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--

the memory of your body
in my lap

press your body 
into my lap again
one more time &
i'll pull your six hairs
through my fingers 
& call you lover--
your stomach all
echo with a song-- i'm
reaching for a note
deep with in your stomach--
you let me dismantle
every piece of song 
you ever try to keep for yourself--
you're a martyr like 
every one who loves too much--
you tell me to finger you 
c-chord again-- without a capo
this time-- you want to be 
open & you like the way
my thumb presses up against
the back of your
neck-- you ask if
i will out-grow you & 
if i love you like
the resonance that
murmured in your hip
bones when i took you back
to the coffin--
laying down you think about callouses
& what it would be like
if you were in love with someone
who wanted to make
a life out of laying with you--
i am a fickle musician--
who buries instruments
in the back yard under
the pine tree--
the crooked mouth piece
of a trumpet haunting
the staircase with a ghostly--
bent-brass version of taps--
the cracked reed moaning of
the oboe-- the same piano
key played on the heads
of the buildings on 
main street that jut out
to leave silhouettes on
the bruised skyline-- i
use your body as a tool
to paper machete love
songs for boys--
i thump your chest with 
the back of my hands
under a canopy of 
firework & untuned august--
falling out of love 
is as loose as your six hairs
slowly lilting into
dissonance-- un tune
with me-- strangle 
yourself with a capo--
this time i'll lay in 
your lap-- carve my
hips out of wood--
keep the chords knotted
somewhere in my stomach
for your to reach in
& yank from my 
six quivering
strings.

& other love poems to girls named sarah

i am the name you write to
when you're too nostalgic to 
write her's again-- 
the place holder
the eternal princess of a 
blank space 
& a name you've been forming
since the first time you
saw someone kiss on a bench
in the park
where acorns fall like
fat drops of rain--
you write me love letters 
like a grocery list--
the enumeration of every
mark on my body you have wanted
to carve out a space
for yourself--
has no one taught you
how to love someone yet?
lately all the love
poems every addressed to 
a girl named sarah have begun to
collect on the concrete back
step of my house--
there's no address to write back
to so i read them to
an open window as a form of
exorcism--

1. 
people can be like windows--
let me crawl through you
on my knees-- leave
the keys under the doormat
i want to come home-- sarah 

2.
i'm sorry, you always deserved
more but i still think about you
when i order grilled cheese
at the diner on eighth street-- sarah 

3.
sometimes i think the cat
is looking for you-- then i realize
that she's just watching the cardinals
out the window & fantasizing about
a mouth full of feathers--
i realize i just wish i had
someone else to miss you with-- sarah

4.
when you're not home i sit
in your chair-- i'll never tell you
that-- sarah

5.
i'm scared it's to late to
tell you i love you after i forgot
your birthday-- i bought you
chocolate-- the kind you like
from the ice cream shop
with the big plastic cow-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
i think about you during
geometry class-- sarah

8.
do you remember me?
i wish you got my letters--
i guess you wouldn't be able
to read them all stuffed in
the top shelf of my desk-- sarah

1.
i knocked over the vase
but i bought you a new to
sit in the window--
it makes rainbows in the light-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
you help me remember the 
Pythagorean theorem
because i think of the exponents 
like your bows-- sarah

2.
i eat alone now
& sometimes i get breakfast with
my brother at that diner--
you always liked him-- sarah

3.
i want to put the cat up for adoption
but each time i try
it remind me too much
of mornings with you-- sarah

3.
i'm not sorry anymore-- sarah

5.
i love you can laugh
at the way i forget you-- 
it reminds me how selfish i
can be-- sarah

6.
i hurt you-- sarah

7.
i wrote you name & erased it
in the margins of the notes
for the circumference of the circle--
i could help but imagine
with you i could somehow spread
myself so thin that i could
cover the entire face of the earth-- sarah

6.
you each chocolate covered pretzels
even when it's warm & they melt in
the wrapper--
i hate how you like the stains get on
your jeans-- sarah

1.
leave the window open--
i want to come back inside--
i miss the curve of your salad forks-- sarah

6.
i'm sorry-- sarah

3.
i don't want to 
forgive you but i keep writing
this letter to try to be sorry-- sarah

2.
do you still order grilled cheese?
does she have a name or
are you in love with yourself?-- sarah

1.
people can be like windows--
shut & latched & foggy--
you're the type of window with
an electric candling glowing
from a dark room--
i love you more if you keep
the window shut-- don't let
me back in-- i'm only here to
watch for a minute-- 

1.
i want to say your name
& for some reason 
i just keep calling you 
sarah, sarah, sarah
i think that had to have been
your name but
it sounds louder every time i say it

1.
sarah-- this was 
always written for you

dandelion girl.

you mistake me for a flower.
they all do.
i don't want to waste my time 
anymore asking you what
it would take to be one--
i'm a dandelion
& i have no other names.
i'd rather you call me
a weed than a lilac--
i don't have fangs like
a rose or lips you can
press like a tulip--
this little girl who 
killed the grass--
i cut my hair scruffy 
as a worn tennis ball--
my leaves crinkled
dragon tails-- thrashing from
a gap in the pavement--
i break stone-- break side walks
hold hands with another sister
from the other side of the parking
lot-- we were made for this kind
of contagious radical love
whose petals cough sugar 
into the cool dew-- 
did i fool you?
i take pride in confusing
young children who don't 
like it when their parents 
insist that they not
collect us-- 
you don't put dandelions
in the vase son-- 
vases are for
flowers-- the type with
lips & cheeks &
petals that blink to
the kitchen table like
eyelids--
we bow for the belly of a 
bi-plane--
you little boys wanted to
pick us anyway so
i smudged
pollen under you nose--
there was never enough
body here to become a
bouquet-- 
still my roots grew & grew
until driveways
beneath me snapped 
like graham crackers--
churned back into dirt--
this is the breaking of the bread--
this is our dandelion bodies--
this is where
our heads
fall off into the grass--
where we feel our faces
pulling away from
ourselves & we come
apart-- we come
apart in tiny propellers of
the same bi-plane.

the sinkhole beneath the kitchen table.

there's a sinkhole beneath
the kitchen table.
it swallows
family members like uneaten
green beans--my grandfather
was easy because he was
only a mason jar full of
ashes & the golden
handle of a cane--
this easter is the smallest
holiday my family has ever
witnessed but we 
still don't acknowledge
the hole under the table.
if we did-- that would only
make it more pleased--
the key is to ignore
these things-- pretend
you didn't watch your
grandmother slowly pulled
from the white chair--
she gripped the edge of the table
with her red-manicured
finger-nails clawing
to hold on--
she couldn't put up
much of a fight because the
hole is swift--
it's precise & it
knows when it wants to
engulf something--
it chews the memories left
in our bones--
gnashes femur & fork
& knife--
leaves more empty chairs.
joey fills 
newly vacant seats at the
table with stuffed animals
& plastic dinosaurs
for where our family members
used to sit--
my mother doesn't agree with 
me that because
i think that the china set is
cruel-- smug & too gold
for us-- we've never
been a family for china--
i don't understand why 
we need to set so many 
empty places
at the table only to watch the 
people sucked down
beneath us-- we have
never asked much about where
they go-- it's always been
more about the exit.
sometimes it leaves
their shoes.
my aunt's modest 
red heels still
wait by the front door
as if she's coming back--
each show 
was spat one by one
into the air when
the rest of her body was
consumed--
i keep a white plate 
because things are easier that
way-- twirl a fork--
take bites of thick & 
buttery air between us--
we use the poinsettia 
napkins-- 
unfold them on our
laps like we're at the tavern
again & billy & i
order chicken fingers--
i steal the red cherry from his
sundae--
i look up to see it's only
me & toys 
at every other chair--
i check to see
if my mother is still stirring
a pot
or if my father is holding
a glass of diet coke
& staring out the window
towards the garage--
i shovel a mouthful
of air onto the fork--
drop the china plate 
on the speckled red floor & 
i watch
the sinkhole nibbles
away at the shards--
it's gentler than i thought
it was--
i can't help being hungry.

on brief human achievements of flight.

who was it who brought you flowers?
the crocus-- the jonquils
pressed in between your leather
journals on the end-table--
the lamp wears her hat 
askew-- holding onto the rim
like a woman promenading 
along the edge of a glassy lake--
you took your words in tangled
fists of ink--
raw fingernails to 
dig stanzas from the white
of the page-- 
do you still wake up
haunted by the rain
falling on the keys of your
type-writer? did
you funnel men's words
down your throat like
you were taught to?
held them long enough 
in your stomach for
them to become a child--
there are different ways 
in which humans achieve flight--
there was the plane to San Francisco--
the paper folded for flying
that she sent to
you across the apartment--
there was the typed lines
of men kicking knots 
into your intestines--
& there was-- of course-- 
when you turned inside out--
white of a hospital robe
your blood wrote the garment into
a page-- fist to dig &
to uproot a child from
the page of a journal--
her name leaves you notebooks
empty like wilted
crocuses-- lavender & white--
the remind you of 
the skin of children or
of your loved who
flies paper airplanes 
across an apartment to 
someone else--
you're empty enough to
come to new york-- the
air on fifth avenue gets
swallowed by snow
& cigarette ash-- you don't mean
to still love her--
you don't mean to your
poetry in couplets
but your thoughts end in twos
& the window is open--
the pages are alive & breathing--
you hide them under your pillow
so no one care hear the
mouths you're hiding
& the window is open
& the lamp tips her hat
& the window is open & 
you catch a paper airplane
from the sill--
& the window is still open--
there are different ways
in which humans achieve flight--
you build wings from crocus--
folded yourself into an
airplane to fly
three stories down
to the street below--
typed your body
into the pavement 
like a glob of rain.

when you father asks you to go
for a ride in the blue jeep.

when your father asks you to
go for a ride in the blue jeep 
you don't say yes--
you just follow-- 
crawl inside on all fours--
choose how old you want to
pretend to be--
you wear jeans with
the knees ripped clean from
kneeling by the stream
catching tadpoles--
you both live together inside
a terrarium that was once
your bedroom--
you wear your kenpo uniform with
the jacket un-tied
& you keep your hair short &
brown & slick with
august sweat--
he keeps the top down so
you can both become part of
the wind--
engine hums with
the throat of a tambourine--
together you make a radio 
from the cicadas--
you want to join them &
burrow deeper
& deeper into the corn fields--
you listen to him
when he tells you about the 
farm house they tore
down around the corner--
how naked & how menacing
the empty earth has become--
you tell him 
what you remember of
the airport & watching the yellow
biplane taking-off while
you & him ate turkey club sandwiches
at the Airport Diner--
you stole the pickle spears
& could never finish your milkshake
while
he folded the paper napkin rings
into airplanes to
fly across the table--
you notice he took off
the rear-view mirrors--
the road disappears behind you--  
the jeep only drives forward--
it is a forgetful kind of god
without a face or a rudder
to steer with--
your father & you trust the machine--
pray a hymn built from 
the collective melody
written my the falling rain--
you felt the hole in your
spine weeks before
the bottom of the vehicle
started to rust out--
you felt your own body 
metal grin when you 
stumbled forth
from the garage-- seatbelt-less
& unpredictable--
you didn't tell your father
or anyone else--
it's an easier task to 
feel your skeleton rust
& bend alone-- 
you listen when he tells you
the jeep has a hole in 
the frame-- the road behind
you shatters into a mist
until you stop at a 
bent in the road--
you believe him when he says 
he's going to weld the hole
in the frame of the jeep--
you drive
off the road together--
feel the holes in your own
spine growing--
when you father asks you to go for a ride
you follow him until there's 
no more road & the jeep 
digs itself into the tall talks of corn--
you wear a jean jacket--
you hang your hand out the window 
& try to catch yellow
bi-planes in your fist.

billy flash & other names i call my father

as far as i know i own
my father's only remaining band
t-shirt-- 
i stole it before i left for
college from the attic--
the cardboard box was 
nestled between a folded
stack of Genuardi's supermarket 
aprons & my grandfather's
ashes we never bothered 
to bury--
my family are people
who don't unpack themselves 
much-- we pile the spaces under our
bed-- toss old shoes 
to the back of the closet.
when i visit home i always
pick up my first pair of 
Chuck Taylors & put them up
against my shoes to see
how small my feet used to be--
completing the ritual i 
put them back-- cover
with the curtain of a prom
dress & my white confirmation
robe--
i wear my father's band t-shirt
with purpose-- it's a kind
of portal--
in the photograph printed 
on the front 
my father crouches down--
hands on his knees--
his hair is thick & curly--
he's a cartoon in black and 
white outlines--
my uncle wears sunglasses
gazing off into the distance--
cool, calm, & sleek--
they're probably maybe age now
& i can't imagine what
my young father might have
been thinking when
the photograph was
taken-- so what i do is
i lay the shift on the floor--
take two steps down into it
look at my own body turned into
a black & white outline--
i read their band name 
BILLY FLASH & THE RAINCOATS
inscribed relentlessly
above our heads--
a sort of halo or a homily
to a past boy
in Chuck Taylors &
Rickenbacker slung over
his shoulder--
we don't say anything to each other--
i let him pose while
i walk off
into the far corners of
the t-shirt-- i walk out
through the arm
hole & emerge back into my bed room
still a black & white outline
of a daughter--
i pose for myself in the mirror--
peel the band name from the
t-shirt to inscribe it above
my head like a proverb--
i lace up black Chuck Taylors--
i write my poetry 
on the inside of the sleeves. 

the easter bunny 
& other lies that can't hurt us.

while sitting in my 
father's blue jeep
when i was seven
my father & i agreed that
the idea of a giant bunny
breaking into your house
on easter eve was absurd--
we resolved it was nothing
like santa claus.
santa had sound evidence
of transportation &
neither of us could refute 
the crumbs on the plate
of oreos left out for him 
each year--
we ate jelly beans mouth fulls
from an open bag--

i never believed in the easter bunny
but he taught me how there are some
lies that are sacred.
there are some lies 
that were always inevitable-- 
some lies that are necessary for
falling in love & you have to  
really love someone to lie
to them like a fist of
robins eggs.

we have nested here in the
green plastic
grass-- pulled on
our sugar-blazers like
the marshmallow chicks--
my father call me 
his little girl.
i sit patient in a 
woven basket for him--
pretend i still eat candy
with a fork 
pretend i still believe
in easter bunnies-- bending
up right & walking
in our unlocked front door--
my parents wave to him
& tell him where to leave 
the baskets for us--

i decided not to believe
anymore so that maybe
everything i eat would stop
tasting like jelly beans--
i don't want to sit in
easter baskets.
i don't want to keep
waking up in the body 
of a girl--
each time i pull out
my hair in tangles
of plastic grass i am reminded 
of how beautifully deadly
our lies are--

i refute him from the back porch--
not loud or audacious--
i whisper it like
the gossip of the wind chimes--
i say
there was never an easter bunny--
the easter bunny
is nothing but another
name my father gave himself
so that we would love him
in more ways than one--
& so the sky cracks
to sprout tulips 
& the ground rains upwards--
the thunder growling from the
the soil won't let me sleep--

i have to fill plastic eggs with
handfuls of speckled jelly
beans-- blues & greens &
a certain type purple
that reminds me of bruised 
skin-- my body in a trance
i peel off the wallpaper
to harbor the vessels--
rip up the tiles of the
kitchen floor like scabs 
to conceal more eggs--
this house is a skeleton
of everything we left unspoken--

this is how easter bunnies
are born-- refusing themselves
& simultaneous proving our
own existence-- 
i refuted my own existence
on the back porch--
sneak in front doors--
crawl out of plastic eggs--

i can pretend to be your
little girl &
bite the heads off
of the chocolate rabbits
sleeping
alone in the woven basket--