blueprints. let's go back to another type of beginning-- the one where we walk backwards down the street & watch the houses sink back into the earth-- this is what it looks like to take time backwards-- this is another type of beginning-- one where we sit in a booth at the diner & watch god walk in & order the usual short stack of pancakes with a stout glass of vibrant orange juice-- in it sinks the sun-- he hangs a rain cloud on the coat rack in the vestibule-- god has never been a coffee drinker & from our booth we watch the airplanes land & take off out the window-- like always you fold the napkin ring into a plane-- fly it across the table at me-- in this scene we've yet to be born but we already know we're going to like black & white milkshakes-- we know i'll get the cherry before you-- we know that god is ordering a thin slice of cheesecake & tapping his blue pen on the counter-- he flips over the napkin & begins to scribble & write & we become lines-- mouths-- a gaping eternity in a window & from the counter of a diner on the cusp of nothing god writes the blue print to what would become our home town-- he wrote the clock tower askew in the november wind-- the thrash corn in his breath-- the windowsill i would drop my hair from-- everything set down in blue lines bleeding through a napkin on the counter-- & ever mark is permanent-- he flattens down the wrinkles of his master piece & glances around the diner to make sure no one caught him in another fit of creation-- it's a contagious addiction of his-- the angels joke they should keep him away from pens or soon enough he will have to watch a whole world-- he tells them he's going for a walk when he comes to the diner to write-- it's quiet there other than the faint hum of a radio station lulling songs none of us have had a chance to write yet & the waitress named julie who leans up against the counter & makes herself root beer float with her lunch-- the chef-- veiled in a burst of grease & steam from the grill watches god at work-- he hopes he will have two daughter & that one of them will like his cheesecake & i am there & so are you & this is the beginning no one mentions when we were only the stain of a blue ball-point pen-- a oily smudge from a short stack of pancakes & the planes still take off & we both still want to order black & white milk shakes & when the planes take off they do not yet have a place to land so they collect like wasps swarming in the sky waiting-- waiting waiting to descend--
06/02
it's such a big thing. growing up is such a big thing & in 8th grade we were all busy undoing the love we had drank from juice boxes-- it was a race to become humans-- & it's such a big thing to feel yourself growing so much smaller in such a short period of time-- in 8th grade we read poetry from the holocaust & sometimes a body was a paper clip & it's such a big thing & in 8th grade we took another class on american history where not all the slave-owners were bad & it was still inevitable that the bomb would fall on hiroshima & nagasaki & it's such a big thing-- it's such a big thing to drop a bomb from the ledge of a gray desk-- it's such a big thing to grow up in a cement brick full of pink tongue & tile-- it's such a big thing to undress in the girl's locker room & feel like crawling into the navy blue metal locker to escape the movement of your own legs-- it's such a big thing to become so small in such a short period of time & in 8th grade we all had boyfriends in homeroom even if it only meant sitting across from each other at the gray desks & it's such a big thing to be wanted-- it's such a big thing to be changing-- in 8th grade i took off 50 pounds of my own skin to try to become a smaller human but i only enlarged to the size of the hallway-- the windows could never have held me-- i'm such a big thing now & we thought we would become something but we would become changing & we wore paper clips as an apology to the holocaust poets-- some with empty mouth biographies-- it's such a big thing to figure out how wide we are when we become a word-- in 8th grade i started & stopped a journal at least twelve times-- none it makes any sense but all my poetry is too sad to share with anyone now-- i wrote about brownies & wanting to be a human & wanting to change into something other than a moth & wanting drop myself like a bomb from the window outside the biology room in 8th grade we were so old & we knew everything about the future & becoming a mountain-- in 8th grade we dropped the bomb again-- i snapped a blue lunch tray to trade it for a hallway of a body-- walk through it with be & i'm such a big thing-- i'm such a big thing that i haven't stopped walking through myself i'm such a big thing that i can neglect my one single duty which is to become a human-- in 8th grade i crawled out into my locker-- i folded like a paper clip-- i apologized for everyone who had never been apologized to but it didn't help me become any smaller-- i am i am i am such a big thing--
06/01
"let all things have their places" -ben franklin i'm sitting in the back seat of my own car at a gas station in new jersey-- i've been wondering how many places i am going to have held in my life time-- they're in my pockets-- annoying stones in the heels of my shoes-- what are we but a collection of our legs carried down too many streets named after trees-- chestnut & maple & elm-- knobby with contorted trunk wrists grasping at my ankles-- i pluck off the street signs & sling them over my back so more people take the time to get lost-- there are so many places i can only hold on my tongue-- there was the pizza place we stopped somewhere between here & virginia-- with a name like Maria's or Mario's or Georgio's where we got slices on paper plates & chewed through wobbly stools-- it takes an immeasurable amount of time to leave a place & still keep it dormant inside you-- i've never been good at nostalgia & good bye-- i've become so thin & so wide-- there is still a iteration of my body who spends each day leaning on the railing on the top deck of the dinner cruise we took out on lake erie as children-- her dress is too tight & her leg hair is prickly-- she feels like she's still sinking & i don't try to take that away from her-- it's good to remember being heavy & still-- so you asked me on those wobbly stools if we had to go back to our places-- the ones we knew the street addresses to-- & of course i said 'no' & we ate & we left those lover's bodies seated on wobbly stools where they were made-- there is nothing permanent to a place-- they have long since torn down the park pavilion where i split a twin root beer popsicle with you & let the syrup drip over my fingers-- the ghosts of the bees drill into the ground & the floor becomes angry-- we weren't meant for so much departure-- so many toes to drop like bread crumbs-- i don't want to leave you here but if you wait for me i'll remember you & we can sit here again in the carcass of a vehicle drinking diet soda like arsenic-- like melting popsicles whose spines we used to make our elbows-- this is where we compile a map of ourselves with no street names & no beliefs other than nostalgia-- yes we all have our places-- until we have more & more & more & i fold myself into the patient crease of a slice of pizza & you confess your love to me-- & love lives in places-- in wobbly stool legs & all the unlived forevers we promise when we stand still for too long--
05/31
as i was born in a margin-- my earliest memory is laying akimbo in a margin-- i was conceived before my parents knew each other's shoe sizes-- i was written in the margin poetry of my grandmother who made use of all the white spaces surrounding the crossword puzzle-- it is sunday morning & she drinks coffee & looks out the bay window at the tree that would grow into a shoulder for me to rest on when i would someday visit my great aunt's house wearing a soft body-- she writes lightly--a graphite kiss-- "And my grand daughter will cut her hair" & so i was made-- a notion-- a metaphor-- later my other grandmother would write out the thickness of my legs in a stack of recipes on index cards-- pull this string-bean hair out of the margins. oh here i rest-- here i found the dark comfort of existing only as a poem-- there are nights when i remember my own conception-- i look for a newspaper-- tuck myself in the square of a crossword puzzle-- close the lid on myself until all is quiet & black-- we don't thank our grandmother's enough-- she was a writer they always tell me-- & when i write down your conversations on napkins & pause at the hem of the stairwell to remember the first line of a poem unwritten i remake this body she started with a pencil in a margin-- aren't we all the bodies to emerge from someone else's idea? i look out the same bay window -- i grow thick thighs & plant string bean hair-- i am the grand daughter who fits in small places & likes to feel loneliness fill an empty room-- so i lay with my hair cut around my-- my grandmother with her legs crossed-- holding me-- & calling calling calling me daughter--
05/30
when i am/was a girl when i am/was a girl i had orchids grow behind my ears & i heard you like the sound of wet fingers on the rims of wine glasses-- you couldn't teach me how to keep my fingers from singing-- i un-hemmed my skirts to rip the seams off a sky line set out for sneakers-- were these strings shoe laces or bows? what do you know about wearing toad skin? what do you know about eye-liner? girls laughed as i painted waist lines around my eyes in sapphire & evergreen & bruising plum-- i learned to wash my arm pits with hand soap in the sink-- taught myself not to eat with both hands-- mastered chewing small bites of naked salad-- i have/had always been scared of my boy knees-- that they would give me away-- so i wear/wore leggings & cut myself free of brown pony tails-- i use the old scrunchies for sling shots-- pluck out stars like stones to shoot at my neighbor's windows at night when i get to feel like romeo-- my leg hair has often grown in to a place to escape to-- the rain forest on the walls of my bedroom-- i get to sleep there & no one asks about my boy knees-- i cut patches to plant tomatoes & peaches-- press the pits into the palms of my hands to remind myself how much flesh we can grow back in a day & how many razor rows i have tilled over the prickly hair of my knees in an attempt to make a girl-- have/had been so much like the neck of the orchid-- listening in a soft bell-- drinking softly from my feet-- i had/have watermelon painted nails & smudged mascara on my index fingers-- i have/had acquired a skill of disappearing into leg hair-- they'll find you & ask you what you are & i'll reply i have/had been a girl but i m proudly the ripped hem of the pleated skirt of the skyline-- the soft tongue of an orchid-- & the untamed thicken of my knees
05/29
oh these buildings-- i remember us as a vacant & beautiful building-- the kind that teenagers crawl into the eyes of at night & sit on the floor to tell all their uncle's ghost stories-- they speak fear as a for of exorcism-- here there are nooses dangling like intestines from the ceiling-- they try to swallow themselves but get knotted in dry cob webs-- they undress each other there after leaving their canvas shoes inside of the front door-- make a home in our dead walls-- this is where you once cut the bottoms off my roses so that they would live longer in the vase-- where you leaned up against the frame of the window & listened with your whole body to the chickadees in the twin evergreen trees we never strung a hammock between- this is where you wiped your feet on the porch-- where we kissed collar bones like shoe horns-- put ourselves on each other's feet to walk up into the attic where the floor boards always sounded lonely-- the spaces we enter with each other are somewhere else-- there is no building for me to leave my shoes inside the front door-- no window to trace a shadow cast by your body-- knock over the vase of flowers only to find the water itself was a myth-- the roses grew from my own mouth-- swallow thorns like cob webs-- i made this building from pictures untaken & the words we never wrote down-- i won't pretend to remember in what kind of why you tried to love me-- i won't make this another poem about love-- this is a poem about the buildings we leave for people-- the eyes smashed in by baseballs & the nooses hanging from the ceiling where we drank the water from the vases-- drunk off rose feet-- wear me as shoes next time you walk up a staircase-- wake up with me in a knot of lonely floor boards-- we have become one of those houses-- the ones that everyone & no one has been inside-- where the picture frames are askew & you wouldn't recognize this building as ours if you were to walk by-- barefoot & looking for your shoes-- i kept them here as a memento-- sometimes i wear them but they're far too big for me to walk in-- & if i'm correct you keep your own empty building for us-- maybe you even visit there & behind those walls i am still hugging you around your neck like a scarf or maybe i'm sitting in the windowsill waiting again for me cue to fall-- the buildings we leave vacant for each other exist so that when we remember we have a place to take our bodies to mourn everything we could never have saved quite the way it happened-- but after all-- you & only you gets to decide how you want to remember yourself & everyone around you-- i like that image of you in the window-- a shadow-- a boy who listened with all his windows open & his shoes waiting inside the front door--
05/28
gasoline rainbow girl-- broke my shins off from licorice sticks-- red vines strung up to my knees-- pour me into a gasoline rainbow-- that's the type of girls we are-- the type of accidental beauty that only comes from kneeling in a puddle of water--i like to remember how i got to grow up collecting beneath truck bellies in the rain-- i learned that my skin takes bruises & fire. on the way to taekwondo with my blue belt coiled & venomous in my lap we stopped at the same gas station every tuesday & thursday when i was 8 -- crushed rock candy & packaged my body in a root beer barrel to toss over the edge of niagara falls-- the ultimate metaphor about human curiosity is our tendency to want to throw ourselves from high places & live-- when mom & dad weren't home you & i would ride the couch cushions down the attic stairs-- bruise our knees like echoing puddles of indigo gasoline-- out of boredom sometimes i would take out the clear blue lighter from the top drawer in the kitchen full of half-opened boxes of birthday candles & we would sing to ourselves before letting years all loose in the fire-heads of untimely candles-- what kind of water are we made of that let's us become such dangerous rainbows--? let's play in the puddles in the driveway-- the thunder is crying open the sky in the back yard-- laugh with me like knees & sun showers-- we knew we were gasoline children-- laid down on the back seat at a rest stop on the traditional five hour pilgrimage to chingoteague the family took each july-- you tell me that you think you like the way gasoline smells & i agree but we both know it's weird-- we watch the people wipe their hands on the thighs of their shorts as they escape the matrix of bathrooms, snack islands, and brochure kiosks of too many places to travel to-- when i'm alone i think of us & how we have the habit of returning to our gasoline rainbows-- sleeping under the bellies of cars-- riding kayaks in faded brochure photographs & eating our own shins on the way to karate-- what do you remember about bruising? what was it like to drop from the top of the waterfalls in a jars made of root beer glass candy.
05/27
catastrophic waltz i swerved because i mistook the shadows of the trees for bodies dancing in the parking lot last night-- hips bumping carts in their corals-- laughing with the thin hair of plastic bags-- they suffocate each other-- sit in the infant seats & race up & down the parking lot as if it were still the grocery aisles-- their catastrophic waltz a wish of death by headlights-- it was that kind of illusion of bodies that reminded me of us & how so much of our lives is a collision of our shadows on a windy night on the cusp of irrevocable summer-- i have been thinking about god a lot lately-- i have been trying to put a face to an idea-- sometimes i think of them as the breath that hurtles our shadow bodies into each other through the limbs of the trees-- aligns his spine on the double yellow stripes of the parking lot only when it's ten o'clock & i'm at the supermarket in an attempt to feel less lonely-- he the neck of a street light-- bent orchid-like & full of light-- he is the silver-dollar moon pressed into the palm of the night sky-- dangled to stretch our shadows-- taller & taller-- reach & become another tree torso waltzed in the window-- pull out your hair in fist fulls & toss it behind the supermarket like feathers-- the ice cream is melting in the back seat of my chewing gum-green toyota but we're running out of time to connect the dots in the stars-- i image that it's a sort of of constellation puzzle-- threading your fingers through the stars far enough & you can construct your own vision of god-- she wears stars like bells on her hips & believes in living in collision-- oh do you remember when i asked you if you believe in god? i think we all dread the question & it's unwise to try to love someone without feeling each other's discomfort with the brevity of our shadows-bodies dangled lightly like wind chimes in the trees-- if i were to be honest i would tell you that somedays i don't believe our bodies separate enough for me to answer that question for myself so i ask you again do you believe in god? & our waltz is a catastrophic evasion of the question-- & god tilted her neck in the street lamp & god chuckles is the crinkle of plastic bags-- & the ice cream is melting in the back seat-- i tell the shadows it's time to go home & they pirouette beneath the belly of the car-- next time you dance stay out of the headlights-- i like your body as it is-- un obliterated by light-- do you believe god makes our shadows?-- stretches them & uses the window to make them collide & sway on the side street-- the ice cream is melting & so is your shadow & so are the trees & dropped is the moon from a shaky palm god we both firmly want to believe in--
05/26
in a tangle of sky-- we broke off in bird wings caught in a tangle of sky-- the clouds cough feathers into our lungs-- breathe & descend-- the fibers sticky in our mouths-- i have never forgotten a moment of the summer & i love the lightning storms in Pennsylvania so much that it hurts-- a part of me most close to my spine was struck there-- i sleep in a dream of fireflies-- listen for when the they'll snap their backs open in a glimpse of light-- they'll make flutes from our hollow bones when we finally fall-- we are the birds who dart between the trees-- we are the porch people & the lightning rod bodies who channel our acid-blood origins-- crack my veins again in lightning-- feel a body erase in thunder rapture-- your tongue was a mallet to thrum on the tympani set somewhere beyond the sky-- you felt the toads emerge again from the soil to eat headlights-- this is road we die on-- double yellow lines distorted into bolts through a cloud-- you felt the grass drink with its legs-- you felt my body turn slick in the down pour-- we drank each other from the puddles-- kaleidoscope colored from gasoline-- the best place to watch a storm is from the left bay of the garage full of warped bike tires & lawn mower mouths-- we are the type of bodies to run out into a storm-- rush rush in the whirl of water-- the ocean makes a home in the puddles & we swim-sky-bird-- i'll be the first to be struck by electricity because i've been tempting god longer than you-- so when the water stops falling i'll walk with you up the street to the park where the trees make the rain keep going-- our father will push us on the tall tall swings until we take flight again-- only to singe feather & bone-- i have lightening for veins & thunder caught under my tongue-- this is all i have left to speak--
05/25
behead your nightmares the lies we tell our therapists are a different type of truth-- i have learned a hatred of the pity of couches-- they look at you like stained glass windows-- glossy-eyed & brown leather like the movies she says behead your nightmares & the woman in a taught bun & square glasses hands me a pocket knife while i lay back-- we're here to cut a circle behind my ear & look inside-- i don't like couches anymore so i sleep beneath them-- his voice can't find me there & i hate the face she makes the first time i tell her i wake myself up in the middle of the night to begin my body in a symphony of OCD compulsion-- turn my elbows into trombone slides on the carpet-- my forehead the bell of a trumpet-- i sleep like the reed of an oboe-- restless & unfinished-- & i hate the way she looks at me because she's handing me a knife & telling me to behead my nightmares but there's nothing to cut open anyone more & sleep is only a memory free of the strangled cry of a digital alarming clock shrieking red into a black room-- so i tell her i don't play trombone anymore-- i tell her i count moon light instead of calories-- i tell her i don't know why my knuckles have grown dragon scales-- i tell her each night i wait up with the pocket knife & wait for the darkness to fall like an eyelid over my room so i can cut off it's limbs & kick it back to the other side of the moon-- i sleep under my bed now-- with the resting on my chest i let nightmare undress me-- i hand him the pocket knife & give him the option to do what he sees fit & some nights we take off my skin & share it like a throw blanket-- other nights we play oboe-- crawl out onto the windowsill & yearn for the sensation of falling-- i like it when she smiles-- when i lie & i tell her that i sleep longer now-- when i lie & i tell her i'm doing so much better-- & so she asks to see the knife & i tell her i keep it under my pillow for when i need it most-- the lies we tell our therapists are the teeth of our fears-- the alien beauty of our death under the bed-- the pocket knife still fresh with the blood of trombones--
