girls who cheat through labyrinths &
pray to baby's tombstones--

i was the girl who cheated
in the stone labyrinth maze &
the one who told our girl scout
troop that some of the 
tombstones were for babies--
the ones with the cherub 
faces worn by the rain--
6 months, 2 months, 8 days--
we were premature with
our fascination with death
because we played
in the graveyard behind
the old lutheran church--
sat on tombstones-- walked barefoot
on the freshly dug soil above
a new grave-- 
the brick church with the
glass window eyes
overlooked the town
like a grandparent:
slumped & disapproving of us
but still always falling
asleep in their rocking chair
-- the "cemetery hill" it was
known as by everyone from
the children whose parents sent
them to camp in the park
to the kids who thought of
the public pool as their godparent--
we took turns walking 
the stone labrinyth 
just inside
the cemetry gate while we sang
our songs over & over
make new friends & keep the old
one is silver & the other's gold--
i never had the patience
to walk the whole thing
& instead i hoped in between
the divisions-- reached out my
hands to other girls
who ran away from me--
a circle is round it has no end
that's how long i want to be your friend
they had started a rumor that
freckles could be contagious
& they didn't want any of mine--
i knew it wasn't just freckles--
girls are masters at finding ways
to make each other ashamed--
i stepped over each make-believe
wall of the gravel maze 
until i reached the center
& proclaimed i had made it--
to which they told me that it
didn't count unless you followed
the rules-- walked in the lines--
i told them they would get
haunted by baby tombstones--
bewitched by the rain-raw gaping-mouth angels--
trying to fly with stone wings--
the other girls
ran further up the hill towards
the mausoleum & so i sat &
let the stones chew
the backs of my thighs-- 
i decided that i would pray for
the tombstone babies & for the labyrinth
to grow walls to keep me inside
& this time for the circle to find an
ending-- or if not
for us to walk through walls
to find it--
a circle's round it has no
end. 

the un-invention of numbers.

1.
i want to un-invent numbers
if that's what it takes--

1.
obsessive: 
all consuming-- the numbers i pull from
a bowl oatmeal & the tormenting & 
inescapable enumeration of
ever aspect of reality--
i'm pulling the burning
alphabet from the digital
clocks implanted in my forearms--
cut out the hour-hand--

1.
compulsive:
irresistible-- uncontrollable-- 
yesterday i tried to stop time--
i thought maybe that's where number 
are born-- from the incessant progression
of the sun painting a belt
around the earth-- my
legs are pendulums & my body
is in a numerical state of--

1.
disorder:
noun- state of confusion--
when the numbers add wrong & 
i feel the room tip backward--
i count my fingers to remind myself
that i'm still all there
verb- 
disrupt the systematic 
functioning or neat arrangement of--
my knee caps turned into 8
& my elbows were made of 7s--
there are 0s in my mouth
where i used to put words--

1.
what would i use to measure 
myself if i could eradicate
the numbers from this body?

2.
would i touch the tips of
my fingers in a silent ritual to
quantify my foot steps--
i hear myself counting when
there's nothing left to gauge--
i compute the air between
myself & the ground--
between my lips & the next
word that emerges for
the folded calculator of my brain
repeating 0
0 
0

3.
the irony of a list poem
that attempts to dethrone 
all the numbers--
how will i write a stanza?

4.
i crawl into the ceiling tiles
to count them up close
& move on to checking the number
of ribs i have remaining--
i've lost 12 & a half teeth
the number of syllables 
in each apple i eat is 80-- round
me off by ten-- i'll be easier
to remember--

5.
when i was in 3rd grade we learned
songs to sing our times tables
& now i hum to count calories

6.
there are 19 numbers
inside a zucchini-- or at
least that's what google tells 
me-- 

7.
i started noticing how much
the blue veins on my wrists
look like the number 1--
repeated & repeated & repeated--

1.
how do you expect to get
better
if you keep counting--

1.
the number of times i 
have recited all the numbers in
existence--

1.
if i can manage to 
count my body to one-- maybe
we can hold together--

2.
i peel digital clock numbers
from my forearms with a butter knife--
i hear the faint
clicking of each clock
hand set in motion
in the curve of every rib--

0.
1, 1, 1--
i will be obsessive compulsively
whole & each time i count myself
a apart i'll be reminded i have only
counted to infinity once so i could make
it back-- discard the numbers on the clock
in exchange for my femurs--
my tongue funneling the numbers
back into my throat--

1.
drown below 0.

1. 
resurface--

2.
reset back to 1.

for girls who shaved their legs 
while i made pads out of toilet paper--

sleepovers are dangerous terrain
for oblivious bisexuales who 
shave their legs with
their father's razor stolen
from the medicine cabinet-- cut rows
in leg hair like a corn field--
i bled in snakey streams in the shower--
stood bare foot in blood--
Kate showed off her
pink & green razor at the sleep over & 
Jessie waxed & her legs were perfect like
they we were taught from the 
confessional of a cosmopolitan cover--
i didn't believe in that kind of
beauty but i was scared of it--
Kat sprayed shaving cream at us in the 
pink tile bathroom & we laughed--
Jessie un-clipped her bra & declared
us officially in sleepover mode--
i had hide my white bra behind 
the toilet at home in the hopes 
it wouldn't end up back
in the washing machine again & 
when i got my period a week earlier 
i didn't tell
anyone-- i knew what it was but i 
pretended it would go away--
treated my vagina like a scab
or a nick from shaving with an old
razor--dabbed with toilet paper--
sat on the edge of
the bathtub & asked for the blood
to stop--
Jessie bragged about how
boys snapped her bra straps & 
Kat was jealous not of the boys
but of the attention so she suggested
we sneak out to the gas station-- 
over flying saucers of stale glazed 
doughnut we played 
kill. marry. fuck. 
& i never liked it because i knew
whatever partners they gave
me to choose from that none of
them were attainable & my answers would
probably make Jessie & Kate
laugh  like girls do when they're trying
to be approximations of women--
Jessie asked--
what age do you want to lose your virginity?
Kate & her agreed on 16 
so when i said 25
they laughed nervously--
i didn't mean 25 because i wanted to
wait to be married or any other
reason i cited in the moment--
i said 25 because that was
the number of years i calculated that
it would take me to find someone
who could want to a clumsy girl
with rows of corn cut into
her legs--
frantically try to stop the blood
from bleeding through to her jeans--
we went to be without brushing our
teeth but i stayed up to make
sure i would be the victim  of
another prank-- there in the dark
of my friend's bed room
i got up & walked to the window
to open it & feel June drape my
body in the kind of Pennsylvania humidity
that feels like a hot body caressing
your own-- my face was oily &
my white sports bra had made red lines
where it bound me around my ribs.
i closed the window
& returned to the navy blue sleeping bag
between where Jessie & Kate
were asleep & breathing
in & out
so much like the wind
across the corn--

the radical protest of slowing down.

you tell me it's hard to love
someone so much like a zephyr--
i've been learning how to walk
slower for you--
i'm a humming bird heart
& a restless squirrel's tail--
i knock my head on 
street lamps like
the moths-- you wouldn't
mistake me for a swallow
tail or a monarch--
there's nothing butterfly about me--
i leave moth dust from
my wings--
you taught me to be a fast girl
but i want to fall more slowly--
like the watchful of 
maple syrup--
teach me to thicken my blood
until it becomes shortbread
dough-- roll me in cranberries
& white chocolate--
i want you to melt with me in
the oven-- pull me apart all
hot & knees unbuckling slowly
slowly slowly--
until you leave my in
my monkey bread elbows--
we've all unfurled like a cinnamon
roll-- that's what you 
do with my tongue.
you called me chick-a-dee or
blue jay-- i never liked
blue birds because they're too
quiet-- too much solidarity--
i was born with the hair 
& the black beak of a blue jay
i want to be fast & loud
but you tell me to lay on my
back-- the sky floats
above me like a bowl of 
Italian wedding soup-- i pluck 
comets out of it 
just to watch them turn to meat ball
in my hand-- the pasta pearls
lilt in & out of becoming stars--
you tell me to take the wrapping
paper off the sky
so i pull & pull & tear out
cloud & oak branch & airplane streaks 
until there's nothing 
but night beneath--
yet you tell me to keep shredding,
so i pry the moon hastily from
her corner-- she was only a 
watermelon rind cut in the sink
by my father-- seeds taking root
across a patchy sky--
i roll over to ask
how long it took you to
wrap up the sky like that & you
tell me we should stop listening
to the sun-- count time
in each other's mouths--
you tell me it's hard to
love someone so perpetually
tragic as the moth against 
the lamp light-- i bang i crush
i break myself to pieces--

the house falls away beneath my
brother while he sleeps.

my brother & i are bad dream 
people-- 
we wake up from separate beds
& walk down the staircase
to play black jack together 
at the kitchen table while
we wait for sleep to take
us back-- 
there is no dealer & 
both of us don't take winning
very seriously-- 
he says that
last night the house fell away beneath
him again-- wall by wall &
i say i remember it too--
he lives in the attic where
we used to raise blanket forts &
elope the way only siblings know
how to-- we saved rations
of milano cookies & goldfish crackers--
stole the cushions off the couches to
furnish the interior of
the bed sheet canopy--
lightning storm struck the microphone 
poles we'd used to hold up
the sides-- we are lightning rod
creatures--
thunder-clap mouths--
we are the children who can't
help but run away--
we make bets with chocolate coins
from my uncle's treasure chest
above his fridge--
the foil around each confection
is electric from the rain--
he asks if when i sleep
if the house ever falls
away from under me-- 
& i laugh because of course it
does-- we feel
the cracks along the walls in
the living room--
the eternal curse 
of the rift in the foundation
of the house in fleetwood that
we left to sink back into the
earth-- we carry plaster &
rollers & try to work
to keep up with the disintegration 
of the walls around us--
i make over-cooked 
scrambled eggs & we split them
dabbed with ketchup so
our lips look like they're bleeding--
we love our other brother
but he's younger & doesn't remember
what it was like to get lost in
a supermarket on purpose or
how to crawl under the shelves in
the movie store up the street--
we are the kind of runaways
that are only found when we 
want to be-- & we don't want to be
anymore--
tonight he wins the pot of
chocolate golden coins-- 
i had 21 but i didn't want to win
so easily in the last hand--
it would seem like a dishonor to
the night we had spent by chance--
my brother asks me if the house
ever falls apart beneath me
& so we walk up the stairs together
like when we were young enough
to believe in a fear of shadows--
he holds the edge of my shirt
& i pretend like i don't see
teeth & eyes glow in the dark
& under our rusting bunk beds--
i walk him back up the sleep
while the house shakes & shakes--
i tell him it's only the wind
& the pipes cracking their knuckles
like they did when we were smaller
& everything was an action of
the paranormal-- 
today we ignore the ghosts
so they talk louder-- the woman
inside the radiator & the man dangling
from a single chord from the stairwell--
our house is a mourge of all
the things we've ever feared together
or separately-
close your eyes 
i say
go to sleep
& we wake up in separate
beds with the taste of chocolate
coins & foil in our mouths. 

my summer body & the assumption of our 
figures into the clouds.

are you careful when it's humid?
are you drinking enough water
today? have you ever been a stream?
my body gets hungry for summer
& feeling itself evaporate 
from the back porch-- i drink
lemonade from the powdered mix--
pink like knee cap & 
my father's sun burned forehead--
we are the people who 
brand summer harsh into
our bodies-- pan-fry the freckles
on my cheek bones-- i want to
steam here-- like a pot
full of soybeans pulled up
by the roots-- crush rock-salt
in my fists-- oh you know
it's true that everyone inevitably
falls in love in summer--
you know it's coming--
ready to kiss you in the thunder 
clap of the ran-- pinned up
against the torso of a tree--
drench your body in the 
sobbing & gentle rage of grey clouds--
these that were once our bodies--
i walk down mainstream to feel
my hair beginning to float--
this was back before i cut it all
off-- back when my hair fell
down to my waist-- lifting lifting
& then gone-- taken by the clouds--
& next goes my hands & then
my feet-- turning into beads of water--
this gentle assumption
into the coming storm-- we're all
leaving in such a gentle way--
would anyone want to snow
when they can rain with
the lightning zephyr through 
my un-cut hair--
i am twelve again-- i sit
on a log in the stream & bury my
feet in the silt & the mud
as if to try to tether myself
back to earth-- i wander wander
wander lonely as a cloud
& make a phone call into the
mouth of a daffodil
i call my neighbor & we sit
there & say nothing--
wait for summer to take our bodies
& recycle them back into the
rain again-- i want to fall hard
& break.
i am twenty & summer reminds me
of the back porch & the open bed room
window--
i don't believe in heaven unless
it's summer-- this is when 
it's safe to float--
i feel my hair growing long
no matter how many times i keep cutting
it off-- the dandelions blow
wishes into my face while i
slowly slowly slowly
rise bead by bead into
the clouds--

the telescope & the farmer's wife.

he's the kind of man who loves
too many bodies to be a good 
american boy-- paints on the layers
of his hands with a roller on
the porch each morning-- picks
dirt from under his nails at
the dinner table
when his wife folds her hands
in front of her as if to turn
her hands into the halves of
a peach-- her wedding ring 
is the pit in between them--
he doesn't eat from one table--
takes the soup ladle to the
stars from a telescope out
the open barn door--
picks up the rotting carcasses
of overripe moons
& passing comets so that
he can press them & plant them
in the year to come--
if he waits long enough he'll
find one with the stem still
attached-- pluck it apart
& peel the star like a tangerine--
rind thick & callous like
his own hands-- black
blood
of the night coursing at the core--
& be bites because he
thinks of bodies as something
belonging to the sky-- he
would only wish to write him
& his wife as constellations--
he would make the big dipper
her wooden spoon.
she watched him from the house
as he picks seeds for the coming
year-- she doesn't like
how at night the sky
becomes full of the eyes of all
the stars-- she can't tell
if they're all a different version
of god who has decided to watch
that night-- she puts back on
her wedding ring to do
the dishes-- feels herself turning
into saturn-- orbiting the acres--
waking up encircling 
the apple trees-- plucks small
seeds like more meteors to
scatter out into
the cosmos of the soil-- she
plants her world in potted
herbs by the back window
where there has always been enough
thyme-- he won't come inside till
she's asleep but he meets
her under the Jonagolds & the Winesap--
tells her he's sorry that
he can't stop planting
stars instead of soybeans
but she says she does it too--
he throws his wedding ring around
neptune & laughs with her--
the chickens flourish into 
each other & the pigs kick their
hooves impatiently into
the dirt & hay as they pray
to be assumed with the humans
into the celestial dream
where the farmer & his wife
leave their bodies--
she think the telescope
might be his mistress-- the way
it kisses him again
& again around the rim of his eye--
tells him there are bodies so
much larger than a field--
offers him a chance to 
follow the orbitals
of the dwarf planets--
so far & so cold they forget to
grow when they're supposed to
in the spring--
she stands by the window of her
room-- rests her feet on the radiator
while she watches her husband 
kiss & kiss & kiss the 
night sky-- beyond him
only she can see the field turn
into constellations-- an infallible 
mirror of the sky--

this is a ransom note for my body.

this is a ransom note for my body--
if you ever want to crawl beneath
the sheets of your own skin again
you'll listen to me carefully--
don't worry-- i won't hurt her
in a way you could see 
if you passed her while she sat on
a park bench-- writing her name
in sharpie on the wood--
you can try to take her back one word at
a time-- peeling apart rib by
rib in the commas of your
prose-- your teeth fall out 
of your skull to finish sentences
when you run out of freckles to use for
periods-- i'm asking
you to meet me somewhere remote--
she'll pack a suite case to the
moon-- full of stuffed animals &
baggies of goldfish crackers--
we'll camp out in the tent 
your uncle used to set up in the backyard
where the old red chicken coop
used to sit beneath the evergreen
tree-- we'll be far enough away--
this is not just a transaction--
i'm not the kind of kidnapper who
treats his victims like
poker chips-- i like to hold them--
spoon them in the murky quiet of
summer-- open the window & kiss
the hairs on the back of their neck--
you see i don't really give bodies back--
they have the nasty habit of
coming back & back again-- they like
it here-- they like to be opened up
from the rib cage like a clam--
i crawl inside-- make more space
for myself than her
--she feeds me fist fulls of
rotted apple cores-- a potato roll with
peanut butter & thinly sliced banana like your 
mother used to make-- 
i pull sleep from her hair like
a soft spiderweb spindle-- oh & you
you have always looked so much 
like your own blue suite case--
packed & sitting by your bedroom 
door-- take her for a walk & bring
her back to me-- there is no
such thing as a ransom with me--
there's nothing either of
you have left to give me--
other than your own mouths--
i'll kiss you quiet--
come now, let's not be silly--
there is a tent in the back yard
where there once was a chicken coup--
the night is wailing like
a basket full of crickets
& she's falling asleep here with me--
feed me freckles--
pick up your teeth & put them back into
your skull.

my father & brother in the great war.

i wish him luck each time
before he goes--
i send a telegraph of
thumb prints & necco wafers--
i imagine he recieves it while
sitting on the end of
his bunk-- measuring time
with the unwound pocket watch
of our father--
the one i used to take to 
elementary school
to open the back panel
to reveal where god left the gears of
the universe--
only him & i know everything infinite
is really so so so small--
he opens it & thinks of the grooves
as trenches--
his thick metal helmet tips over his
eyebrows-- thin-wire glasses
perch on the tip of his nose--
my brother was drafted into
the great war again--
it's been so many times
that the family has stopped 
counting-- this time my father 
joined up too out 
of nothing more than stubbornness
& a fatal yearning to find glory
-- he paints
signs for the germans--
seated on an orange paint bucket
in a trench my brother dug for him--
the house has trenches now too--
or so my brother tells me
when he sends me letters--
he's added trenches to the
hallways-- to the kitchen &
all the way down to the basement--
sometimes my mother falls in
& my father & brother pull her
out-- she ignores the
trenches & sets the dinner
table 
as if her boys weren't away 
at war-- i take a sort of 
responsibility for this
perpetual state of warfare--
even if it is the type with
candles in christmas trees
& love letters tied to the legs
of pigeons-- i 
sometimes think if i would
just go back that i could
fill in all the trenches
with a wheel barrow of sand box
sand-- my brother would wake up
in his catholic school uniform
& forget he had ever enlisted--
my father would re-tune the strings
of his guitar--
open the back of the pocket watch
& watch the universe from
his own callous hand--
i received my draft card 
for the great war yesterday--
i burned it over the kitchen sink
& washed the ashes down 
the drain only to look
down & see a trench digging its
way through the middle of
my own kitchen--
we share a contagious sense of
war-- sink into trenches--
open the lid
of the gold pocket watch--
slip safely inside.

i am absolutely nothing like a rose

you ask yourself what you're going
to do with me when my roots don't
fit in the brown ceramic pot anymore--
you think it might be time
to cut me down by the ankles
& turn me into a solitary bouquet--
you want to clutch me in your teeth
& dance in the long floor-length mirrors--
parade our reflection--
that's what you've been taught to
do with a girl-body full of 
thorn-- i'll cut your cheeks when you
bite me-- won't i?
this is how you make 
a lady out of us-- i never learned
anything from a mirror--
when you're finally
bored the water in the vase will
have turned to froth & my
petals broken off like
clementine lobes-- i'll smell
rotting & sweet so you
know it's time for a new
rose to make herself into 
a girl for you-- 
i'm here to announce that
i have never been anything like
a rose nor did i want to be loved
like one-- 
i deserve to be loved like
my mother's African violet--
the one next to the sink
so she doesn't forget to water it--
bruise myself onto the counter top
& open dark green leaves
to clutch fist fulls of sun--
you know nothing about where
we keep our thorns--
we're orchid neck & tulip
frown & knuckles hidden somewhere
in the hyacinths out the front 
window-- 
we sip ourselves 
from branches of honeysuckle--
we're tired of living off
of vase water--
i'm absolutely nothing like
a rose-- i keep
dirt up to my waist & my
teeth in my own throat--
i grow un-apologetically 
in the windowsill
if you come looking for me--
i'll be the bruise under your
eyelids-- the other face
in the mirror on the medicine cabinet--
i had wanted so badly to be loved
i was okay with turning red
& living short & slender
in the glass veins of your vase--
no-- i am absolutely nothing
like a rose-- none of us are--
i'm forgetting to water myself--
chewing sunlight from the porch &
sitting bent over
a toilet coughing up thorns--