hot metal ladders into the
bee-sting sun

i am the ghost body 
swaying
in the big-kid swings-- 
we all thought we could kick
above the trees &
we were all scared of loosing
control of flight & flipping
over the metal bar at the top--
all of our fathers pushed us
higher & higher & higher
& we closed our eyes & for a moment
were hot & deliciously angry 
enough to be the sun--
they have been taking apart
the park i grew up in bone
by bone-- & with each vertebrae
of monkey bars pulled loose we're
losing chances to crawl
back up to the sun--
i was 6 the first time
i climbed all the way up the
rotini metal slide-- cork
screwed into the jugular of
the fever sky
& i felt trapped-- hot
throat to slide down on or
the metal stairs the whined
like the faces of snare drums
when you walked on them--
drummer girl made a rhythm
to rock each cluster of metal bone--
the merry-go-round &
the straight-teeth jungle-gyms--
above me the sky was angry 
like the fresh wound of a bee
sting on my stomach & i 
felt like i could just stay there--
yank monkey bars from the clouds
& sway on rungs over
the entire town--
take a rest on the roof-top 
of the house where we used to live
on main street-- the one
with the little balcony where
my father taught me how to 
count the lightning's distance after
if roars--
they taking apart this play ground
bone
by stubborn bone & when i return
the metal slide is nothing but
an obelisk & the trees mourn the
roller-skating rink
where all the stray cats in the town
used to live beneath & the
park still wears the scattered tattoos
of all its lovers on back wall of
the band shell & in each cement bathroom
stall-- on a tree near the baseball field
my brother & i carved our
initials with a dull pencil into a wooden
poll holding up the wires feeding the stadium
lights-- we wanted to be part of this
place-- wanted to remember what it
was like to be able to be tall
enough from the top of the slide
to dangle so precariously above
town-- our father called down from the
foot of the slide & told us we could do
it-- we could let loose our bodies
& be swallowed--
the sun was angry & alone that night
that the park lost most of its bones
& now when i return i mourn
her body with the trees & the ghosts
of all the brothers & sisters
& fathers & babysitters & bathroom stall
lovers & band shell children attempting
to last forever--
write me a song for snare drum face--
i'll hum it when i climb to sit
on the bar above
where the ghost children sit
in big-kid swings-- push me higher
push me higher
i want to be part of the sun--
i want to slide down
your throat like a bee sting--

 

DVD player phone call

Oh no really—

Yeah—ya—

I can try—

Yes—now hold on—

There’s a green button

What’s that

Okay

A green button

Go back and hit where the tray came

Out

Hit the black box

The black box

Upper left hand corner

Tell me when the tray comes out

…

…

Okay

Good

Push the tray back in

Hit the green button

Up on the right hand side

Ya see it?

Hit that hit that-

No

Okay but hit that

Got it?

Okay—

No—not that remote—

Okay okay

Honey

No

Okay

Bye bye dear

yes i’ll call then

the thief of left socks 
  
if you're wondering where all
the left socks go
i'm here to confess anonymously
that all these years it has been
me all along--
it wasn't an easy choice of
profession but someone
has to do it--
you see i learned mischief
in my father's rocking-chair
stories & i found that i could
live everywhere & no where 
all at once--
i open old yellow phone books
collecting mildew on 
front porches & pilfer 
addresses-- ball them up 
tight & swallow them like wads 
of pink chewing gum--
these places to become my homes--
i follow my instinct of place to
i sleep beneath the restlessness
of another dryer--
why the left one? you ask
because it's the first question
most people ask if they have
a chance to meet me--
i don't have a real reason but
i think that absurdity is
the only & best reason for
action-- on nights when i'm feeling
alone i will take out my back pack
full of all your left socks &
i'll lay them all out under a 
belly of moon--
there is, of course, the polka-dot
tube sock from michigan &
the one with the schnauzers
from illanois &
i line them up in tandem
like waltz partners--
my home state of pennsylvania 
has delivered me many 
white & black fruit of the loom 
with the heel chewed through
from standing or from 
walking up & down a gravel road--
i like to put them on &
feel my own heels 
naked in heavy august air--
summer has the best months 
for sock theft-- people
are more careless-- 
i swipe addresses
off mailboxes while everyone's too
busy finding orion's belt every night
because it reminds them that
there's a waist big enough to
lock them into a night sky--
you wouldn't notice me 
if you passed by me in the 
local library--
i'm always sitting by
the pile of atlases with a 
puffy back pack brimming 
with left socks tucked nicely away
so as to not give away my identity--
i page through book after book
of oceans-- of rivers i try to 
untangle from the pages
& stuff into my pockets--
it's most thrilling to collect
all the places you'll never go to
just like i collect the lives i'll 
never get to live in every left
sock i take from the 
hearth of a dryer--
it's never been out of malice--
i never meant for you to feel uneven
or uncertain but this
is what it take for me to feel human
again-- if you want to join
me i'm spending the night
beneath your dryer in the clamor 
of the machine-- waiting for the right moment
to take just one for the collection--
if you want to trade i've been
looking to part with this toe sock
from new york--
its reminds me too much of sleep overs--
& too much of addresses that were nearly 
too heavy to swallow--
as for me i go barefoot--
i got to feel 
the dew-softened soil beneath my
toes-- dig my whole feet into
the sandboxes & the ocean bites
each of my toes one at a time--
someone else like me took my left socks a
long time ago--
i hope i meet them someday--
maybe i will crawl under the dryer
to find them there too or we will reach 
for the same atlas of middle eatern
europe & blush & pretend not
to know what each other is doing there--
next time you lose a left sock
don't think of me--
this is our secret-- i promise to
keep it safe-- to wear it in honor
of it's foot--
to look at it only by the lonely
light of a moon when i lay them all
out to dance along & together
& so wistful in their emptiness
 

 

the evacuation plan

when i was in middle
school & trying to find
a way to evacuate
my own body i would 
walk around the block 
past the soy bean fields--
once in awhile
no cars would pass by & 
no one would make rustling 
in their backyards or
populate their porches with
knees & dirt-road feet
so i could pretend it was only
me here-- that everyone else
had found somewhere else to go--
i guess i just wanted to
find a way to tell you
that if everyone escapes
their bodies i want
you to leave me behind--
i want to be the last one &
i would start by just
walking down the back road again
& listening to the naked necks
of all the old trees whose 
skeletons rotted from the inside
out-- 
i feel myself growing hallow
without voices to fill 
the empty corridors up to my 
wrists-- i husk
myself-- scoop out
enough to be used as wind chime
for only me to hear--
i'd pretend the dotted
yellow lines in the middle of
the road were a balance beam &
i would hide all the places i
never thought i would fit into--
crawl inside the fridge & lay face
up on the second shelf next to 
a pint of blue berries
that my mother would have forgotten
about before the evacuation--
inside everything would be bright &
cold.
i'd wonder what it was
like for everyone 
to leave their bodies behind & 
where everyone had gone without me--
i would wish i'd kept you with me--
just you.
together we could repopulate the
earth with the sound of our
bones turning into wind chimes--
fall slowly like the trees who
gave up their bones-- we'd make
the kind of an unpredictable 
song spurred on by emptying 
yourself out the windows--
each sill filling up with voice--
the voice of everyone holding their
breath & waiting for me to give
up my freckles like a handful 
of sunflower seeds--
in the back yard i would listen
to the ghosts of the pumpkins we tried
to grow that one year--
they would make jokes about how
strange a relationship i have with 
other humans--
a limbo desire to be totally
& utterly alone while also engulfed
in a mouth full of every word ever spoken
into a poem--
i want to know if i'd still write poetry 
if it was only me to haunt this body--
just me here walking ghosts back
into the soy bean field--
i think i could keep writing even
if i forgot what all the words
we'd ever shared had meant-- written
in a language of empty femur &
vacant porch my poetry would
fall heavy out the windows
of the house & shatter in the driveway
like all the promises we 
made to sleep quickly & alone--
this is the evacuation plan--
stay with me-- we can unlearn what
all the words mean & i can teach
you how to depart from a body 
& how to trick the soy beans
into laughing like bells--
we'll bring dirt-road feet back
to the porch & wait
from everyone to return--
coming back to your body is like 
slipping down from the second shelf
in the fridge-- a carton of
blueberries in hand--

 

it's not the kind of thing we talked about

--my mother said when i asked
her if they had picked out
any other names for me other
than 'sarah'
i guess i had imagined them
with at least a sort of
list-- crossing off ideas
until they circled my name--
maybe it took them hours--
i thought-- passing around
my tulip face into a word--
i asked what i would have been
called if i was born male & 
they said my 'william'
which would become my 
younger brother's name-- 
we were each
other before we shared bath tub
water--
what i didn't ask was 
what they did talk about
if they didn't talk about my
name--
i've tried to figure it out
from old photographs 
of them holding me-- a tangle
of clothe & soft skin--
in the ones from my baptism 
my mother clutches me like
a loaf of French bread--
i know you never expect someone &
maybe they were smarter for
not trying to expect me--
they certainly didn't hope for
an anorexic poet who sits in 
windowsills some nights feeling
heavier than a star but
still somehow in flight--
i trace rings around my body--
the orbital paths of invisible moons--
i like to think that maybe 
my parents thought
about what would happen if they
planted me in the backyard
behind the house on franklin street--
maybe my mother bet i would grown
into a fig tree like the ones 
that had grown from 
her grandmother's veins &
my father would bet i would become
a pear tree--
like the fickle one behind my great
aunt's house-- growing
green pears on a whim
& letting her balled fists rot
into the lawn--
maybe they would
argue over a plot of top
soil & resolve not to plant
me for fear i would be neither a
fig tree or an apple tree
or a pink balloon like the
ones tied around the mailbox 
to walk about baby girl--
i don't want to ask more question--
i prefer my answers from 
pictures where i am small
& neither myself or someone else--
maybe even then i knew i had poems--
but not enough words to put
them into air--
maybe i tried & only clumsily 
crumpled napkins with my slimy 
baby-hands--
when i cried i wonder if they
talked about how quiet i would
be if they had let me become
a fig tree or a pear tree--
i wonder if they talked about
sitting me in a window sill or
worrying about me drawing
the moon closer to the windows
when i was asleep in the crib
with the tall wooden bars--
i have asked my brother if he ever
thought much about his name--
he shrugged & said 
it was just a name & i joked
that it would have been mine
if he weren't always late--
he tells me i can have it & 
i laugh because i already have
enough names & still too many 
to choose from--
my parents planted letter 
in my mouth-- held me close
as a loaf of french bread & 
took down the pink balloons 
tied to the mailbox the next morning
when i was soft as a rotting
pear fist & free
of original sin--

 

anonymous girl & re-gifting the sky 

by the time you pull the 
wrapping paper off the
sky i will
already be someone else--
you will catch the gift tag
when it falls
down from a cloud--
you might mistake it for
a gum wrapper--
it's from
the anonymous girl who
poured the steam off a tea
kettle to make the night
blush grey--
i kept the stars hidden
so you 
would have a reason to 
take me back.
in the city i don't have
to be anyone-- i can
order a coffee from another
notch in the shin of
a sleeping stone body
& pretend like i have always
stopped there-- 
i can put
more money than i should in
the tip jar as an offering 
to the buildings to ask
them to keep sleeping-- we
need a few more thousand years 
to use their skeletons as a city--
i sit at the counter & 
look out the window like
all people who write poetry do.
i'm stuck because
in my mouth everything rhymes 
with your name--
when you go to bed in june
i'll re-wrap the sky for you--
this time with red & green christmas
print paper & when you open
it the sky will turn
to snow around us--
there will be no falling here--
only waiting for the ground 
to stop snowing too--
you still won't know me
& i'll still drop my names
in pennies on the sidewalk
for other people to find--
oh what are we but anonymous poetry 
on the backs of our own hands--
unwrap the sun i left for you--
peel off the rind-- each
smile in a little juicy clementine 
lobe-- everything good
you have to unwrap--
to you we are still anonymous
& i'll probably recognize 
your face only from where
i sit in the coffee shop
i'm pretending i stop at everyday--
i go here to write love
poems for people i'll never meet--
someone has to be no one today--
it's a terribly brave
things to wrap up the stars
without knowing who
might unwrap it &
who might find my name
at the end of a poem they're
accidentally writing late 
at night or in the morning
when the grey june sky turned 
into snow. 

 

spoon-fed crucifixion

when i was in high school
my mom sent me to jesus 
camp-- but i was already
too far gone-- i had already 
performed my own
baptism in the flyleaf
pages of a notebook--
drank ink instead of wine--
i liked my own skin too 
much to believe in a god
who was disgusted when 
i touched myself-- a throat
full of blanket-- at the beginning
of the weekend  
a priest stood
up in front of our group
holding a thick crucifix &
proclaimed to the men
in the room that if they
weren't ready to give
THAT-- then they weren't
ready to have sex-- he moved
to the ladies & explained
on that we shouldn't
believe boys who tell us
they would give THAT for
us-- if this were true
then none of us would be ready 
to love-- i don't think
love is the type of thing 
anyone can be ready for--
there's not a qualification 
for it-- some of us love 
like nightlights & other ones
of us love like goldfish--
indifferent & staring forward
into the warped face of a 
mouth we fall into--
we played this game in partners
where we each made our own
bowls of ice cream & then picked
a slip of paper from a jar
instructing us how to eat it--
mine told me to feed my
sundae to my partner but only
after they had fed me-- 
the girl i was paired with had two
strawberry blonde pig tails &
her sundae was covered in 
oreo cookie crumbles--mine
with gummy bears & rainbow sprinkles--
she fed me slow & then i followed--
we tried not to make
eye contact with each other
& we nervously laughed at the clumsiness
of each spoon full--
at one point she stopped before
the sundae was done & we sat in the quiet--
the leader explained that love
was like how we were feeding another 
person a sundae-- that the best
type of love would be when
partners fed each other at the same
time & how each different little
pattern represented a different type
of flawed human love--
there was one group next to me
where one person didn't
get fed sundae at all--
that night we shared prayers
& partners & the pigtail
girl said she prays every night
that young girls & boys have the 
strength to stay pure-- i told her
i pray for homeless people because
it sounded like something i should say--
i went back to my room & sat at
the wooden desk-- exhausted & restless
& undeserving of someone to
feed me ice cream with gummy worms. 
i began to write myself a letter--
i thrust my hips into a page--
unwrapped my tongue in letters--
i wrote myself into a body again--
a body deserving of lust--
determined that love wasn't something 
i would be fed by someone else--
love was something i had swallowed
when i was very young & was in the process 
of pulled from myself--
they teach young girls so little
about unfolding & how to 
be your own spoon-- this is my 
self-crucifixion-- the kind of love
with stigmata is the love i eat
while you watch me-- 
this is where you wait while
i am busy becoming untangled 
in blankets-- 
i don't want your prayers for
my purity-- i want your prayers for
plastic spoons & boys who don't
think love his anything to do
with the violence of a god
who loved his hands full of nails--
how many times have
you used the back of a hammer to peel
yourself free?
i sat there & wrote myself into
a letter that i crumpled
& tossed into the trash--
in the morning we met by the
lake with the Franciscans in their
brown robes & prayed old words over
the water--
our father our father
or body-- my body i eat from
a plastic spoon-- 

 

 

the june after the bridge floated away

one march
my brother, my neighbor dylan
& i built a bridge across the 
creek behind our houses--
it was a Frankenstein of rotted limbs--
twigs-- rocks & the biggest 
thighs of the trees.
little worms scrawled over 
the backs of our hands as 
we peeled the wood from 
the dirt-- beetles scurried & screamed
armageddon.
foot in front of foot we walked on 
water to the other side
where we mistook the old limestone 
kiln for the throat of god--
this is where we made a shrine
to our childhoods--
strung rosaries out of plastic beads
& mulberries smudged in our
fingers-- wrote on the walls of
the cave with sharpie-- 
we didn't know any profound 
words other than our names & dylan
teased that i had always wanted to
kiss him--
the creek takes time to grow thick--
each weed reaching taller
through the months of spring--
& before summer gets too rampant
we still had time to 
explore in the waning months of
elementary school--
escape into the wet land around the
creek-- 
this was where we swallowed 
ourselves & set all the words 
used against us at school on
leaves to float them back 
down the stream so they couldn't
be used to hurt anyone again--
this was the year dylan's father died
& my brother & i watched
the ambulances congregate outside
his house like screaming beetles--
we learned there
are certain things you 
don't say sorry for
this was the year the thunder storms 
took away our bridge after years
of service-- this was 5th grade for
me & before school let out we 
all watched some man from
the borough plant
a sapling at the edge of the
stream as a gesture of truce
to the nature we
cut
back to build the strip
mall with the CVS in it--
the stream took back the logs
& the twigs-- the thighs of
the trees took burial 
in the mud beneath the water--
& we returned to find there 
to be nothing left but a few 
scattered trunks--
it was just dylan & i
so we baptized our feet in the mud--
left our socks on a the shore
& waded up to our hips--
on the other side we sat 
on buckets again
in the throat of god--
dylan coughed his mother's cigarette
ash & there was no where to
be swallowed to--
growing up isn't a moment--
a come-of-age-dream
where everything aligns & you
are on the other side of
it all--
growing up is crossing the 
creek with a bridge & watching the
bridge float away
with the words you left on
dead oak leaves &
growing up is a process of
taking no one with you-- letting
yourself get swallowed & learning
there are times to apologize 
for nothing just because someone
has to say something--
i want to say sorry to dylan now--
sorry to my brother for
not building the bridge
stronger-- i was oldest--
that was of course my job--
somewhere there is a neck of the stream
where all our leaves are still waiting--
their backs covered in bruises
& somewhere the beetles returned
to the undersides of tree
trunks we dislodged & they 
mutter to each other about
how desperately humans try to
make everything they
make last forever--

 

what is the storm running from
this time

what is the storm
running from this time
on those
thin lightning-strike legs
that kick at the skyline?
our houses turn into bowling pins--
knuckles of balanced dominoes--
each footfall is another
step closer to our chimney--
the artery-- a telephone cord we
pulled from god's throat
to pray into--
we talk like radio show hosts--
god doesn't ask questions or pray 
back to us--
i have never been scared of 
thunder & lightning because
she is more scared of us
than we are of her--
spends her life time speeding-up
in an attempt to escape
her own destruction-- watching
the ground evacuate under her feet--
she wonders what it is about
her that makes everything shutter--
sometimes i feel like her--
a storm with unforgiving feet--
it's not her angry electricity--
it's the frantic sprint
& catastrophic qualities of
my own escape-- my arms 
spread the length of the road--
i connect my house
to the quilt patch of soy bean field 
tucked 
behind the water tower--
i fill the space under my
bed with my organs before i 
go running in the grey-- wrap 
them around bed posts-- try to
stuff the pillow--
i always need more space--
i'm making space under my skin 
for worries & metal spoons
-- there's no more
room for stomachs or
veins-- i take 
them out on the bed room floor
while my wrists snap like 
distant thunder-- here i come again--
thin legs kicking at the earth--
strike down the crooked rooftops--
shout into the chimney--
here i am as frightened 
as the storm running from herself--
looking for my places to hide my
veins where they won't just
become blue static in the hair
of the willow trees along
the edge of the farmer's market--
look at my hands full of
earth & husks--
my bed post
was also my chimney-- all four of
them--
don't be scared of me please--
i fill so much of a room
it's hard to keep me company--
i know my legs are loud--
i know it's hard to listen--
count the seconds after the flash
& that's how close i am--

 

1999, for carole
(maybe to arouse an awakening for poetry)
-love tom

this is a different version of 
the story-- in this
life i fold
chocolate wrappers into
the tightest squares on my 
end table but never toss
them in the waste basket--
in this story i nod to the titled
hat of the night light 
nearest my half
of the queen sized bed--
i eat books like 
fun size milky-way bars or 
cream filled hershey's kisses
only when i'm alone & not
attempting to fold myself
into bed with him--
during the day sometimes 
i take a moment to lay on
my back in the middle of the living
room & i imagine it as a biplane
falling from the ceiling towards
me-- i re-write my will
in my head & i leave the jewelry 
box to you-- my mother left 
me a necklace with one ruby
missing & it reminds me of us.
i don't wear the necklace
because he says he feels
like the remaining two rubies
are glaring at him & says i should where
the necklaces he bought instead--
the one with the sapphire & emerald
in the shape of some sort of
"forever" heart.
i hate new things.
i want to rust 
like old poems crawling free from
their silver wrappers.
i wish you would stop leaving me books
& writing in the front cover.
i think if he saw your handwriting
in all the red ink
he would know i'm irrevocably in love
with you.
i don't want to be careful--
i want to be precarious.
i want to have to wash
the pillow cases when you leave.
i live by looking forward to 
other people's birthdays-- 
i distract myself-- this year
my michael asked me to make
those chocolate lava cakes you
like-- you know they're from a box-mix
right? i keep telling myself
i'll try a "real" recipe but
i don't want to disappoint anyone--
maybe he'll change his mind
& we can have cupcakes--
i love candles in cupcakes even if 
they are box-mix--
if i make enough birthday cakes 
& light enough birthday candles
this year we can skip me turning
older & pretend
you're giving me a book of poetry
for no occasion at all--
just as a lover would 
on made-up anniversary--
i tuck the book under my pillow
& unfold myself like 
the edges of a reese's cup wrapper 
while i wait to share the bed again--
he gets in & takes the light from half the room 
if you're going to keep reading--
do it downstairs
-- he says
so i click the switch on my own lamp
& lay facing the other wall--
i was just paging through 
--i say
& close the book again--
i regret to say i find it hard to
read much.
the first page of most books is
good enough for me-- i like
to imagine an ending-- the endings
we imagine are always better
than what someone else can write--
oh you don't know what it
means to be awakened, tom,
it is a sensation that only grows
when i turn off a the lamp
& your words on the inside cover of
my books turn into the branches
of veins up your wrists
when you wrap me up like your very
own hershey kiss--
next time write in black ink
& we'll awaken together in
the rusty mouth of a dead poem--
he reaches over & touches my arm 
& i flinch because for a moment
i thought it was you--