bleaching heaven 

we didn't expect the water,
the angel telling me to hold my breath
forever now, backwards off the pier.
after all the clouds in picture books 
& all the feathers stuffed in mouths,
how dare death begin with held breath.
as if my ankles had weights, i sank
easier than ever before-- opened my mouth
but there was no air left to escape from me.
i should have guessed that heaven would
be water; the coral reef below,
angels with their fish eyes & yellow fins.
too fast for us, darting by with their 
own important errands. 
a few feet away though the reef screamed
barren & white. crooked branch bones--
the curious body i have had to walk there.
we had no business bleaching heaven,
but of course we did it anyway. i see
my uncle in the driveway tripping & spilling
the bucket of bleach on his hands. the splotches
of white that burned onto him. the reach,
taking handfuls of color & offering them
up to god to keep, hoping that maybe
he, of all clown fish, will keep 
it all alive. he stuffed himself in 
an anemone where none of the humans can go.
out in the bleached fields i wander &
run into ghosts of myself, the version
of me taken by ripe tides in chincoteague 
or mistaken for a stone in the lake. 
they have long hair & i don't try to cut it.
under a staghorn coral i search my pockets 
& find the notebook you gave me. 
the ink all blurry, bleeds blue into
the water around me. i speak to the whiteness
& ask if there is anything i can do to stop it.
no answer. god covers his face,
makes his way over to a land where he can
be a middle-aged man again. dries his 
face with one of our towels in the hall closet.
sprawls on the sofa & flips on the tv
to take his mind off of it all. 
a bucket spills on me & i there's no
where to try to scrub it off. i let it take
effect-- feel the arms-- the branches 
growing from me. a hunk of white coral.
if you end up here, lean up against me.
it's so cold down here. i need some 
of your sun yellow color. empty your 
pockets. the paper clips. the rosaries.
the star you stole before you left. 
the bleach will spill, as it does.

are you a good protein substitute? 
don't eat soy it'll turn you
back into a woman, you know,
like mom with her hands 
in the pink-wormy-tendril ground beef
98% lean. the fat is what makes
it taste good though. the cows stand
in the fields but they're actually
made of plastic. recycled, of course. 
they don't blink. they never blinked. 
these are the cows we use for vegetable patties. 
insides made of kidney beans &
their teeth, chickpeas & pesto.
they lay down. labor day is somehow
always overcast. you can't convince it otherwise.
rain drops fall & sizzle on
the grill while we burn our
hands plucking out the hot coals.
we have to save them. keep them safe.
there's only so much fossil fuel.
leave the cows alone they're just
trying to decompose like the rest of us.
they try to trick me, pointing at
two different meat balls, 
carnivorous roulette, which one is real?
& the pre-maid cows cover their faces
in shame, they can't watch this.
i eat the meat ones by accident
& the rest of the day the dead cows 
spots migrate beneath my skin--
grey cloudy & vengeful. death by
microwave we flatten the herd-- 
the medium rare horizon
i want it to bleed. i'm not judging 
you for eating meat. i used to like
the texture in my fingers-- rolling
patties between palms. skewered & 
marinated. my hands like
cow tongues-- rough & salivating. 
not enough paper towels, not enough
coals; each growing hooves to cross
the street up by covered-bridge road.
i've lost trust in those other cows.
they're too alive to be trusted. 
i saw one breathe. i pried a yellow squash
from its mouth. grind me down to 
unrecognizable bits. the soy beans 
in my blood, are greening me-- an hourglass
shape. burger sigh & hiss. she pinches
of pieces off my hips. mom, this is meat.
mom, it's pink inside. it's all pink.

10 hail marys worth

& for your penance
monsignor said across the breakfast
table. 10 hail marys
i held the confession script in
my hand along with the morning paper--
a headline about russia-- my mother 
in the other room typing the news--
she listens to a radio muffled in
the corner-- reporting on the world outside.
i hate that, how he always
gives me hail marys & i want 
to know if it is because i used to be
a girl (briefly). emptying my pockets of
peace-be-with-yous-- coin mouthed,
i lay staring at the white ceiling again--
an orange note stuck to my forehead--
a parking ticket with a little envelope
to mail in to the city. i'm not paying
20 dollars just for falling asleep
in someone else's bed. it's the law
you know? when mom worked in the city
she'd come home with tickets & she'd 
set them on the table with the other 
bills until they ripened & tasted 
like grapefruit or tangerines (still sour)
slicing them with a ball point pen--
if you eat quickly enough the flashlights
would miss us, peering in the kitchen windows--
the police officers with their in discernible
faces & their teeth made of red & blue light.
talk less & they'll move on. the ticket
requested another 10 hail marys but
i'm not going to say them. they can't make
me pray out of guilt. i want to pray 
for the dead relatives, nudging their bodies
one step closer to heaven, that's how it
worked yes? we all get to take up space
with enough prayer. i'm never going to 
get there though, i think i'm content 
getting tickets when i close my eyes--
it makes me feel wild, checking to see
if every black car is the police. 
i don't even trust the old trees anymore,
they share secrets. they snitch. 
occasionally i sleep beneath them though,
coiled up like a fist of roots. i say 
this is a space i want to take up,
this is mine. this is mine. this is mine.
monsignor nudges me with his shiny black
shoe as the sun comes up. he says
why don't you want your sin to go away?
& puts a rosary around my neck along
with another parking ticket. 
saint mary rolls her eyes & shoos him away.
tell me to go back to sleep. says 
the hail marys for me, only this time. 

manna 

god makes a lot of noise in the kitchen,
dropping the steel bowls-- clang of measuring
cups & the groan of the garbage disposal.
he woke me up in the middle of the night
with his antics, up making manna. 
why my kitchen, then? i asked & he just
kept working. i can be sure of one thing,
it won't taste like egg plant. my father doesn't
like eggplant so my mother never makes it,
though, sometimes she'll slip it sneaky
into a casserole or a stew. god doesn't use
the crock pot. god uses the oven &
a stove top sauce pan. i had no idea it
was so involved. on the stone basement floor
are waiting the israelites in exodus.
they talk in hushed voice when i open
to creaky door at the top of the stairs,
all looking up, crouched on their knees between
cardboard boxes of christmas 
& halloween decorations. some of the little 
ones pluck out ornaments & dangle them from 
their fingers. i asked them nicely to 
put them back. dad, of course, watches god
cooking, a big metal serving spoon in his hand.
did she make slop again? he asks, sleep
talking again, thinking god is my mother.
god ignored him & added a pinch of cumin
(the only spice i know that tastes like its
colors). so tell me then god, what does
it taste like? he doesn't answer, rolling
the pastry thin. chopping the onions thin.
the eggplant in half. the apple into ribbons.
he takes spoonfuls as he goes so i scooch
in closer, tearing a corner off the sheet 
of golden dough. he tells me that to everyone
it tastes different. i hope that for my
father it will taste like eggplant.
my mother holds one of the purple plants
in her arms like a baby, cradling it
back & forth until god bathes it olive oil
ready for the pan. the manna tasted like
cotton candy & cuticles. like chewed aluminum 
& sliced tomatoes. like the unripe peach 
you once fed me in your backyard. god laughed,
tearing a corner off for himself and saying
yes, it is an acquired taste.

jupiter

we sighed too loud & our breath
scattered jupiter apart into thousands
of little droplets. rosary beads on
the spider's web. she counts for
us, for girls who love girls who
love boys who like girl-boys who love
their bodies out of mirrors. a hand to
the glass-- i helped myself walk 
out from the frame & told the other half 
of me to sleep under the bed for the both
of us. i said that we should probably
do the work & put the planet back together.
we started with the red eye-- hoping
its pieces would be easier to find--
blinking at the bottom of the refrigerator
next to the dried out baby carrots.
i scolded the eye how did you get here
&, of the course, the eye berated me about
having exhaled so close to the weakest planet.
i didn't mean to but we both, deep down,
wanted to know what would happen to jupiter
under pressure-- how many fragment 
the planet would break into. we break
pretty cleanly in two. still sleeping
beneath the bed-- a nightmare strumming
my temples-- ukulele thunder. 
with the eye back together we hung it on
the wall in the vestibule so that it
could watch for intruders-- not that anyone
comes around here anymore. i warned you
of the flecks of jupiter in the ice cube
tray-- scattered in your sweating glass
of lemonade. i love you because you swallowed
the shreds-- no second thought. we'll get
jupiter back in our own time. when you 
finally went to bed was when the guilt set in.
i took a stroll out to my car in the parking
lot to find i left the inside light on--
beads dangling from the rear view mirror.
i puzzle-put them back up past mars who 
pulled his red baseball cap over his eyes--
rolled over. eventually i promise you, jupiter
i will find them all, all the little pieces.
these things take time. these things take time.

prokaryotic 

coming out in ribbons-- i tie my
DNA in bows around my wrists to
keep track of it all. a ribbon for
my mother's stone feet. a ribbon for
a pile of beer bottle caps in the 
rocking chair that was/is my father.
you assured me that there is no way that
i'm made of prokaryotic cells but
i think there's a possibility:
i'm citing the the chaos of my body
as evidence. i peel back the skin 
like the sliding open of a window &
inside everything's in knots; the DNA
in broken Celtic knots like the ones
i would draw on graph paper-- 
the Ouroboros  (these snakes biting 
their tails). singular celled-- bacteria--
beginning-- i go back to before complexity
& wriggle into the couch cushion--
ringing like a cell phone-- call me
call me & leave a message written 
in my ribbons-- a roll of 
grocery receipts-- almond milk & 
honery crisp apples-- i forget how
to eat-- what with the lack of a membrane
bound nucleus-- the membranes don't
do anything anyway-- in the end there's
not much that can keep us bound together--
i prefer this life-- we touch cell 
walls & you're so warm like playdough
kneaded all day long. come inside
& take a handful. there's too much
DNA anyway. there's enough OCD 
to arrange your freckles into rows--
there's violin strings in there too 
for the instrument i've given up 
playing over the years. i'm scared 
even though i seldom admit it. i'm scared
i'm going backwards too fast & the world
will start over & i'll be here with
the ancient cell structures-- the video
tape spitting film from his side.

the old woman who lived in the shoe

licorice veins unpeeled from ankles,
i knelt to take my chuck taylors off. 
some body parts are re-usable-- make shift even. 
my shoe laces are too long so i have to
wrap them twice before knotting them &
each time i do i hear my first grade teacher
scolding me again for just tying them in
too many knots. we'd hate to come undone.
i don't know the little rhyme anymore
about bunny ears. shoot the rabbit &
hang the pelt from the closet door--
laces-- thick as boas-- their girth 
crawling on the bedroom walls.
the old woman who lived in a shoe,
the one from the nursery rhymes-- she knocks
at my door again. i tell her she should bother
my father considering he has much bigger feet
than me. a little girl again i plant both
soles in one of his black converse-- the laces
growing teeth to dig into my calves. 
i cover my mouth so as to not wake
anyone up-- there's always someone sleeping.
the old woman is followed by all her children--
as we know, she had so many that she didn't know
what to do & i surely didn't know what to do either.
if i'd opened the door they'd have rushed in--
no stopping them. they need a place to stay for
the night. the canvas tongues admonish me
for not being more generous. acid holes in
my father's white socks are where i escaped
from. he sits on a rocking chair suspended 
just above the ceiling. he wears the same shoes
he did to all family occasions-- the versatile
black chuck taylors. i tell him that the day is
over & both of us can take off our shoes--
he stares forward-- rubbing his hands across 
his sore feet. i catch his ankles when they fall
off & hand them back up to him. the last few months
i think my feet have been growing-- the shoes
rejecting them-- slinking back into the closet.
i assume they wanted me to let the old woman in.
one of these days, maybe. i just don't have
enough room. there's just not enough room.

the foxes are having a wedding

turn off the flash
i said to god as he snapped a 
picture of me pulling back into
the driveway last night. he's so
damn sentimental sometimes with
the thunder & the polaroids. 
i wasn't looking very photogenic,
but then again, who is?
all yesterday, he knelt down from
a fickle cloud, telling me i should 
visit home more. you didn't notice
even though his voice is booming
& nothing like my father's. that was
when you said that sometimes they
say "the foxes are having a wedding"
when there's sun showers like that.
adding that they also say "the devil
is beating his wife." i prefer the
foxes but i assume that both are
happening at the same time. back in bed 
with the lights out i asked god what
he does with the photographs. he lamented 
that despite his best efforts to plan 
the lives of humans that he regretted 
how short he made things. he snapped 
another photograph & the clouds rumbled
like boulder aching against boulder.
he said he was just getting to know
me & already i don't say my prayers &
already i don't pose for pictures.
still, he pins the photographs on the
wall at the far end of his bedroom above
his desk-- a wall infinitely tall & wide
& it's still not big enough to fit us all.
he frustrated me, peering in the window
what with all the things he could be doing
to fix the world. i often hear people
my age ask if there is a god, then why
is the world like this?
he's out there, i know, trying to make 
me last longer. afflicted with nostalgia;
that's where i get that from. 
there's so much right now to take in.
after all, the foxes had a wedding today.
the devil beat his wife, which was,
as we know, not out of the ordinary.

water under the bridge

i went to sit on the rocks 
beneath the overpass 
where the perkiomen trails touches
the river bank. took off my flip flops 
to step between them barefoot--
grey mud on my toes. i was thinking
of all the times we'd been there--
me & you & you. the august afternoons
freshman year when we clapped gnats
out of the air. the boys who 
threatened to drown me. last time
i asked if you wanted to dip your
feet in the water & you said "no"
which was terribly disappointing. 
i only like boys who wade in rivers
& girls who catch crayfish in their teeth.
that was me. i found old dresses between
the rocks & over head the sound of
cars driving over the bridge echoes 
against the water-- a wail-- a yowl.
the asphalt is your fault-- the kind
of heat in heaven. underneath 
the bridge it's cool. pulled the
altar out from the trunk of my volvo:
took matches from my pocket & lit one candle 
for all of us. a runner's feet 
crunched across the gravel trail behind me.
is there no where to be alone?
yes we will find one-- someday. it rained
too much & the water was wild & brown.
i put my feet in, but mostly just to prove
to you how lovely it would have been.
i pray by the candle that there's
no river monsters today-- seeing 
rows of teeth blinking just out 
of sight. i pray that if the river
eats me that it will at least me quick
about it-- that it will remember us.
a little ways down we start to congregate--
the memories coming down to the river
to baptize themselves for good-- wading in.
i don't try to stop them but i watch as 
all my different bodies submerge. 
i'm moving to another state in 10 days.
i won't need those anymore-- the bodies
i mean. with their skirts & floral dresses.
kissing a stone, mud on my mouth
i snuff out the candle with my thumb.
a 16 wheeler howls overhead. i ask
god to keep the bridge steady-- just
a moment longer & if it were to crush me,
to make me a crayfish in her teeth.

I.
fingers turned to white meat-- the breading
crumbling off on the back seat of
Uncle Rich's yellow Ford focus. grease 
stain through skin-- through paper bag.
at home on  the kitchen counter he 
urged me to dip my feet-- wade 
slowly into the plastic sauce containers--
lips metallic & peeled. i dipped fingers--
licked clean. spoonful & spoonful.  
chicken-nugget kneed we picked each other 
up to dunk. careful with me i'm full
the bees humming vulgar cayenne & vinegar. 
tripping into the salad-- white dress damp 
with mayonnaise. paper 
napkins pleating calla lily. be a careful girl
if you eat. 
II. 
my forehead broke out in a rash
the day after confirmation-- the oils
on my forehead frying under church lights.
i broke the breading off my body in the shower--
removed from knuckles-- bare white chicken
breast underneath. less calories that way.
i usually lie & say i don't like
dressings or sauces. she said i did that too.
salt & pepper under finger nails. 
there were two cruets of honey mustard 
dressing on the table & the bishop told me to
look up at him, which was odd, because
we were sitting in the restaurant booth & not
a church. i refused so he poured them both 
over my head. at least none got in my mouth. 
in the bathroom i washed off my face but
the sink was dressing too. porcelain bowl
brimming honey mustard. give in.