cat birds

you said 
it's a terrifying thing 
to be a biological being
& the baby in the grocery store
sounded like a cat bird/
maybe it was a cat bird 
spitting grey feathers--
mom crouched down on her knees
rocking the basinet back &
forth while her husband 
scanned groceries--
the tiny voice reminded
me of my brother when he was small
& looked like a pink boiled potato.
we would be rocking him back & forth & hoping
he would go back to sleep--
it's terrifying yes with all 
the slimy fingers & little black beaks
all the feathers & the business of
falling out of second story windows.
my friend used to baby sit &
one of the boys pushed on the window
screen & fell out-- he wasn't a cat bird--
when i was in elementary school i thought
that i wanted kids & i would swallow
the stuffing of teddy bears to try
to make one grow inside me-- wads pulled
out from the floor of my bed room where
on the front porch there were robins 
building their nest-- filling the world
with more gumballs-- pink chewy babies--
i'm 21 & i don't think the world is over populated
but sometimes i think that there's
too many birds-- the bamboo thicket behind
the house chirps at me & i can't see any of
their faces so they could be anything--
sparrows & red-headed wood peckers & a cardinal
or three-- maybe babies crawling on
the forest floor-- learning their bird calls--
practicing-- their mothers had dropped off
for an afternoon of peace--
i don't know how my mom put up with
so many birds in the house-- feathers 
strewn about the upstairs hallways where
you can't leave the light on too long
or it'll overpower the circuit-- we don't
own any bird cages but we do own an attic--
so yes, we were talking about wanting kids 
& we don't want kids, yes we don't want kids 
not like this only if they're queer &
come to our back door step looking for
a place to sleep. the idea of being so
far along in life that i have a guest bedroom--
that's where they can sleep at first &
i'll warn them that i am a selfish person
who probably shouldn't be responsible for
pushing someone off the ledge of a nest but
i'll remember the boy who fell & i'll caulk 
the windows shut so no the baby can't go
pushing out the window screens--
the house is too tall-- 
we've become so so biological 
so epigenetic-- 
the gay & transgender 
cells expressing themselves
& making gay & transgender cat birds--
bumble gum stuck to the bed post
rocking chair made of feathers

 

a love poem for Decartes 

this is a love poem for you
René Descartes because i think
after all these centuries you
probably need one. did you
ever write a love poem? i think
everyone should write at least one
if they want to call themselves
a philosopher. we read something
of yours in freshman seminar & 
i don't remember anything about
it other than you staring into
a fire & thinking which doesn't
seem too out of the ordinary to me.
a few weeks ago a professor said
"we have Decartes to thank for
the separation between mind &
body." i wish you hadn't gone
& done that. sometimes i let
my body run away to made up places
like the grocery store 
or the seven eleven-- i always
comes back but we should go together,
shouldn't we? i don't like
to make assumptions but i think
no one must have ever held you
right if you truly thought
there could be those divisions.
do you trust your body? even after
all the times they moved your burial
site from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont &
eventually to Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés
with one finger missing & your
skull. i'd like to go visit
your skull someday where it waits 
on display in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris.
i'll sit down & wait for after hours
when we can really talk & i'll
ask if you can feel your body despite
the distance. why are you so resistant 
to letting me love you? is it the 
language barriers or the centuries apart?
i want to argue with you for
writing Cogito Ero Sum
i think therefore i am 
mostly because i've heard too many
English majors use it in class discussions
as if saying it again & again could
make it true. 
i wanted to tell you 
i think therefore
i am cobble stones &
the stop lights that change too fast--
that i think therefore 
i write love poems to dead men 
whose skulls ran away from
their bodies-- therefore my own
skull rolls in the backyard 
like a crochet ball therefore
i'm tracing circles on the small
of your back therefore i'm
walking home in the fog & thinking
of ghost stories--
it would be too contradictory 
for me to tell you 
i think therefore 
i am not-- is that what you
thought i'd say? 
contradiction makes for good 
twilight talk, now are you
coming to bed with me?
put your head back on, make yourself
decent. have you ever loved 
a man before? i'm going to coax
rationalism out of you. 
i think therefore 
i'm going to keep you awake.

 

let's make creme brulee & 
eat honey off the spoon  

we always let the honey
sit too long on the counter top
& it starts to crystalize--
if left out too long our
skin will likely become 
diamonds as well--
how boring, i hope my skin is something
more exciting like bismtuh or coal.
we'd pour out honey on the spoon
(the big wide dinner spoons)
& feed each other while 
sitting on the carpet
of the living room where the 
television was selling something--
mouths turning into honey rock-candy--
it reminds me of the boy 
who liked Crème brûlée & how he'd
put a torch to my forehead 
in the hopes that i would turn
caramel & custard in the heat--
he tried to feed me.
only you can feed me & that's because
we ate honey together so i
trust you. did you know
that when you die they can press
you into a diamond? squeeze your
ashes really tight until 
everything that was flesh & boney
is shiny & hard. i'm imagining
a world where they just go ahead
& make everyone into diamonds 
instead of messing around with
urns & big holes in the ground.
Can you imagine if they hung the
diamonds from the trees & when a strong
breeze blew through they'd all clink 
together. graveyards made of honey
& milk on the grass instead
of dew. don't trust boys who
have to burn things before
they eat them-- who crack your 
skull with the back of their spoons.
he was the kind of boy who 
had never eaten honey off a spoon--
the kind who makes you into
a diamond before it's time-- in
his basement-- crafting a ring 
for himself to wear to set you into--
i ran away while i still had time
but i think there's remnants of
his pressure in all my joints--
if i turn wrong i remember what
it felt like to be clasped between
an index finger & a thumb--
i have diamond teeth-- the kind
with impurities-- black streaks
where the earth strained or left
me with birth marks. i don't stir
honey in my tea anymore but you
do & i love to watch it pour out
perfectly on the spoon-- a little 
sanctuary of gold. i want to walk
inside & move slower-- mouth full
of sweetness & sugar. has anyone else
ever lived in a glob of honey?
i'm willing to set out alone, i'm
only wondering if i should 
expect company. i left him 
a ramekin of Crème brûlée on 
the porch like a newspaper, i wanted
him to know that i could still
please him if i wanted to--
so i watch him eat & think about
how he used to kiss me like
my mouth was a spoon-- i had to
do it so i knew i didn't miss him.

 

holes punched in the drywall,

david/goliath & dead flies

 

the walls were asking for it

with their primary colors

& the peach blushing corridors.

sometimes i would put

my ear to sides of the living

room & hear a heart beat

dropped down on the floor of the basement

or was that the stones flooding?

the christmas decorations up

on stilts & young david (slingshot

in hand) pacing with the water

rising up to his ankles.

flies congregate beneath

the warm white glow of

my overhead light.

i’ve thought about hitting

things when i’m angry

& i’ve followed through on it

on occasion. there’s still

a hole next to the downstairs

bathroom where you made a fist

& struck. i don’t blame you.

goliath’s legs

were everywhere, hiding behind

the walls of our farm house.

phantom & thick. ear to the wall

he’d exhale & prickle all the

hair on my neck & i’d have

to go wash myself in the kitchen sink

with the other utensils.

he’s a symbol for paganism

(says the priest) who just happens

to also be behind the drywall.

i put an air conditioner

in the window & now flies climb

through it. i can’t imagine what

makes them want to climb between

fan blades to get into my bed room.

i stamp them into the walls,

bodies crushed & contorted.

it’s cathartic but i feel terrible

afterwards. david hurls a stone at

my head & i duck so it flies

out the window & hits someone else’s

windshield. i don’t tell them.

you tell me i should have let

them know but that’s because you’re

the better brother.

there’s always a better brother

in the bible story.

did i mention david is also a fly

in this story?

he stands upside down

beneath the ceiling lamp,

eyes fixed on me when i turn off

the light to try & sleep.

did you make a hole in

his shins? the giant as tall

as the pine tree in the back yard.

it’s best to take out

your anger on smaller things

you know? you’re going

to knock the house off its feet

next time. pick up

my heart from the floor of

the basement if you hear of it,

it’s hiding from david, it doesn’t

want to feel guilty again.

i smash an opening large enough

to climb into, he’ll protect me,

we’ll make offerings to false gods.

don’t look for us. i’m leaving

you the flies.

 

pythagoras & me

i imagined you a life 
in geometry, living on
a white background with 
black outlined triangles.

there you would spend your
day pacing back & forth

breaking the physical down
into equations, squaring all
different parts of yourself:

your arms & elbows,
hanging little '2's from
your ear lobes & waiting
for the multiplications to
take effect.

really you lived around 530 BC
moving from Samos to Crotone,
(which is on the heel
of italy's boot).

did you have a body made
of white stone like that bust
they have left of you in 
the Capitoline Museums of Rome?

i see you ambling down
the Mediterranean shoreline
rubble joints & pupil-less statue eyes.

i ask you to make my skin 
into stone as part of 
your ascetic life: withdrawing 
from physical sensations to
obtain spiritual goals,
i let you kiss me once before
we begin.

at night do you wonder back
to the land i set for us 
of blankness & triangles
in search or the tactile?

the acuteness of angles
aching in your body as you
turned in the dark beneath
of moon too round for us both.

i read that you came up with 
the theory of metempsychosis
or "the transmigration of souls"

each soul set free briefly
from heaviness:

upon death, souls entering 
new bodies

i see this when i looked
out the window last night
at the sidewalk 

in the glow of lamp posts 
at least a dozen souls 
with L.L. bean backpacks &
camping kits 

on migration 

was it your soul that came
into me?

was that why i noticed you
far off in the distance?

why i made a blank world
for us to measure the 
length of each other's sides.

your father the seal maker 
in his shop, pressing metal
into permanence.

what do you think of it here?

i'll walk us to the shore again someday 

& i promise you can tell 
me about what the ocean 
was like in Crotone

i'll leave the light on
in my bedroom in case you go wandering.

10 minute mysteries

in middle school we had this substitute teacher
who ended class by reading from a yellowish 
brittle-paged book called Ten Minute Mysteries.
the man had hair coming out of his ears & tufts
of grey on both sides of his glossy bald head.
he kept a notepad in his breast pocket. despite
writing his name on the board at the start of
each class i can't remember what it was. 
i keep re-conjuring the image of his back turned 
to us, chalk in hand, as if i can reenact his
name into existence. i was thinking about
this while looking out the window when it started
storming yesterday. the trees throwing down their
leaves in frustration. i wondered if myself there
was something they couldn't remember too.
i never talked much about him to my friends 
in middle school & i think that might be because
i didn't really know anyone in middle school.
i was still trying on bodies. eyes tearing up
as i tried to circle them in olive colored eyeliner
like Jessie & Laura did. touching the smooth plumpness
of my freckled face in the girl's bathroom mirror.
the smell of strange sterile pink soap.
the whole point of the 10 minute mysteries was to
get you to solve the scenario piece by piece as
a class. there were murders & missing diamonds &
sometimes mundane occurrences like broken lamps.
i always wanted to solve it all by myself. i'd 
scribble frantically on the back of a piece
of notebook paper trying to take in all the details.
i never did answer one but the man would take on
my desk & nod & say something like "good shot" 
or "nice try." on days like this i want someone
to write me into that book. maybe as the detective.
i could be the criminal too, it could be interesting.
would the younger me notice myself in the story?
the teacher reading aloud. me standing up from
the grey desk & walking forward into the front cover 
of the book with a great big golden watch on it.
could i be solved in ten minutes? before the buzzer
rings for eighth period. before my hair un-straightens 
in the humid mouth of may. before the gun smoke clears
& the finger prints are wiped from the diamond.
before i leaned over a bathroom sink, painting
the circumference of each eye. are you a girl? 

on a humid night in early June
it comforts me to think of you 
just below the himalayan snow line
on another walk with yourself. 

what century was it when you last
felt lonely? up so high that the sun
releases pieces of herself like pollen.
cold melting on your hot grey fur. 

like all monsters there could
only be one of you. your ancestors
shaving themselves with the pink razor
until they became human.

blended in. worshiping thinning
air. only you feel her growing pains 
& the way her knees split open with 
ice & stone. covering your foot prints,

keeping you for herself. will
you teach me how to live singularity?
like the center of a black hole,
beyond helms & expeditions & oxygen.

for a moment journeying like you
do, without knowledge of the men
shifting for your skeletons. 
their thick coats & base camps.

326 B.C. when Alexander the great 
demanded the body of a yeti as a piece 
of conquest. the locals knew better 
than to try & take from the mountain. 

i'd like to belong to someone like that.
more than a child or a lover. 

a phantom limb. a threshold guardian,
hanging heart beats like flags
at one of the shrine sites on 
her craning neck. lips pursed. 

i love humans too deeply then, don't i?
too much to take on being a second species.

will it ever be so hot this summer that
temperature comes back around? 
cold, snow pouring in the open window. 

 

THE GIANT

this is another time i've
mistaken that NC Wyeth painting
for a memory.
a great giant made of clouds 
passing by a group of
girls on the beach. 
you tell me 
"it's about growing up."
it used to hang in the guest
room of grandmom's apartment
above the wicker end table
& next to the black metal-work bison 
poised on top of the book case.
there i imagined the girl
in the yellow dress
(the one a little farther 
away from the group) 
as you. your hair isn't black 
but maybe it was when you
were as young as her.
her feet towards us, i can
see the stones in them. 
the callouses on your heels
that sink you when you tried
to walk on water. 
i sink too, the bottom
falling out of the creek,
plummeting, bubbles trailing
from my mouth like bread crumbs.
the witch's house is a pile
of rice, fold me over. 
i'm thinking
of coming in when you were
taking a bath, the smell of
lavender & thinking of you 
as a brush stroke waiting to
be undone, saw you wiped
off on the painter's button-up
shirt. running miles & miles 
back to the guest room 
to check you that you were still there.
touching the gold frame & 
feeling the surface ripple.
a lake. bodies bending like
koi fish beneath. 
there's one girl standing up
in the painting. i always
imagined that she was walking
away. that maybe she was ready
to leave. her hair thick & brown.
i want to cut it off with a pair
of silver craft scissors.
i guess i never thought much
about the giant because i always
assumed he wasn't really there.
i think maybe he's both of
us. that maybe someone caught
us on one of those walks up
the gravel road by the soy bean fields.
or maybe up the perkiomen trail
one morning while the sun was
blinking wrens.
i know sometimes i feel like that. 
gigantic & imagery.
you watching me on your knees
in your yellow dress from
the back of the closet that
we don't speak of.
grandmom, hands on her hips,
her hair a nesting storm cloud.
i keep on & pretend no one sees me.
the birds flush.
no earth shakes. the ocean 
folding me in. a pile of white rice.

 

 

spring in Canóvanas Puerto Rico 
is impulsive. sugar cane fields
growing tall enough to thrash-- did you
come forth from the soil like the 
coffee bushes or el platanal?
or did the moon take a human man
for a lover again? you growing
through winter beneath a veil 
of clouds & tired ocean. he went
back to his family the next morning
to tend the goats & the sheep, hands
still cold from the cratered-surface
of her skin. his wife would breathe 
on his hands & wonder what could have made
them so hard like limestones. 
you come forth from el río herrera
run red, dripping with afterbirth,
sinews & veins. the spring has always
been hungry, plunging roots deeper 
into our skin. where does your hunger
come from? your unavoidable need for
blood. like you i have been ashamed 
if it. of craving. of thirst. 
as you walked by night, draining each  
maroon-scabbing creek & stream, moving on
towards the wooden fences of fields.
i believe you chubacabra. i believe 
that you didn't mean to leave carcasses.
first the goats, three pronged punctures
on their necks. on to the cows, who, with
rolling eyes, fell like tree torsos.
maybe after feeding you ran & laid
down on a stone near the brook, just listening
to the thrush of your own heart.
do any of us truly have control over
our bodies? i sit measuring raspberries
by the cup, each approximately 1 calorie 
bleeding on the counter top, our mouths
color murder, do the stains wash out
when you wipe your hands in the supple 
grass? do you scratch at your forearms
with twigs & brush? begging your body to be
less ravenous. over 150 farm animals
around the town area & onward towards
las piedras & juncos. did you stop at
the ocean & wonder if the salt could purify you.
if maybe there was enough to replenish 
the blood you drank. washing your face.
the bathroom mirror an open sore. come find me.
together we can take inventory of  
everything we've eaten. void me. i want 
to feel less guilty. wash berries in
the smooth  metal bowl.  

 

cicadas 

I.
dad says each year the cicadas disappoint him.
their gossip rain stick clamoring outside our windows. 
i imagine thousands in the sky like he wants. 
dense & shifting. a bowl of sun flower seeds.
spit the shells out in the dirt. dad divides his soul 
into parts when he makes batteries. cicada-angry 
in the chests of motor cycles & sometimes cars.
how much further can we sunder ourselves before 
god thumb-presses us back into the soil?
he blueberry-picks the insects from their clouds.
back underground. wait 13 years. 

II.
i find their body husks clingy to the trunk
of the maple tree in the Aunt's front lawn.
dad removes a few, inspecting their tiny blank eyes
& legs poised like mom's knitting needles. he sets
them in little boxes for our rock collection beside
the ammonite fossils & calcite pieces. when he's
at work the next day i go up there alone & pick
up the exoskeleton left behind. i hear it's ghost
throb in my skin & i want to burrow myself. i run
my finger across the slit where his soul escaped
& i step inside. his body is stiff & militia-like.
i open my mouth & a thousand voices fall from 
the ceiling like sun flower seeds.