my spider legs.

spider legs grow back when
you pull them off--
one by one--
for you it's as easy as
cherry stems--
apple neck-- pluck the tight
artery of a strawberry skull
sway low--
low low-- we watched
them hang themselves
in the spring which is wrong
because things don't die
in april-- you're supposed
to wait till november when the
leaves are ready for bodies--
daffodils have gaping lips
languid with frost bite--
this is me watching myself
regenerate in a mirror--
wait with me while i grow back
myself sitting on the hem 
of another midnight--
i fall asleep wishing i wasn't a spider--
but don't we all? how many 
girls cried when they counted their
own legs-- 
there's so many pieces of
myself to keep track of that
i don't notice when you 
dismember me until i stop
before the mirror--
oh what did god not think
of little boys when he made 
our legs? 
did he not know how much fun
it is to watch a girl grow back
after you've picked her
unripe and blushed in green--
pin her up against your bedroom
door and kiss off her legs
until she is nothing but
a tree torso--
oh there's only so much
you can lose until
you have lost too much to 
still remember your own name--
my father is a cricket
so he named me after the temperature
of an august moon--
round and welcoming as a dinner plate--
he used my legs for guitar strings--
my mother--was a jupiter beetle
and she wanted a daughter
to shine but instead she
fills the trash cans behind the house
with my limbs-- 
i want to blame boys--
i want to blame the fallacy of regeneration
no no no
they lied to you when they
told you i grow back the same 
after i've been harvest as 
easy as cherry stems-- 
spit out my brain-- the gory vein pit--
oh four-leg boy
how sweet are the cherries this
season? did you remember
where you put my legs after you
pulled them off--
tossed them in your hamper
like boxers--
oh boy yes the legs will grow back
but keep the last ones as souvenirs--
a bouquet of my stolen body--
the trophy-- my spider legs--
did i meant i bite back
while you sleep?
oh this is how you love
and still grow back your limbs--

the lights go out one by one.

do you remember what it was like
when we once had light?
trapped fragments of stars--
angry as wasps behind the glass--
we pulled the bulbs from
the frostbite earth from
in between the unborn tulips
waiting to stick out their tongues--
suspend yourself with me
in the filament of another
light bulb-- kiss ourselves into fire
at the flick of a switch--
it was the
lamp in the living room
that went out first-- a dark
blotch in the far left corner
of the room--
it reminded you of the night
in December--
there are few things more irrevocable--
we avoided it--
you said you would change the
bulb when you had the chance--
when the stars came back ripe
enough to steal--
so we forgot about the corner--
the magazines on the shelf
had never been anything more 
than distractions--
their pages now sucked
free of words--
that's what shadow does--
eats words
eats colors
eats faces
occasionally a guest would
get close to the smudge
so we'd warn them-- we'd tell
them
there are creases
of this home that have expanded into
darkness-- we've yet to have
time to fix them--
the hall light to the bedroom
went next 
so thus we gave up sleep
for the fear we would lose more light--
i said
let's buy light bulbs
but you stared at the 
shadow as if watching a wolf 
trot on the parameter of our
yard--
it's hard to watch someone you
love fall into love with an idea 
instead of you--
oh how i mourned you fire-lips--
you said to me 
we never welcomed enough shadows
into the house
it was time 
it was time
it was time
to stop closing the windows at night
i kept a lantern-- turned
myself into an island--
flashlight flesh cut
the darkness--
sliced fresh-- do you remember
my face?
i called out for our front
door
that had long submitted to the
shadow-- she too 
only a memory--
i savored the time i had left
with the lantern 
but like all stolen light
i too 
became part of the silence
of an open window--
is that your hands on mind 
or my hands on my own
your or 
your hands on your own
hands that i can feel through
the unraveling of our senses--
whoever you are
it's easier to touch you 
where it's dark--
we're blissfully
unaccountable-- and oh oh oh
there's still fire in you--
the light bulbs were too
prude to watch us. 

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.

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--

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.

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--

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. 


 

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--

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--

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