Tell me your stories and we don't have 
to ever write them down--

Tell me your life story like the
tall tales of children.
If you wanted to be the boy
who won the relay race in second grade
I would love to hear you become that
even if you only got third
and a frayed green ribbon that you keep
in the back of your desk drawer
between the books that
you had wanted to read this semester.
Tell me you were once magic.
Tell no one understood but your brother.
Tell me your bed room was haunted
even if you know it was mice in the walls
or the pipes in the old house
cracking like shoulder bones--
Did you plant red delicious apple trees
like the periods of so many poems
and perhaps?
Did you ever pull blue oxs on leashes 
in the park--?
Did you learn to tie shoe laces
from licorice rope?
I want to know about the girl
who spoke seven languages--
each that she made herself.
I want to know the boy who made
his desk into a time machine
to go back to before he broke
the teacher's vase. 

When I learned about tall tales
in elementary school Mrs. Kenney
said they were lies-- but I
think they're a more
pure reflection of a truth
that we all want-- I don't want
to live a history-- I want to
live a tall tale of lovers
and saber tooth lions
with ghosts in the hallways
who leave hand prints
on the window in the spring that only
you and your brother saw. 

Leave me with only words 
and I'll write letters with my teeth.

I was wondering what I would be
if there were no letters--
If we woke up to find that
they had left for fear of being understood.
Everyone would remember there
was something underneath
the bunches of obscurely laughing 
teens on the covers of pamphlets
in high school guidance offices
but we would be able to remember 
what a 'Q' looked like.
"They were obscene," some middle school
principal would say while sipping
lack luster coffee from an untimely
Christmas mug--
Librarians would say that
they were the only thing to ever
resemble the face of God while
English professors would argue
that they were the only thing to resemble
the face of human--
And then some would never give up
and I think that would be me.
I would plant myself on street
corner even if it was too
cold to stop moving my fingers
I could count the syllables on
them to stay warm-- and CNN would
call me another victim of hysteria
while grad students would stop
repeating their thesis to them self
for five minutes to hear what 
poem I was attempting to 
stamp in the sidewalk with my
breath that day. Sometimes I would
forget a line-- maybe a whole
stanza. I would wonder what it would
look like if my volta had a face--
a thick nose like my grandmother or 
quiet brows like my brother.
I wouldn't remember most of the words
I would say-- like the shutters
of bent saxophone lips dripping 
in their own language like
melted snow into the bay--
but someone would remember. One
of them would stop and stop repeating
a grocery list, a cell phone number,
a name of a girl from a bus stop
and they would find that they
were always a 'Q' or a 'H'
And that the bones of their
jaws made up the resemblances of
every face they'd even known.
Even that of God.

Of apologies, elegies, odes, goodbyes, and thank yous

There's a list written in the carvern
on the underside of my tongue where
veins and ink have accounted for all the 
"i love yous" I have spilled so far.
I house the list there-- it was choice.
God had asked if the list would fit
on my eyelids-- I told him i already
see the whole thing every time it's dark
and I'm alone-- I told him
it was too long and I wanted to taste
all of the names each time I said
an "i love you" again. Like a scar and
a horehound throat candy and a honey packet  
and the licks at the bottom of a bowl
of vanilla bean ice cream.
Behind my "i love yous" I'm hiding
"I'm sorry and I have your giraffe"
"I didn't mean to say it so loud"
"I miss the way you scribbled in 
the right hand corner of notebooks"
"I remember walking on the big
stones in the creek" "No I don't eat
chocolate chip pancakes but I 
love peanut butter" "I didn't even
like pizza-- I just tried it for you"
"I don't actually know anything about religion"
"I never prayed a full rosary for anyone
but you" "I'm lost and I'm making a map out of you"
"Stop-- I've never wanted to be held like that"
"I'll think about you when I roast marshmallows"
"I never threw out the necklace"
"You taught me how to tie my shoes and I forgot"
"There are kisses that I don't mind remembering
and ones that feel like poison ivy under my skin."
"I never wanted to run away with you
but you tricked me into so many bus stations"
"Stop saving me-- I want to save myself for once"
"You make me love painted finger nails"
"You make me want to eat angle food cake
and pretend that it's my wedding"
"Take a walk with me-- we'll talk about 
something and it might go no where"
"i love you" "i love you" "i love you"
And it's all for you-- a thousand tongues of
flames and marshmallows. 

At least for today I don't want to shrink
you down to the size of a 
"thank you."
Thanks yous are for stone bracelets,
apricot scones, and the sputtering of the coffee pot 
in the mornings.
They're for blue birthday cupcakes
that wear icing like a wrinkled skirt--
Thank yous are four a.m.

Today I don't want to say thank you.
I want to say I wear
the things between us around my wrists
like leather bracelets-- they sprouted
my flower crowns and painted on the 
layers of my callous feet like slippers--

I want to say that the arches of your heels
stamp out the curvature of each vertebrae
I own-- wobble like river rocks and loose teeth--
I follow it each morning to the other side 
of a creek that just happens to be
the beach of Chingoteague
at sunset back when we both ate
crab cakes.
I want to say I remember you painted my
fingers like watermelons one night
when I begged you even though it
was late and you had just gotten
home from work--
I want to say only you were
the voice of the wind on a car ride.
I want to say I still roll down
my window to listen.
I want to say I'm sorry for all the
Dead Hyacinth bushes and African violets
I've bought for mother's days.

We've never been flowers mom. We've been
Amethyst and callous feet pressed on the lips
of a raspberry bush. We've been jars and  
the blueberry jam inside-- we picked each berry like pearls.
We've been peanut butter toast.
We've been the Wendy's road-stop.
We've pulled each other like pretzel dough
and weighted out some afternoons
like summer squash and zucchini.

You can always meet me where it smells
like burnt pancakes and the strawberry jam
we slide between them. Somewhere on the 
other side of creek that is also somehow
a beach we're always trying to find
but always end up on a back farm road
where the corn bows like cupcake skirts. 

My uncle called me a rain forest baby.

swaddled in chewed-edge towels and
lavender shampoo still yet completely
washed from my hair-- he called me 
a rain forest baby-- asked where
they had found me--

I had waited a long time orphaned, 
lay in a clearing between
two ceiba trees where I had been born
from the wide lips and white 
nectar sugar of passion flowers
--startled the hummingbirds
who had not noticed the body
of an almost-human among the 
vines and the dew like
a boxed jewerly box of God--
I have always been so much
like a plastic fruit basket--
especially the grapes--
No-- I am
not a goddess or a prophet or
even keel billed-toucan--
but I could be some form of a
night monkey-- blank stare
on blank verses-- I was
taught poetry from the tight
jaws of howler monkeys and
from listening to the shy
meditative hum of insect throats 
and anxiously praying thighs--
The insects make
of the wind chimes outside on the 
front porch.

I wear dart frogs for earrings 
sometimes still to remind my family
I am not anything more
than a rain forest baby
with soft bones that bend like
vines and pearl necklaces--
wrap me up in chewed edge towels
I'll drink lavender nectar and
write like a howler monkey
and walk like a throat of a beetle. 

My brother and I are 2 a.m. Milano cookies.
 
My brother isn't supposed to beat me at
chess-- 
in the summer when we were old 
enough to survive off the fine cuisine of boxed
macaroni and cheese and Popsicles
but far too young
to understand how to deflect boredom
we would walk to the library.
First in line at 10 a.m. when it opened--
Glasses perched on a pointed nose
the librarian knew we were the
kids without home computers-- 
ravenous for the escape of the internet.
Me in my rainbow crocs and blue knit hat
and billy always with his collar ripped
from chewing on it when he was nervous.
In between hour long internet binges we sat
by the window with the chess set
that had no second black horse.
We'd glance up as if it were raining.
My brother always beat me at chess--
and he still always beats me at chess.
It wasn't just that he was younger 
that it bothered me-- NO he NEVER won things.
Billy was younger so he was supposed
to accept his honorable loses but no
matter what Billy placed his pawn
with a patient grace of a priest listening to
a confession. He argued against his own
check-mates-- tried to help me find a 
way out. "Another game!" I'd demand.
Between us there has never been an older sibling
even though birth separates us by three years.
When crooked neck of the trees knocking together
in a thunderstorm reminded me of that our 
house could be haunted anytime I decided it was
I slept on the floor of Billy's room.
I told him I was keeping HIM safe. And he rolled
over back to sleep. I'd bring provisions for the storm.
Lamp light. Mint Milano cookies from the cabinet downstairs.
Mason jars of pomegranate juice.
"Can I have one?" he rolled over to ask.
"One for me. One for you," I'd chirp-- glancing
at the red 4 a.m. winking from the digital clock.
"Should I brush my teeth when I'm done?" he'd ask.
"No it's almost morning."
"Is it raining?"
"No it just feels like it."

If you wait for me-- Don't wait for me to be whole-- 
I'll be here with my Amethyst and Monkey Bread

If you want to wait for me
by the bus station in Norristown--
stand in the white little tunnel that
goes underneath rail road tracks.
I've never seen a train
but I know there must be one
because the tops of the tracks
are polished silver from
destinations and sliding stops.

If you want to wait for me
look for a me in my
Bulky black winter jacket even though
it's May. I'll be carrying a blue
bag of stockings and square dresses
and a tan satchel of varieties of
oatmeal because I microwave
my sense of home at the bottle
of a white bowl.

If you want to wait for me
I will be tired. I'll talk about 
how my mom used to make Monkey Bread
when I had sleepovers and how
I liked to peel off the pieces--
even if just to pass them to someone 
else. I'll talk about my rock collection
and the little caskets holding
the corpses of sediments and metamorphosis.

If you want to wait for me
I'll smile and I'll love you.
I'll tell you how if you start
a bread crumb trail at my wrist
we can end up somewhere that feels
like August and not like March
and get lost in a snow squall
in April without it getting
too soggy. 
I might cry about how lonely the bus
looks as it saunters away-- a diaphragm 
heavy with breaths held in anticipation,
wonder, and the type of fear
that no one talks about. The kind of fear
that flutters-- delicate and sharp
like slivers of Amethyst.

If you wait for me I can't promise
I'll be whole. I can promise I will
be carrying a bag of oatmeal and that
I will find something beautiful about
the way you don't rush to greet me
like the movies because you know I'd know
that it's cliche.
But that's what I love about you--
You've never waited for me to be whole--

You take the misshapen offering
of a Monkey-Bread girl and look
at the cinnamon sugar like Amethyst. 

A Elegy for Babe Ruth, Sunflower Seeds, and My Thighs

When I was in fourth grade I wanted to be Babe Ruth.
I wasn't like girls who play
soft ball. They learned to peeled of neon head-bands--
painted nails-- shared shredded bubble gum
in the dug out-- wore Adidas sports bags-- 
Not me. And I never felt like a girl who played
softball. I pretended I played baseball.
Baseball like crisp hot dogs that wear mustard-ketchup braids.
I played baseball like peanut shells under sandals.
-- I carried my cleats in my hands and 
swung them around like jump rope or Strawberry
licorice on the windy jeep ride home 
on a night in June when we lost in the ninth
inning. I was the last to strike out. 
There was something that made
the ending of a night game seem nostalgic
and eternal. Something in the big blaring lights
that blurred out the stars--
We had m & m rice crispies after the game.
I proudly ate four and piled up the wrappers.
I leaned up against 
rusty chain fence away from the rest of the team
who was talking about how
fat our fifth grade teacher Mrs. Baron was.
I brushed the dust off my knees-- wore
the streak of dirt from sliding
into second like a battle scar. I ran my fingers
over the way my stomach billowed gently 
over the elastic of my baseball pants.
I thought about how Babe Ruth probably
never noticed being fat. I wondered if 
looked at himself in the mirror and knew
he would be an icon for chubby girls
who love food and batting clean-up. 
I asked my dad if Babe Ruth chewed bubble gum
and he said he probably chewed tobacco... but
that he might have liked sun flower seeds.
He bought me a bag and I practiced spitting 
them off our porch. I wondered what it would
be like if Babe Ruth was a girl. I wondered
if she would worry about how her jeans
always wore away between her thighs.
At bat I never sat on the bench.
I put my fingers through the fence--
watched every pitch tumble into a 
catcher's mitt in a timid flourish of dust--
waiting for my turn.
I lived between the chalk lines of the batter's box.
I have never felt a sense of vitality
like the moments before the pitch.
The practice swing-- the images of Babe Ruth
pointing toward left field and nodding.
I never thought about my thighs in the batters
box. I never thought about cheeks or how
other girls seemed to be born
knowing how to be beautiful in a way I never
wanted to be. I ate like a King in the batter's box--
I put relish on hot dogs and dug
plastic spoons into banana splits.
I was cracker jack- July- Jupiter beetles
and juice boxes in between those
lines. 

I haven't picked up 
a baseball bat for years but
I will tell you I still play baseball.
I still want to be Babe Ruth but
I lost his thighs and his stacks
of rice crispy wrappers and I
never even liked the taste of sunflower seeds.

On a night in July I still 
ride home in the jeep and my dad still 
pretends I play baseball and not softball.
We play catch just not with gloves.
I buy him strawberry licorice
and there's not lights to out sing
the stars. 

This time I watched.

I am the type to pride myself
with a body painted in rain--
A water-colored paper towel--
leave out the soap and
clean my skin with the basking
of the worms-- the thin sausage fingers
on tympani asphalt.
Drum on my head like a lake.

Last night I just watched-- 
I'm not the kind of person to 
look at things from a windowsill--
I like to hold the perspiration of
a storm in my fingers
I like to learn to breath water
I like to make the streets
into Amazons-- take a trip
in my soaked canvas shoes to 
the banks of the Mississippi
the taste like turtle soup--
fill up my canteen there
with broth for the road
and walk to a street corner
so I can feel like I exist
on an island somewhere
in the Caribbean where
there's only Iguanas and
great papayas the size of 
Boston terriers.

This time I watched.
I did not leave my wooden
desk chair.
This time I watched another girl.

She had brown hair and
she tied it up in a braid 
like a whip to shape
her veins into lightning.

I wanted to tell her
she moved like a body painted in rain--
a water color paper towel.
Instead I watched her cross 
a street in the rain like a movie
like a goodbye or
a goodnight-- and she took
the shore of another island
in a raft drawn by hoodie strings.

This time I watched.
This time I watched.

Of strangers falling asleep next to each other on buses

I've never met you before but 
I can tell that if you had five dollars
you wouldn't be able to decide between
African violets and the mini-cacti 
wearing the blue flowers
like old ladies in ornate hats--
You eat an apple at 11:47 a.m.every day
right before the bus gets there--
Pull back hair that begs for night time
and grey head bands
We've all had wrists for blue plastic bags
but you wear yours like bangles--
Haven't we all fallen in love
with someone at a bus stop?
Not for honeymoon but for pilgrimage
and the prospect of someone else driving
you off into their own forever.
Slept together like third grade sleepover
when you could touch everyone like
a brownie tray or a quilted blanket--
Sometimes on a bus I close my
eyes and pretend that I had missed my stop--
I pretend to sleep like it's Christmas eve
and my mouth tastes like sugar cookies--
I pretend the bus was inevitably headed
for the city-- like there is nothing
I can do but wait for my arrival
at at station poised in time somewhere 
between 1921 and 1996-- before I 
was imagined and dug out
of one of God's blue play dough jars--
Doors open to the station where
someone hands me a oboe and I can
play it even though I haven't played
one since fifth grade-- it sounds
like honey packets and melted ice cream--
drips on my shoes and everyone there knows
I'm a poet-- they all missed their stops
too and we sleep together like
brownie trays and quilted blankets
swing like blue plastic bags on
wrists that rustle like African violets.