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.

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--

empty my bones from the jewelry box;
my grandmother's orange gloves
turned out skin in cigarette smoke

when my grandmother died
we picked though her wardrobe
like paleontologists
hunched over the filleted 
carcass of a triceratops--
her ribs opened wide like
wings-- this is what we
call a jewelry box--
the container to house
what's left of you bones--
i blow the dust off
a pair of orange gloves--
tight like a second skin
my flesh turns into cigarette
smoke-- precarious as a bar stool--
her broaches we can use to 
sew out ribs  back into 
place-- we saved approximations
of the moon
shrunken down to the size 
of these pearl earrings--
what did she see in them?
did she ever use her sunglasses
as a mirror--
when i die i hope you 
are bold enough to wear me--
let me leave green halos
on your fingers from the 
fake gold of my blue-gem
rings-- pull the 
pin through the skin on
your collar bone and
feel how deep my blood used
to run 
when my mother pinned on
my green shawl with a bouquet
of fake stone--
you'll find my irises in a set
of a cheap earrings at the back
of the box--
when you wear them you 
won't be able to help but
to look again and again
at the sky as if hoping it 
will be night--
when you wrap yourself
in my old blue scarf
i wanted you to remember 
the times i had wrapped you
in the absence of my hair--
pull the incense out of 
the seams of another sweater--
how will you tell your friends
that the shirt they like
so much was pulled from
the rib cage of a triceratops--
your parent-- your
brother and you--
pass down the burden of
the paleontologists--
blow the dust off
your parent's bones--
wear my eyes when you're thinking
of taking a walk at night--
find yourself impossibly
draw to becoming
another earring
dangling from the bottom
of the moon--
find a mirror beneath all
the necklaces and 
orphaned pendants so you 
can look at yourself--
touch your face
to find you're still
wearing the orange gloves--
tight tight tight--
blew away like 
cigarette skin.

elegy for our manic pixie dream girls
and other ways to put out a star--

and so 
when you look up at the stars at night
there is a faint possibility they
are all already dead--
faint mouthfuls of light
spat liked wads of blue or white
chewing gum at the smug face of the
earth for lovers to mistake as
eternal-- did you cut your hair
short for me?
perched on the toilet with
craft scissors-- 
collect the hair in a ziploc
bag to remember yourself--
were you a martyr for me 
or for plot line--
how many stains of purple
lipstick on mirrors have you 
become?
who killed the birds whose
feathers you wear as earrings?
i met you sitting on a stone
by the edge of the steam--
you were waiting for me to
pull your name out of 
your own throat--
wrap our necks in mardi gras 
beads-- dangle quiet 
as flecks of stars we had become--
i came back to say 
i'm sorry--
not for where you are but
for what i let you become--
and i'll still always
think of you as
hopscotch in the rain--
i plucked the wings off
a butterfly and
wore them as eyelashes--
this is what you turned me into--
i think about the life
a star
and devouring their
dying light with a twirled fork
and a spoon--
did you escape with me because
no one asked you to escape into
yourself? what color would
you paint your nails if
you never knew me?
i imagine you might
have listened to cassette 
tapes when you were home alone--
ribbon printed with the voice
of your father who dug
his grave with a burnt spoon--
where are we going now?
the last thing i really 
wanted to know from
you is your real name-- no 
not the name you tell the boys
who cut your hair and 
lay next to you on roof tops--
what is the name you tell
your brother when you
say goodnight over
the vein of a telephone line?
the name you wrote
on the inside of your journals
in elementary school
when the window was as
good as a doorway--
maybe that's where you learned
to climb trees--
i didn't bring flowers because 
you wore so many in your
hair that i figure a garden
would grow wherever they 
decided to plant you-- no
i brought back the pages
you pulled me through-- the words
this story that you gave
me-- i want to give it 
back-- i want to know
where you would go if you
weren't just another sacrifice 
to bring a brooding boy to
a back porch-- listlessly 
smoking a cigarette--
god i miss you-- god i miss 
you-- 
i'm sorry-- 
i'm sorry
we lost your story 
for me--
tonight i'll harvest back
your hair from
the beams of star--
we'll make you a wig
and start over. 

i was waiting for your phone call
in the bell of a daffodil.

i'll grow roots from
my toe nails here in the 
mulch & the soil--
soak in the 
eroticism of the dew--
i left the morning blushing
from the night before
when we lay with each
other draped in ivy--
the moss grew over our legs--
made us monsters--
made us hairy--
made us invisible--
& the snails rang their shells
like bells--
i woke up to find you
gone again--
is this your idea of how
to wake up the sun again?
the necks of
the daffodils snapped &
shrieking in dial tone--
dial tone
dial tone--
i don't know which bell to
listen to because any 
could hold your voice--
are you humble enough
to speak with the yellow
lips of a flower?
i am-- i am not afraid
to fall in lust with 
the taste of petals--
you always knew i would
eventually leave you for
a tulip--
puckered face tight 
as the knots that still
keep our phone lines entangled--
i don't want to the 
daffodils to stop ringing
like wind chimes--
it remind me of august
& pulling another orchid 
from your throat--
don't forget to
water us-- puncture 
a hole in the angry grey
of a cloud & drink with 
me-- drink static
drink acid
drink foot step
of thunder in the seduction 
of the soil--
i ask only that someday
when you come across
a bed of daffodils
that your remember how
much you kissed me
like the skin of a petal--
take a fist of 
dirt & root
& call me from the bell
of the daffodil--
crack the dial tone
like a foggy morning dove
egg-- i'll open
up the moss--
grow monstrous with me.

ouroboros and
my mother who takes off her bra
on the slumped polka dot sofa 
in the living room

and i ask you--
how can i get you
to unfurl? 
what do you
take off first when you 
enter a door way that holds
you like the sofa in
your living room back at home?
i'm talking about the place
where you came from-- 
the sofa
whose springs you tortured
like a trampoline--
my mother comes home and
takes out adam's
rib once again--
lays her bra
on the coffee table-- 
looks
up at the ceiling to inhale
the smell of cinnamon-citrus
perspiration in our walls--
the living room steeps like a 
bag of my brother's earl grey
tea-- he takes of his boots--
systematic-- one lace at a time--
uncoiled bodies of the snakes--
slither over each other--
ouroboros-- the snake
who eat's his shoe strings--
line-up at attention by the
entrance to his room at 
is also a bunker--
whose bedroom isn't a bunker?
only i'm not going to war
with the Prussians i'm going
to war with a windowsill--
i taught my body poetry 
from the tug of a pony-tail holder--
hair laying on my back like
a shawl--
i cut off my hair so there
was one less part of myself that
i would have to learn
to let go of when i came home--
my home is now a doorway 
and it no longer smells
faintly of citrus and cinnamon--
there's no ribs left for
adam to come and collect and
so the proverb goes
that my father is
the one who bites his own tail
in the form of his shoe laces
--doesn't know how to take off
his feet when he finds himself 
in a doorway--
my father eats stew from 
the kitchen counter 
standing in his constant vigil--
he's using his
ribs to open up another door
frame
crack under the pressure of
the foot steps down the staircase--
no this is not my doorway
and i never asked for your ribs--
take yourself apart with
me-- unbutton me like the turn
of a doorknob--
come in
come in--
let's eat out tails--

in the case of
talking to your mother through an Ouija board

the ceiling of my uncle's bed room is
slanted-- it was supposed 
to just be the attic--
the attic is where we 
put everything we
don't want to have to look
at everyday--
a good place to keep boys--
a poster of a shining robot woman
stares down at him and my father--
laser poised-- lightning bolts
spray painted on her hips--
my father sleeps in the room next
door with the windows open
because it's july
and their aunts are afraid
of air conditioners--
the artificial arctic possession of
a house--
their mother died without them
knowing she was sick--
cancer is only ever a metaphor--
from under his bed my uncle pulls 
out the rectangular box--
sun and moon painted in the upper
corners--
"Ouija," he says-- 
and reveals the
wooden board-- collage of letters
and numbers--
it reminds my father 
of the porch for some reason--
he's remembering himself
bare foot and shirt off-- 
legs collecting another
layer of sunburn--
his mother is under the shade
perched in a white plastic chair--
notebook open-- harvesting
a memory of how the sun
dried out her children--
she wiped perspiration off
a glass of lemonade--
flicked the cold water 
at him--
he jumped and squealed--
"I want to ask something
to her?"
"To her?" my uncle asked
and picked up the board--
"how will we know we're 
really talking to her?"
my father was already at work
and they put their hands down
on the disk at the center--
"I'm scared" my uncle said--
"I'm not," my father said--
"I want to know where you
are," my father demanded--
fingers grazing the surface--
for a moment he contemplated 
moving the planchette himself--
he would make 
her say she loved them--
that she remembered--
that's all anyone wants to 
hear is that they're remembered--
instead he let the 
disk levitate on it's own--
"It's moving-- It's moving"
my uncle whimpered--
"put it away-- put it away!"
"But we haven't said
goodbye or even hello" my father
protested--
but my uncle flipped
the board 
scattered-- shattering the
glass looking piece--
"Look what you did!" my father
snapped and a shard glass
nicked his hand while
he tried
to get to his feet--
"I was just scared--" my uncle
said-- "I was just scared
she wouldn't remember--"
and they both cleaned up 
the broken glass off the
floor--
laid out again on 
the porch and
painted 
painted
painted sun burn. 

platonic love 
and the escape of the 9 muses

1. 
the muses we're sick of
being another man's inspiration--
they said the only
place to pull poetry is
out of the mouth of woman--
a queer body--
scar skin and the 
frame of windowsill--

2.
zeus nailed the windows
shut--
as if a god could
ever stop something
like poetry--

3.
you would 
know how imperfect 
i was-- i am--
there would be nothing
i had left to hide--
fill the space under 
my bed with lamp light--

4.
you taught me poetry
there's poetry in silences--

5.
there's a certain 
rhyme scheme to a
morning--

6.
open the windows--
crawl bare foot through 
the garden in the back yard 
of a cloud--
Calliope painted 
the walls of our dorm room
with cinnamon
Clio writes our names in
the closet walls--
Euterpe laughs
in the scratchy voice of a
dying air conditioner--
Thalia stacks cups of pudding
while Melpomene reads
the bell jar
from the first time and cries because
she feels like she
has let something go--

7.
Terpsichore taught
us to dance-- but only
in a page turn-- 
Polyhymnia made a hymnal
for the entrance to 
our room and it sings
in the voices of unwritten
women-- the throat
of a coffee mug--
stories carved into forearms--
i'm going to ask
you to read me another poem 
about a Goddess--
watch Urania as she paints
black nail polish
on the back window
to make the night sky--

8.
and it was Erato who
tricked us into falling
for straight boys--
she still thinks it's funny--

9.
i don't lock the door because
there's nothing
i feel like i need to keep
out-- let's be muses
no one gets to use 
for their inspiration--
pry the nails from the windows
and sit from opposite
sides
of a windows sill
smudged with cinnamon--

the digestion of my body from the basement.

the steps to the basement
make me feel small-- 
i hold 
onto the railing like the hem
of my mother's 
purple lilac print 
skirt on a sunday-- 
we walk into the diner--
i order the same bagel with
ham, egg, and cheese--
only eat half because
i'm not big enough to bite
my way through the
empty space at the 
center of a bagel-- 
i gnaw on an end until
ketchup cuts open my white
dress like we all knew it
would-- chew
me into the house's
crinkle of intestine--
hear each wall swallow air--
push fat gulps of blood
through the pipes--
this is where the monster draws 
her blood--
fresh from the earth-- 
from the soil--
bubble freckles of 
white and green mold--
the basement wears mildew like
lace-- startles the rats 
with the hunger
that clatters each
femur-- each ringing clavicle--
the assonance of
your lips turned your
intestines into a sonnet--
who taught the house to 
make her body into a percussion 
instrument--
like all women 
she has
been a percussion instrument
i watched my ears turn into
tambourine 
she had to swallow on each
step down--
play the cymbals left in
my ribs-- 
there is no rhythm 
to being digested--
only the hollow mouth of
the tympani calling
louder
louder
louder
the stairs to the basement
unfurl 
into a sandpaper tongue--
scratch and slide
onto the cement floor
where her stomach is
cold and viscous 
with the scent of spilled 
laundry soap
and dried clothing
churning, burning, yearning
in the knots
of her body--
can't you hear her bones?
don't you listen to her body?
she is trying to make
a song from her blood
and her bones with all
these humans trapped
inside-- 
blue wires knot her veins--
she pours herself to
wash the ketchup stains
out of that white dress 
again 
and again 
and it's never stopped bleed--
from the floor
of the basement 
the house takes me into herself--
swallows hard like dry
white Women's vitamins--
i hold onto 
the wall like the hem of my
mother's purple lilac print
skirt-- come out with a fist
full of dried flowers
that smell
thick as
laundry soap-- 
wrinkle my white dress
like the flush of intestines--
the house is consuming
me with each foot
step down the basement stairs--
and I couldn't ask for
anything more--
she knows we love only
with the blood
we steal from the soil
and wash out of
the scars in a white dress.

my goddess is a poet.

my goddess doesn't have curves.
she's fat in all the ways
a magazine can't photoshop
into beautiful--
you can't airbrush the 
wrinkles from the sides
of her mouth from 
laughing at everyone who 
ever tried to pray to her--
her skin is the uneven 
texture of the moon.
she breaks mirrors in the morning
because there's no 
refraction of light that could
contain her.
Her face turned
the morning doves to stone--
fell from the branches
like lumps of coal
or hail--
my goddess has hip bones and
a blooming muffin top-- 
jeans pulled 
tight around her waist from 
a fist of powdered doughnut--
my goddess skips breakfast sometimes--
pulls herself free from
the gullet of a coffee mug--
fucks in the back seat of
her mother's mini van
to watch the windows fog--
doesn't want to remember his name--
paints bruises on
her thighs from
times she dropped herself
like an apple--
eats McIntosh with the snakes--
my goddess is in therapy--
she's anorexic
bi-polar
schizophrenic 
and
most days she tastes depression
in the wrapper of a pop tart--
she kisses girls
and thinks they taste like
peppermint lip balm--
she sleep in the roof in the summer--
my goddess
took a pregnancy test in
a port-a-potty and dropped the
stick between her legs
in relief--
she's infertile
and out of sync with the moon--
my goddess never wanted to be
a mother--
my goddess carves blank
paper and the smooth
glide of a pen--
she's a poet and when she's
starved herself of everything
else she can still take a fork
and eat through the core of a sonnet--
swallow each syllable
and chew punctuation free
from every stanza--
my goddess ran out of quarters
at the laundry mat--
wore her dress wet and wild
to diner--
ordered coconut cream pie and
had lunch with herself 
alone--
my goddess is not looking
for a god--
she's looking for a 
gas station to stop and
buy a bag of peach rings--
she's looking for her brother
to tell him how much 
she wants to play cards with him--
i love a goddess who
knows the waiting room--
the crinkle of the wax
paper at the doctor's office--
the feeling of blood drawn from
arm veins--
i love a goddess who kisses
the knobs of my wrists--
breaks powdered doughnut
like body--like host
like heavenly mondays--
my goddess never had a name--
it was swallowed by the moon
a long time ago--
but i can tell you her lips
taste like peppermint 
and she loves
loves loves
to write.