the snow was hungry for words. blank mouth open-- she's hungry for words-- she's waiting for another poem-- the snow is here to claim a piece of our tongue-- she's jealous of lips-- of teeth-- of whispered memories from either side of a bed too small for either of us to sleep on-- she's laying her body on the door steps-- pleading for our dictionaries-- what can we do but appease her-- i tell you to grab your favorite book from the glass shelf-- rip out a page from the middle-- the first chapter-- the last page so at least she gets to know the ending-- thread it under the door-- in a glass bottle-- tell the snow your free to read aloud-- that's what her plan was all along-- hold us here captive until we had nothing left to do but to read our lives into her blankness-- so hungry she'd eat the apostrophes from our eye brows if we weren't careful-- she likes most when we talk without words-- tries to build herself a body collecting at the ankles of the trees-- she's trying to be sexy-- undresses herself with cough & flurry-- somehow she can only become more pornographic-- what the snow really wants is to taste those things we say without letters-- holds our vowels in the ice between her thighs-- the snow is looking for the one thing that makes us human-- the scream-- the fracture of all those words we used to build a book with-- bleeds ink from pages-- bleeds blood from gums-- the snow wants you to teach her how she can scream like you-- open the back door & let her consume all that has rattled around within your bones-- the memory of you past without the alphabet to chew on-- this snow is so ravenous you lose all that was left of your language there with the door swinging open open open-- your mother tells you to stop letting the snow in the house but you can't-- it is already too late-- you already speak cold-- lay your body on the welcome mat & come the grass for any letters left that you might have dropped-- you find the first page of your favorite novel-- silent petition the snow to read to you now-- it's her turn-- take the pages in a gallop of wind-- pluck off each letter-- tossing them one by one like grapes down your throat-- teach her there are words other than a scream that make us human-- the-- a whistle-- a sustained hum-- the rocking of our mother in the wooden chair by our bedside who tells us it's okay to let the snow take our words-- it's only temporary-- everyone deserves a chance to speak-- even if they don't know what to do with the words once they steal them.
03/13
a collection of keys to no one's back door-- flea market sorcery and the search for a world war I bayonet my father called me the antique princess-- throne of beanie baby torsos & the piled pocket knives of our dread grand fathers-- we collect doll eyes-- rusted keys to back doors to no one's houses-- what will you find left of us here? we're here to find a world war I bayonet because that's what you look for when you're looking for a way to talk between stacks & stacks of records-- i don't like jazz but i can pretend to-- my father maneuvers each week in an act of flea market sorcery-- a hex his tongue trained in talking away prices-- turning antiques into love poems-- the flea market doesn't get enough credit for being magical-- i practice how many clip-on earrings can i fit on an ear lobe-- gaudy jewel eyes who watch sun crawl over blankets-- i hide from him in a glass 1950s punch bowl-- i fill it with PEZ dispensers but the walls still smell like a ladle of plum pudding my grandmother might have once baked-- flea markets remind me that there's nothing inherently magical until you waltz in the aisle of it's soul-- each wine glass had a name or at least a wife -- put your lips there-- right there-- taste sangria on someone else's porch-- citronella candle insinerates mosquitoes & you laugh about a joke no one ever told you-- oh father what did we do to become knick-knacks? was i the toucan or another statue of a child praying by a bed side? the flea market smells like the memories we elected to part with-- it's the kind of realm where only my father and i transcend-- feel my arms turn back into a pocket watch-- he tells me that he likes the flea market here at Zerns because there are corners of the market that still smell the same as they always have-- i go i go i go right back my father ate cheese steaks on the corner stool-- that's where he sat-- red stool blushed from use and so i take another hand full of rusted keys-- a pocket of beanie baby eyes as protection-- walk back outside to test these keys on everyone's back porches-- i'm looking for the screen door to the house we once lived in that smells different to me know-- i'm looking for a door frame made of pizza crust-- i'm looking for place guarded by world war I bayonets-- a door knob of clip-on earrings-- we all become our own grandmothers in a flea market-- i'll make you plum pudding feed each other stale PEZ candies-- stop our watches-- eat cheese steaks from a blushing red stool--
03/12
my father buys me a book of poetry. my father buys me a book of poetry & tells me to use it as hymnal because he doesn't speak the life back into a dictionary like i do-- he says he doesn't understand my religion but he knows it's the kind of thing you should read over the carcass of a dying vehicle-- we remember the blue jeep as our shared grandfather-- the hole in the car's frame is dug from china & in it crawls all the ghosts of the toads we didn't manage to scoop off the road in time-- in it flies the lightning bugs that burst from my mouth when i was born-- i came to life in the back seat of that blue jeep-- my mother was a fist of dandy lion wishes & my father the wild august wind rattlesnake-tail shuttering across the corn-- our jeep is sinking like the sun slung in a soup ladle-- my father taught goldfish how to swim in a bowl of chicken noodle when my fever was high enough to sit on the roof-- we used the shingles as the squares of a checkerboard & my father always let me win-- stacked our kings taller than the ghost shadows of the evergreen trees cut off at the ankles-- my father's shadow is permanently etched in the corner of my bedroom from the white fingers of the nightlight-- only my father's shadows has succeeded in banishing a demon-- they sleep on my chest-- eat my hair like spaghetti to keep it short-- it's to remind me that i have been a carcass of a girl for boys to pull the hair of-- but never to my father-- he still looks at me like a fist of dandy lions & rattlesnake tail corn-- i don't need to tell him i've been raped for him to know that my poetry is a soup spoon full of melting goldfish-- queer body-- & our shared thunder veins that refuse to vanish after they crackle the sky-- so in the back yard we each take a hand on the rib cage of a rusted jeep frame-- pull pull pull-- each word never spoken between us-- my father doesn't speak poetry but he knows that if he buys me a poetry book i'll breath the lightning bugs into a poem & pull something from a page to sing over the rust of the blue jeep-- what color is it beneath the paint? we'll pull it off in chips to touch finally it's white bones-- write our names on the inside of hips-- my father plants a blue jeep in the backyard-- my father is a fist of dandy lion-- a mouth of fireflies-- holding my poetry like hymnal.
03/11
shadow waltz of the evergreens; cut me off at my ankles & i'll leave fingerprints on the windows-- in 2nd grade i came home from school to find the two evergreen trees in front of our house had become stumps-- bases still wet from where they cut off by their ankles-- & i cried-- no one had warned me yet that dying cuts you off by your ankles-- leaves shadows on the hull of the house-- i still saw their silhouettes where they once swayed out my window-- reach out to grasp branches-- in a dream i tied a hammock between them-- asked them to sing a song about where they had come from-- they hummed like fat-thighed grasshoppers & the tight lips of the preying mantis-- from my windowsill i watched their stumps become fossils-- gnarled faces in the yard-- when i stood on top i felt as if i were on the cusp of a portal-- i asked to be cut off by the ankles-- shadow-waltz in the round belly of the moon-- cried out to let me see their corpses-- the trees live on to leave their finger prints on my windows-- i write them love poems carved into shingles and tossed off the roof at their scabby feet-- on occasion they take on the form of the the lady bugs slowly devouring the walls of our house-- chew slowly on the windowsill like a love letter-- it is a love letter-- it's where i told them i wanted to die like them-- have my corpse hauled off like christmas tree-- let's all die without our feet so no one can trick us into running-- would the trees have ran if we would have given them the chance? would they have known to? i would have walked out to them in the crinkled dew & told them to fly away-- swing shadow mouth on the hips of another farm house-- take their bruises from our cheek bones-- the trees smack my shoulders into plums for not saving them-- i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i say standing on the tree stump-- i count the rings like hula hoops around my waist traced in the driveway-- when i sleep at night i leave the window open a crack-- in case the trees are cold and looking for a pillow to rest beneath-- what did you do with their bodies? take me take me take me with them--
03/10
my father built the rainforest in my bedroom. we pull the sound of the rain out from under my bed before i sleep-- each droplet a solid bead in my hand-- sometimes i wear them as a necklace to show off to the dart frogs-- prove someone else can be poisonous-- other nights i string the rain together to built the wind chimes-- the toucans learn to imitate the ringing of the water-- this is how we grew walking palms to form the bare legs of my bunk bed-- my father open a picture book like a bible to charm the moss across my body-- lichen quilted-- my skin learns to reject itself-- i am soft and fresh-- a newborn fruit bat-- rib cage tight as a fist-- we learn to drink blood in our dreams-- the smell pulls us down from the canopy to bite the necks of the other family members-- my mother slept in the hollowed out leg bones of a pine tree-- my brother in the shadow of a sequoya-- when my father painted the walls of my bedroom he pulled orchids from the walls with a brush-- butterflies wriggled free from the creases and toads rose from the pelt of the carpet-- we heard the low growl of the tiger from the closet floor hiding in the underbrush of my old dresses-- when we opened the windows the air only got thicker and thicker and thicker until the ceiling contorted into another thunder storm-- i like it when it rains on me-- when the carpet is soppy from flooding-- read me another chapter i beg my father who takes another book from the mouth a leopard licking her fur from underneath the laughter of the wind chimes-- she's protecting our stores so they don't sink back into the soil-- we have a tendency to let our memories get deformed in the jaws of the tiger gnawing quietly on what was left of my dresses oh my father still speaks in the language of the frogs some nights-- pull a star out of his pocket to make a nightlight-- tells me wherever i sleep he'll grow me a rainforest and he has never been wrong.
03/09
a conspiracy to kill the sun; let's share the peppermint candy moon-- there's no other way to ensure ourselves sleep than to kill the sun once and for all-- it was never any use anyway-- burned a hole in the sky just to teach our faces to freckle-- angry on the eyelids of un-watered sunflowers-- take the body of another orchid-- parch lip and body turning into a raisin-- the sun reminds me of being an altar server-- pull the wick from the oil-- shake the matches from your hair with me-- don't drip the flame you wouldn't want to burn down another church-- this is for the death of the alarm clock-- the confused throat of the birds pecking at the hem of the skyline trying to pull forth a speck of light to yell from-- no-- no we could finally do it-- the morning would crawl back into the sea-- sink step by step by step-- float on her back to look up at what had once been a sky but is now only the roofs of our mouths-- she lets us rest but feel empty-- morning without the sun is like night witch all the stars erased-- i feel bad for her because i know what it feels like to be naked-- what we'll do is wake up just early enough for the sun to be groggy-- catch him in the act of beginning-- he won't expect two freckled humans to take such drastic action-- a metal snuffer from our days as acolytes-- walk behind me with incense so the world knows it's a funeral-- he died like any king-- mouth full of fury and fear-- we burned our hands for you-- for the silencing of this obscene star who prompts us to awaken-- you have nothing left to wake you but yourselves-- we are free from the impending nature of a sun rise-- branded hot into our temples-- the moon comes like a hard peppermint candy-- wipes the freckles from our faces-- drinks our pigments to leave us bleached incantations of a dream-- the same dream where we wake up in each other's bodies-- write poems on our backs in water-- this is life without the sun-- you hold the candle snuffer this time and i'll be the incense-- never believe someone if they ask you to wake up before the moon trust me trust me-- you'll like it more when we light the candles-- pull our fire from in between the creases in our hands-- finger-paint a cloud on the scaring face of the playground of the stars-- they'll soon forget the angry face of their father-- like we all do--
03/08
elegy to my body in a corset. i wasn't in love with you-- i was in love with being wanted because isn't that what we're all in love with anyway? and yes i know i did crave to be your object but it's no fun to be a muse for another artless boy who uses a girl-body for inspiration only of his mouth-- what will you eat of me today? stole words to sew them into black lace-- the calliope of scream weave me body machine-- the corset was only the wrapper-- each clip another unsung promise to fall in love with a part of me he couldn't peel the wrapping paper off of-- a corset makes you feel like a tasty cake-- flesh moist-- blush in the sunset oven-- so so so so many bows to undo-- the puzzle of the little boys peeling cellophane off our bodies like shoe laces-- a corset is one way of unlearning how to breathe-- a lesson in silence and pulling yourself tighter and tighter until you diminish into only his word of mouth-- this is the making of a muse who wrote her own body to relive his notion of art in herself-- i never wrote a poem in a corset but my body was a different type of poetry when the sun lit me right in the window-- yes i won't lie to you-- i find myself delectable now-- i'm not looking for an audience-- the night paints the back of my window into a full-length mirror i know you can watch me but this is not for you-- this is a elegy to my body in a corset-- a photograph gnawed in his hungry teeth-- the space between our ribs is where you're supposed to start dismantling us from-- pull the bow-- sink with me-- cover my face with a bed sheet-- naked and cream-filled body-- i wore my hair in a sheet of a icing-- tasty cake girl eat yourself in a mirror-- peel off the black lace from the rim of the corset-- turn the frill and arabesque back into stanza-- i'm writing my body back into a poem-- written on the fogged glass of the bed room window-- oh oh oh there's nothing left that could be held in by a bow fixed between my ribs--
03/07
your body smudged against the canvas and other ways to live in someone else's memory of light art museums are places for lovers-- i knew what i was doing when i took you here after hours-- light dark we escaped into the midnight setting in the gallery-- this is when the pears roll off the table of the still-lives-- you pick up the fruit of Picasso and tell me that it tastes something like laughter or a muted prayer-- pursed lips of a brush-- let's dance with each other on the tightropes that were supposed to keep us far enough away from the canvases so as to not become part of them-- the museum guards during the day aren't there to protect the art so much as protect us from ourselves-- stop us before every scab of oil paint becomes a reflection-- these pigmented mirrors-- and so we pull ourselves into the gnarled mouth of the gallery-- you plead for me to push you up against the frame of a Monet-- let's knock the paintings off the walls together-- i'm sick of this organization-- we fall out through the other side of a Renoir-- i will never forget how fast we ran there-- body turned into a fading promise-- oh lover i always knew we would shiver like his flowers-- let's not crawl out-- i want to be a girl in a little red hat-- and you can be the poppies kissing each other's necks-- when the sun comes up again we will wake up in a blur-- scabs on our knees from lying together in bodies torn open by the pocket knife paint brush of Soutine-- Monet made our lips thick enough to kiss through a canvas-- the light in the gallery reminds us that each painting has taken up the task of stealing a fragment of light flickering in the decayed eyes of a painter-- facing up towards the shuttering sun in a casket-- he still feels the dismembered pulse of initials slathered in the corner-- maybe we shouldn't have jumped off so many ledges-- now there's no where else left to jump-- drink coffee from the bench in front of the blaring of the card players-- you ask to take a dip inside and i say tonight tonight tonight
03/06
i drove into the mouth of a shadow-beast. headlights against flesh-- the rust-bitten pocket knife tattooed with the name of stranger-- your name is the color of a blade flicked open in the sun-- carve your name into the steering wheel & make this journey your own-- we are not born until we drive into the night sky-- leave earth-- leave ground-- leave limbs-- this road was raptured by the atolls burst out of the street lamps-- bomb the pavement with light-- until we escape the firing range-- the hairy legs of the corn field in winter prompt us to run run run run into the night with me-- no i didn't want to break so much with the blare of these headlights-- i turn on the radio to hear my father read me the same bed time story-- we're suck on the last chapter but there's never anything more & the glove box is a toaster oven for my boyfriend to toast white-bread-- he's asking me again why i can't love him even though i tried-- have you ever tried to love someone? it's the kind of thing that feels like being driven into the mouth of a shadow-- i told him i was trying trying trying use the car horn if you hesitate to get on your knees before the crooked joints of the mountain-- the house with the bright face full of candles where i have stopped in another life-- they bake apple pie at night & cross-hatch their windows with pie-crust-- paint cinnamon on the door frames-- i know what happens to the trees when you drive at night-- the contorted spirited wrinkle in the bark-- shadow beast shadow beast open your mouth so i can fit the whole car inside-- no one wants to be left half-eaten-- i want to turn off the radio but the book has no ending & the night light my father reads by turns into a headlight beam running me over in my own bed-- i'm the type of road-kill who carries their body off the street to die in the mouth of a tree turned shadow-beast-- low-growl in the razor-toothed throat of a gust of wind-- flick tongue across window chimes-- this is what it feel like when i drive home alone across the corn fields-- legs unshaven. window cracked open-- to smell the fires set by street lamps-- the thick sweat pulsing off the bodies of the shadow beasts in june-- write my name in their torsos with the dulled pocket knife named by the flea market-- i write goodnight goodnight-- there's nothing as violent as light.
03/05
where will the sun go when it is finished--? i broke the yolk of the sun with corner of my spoon-- soaked up the ooze of the fat with the corner of a bed sheet-- the crust of the wheat bread triangles-- this is what our mother left for us-- watch the sun dig a grave with me-- fist after fists after fist of dirty horizon-- is that where you'll finally lay down with me?-- bent back of the woman who carries the earth like a sack of golden delicious apples slung over her shoulder-- the sack rips and lets loose the suns-- uneven and bruised from the fall-- tape the apples back into the tree when they all have departed-- re-sew each leaf to the naked torso-- resist autumn if you can before your eyelids grow too heavy with the weight of egg yolk and soil-- let's wrap this up in a bed sheet-- i wonder how many more years the sun can keep this up and where will she go when her work here is finished? do you get tired like the sun my love? resurrected every day-- the burst of an egg shell on the bed post-- if i could run away with a star i would take it somewhere so bright that it could rest-- uncurl her coiled spin and sprawl out on a park bench to watch the squirrels tuck pieces of stars into the ground to grow new elm trees-- the sun bleeds cardinals in april-- blue-bird lipped in march and waiting for there to be enough eggs to make a quiche in the oven-- your mother will visit when the sun is finished and there will be cupcakes with too much frosting-- blow out the candles so everything can be dark-- this is the silence the earth yearned for from the depths of her throat-- screamed so loud it was all eaten by the descent of the sun into the dirt-- oozing stones under finger nails-- dig a grave with me for the light to sleep in-- crawl in crawl in i'll tell the cardinals to write our names on the tomb stone underneath the name of the sun-- pass the salt and pepper we'll eat our eggs in the dark--
