make cars and lace up sneakers
-- that's where we're mistaken.
I will always only find myself as a blood 
platelet-- push me fast in a taxi cab
headed to catch the Bieber at gate
19 or let me drift slow like a paper
boat in kayak on the Mullica river
in between furrow brow of the Pine Barrens.
I was never anything greater than
a red-bellied turtle-- who runs at the sight
of strangers-- how do you jump into the water?
How do you hide yourself like a tree frog?
So that we can only find you by
the muffled patterns of a mating call
long repeated-- compare my throat to a banjo
string and I can speak in the tone of
how a yellow warbler tells my kayak to
just leave it some peace today. It hasn't slept
well and it's been thinking about oceans.
I have to agree though-- 
Humans they're like a disease-- they are a disease 
Once you fall in love you never 
see humans as anything but rivers.

 

I was never so in love as I was when I was a Red Knot and I stopped in Stone Harbor

only to find that all the store fronts were closed besides the fudge kitchen– I bought

a box for you even though I don’t think any of us really want maple walnut fudge

I thought it wasn’t really an option though– no an obligation but a nod to the importance of all the people we would buy fudge for if we had enough little white coffin boxes to fill with the confection– the other store fronts were closed anyway.

I thought about us. I thought about how I never wanted anything more than see the

town when it was thriving– Maybe a July night near my birthday when the little Red Knot were almost old enough to fly– I wanted to purchase a snow globe–

I’d take it back to you– I’d shake it and say that it never snowed n my wings when I was there

but it sure felt like November without you–And then there were the other Red Knots and they ate horseshoe crabs with me– not out of hunger but out of compulsion– horse crabs

taste like metal and blood–

I felt bad for the things– piles of them

on frayed reeds of the beach– scattered like unworn bike helmets– if birds ate fudge I might have nibble at it that day.

But I will be back to you again and I will tell you about the horseshoe crabs– though I might lie a bit. Maybe I’ll tell you the store fronts were open and that I ate oysters at a raw bar jostled between two friends I made on the journey who now purchased houses on the harbor. Maybe I will be a plover or a tern. I could be a terrapin for you. Maybe the horseshoe crabs will taste like taffy or maple walnut fudge.

1.

Invite

yourself to

recede back into

diatom patterns– dragon-

scale finger nails of

our mosa-

-ic God

2.

Build a

chain with me–

we couldn’t all be

ice so he spun some of us

in glass algae– church

 windows that

bleed sun.

3.

Find me on the other side

of bilateral

symmetry

and wait.

Kwek Stop Sunsets.

There's nothing more human
than a gas station stop on the high way.
The rusted hinges of 7/11 sinews
and caffeinated eyelids of the "fast stops"
of the turnpikes and freeways that
might as well by their own
countries--own nations--
hum hymns in their own vernalcular of
slushies and syrup fingers-- they have always
reminded me of love--I have always felt
unintentionally excited about them--
It's they nestle themselves--
poised in coves of
pine trees-- Krimpet wrapper
voodoo dolls standing guard--
they can be glistening atolls--strung out from a sum
of bites taken from moon pies.
We trade broken sun glass
frames for bathroom lines
and there was always something
miraculous about picking any snack
and drink when we were on
our way to Chingoteague-- 
And then we left-- send me a post card
from a Sunoco--
with a box of twizzlers and a 
blue raspberry slushie-- because 
we all know that's the best type
and tell me the vacation hadn't started yet
but the way their is always more exciting
than the sea gulls or the 
sand feet-- it's the sum of all the
potential of what a life could
be-- wrapped in tin foiled--
spun in a slushie.
Let's take a vacation to a Stop and Go
and I'll tell you I love you like
sleeves of a juicy fruit
and not even Krimpet wrappers
can stop us.

 

Believe me when I say I want to be water.

I want to be unfurled like the
tattered ends of a porch flag 
of dull hardware store flowers--
the kind that grandmothers forget
to change in November when
you start to feel your own skeleton
like the sinews of the frost-
rigor mortis roots of the grass-- 
I want to be poured into white-walled rooms 
--tag me with a plastic ID bracelet
to be adorned in a NUMBER so that no one
can know my name is WATER-- 
I have only ever washed scraped knees 
and fallen from high places to spread
myself thin again in the carcasses
of hail and rain.
I want to drop myself like
a butterfly whose wings had been
plucked by the slimy lips of a 
bull frog who sang about eating 
birds and tulips.
I wall to fall like petals and and like
knee caps. Drop me like the skeletons 
in November and pulls me loose 
like porch flags. I want to paint
the walls of a white room with my thumb
prints-- all watered down 
like tulip water. 
I want to be cupped in your hands
and dropped into the grass
for a proper burial-- don't worry
about letting me fall too far--
I've already descended the sky.

 

When I said 'follow me' I didn't mean it.

When I said "follow me" I meant
I wanted someone to know where I was going.
I wanted an address to send
gas station post cards too--
Each will be signed a different name
from the name tag of a grocery store clerk or
a the red- collar of orange-white cat keeping watch over
the CVS parking lot-- in search of
pie tins and firefly wing-dust.
Some days I'll just leave them blank
for you to fill in a story
I haven't even written-- imagine it for me--
play God with my life for a second
so I don't have to name myself today--
I was never one for post cards because
I have too much to write--
When I said "follow me" I didn't
mean on foot-- I meant hold onto
something that you know about me
even if it's only as thin
as a gum wrapper-- I meant remember
me liked creased edges of napkins
and carrot sticks.
Think about all the times I licked
oatmeal from spoon spoons and all the times
I asked you to pet my hair
and tell me it was okay to fall apart
as long as there was enough
left to pick up the pieces and
wrap them in old post cards.
The one I'm sending today is from
the Turkey Hill up the street
from the house that I no longer
think of as home--
It has a Hex sign on the cover
with two distelfinks in a love-locked stare
and it made me think of us.
When I said "follow me" I don't know
what I meant-- but I'll meet you
at one of these gas stations
and we can talk about feet-- and roads
and whether or not distelfinks are
real animals over open boxes of
juju bees, licorice, and firefly dust. 

 

Where were you last night
when everything was quiet
and the doors were shut?

i found myself last night
the only one still left awake--
every single other human
had fallen victim to the pendulums 
of their own weary eye lashes--
curled up like specimens in their
test tube terrariums--
i stood watch and waited for someone
to hatch but the night was lilting
the night was lonely 
and i whispered my Hail Marys 
to the bellies of the moths
that crept in under the windowsill
to keep me company.
they brought strawberries on a paper plate
and the crusts of cold cheese pizza.
they say they had never needed sleep--
that sleep was for swallowtails
and i had to agree. 
Last night i was somewhere 
between the tiles on the roof 
and the faded constellations--
i don't think i fell asleep like
everyone else but i know i did
because i'm not a moth or a 
windowsill. 
i walked away from time last night--
and no cars found their way
down the street to push forward
the gaunt shoulders of sunset--
i had supper with every single
human while they slept 
i waited for one of them to awaken.
i saved them two strawberries
and gave the leaves to the 
moths to use as hats.
i asked when time would bring
me here again?-- at a rest stop from time
with plates of strawberries
instead of red vines
and glass bottle root beer. 
the only response was the beating
of moth wings and air conditioning. 

 

I took off my shoes today
to walk down the spine
of a girl who wanted to spend a 
week and four days longer
than she could loving herself.
I don't want to love her
just for the way her hip bones
dwarf the mountain ridges of Appalachia
where she leaned to make
her knees wobble like the rivers
of limestone rock-- I don't
want to know her only by
the brown hair dormant beneath her scalp
like trenches of magma veins.
No--I don't want to love her just 
for her widow's peak still eroded away by
the same un thawing lips of 
amphibian boys who want to be men--
same anorexia spoons to carve out
the gnarled knuckles of
each stream and creek and the sound of 
her own breath at night like sleet.
She took off her shoes today
and she will again and again
because she never needed sandals
or socks or shoes
only her own heels rubbed rugged 
and thick from gravel 
and smooth stones in pockets.