in a pastle drawing

i smudge the edges of every door frame.
wipe my hands on my thighs 
& smudge those even larger than before.
a seam warbles into a road.
my brother is sitting in the corner
with his eyes smeared shut.
when i sleep i want to be renewed 
but instead i'm pulled & spread.
the water is washing itself clean.
a bird lost its wings 
to a gust of thumb-pressing wind.
i am searching for the horizon line
my mother drew for us.
i'm finding nothing but more 
mountains to whittle down. 
it hasn't rained but will soon.
all my shirts are covered 
with handprints. my toes 
blur into each other. 
stoplight mixes colors. all the cars
park in the street. an alarm 
streaks into a bird call.
i used to sing aloud to myself
but now i just hum & the humming
slurs my lips. soon i will just
have misshapen teeth & a blur of a tongue. 
what i love about this kind of picture 
is you can't always notice
the mistakes. no one has to know
i forgot to give my father
a pair of shoe laces & forgot
to lock the door but who would enter
a blotched house like this anyway.
i keep a nightlight on
& it spills like in little threads
all across the living room.
each night i try to convince myself
to turn it off-- to let the house
go dark but i don't.
i try to draw some of the corners back.
fix my smeared elbows. give my brother
a smile & two eyebrows.
draw my lips back. a dull pink
in the yellow dim. 
the mirror shows only 
my murky silhouette. i am 
a faint ghost. 

each summer i wear my way through a pair of sandals

i had blue ones when i went to maine 
with my boyfriend's family.
august after graduation. i wore 
a lace b-cup bra. 
i bought two pairs of pajamas for the trip.
i thought i was 
a woman. street gravel
stuck to shoe bottoms & fog gushed 
from the ocean. in town
there were all kinds of galleries.
as we walked, my boy friends's hand 
made a purse of me.
a potter & a portrait maker
& then the hat pin carver. he etched 
little tabs of ivory, old piano keys.
i bought three despite not having
any hats. i pinned one 
to the strap of my dress
& the metal grazed against my skin.
my boyfriend stuck one 
in his curly hair. 
on the rocky beach, i nearly tripped
every day. my flipflops made 
gripping the huge rocks nearly impossible.
often i gave up, & just set the shoes
by the side of the road
before the beach. anyone could have
taken them & then i would have had
no shoes at all. we harvested sea glass
& all week we looked for 
a shard of blue. found clear & auburn 
& yellow. no blue. went back
to the hat pin maker & he told us a story
of how he saw the whole universe's alphabet 
one night while walking on the rocky beach.
august august august. on the last day
the strap popped off my shoe.
my boyfriend said, "i'll he'd carry you home."
i replied "i'll walk barefoot."
i have been told in workshops, it is good
to refer to people by their names
& not just relationships like
"brother" or "boyfriend."
i am calling him "boyfriend" 
so you can see more than i do.
this poem is just about summer & feet. 
we took a little boat ride
to the other side of the canal 
where canada waited. the town 
was tired & full of worn wood
& dilapidated storefronts. 
on the ride back i took my shoes off
(this was before they snapped)
& i thought about my ankles.
nothingt matters but august. 
he kissed my shoulder & then my neck.
the boat dipped & ripples spread out
all around us. tiny little row boat.
i said, "we should keep going."

3 pigs

the first house is made
of telephone wires & broken phone chargers.
a street is always a parable.
where do you build your sleeping?
is your brother awake?
when i was little 
i peered in at pigs piled their pens 
at the local fair & they whispered
"we're building we're building."
they weren't telling me,
they were telling each other.
brothers always come in threes.
i once built a house 
just inside my rib cage 
as practice. it was made
of paperclips & jingled 
when i played tag at recess.
fell apart after a week or so.
all the door knobs in my parent's house
are loose. the cabinet knobs
fall off one by one. the second house
is made of old light bulbs
all perfectly balanced together.
their filaments loose in their skulls,
the pig who lives there
is the careful brother who thinks
nothing will ever happen to him.
the rooves in all my apartments
have leaked down on me. 
what is a forced baptism? 
you don't need wolves for destruction.
here comes a wind with it's own teeth.
i wake up with bite marks sometimes
on my back & my forearm.
are they from my own gnawing?
the pigs are just trying
to live as artists do,
in impossible homes. the last brother
with his symetrical lawn
& flamingos & his house
constructed from his own old shoes.
there are no quit enough 
so he used his father's shoes
for the roof; heels & sneakers
& sturdy snow boots at the bottom.
the pig are never content
& they spend their afternoons
shuffling between each other's houses.
there is no wolf, not yet,
but they each know 
one is coming. they are well read.
we ate pork chops about once a week
as a kid. slabs of meat
in their crockpot home. 
all rooves are lids. my skin 
unfurls for dinner. the wolf 
is walking down the street.
he whistles out of tune. 
has a newspaper
coiled in his heart 
like a snake. when you wake up
what do you learn 
about your body?
a light bulb flickers on
by itself. there are no pigs.
i made these houses.

a new theory / practice 

i don't believe in evolution.
it takes too long. i can't wait
another centruy for these bones
to make a new monster.
where are my sharp teeth? where is
my echolocation? my telekinesis?
i'm american which means 
i don't believe in patience
or fossils unless they're fuel.
i want my traits
now. a sixth finger. a veiny wing.
time is a hunger kitchen.
each day i wake up 
to morphed canaries. wings 
the size of great windows
& beaks curving & thinning 
& twisting. they have 
more & more ways to feed.
soon their hearts are gems
& then their eyes are cameras
sending images to god.
my lips fall off & i recieve
a crocodile snout. 
my knees turn backwards
like a horse's back legs.
see, who needs to wait 
a hundred years--a thousand years. 
rocks are vessels of lies.
i am told humans are getting taller.
we used to be a foot or so shorter 
which is why all the doorways 
in old houses seem tiny. 
we are taking too long.
tomorrow i will wake up
the size of a house.
everyone will look at me
& see my thick leg hair 
& my thumbs. i will lay down
& the canaries will sing pop songs
word for word & the straycats 
will walk on their hind legs
like they've always wanted.
i am sick of theories. i want to see
tangible change. give me
a sinew to look forward to.
survival of the fittest 
neglects the role of beauty.
i am becoming a monument 
or a statue. the birds want to be
marionettes. none of us
want to die. tomorrow is another 
hundred or so years away.
i can't sleep. i want to watch
my skin re-arrange itself.

frog portrait in my chilldhood bedroom

his eyes were bright fearful coins.
dark green flesh. the bones of a frog
are feathery. a faint structure.
i loved the photograph. black frame.
bold against my forest-painted walls.
i was a frog-girl which meant
when i laid in the bathtub i dreamed 
of tadpoll reverting,
to swirl like comma comma comma.
mouth flat & pursed. the picture 
was a gift from mom's photographer friend. 
it was like owning a moment.
the photographer had
plucked him from where he sat 
between the damp brown leaves
& dipped him 
in the chill of the october stream
to get him to hold still. a shock.
his symetical body, a little talismen. 
cold blood slow in his veins. did he think about
his life cycles? pond clumps of eggs.
his first arm.
i was maybe eight or nine.
i sat in front of the picture
the way someone might sit
in front of a portrait of god.
i wished i'd taken it. 
once, i lied to the neighbor girl
& told her i did. she said
"wow, you can see the threads
of his eyes." i wondered if there were
threads in my eyes too & then 
if someone plucked me from my life
& dipped me in cold water
if i would pose still like that
for a picture. though, truly,
the portrait was of me. my four fingers.
my throat. my budding hunger
for insects & terror for 
the coming cold months 
where everything turns blue-grey.
my eyes, two impossible
tender coins. 
gloss of the camera's light
across my skin.

sugar substitutes

i used to steal the yellow packets
from the dining hall. a handful 
into the top of my backpack.
three packets in each pocket.
yellow=sucralose. an old slogan 
for Splenda used to be 
"made from sugar so it tastes 
like sugar." a bag of sugar 
perches by the coffee machine 
in my parent's house. 
sucralose is 600 times sweeter
than sugar. you might be wondering
why i was stealing Splenda,
we'll get there. my great aunts ate
the pink packets, saccharin.
a flock of them in a dish
on her dining room table.
has a bitter edge. always gives me
a headache. had to use them
that summer i stayed at their house.
clink of a spoon inside my coffee mug.
i drank from aunt joan's mug
& it was just one year after
she died. her body glistened 
with saccharin. you steal what you have to
in order to survive, though 
survival's definition can go murky
when you are avoiding sugar.
aspartame used to be in all the sodas. 
blue packets.
used once at a diner 
when i was on a date with a person i met 
on okcupid. they didn't want to eat.
they were nervous. i was too.
i got coffee & fumbled with
the blue packet. my mom used to use
stevia which always rings
in my forehead. if any sweeterner 
tastes green, it's stevia. 
this is what healthy people use
& i wish i was one of them.
i tried it again last week
& i spit it out in the sink.
somewhere, trees grow with just
packets on them. there was a time
when i was younger when 
i ate real sugar packets. not in my coffee,
i just ate them. spread the grains
on my tongue. let the sparks
shimmer down my throat. 
zero calories is possible
only through science.
i imagine the zeros going down
my throat each day like eggs
breaking at the bottom
as i open into a long empty corridor.
i lied to you. i don't really know
why i stole yellow packets.
i still do sometimes, just one or two.
little bundles of sweet.
we all just want our taste buds
to finally bloom. i want a rose bush
right there or a wild hydrangea.
zeros hatch into yellow chickens.
what could i need sugar for?

Grumpy's gas station 

i would rub the dust
off candy from Grumpy's gas station.
smudge of grey on my black karate pants.
inside the little store were
marchs of candy bars 
and gummies left untouched
for several junes. i ate my way
through their stock. hard chewy
gummy rope & softened murky chocolates.
the slushie contraptions
spun like sugar washing machines.
i was ten years old & i would eat
anything i wanted. my fingernails 
had dirt underneath. freckles hiked 
across my face like ants. 
i prided myself in how well
how well i could punch my dad's open hand
at practice. i craved the look on his face 
when i sparred & won against boys.
how long have wanted to be his son?
dad & i stopped there at Grumpy's 
on our way back from the dojo. 
i passed him some of me Mike & Ikes
& juju bees & Sugar Daddies
from the passenger seat
of his rusty blue jeep. we both 
put several candies in our mouths
at once. we talked as we ate,
the sugar seeping into our bodies.
dirt & dust still on the wrappers,
we joked about how long we thought
the candy sat there before we devoured it.
dad said maybe three years
& i guessed three decades & dad laughed
& laughed. corn fields unfolded around us.
tall green Pennsylvania summer.
i swallowed the last of the candies
& crumpled the box in my paw. 
fireflies would blink outside
like angel telegraphs above 
& between the corn. 
we road the rest of the way
in silence, 
my arm dangling out the window 
like an oar.

all summer 

we didn't share a bed.
the air conditioner ran so harshly 
it began to speak words, psalms.
i considered briefly 
going to the heavy looking church
up the street from our apartment.
confetti stained glass
& a stone statue of mary 
with a spot light pointed
at her face. i felt like her,
leaden with stolen eyelids. 
outside, a crossing guard waved her hand
like "come come closer."
you asked me over & over 
what was wrong with us. 
you open & closed the fron door.
we ate at the counter 
on the black wobbly stools. i dreamed
of moving deep into the city
to bury my body like a marble. 
your bedroom got smaller
& so did mine. when i thought of mouths
i didn't think of yours. i thought
of water bottles & widowsills.
pressed my forhead
to the window of the train
& saw the landscape reel past.
i walked the dog around
the same block. by myself, i followed 
willis avenue all the way
to the crumpled iHop at the end
of the road. peeled off my polka dot socks.
you sat on the blue sofa.
i perched at my desk. 
i said i "love you" until
the words were nothing but drums.
drums or maybe a juggler
standing in the living room.
i wanted to go to the ocean 
all alone & float on my back.
we went to the movies
only once & had to walk across
a smoldering parking lot
from the train station 
to reach the theater.
the air was white. we held hands
on & off. i wanted to tell you something
but it kept leaving my heart.
instead, we said very little 
& inside the air conditioning 
gave me goosebumps. 
we talked about needing
to make more time for each other.
i went on several dates
with my ghosts, sitting on a bench
by the post office at night.
you slept like a bowl of grapes.
i couldn't sleep. sat up
at the end of my bed
in my room with no windows 
& imagined the moon
always a sliver, a grin
dangling in the dark.

boys

a bounce castle arrives
in the front yard of my heart.
it's full of all the boys 
i still love but who 
i tell myself i don't.
set my shoes by the entrance
& slipping with socked feet.
i think about being a little boy
at the fair & climbing into one of these.
a menagerie of kids with all their
pig tails & throats. 
whirl of wind feeding the structure.
i wonder how long
i might be able to keep jumping 
before exhaustion. these boys 
are never tired, 
they are always asking 
to come into a poem. 
what i really want
is the same as what i wanted
when i was small. i want
to brush bodies with them.
pleasure exists in 
the purposeful accident. 
eric, with his
curly hair & soft arms.
he held me in the dark
of a dormroom. gabriel 
all elbows & cigarettes.
jack with his sand dollar palms.
one night, we sat on the roof
of his house. we were eighteen
& thought we were old.
the boys bump into each other too.
they don't laugh, they keep 
empty faces & poise their arms
for jumping. i sit on the floor
of the bounce house
& let their movements 
jostle me. i want to ask them
to come lay down.
all of us on the inflatable floor. 
our hearts each like little
shadow boxes. do they think me now 
in a similar corner
of their skin? graze a lip.
a knee made of air. 
don't tell the other boys but,
i'm getting younger each year.
soon i will be a fragment 
of boy & nothing more. 
they already don't recognize me.
what is a boy
but a memory 
of wanting? reach for 
a pirate moon 
or a golden vertabrae.
skin on skin. a chest 
is a splayed prayer book. 
the boys get along with
or without me. 
my carnival heart
with all its boys.

fire poem 

in the days after the power went out
we left the stove clock remained off by 
four hours & eighteen minutes.
everything had been a new dark.
electric tea lights on the counter
blinked like orange eyes. hardly lit anything.
your face in the glow 
of our tiny fallible flames 
deep with shadows. somehow
the train still rushed by,
sent a howl through our apartment.
shadows shoved each other
from room to room. my room
with no windows sealed itself up.
a bruise or sore. speckled carpet.
knees in the closet. hands
on the ceiling. you, shifting
in your own room with
window cracked open. smell of
fire. the buildings that burned
up the street. in some sense
they still burn. who will
put me out if i become those buildings? 
stains on our irises
from watching. streak of orange.
streak of bronze. sink water.
hallway getting longer or louder.
i did not know you anymore.
in the dark, my face dripped 
like wax. your eyes were wide
as quarters. when you touched me
you might as well have been touching
a pile of ash--the skeletons 
of the buildings. i was so close
to letting the air
do what it could 
& there you were
walking the hallway
with your staircase feet.
second floor became fourth & eigth.
soon we lived above the city
in a huge spire. i said to you
"there is the ocean" & "there is
the park" & "there is 
my body on the ground."
no, not the last one. 
we flickered. where would be go
if not here? we said
someday we'll leave this place
& in the morning 
the sun was ashamed &
the clock was still behind.