what wasn't meant to be written on a valentine and how i want to remember loving you. when i used to make valentines in grade school i made yours different-- i took time writing your name & i savored the vowels-- loved you like red jolly ranchers & chlorine skin-- kissed boxed dinosaur card before i slipped it into your box in the front of the classroom-- i've made it a tradition to leave words off valentines-- let's just leave it your name & mine on the torso of a dying birch tree in the park-- carve me with a butter knife into the back of a grilled ham & cheese sandwich-- i remember how you tasted-- strawberry & ice cream-- i remember the worms that watched us get married on the playground in first grade-- the back stoop of the soda shop that caught our bottles caps-- tell me again how we fell in love too fast-- tell me again how your lap is where i watch the fireworks in august when we all have given up on summer-- i love you like gold fish in tomato soup-- like the bananas you hid at the bottom of my Cherrios-- like a seat in a waiting room or the psychologist i never told you about-- i love you like the change of a bike gear like my legs buried in the sand-- would you love me if i came out again as a mermaid? i've never wrote about this on a valentine because i don't remember who it was anymore but i know someone had to have taught me how to play cat's cradle-- how to stack cards to make a castle in third grade when the ceiling was still tall-- this is stone slab we used to mark the grave of a dead chicken-- the rotted out tree trunk where we rested to eat granola bars-- this is feeling naked in front of you & for once being unafraid-- i'm not scared to write a valentine to anyone who doesn't want to love me anymore-- it would take will for me not to love you-- there's something i remember about you that makes me want to savor the time it takes me to write your name-- take a chocolate from the box & break again like a cordial cherry-- don't you give me a teddy-bear-- chocolate heart helium balloon valentine-- give me a picture of what you like to remember about me let's split another doughnut here-- rub the icing off my chin with your thumb -- kiss me in the dark body of the witch tree on top of the hill in the cemetery-- we'll elope under the leaves again-- hang upside down from the caterpillar tree buy candy with quarter-- you caught me a crayfish or was it a dragonfly? today i will remember you for what i think about when i write your name-- no one loves each other like the scrolling font of valentine's day card-- suffocated in cellophane-- we bite people in half like pieces of assorted chocolates-- remember how we tasted-- knees on a back porch-- straw stuck in a blue raspberry slushie.
02/13
boiling my angel hair and every girl's fear of the deep end of the swimming pool-- the voice of a steel pot taught me how to hold my breath when i was 3 years old-- face down in a bathtub i assimilated-- inhaling soap bubbles-- and bubbling-- he said he liked me Al dente-- my mother called me angel hair and dropped me to the bottom of the ocean-- i snapped my pig tails in half to fit the steel pot-- beat the sides with a wooden spoon-- the talking drum of the kitchen tile-- a message from the abyss-- break wine glasses on the white coral on the way down-- knee scab marinara-- my bloodied-nose was a bread stick-- my hair again the insides of a spaghetti squash-- tangled and bleached by the darkness-- oh but how the water shook me loose-- shook my loose-- turn my bones into hair into pasta-- i was born so scared of angel hair and slipping down the drain of the swimming pool-- awaken in the candle lights of angler fish-- angler fish eat angels with their tuning fork teeth-- i was swallowing myself in the deep salt water-- face peeled away by a hydrothermal vent-- there was nothing but my angel hair and bone becoming linguine-- what do boys find so attractive about angel hair? about long-hair girls? was it easy to pick me up in a fork-- twirled into submission-- submersion in the deep end of the pool where the chlorine turns into salt into breath from the earth's core-- i feared the deep end of the pool because i could see what was swimming beneath me-- another boy another fork-- another slab of butter to tossed me in-- pull the pot-lid over me so i can get comfy-- get loose with myself-- contort my own hair into a fist of pasta-- crawled out onto the kitchen floor-- a trail of primavera on tile-- my hair was caught in the coral so i had to eat it myself-- no my hair was always mine to eat-- weak body of an angel to resist the crank of a fork-- i bled like tomatoes under bare feet or basil-- i don't swim where i can't see the bottom-- snap my short angel hair in the morning to fit in a coffee mug-- ocean boil these girls into couscous-- escape down the drain-- each grain of my bone ground fine into sand-- the angler fish can't eat you when you're this small--
02/12
20 years i have neglected to ask my mother to sing 1. kumbayah banish the shadows off a night light-- this is the rocking chair with my name carved into the neck-- this is how i went to sleep when i was six-- my father's tongue was another bed time story book-mark but it was my mother who walked with us to sleep-- sing i said-- and my mother said she was never good at singing she said she was out of key but she still sang kumbayah in a voice that i can still hear in the throat of nightlight-- kumbayah my lord kumbayah kumbayah kumbayah 2. I dreamed again of my teeth falling out on the carpet-- sudden as sleet-- picked them to fill a plastic cup returned them to my mother-- ringing like wind chimes or maraca heads-- i woke her up to the sound of baby teeth spilling on her bed room floor-- slept beside her on the carpet as she hummed ave maria into the back of a closet-- dysphoric darkness of sleepy headlights paced out the windows-- slick hush of a tires in the rain-- 3. roll down the car window-- god is in the voice of the rushing air on the way to my grandmother's apartment-- we pray cigarette stain out of our skin-- 4. the puckered lips of a trumpet in a ska band to kiss us out of new jersey on a star-heavy night 5. dulaman dulaman we drove to ireland on the way back from school and my mother told us about where she had hidden our seal skin-- above her dresser with all her broaches-- the stone garden 6. years of kumbayah was enough to break the windows from the frames when i no longer knew what a song sounded like-- listened to the pipes in house crack and crack like the windshield of the blue station wagon-- 7. if my father was a nowhere man than my mother was an everywhere woman-- the stitch in a blue and green poncho-- the spotted slipper wet in the snow-- 8. the fishtail braid in the before fourth grade-- fate of the morning dove who forgot my mother's name tangled in an electric wire-- 9. the disk of the pope reading the rosary that somehow became a song i would never learn how to sing 10. i asked my mother to sing to me in her bare feet on our back porch in august when everything was alive again-- she sings kumbayah better than the knees of a fire-- and she has always held an open window like a hymnal kept church on a dash board 11. i don't always believe in god but i believe in my mother's seal skin she keeps in the closet and her garden of broaches-- even if the jewels are only glass-- 12. believe in corn field and charcoal-- and knitting needle to tie us back into a slumped coach in then living room-- 13. i believe in a nightlight shaped like saint mary 14. i believe a confessional can be a poem-- can be a rosary cd can be a chocolate chip scone-- 15. i don't ask my mother to sing enough-- i forget that she sings because her kind of song is what you hear when you think there's no one singing-- when the curtain become opera singers and the kitchen table in a punk rocker with mayonnaise in the hair-- 16. my mother's voice is tires hushing you in the rain-- 17. my mother's voice is wooden wind chime 18. blistered raspberry 19. rocking chair 20. the hymnal for a midnight and the only prayer that keeps coming back to me.
02/11
a prayer to holy arsenic-- poisoned pancakes, glue-trap matresses and other ways to exterminate the humans the trick is to get them early-- in the weak morning of winter when they are still baking themselves into the kitchen-- burn the night in sugar cookie crumbs and don't believe the smell of pine cones-- humans will take you house down shingle by shingle if you let them-- they overturn a winter and pray the mice away in arsenic-- my father contorted in the corner of the basement-- a knot of darkened skin and saliva thick with blood-- we asked if he had eaten from the dishes of the humans and all he could say was of course of course of course this is the mice's prayer to the white and baby powdered hands of arsenic-- make me a host of the poison and i'll tell them it's Jesus-- that's all the humans want anyway-- a savior-- a way to keep the mice from the warm cement of the basement-- our children know nothing of what it would be like to eat without fear-- we sleep with the image of our father coiled in the basement-- begging for enough water to wash the rat poison from his body-- come with me we'll harvest their gods-- collect poison to give back-- a fist full of poison to add to the pancake batter in the fridge-- the little ones did not sleep well and they asked what humans looked like when they died-- i had hoped they would look like my father did in the basement-- or all our tails caught frantic in the long beds of glue-- i wanted them to have to sleep like that too-- try to lift their head only to see the walls were turning into mice-- mice feet mice tails-- mail whiskers to bristle on the their faces-- it is true we should not poison the humans-- our mother said especially not after you father died like a shadow of blood in the corner-- instead, while the sun was still on dying batteries, we made them chairs of glue-- chairs and bed and sofa and tables and banisters-- a world of glue traps-- smashed the pancake mix against the kitchen floor like a firework-- next jam jars and the human's vessels for wine-- the floor a collage of our worship of poison-- we knew what god looked like even if the humans didn't-- the house woke up in paralysis-- in faces towards ceilings-- unmoved and watching-- trapped like our tails-- a scream bubbled in the throat of the sun-- what did the humans learn about the basement? i would assume they believe it was the arsenic and not the mice peeling our shadows off the basement wall where we had died-- mouths full of poison-- feel cut with raspberry jam and wine glass.
02/10
river bank of dandy lions and how we remember each others names when we die. i'd like to set a plan now. i'd like to know where to meet you when everything else is over and the sky falls away like a wooden backdrop-- sit with me and paint an evergreen forest-- cut Christmas trees from paint swatches-- turquoise and mauve and the raspberry tint we were trying to decided what color was best to paint over the rain forest in my bedroom-- i had decided i wanted a more grown up place to sleep-- there's no sleep in a rain forest clearing or in the snapped finger throats of the frogs-- run your hands under the fountain-- wash your face before we eat-- last supper of spearmint leaves and onion grass bulb-- i'd like to set a plan now so you know how to find me-- so you know how to remember our names-- when we die i want you to find a feather-headed dandy lion-- blow downy into snow into kitten beard into windowsill frost into root beer foam and follow wherever it escapes to-- at first it will fall to the earth but you have to be patient-- the manes of the dandy lions have been going to the same place all these years-- there sits a river bank where the shore sides are built of every wish we ever made ourselves or each other-- dig hang fulls of perhaps of yearning of desire to sleep with your name in my mouth wake up in the woven fingers of a God fist-- when did our skin become a pillow to sleep on? dig in the dandy lion wishes with me-- eat feathers-- lay back and measure a 1/4 cup of the wishes to make the clouds-- send me a signal you're here too-- and i'll find you-- i'll find you in the static fizzle of dead people television and i'll know you remembered us-- maybe i will have too-- and when i find you there feed me a teaspoon of lion mane wishes-- drink the bitter milk of their necks you'll laugh and say it always seemed so hard to forget someone's name who you love but oh how it turned out so easy-- just remember that when you can't think of anything else that at least you can-- measure out a cloud and i'll come find you i'll come find out-- save me a raspberry evergreen tree-- paint over the rain forest-- sleep in the throat of a frog.
02/09
instructions for keeping yourself safe when you walk home tonight 1. trust your instincts learn how to tell which side of the street you're a slut on-- this is where you stand because it is better to know what they will call you than to be caught off guard-- if the street lamp turns into a silhouette of cobra-- trust your instincts and don't acknowledge him-- he'll only want more attention-- you know how a whore carries a book bag-- don't hold yourself like that-- if the stop lights bleed the sidewalk red-- whose fault was it for walking there-- 2. walk in groups whenever possible at least in a bunch of grapes you have less of a chance of being eaten-- the emperor likes his ladies all together so he has the best to choose from-- you can each watch a different street lamp-- remind each other not to look too scared even though sometimes the trees start to look like men who've touched you-- yes we all have had a man who touched us like a crosswalk-- when we walk together what will they call us? a pack? a herd? a murder? a murder of moonlights where we held each others shoes-- 3. be aware of your surroundings you already know the street lamp is a snake-- is a boa is ready to tighten around your torso-- make love out of asphalt-- you know what it's like to be held down and kissed like a stick of gum in a crack on the sidewalk-- be aware of the telephone wires-- they have a tendency of falling and electrocuting the resilience out of our bones-- we become the hum of the Septa bus-- the shifting cyclops of a stop light-- be aware of your own legs and what they're asking for-- you left yourself so bare-- 4. keep your charged cell phone with you make a phone call to God and ask him to unsex you here-- out out damn legs dam breasts damn sweatpants body that asked to me called your fuck-toy we've solicitated the attention of boys and car tire and window-- this is where i was born from-- i'll call my father so he can hear my real names-- "Little dyke-- oh yeah you know i want you" "Oh yes-- oh yes i like it" yes tell me again-- somehow you knew that all our middles names are slut 5. But not to worry No physical confrontations or injuries occurred, and we do not have any reason to believe these incidents were related. it doesn't count if you unbutton my jeans with your mouth-- this is what we asked for-- oh yes-- we wanted this-- we've always wanted this we were trained for this-- learned to grant you permission to pull off our shirts with your tongues-- lick this little dyke on the street corner-- the stop light saw my injuries-- saw my broken knees and the cobra draw blood-- stay still in the headlights so it doesn't see you breathing-- we have no reason to believe that the consistent dehumanization of the marginalized body has anything to do with a culture where it is easier to tell us what side of the street makes us deserving of the window poetry than tell the boys it's not their job to call us by the names we already know we all our we know we're slut we're dyke-- your mama-- your open-window orgasm on a Friday night-- we already knew these names we were born with them.
02/08
Steele baby dig me a new arm vein. i stole the keys to the excavator this morning-- poured diesel into sleeping mouths-- we dreamed of smog & a kiss-- forehead of ash wednesady & coal-- i was always a charcoal nude-- soot laden-- devil spin-- i leave you hands stained from the last time you fucked me into a page-- today i taught myself the controls for the machinery-- black seated queen-- i road an elephant who cried metal-- cried teeth of soil-- cried rocks for her children to eat-- she's hungry enough to take what i give her-- she won't listen to the boys anymore-- she knows babies only feel like swallowed stones-- heavy & carried to the pit-- we devour the murk of dawn before the construction workers arrive-- we don't want their boots inside us-- their fists of dirt & yellow shirts sink all of us to the silt-- what do you know about a river mouth? the delta-- the Nile-- the basket we left our babies in this rush of blood dig & dig & dig myself a new vein-- the core was only another river for us to drop our boots into-- that's what i'm doing i'm digging myself a new vein in the front yard-- slice the grass-- i'm playing with BOY TOYS-- playing-- little God with the gnarled teeth of the elephants-- the hippo feet stomped through the mud & when it starts to rain i mistake my blood for your blood for your rain for the needle working it's way-- knitting a vile of blood to tell me it's only my brain trying to cut itself open-- have you ever breathed loud enough to be a river mouth? drank enough blood to be a rusting elephant-- oh this vein i dug at least it's mine before the men come in the morning to bring their boots their boots inside me-- let's dig these new veins clean-- save our blood in lava lamps for the doctors new tests to find us hysterical--mechanical again.
02/07
link tails with me by the florescent billboards on the reef-- my poetry was neon in the brain coral i was looking for someone to hold seahorse tails with me-- someone to entangle with so i don't get caught in the current of another stop light-- anchor me to the sun poised in another billboard-- sell me Cola-Cola-- break off chunks of staghorn while you try to hold yourself steady-- this is when you learn the coral has blood-- not like your or mine-- but it breathes like the walls of skyscraper at night-- mouth full of humans-- do you ever dream about humans cities? i'd like to travel to new york if i could keep holding onto your tail-- i imagine you'd take me ice skating-- encircle me-- toss the skates over a telephone wire to claim this street make courtship of a night moon-- drape the skates over a telephone wire-- the curb oscillates like a sea pea & you tell me you read about M & Ms from past the neon follicles of the anemone-- drop coins to the clowns in white-orange on the corner-- hold onto me hold onto me lover-- the reef is a car horn-- a preened magazine next to us on the subway-- what do humans eat other than color? i have heard so much about central park-- you'll have to take me there-- i ve heard they grow coral the size of billboards-- roots crack asphalt crack trenches crack abyss crack giant squid nightmare where you let go of my tail & i fall victim to a newspaper-- wrapped in headline or headlight or whatever else we make of this city-- lover-- god gave us tails so we could pretend there was something to hold onto-- tie each other to a stop light-- read the billboards to me like poetry-- advertise to me baby-- i want to buy love like a Twizzler-- drink in the curves of your neck like the popped tab of a can of Sprite-- in the city the water tastes like carbonated sugar-- how did you sleep before you found me? i didn't it's more to do with the coral bleeding than it has to do with all the lights-- you get used to the lights-- i'm pulling lights from the pool cues of your eyes-- i'd mistake you for a eight ball-- if we had teeth we could crack the blue candy coral Caulastrea clusters into high rise-- into pillar coral scraping scraping scraping the drift of stars-- the star fish rest next to heating vents in sleeping bags --swaddled in beach towel-- we cannot sleep yet-- we've yet to read each other's names-- bold & blinking & capitalist imprinted in the scalp of the brain coral-- the cacophony of tinsel song & light-- this is the time draws itself into a square for us to hold each other in-- how do the humans stand a city?
02/06
the blood on the bed sheets & watching ourselves become butterflies in the mirror-- in first grade we learned how to be beautiful. who better to teach us than the butterflies-- & what is a butterfly but a packet of seeds in the bottom of a glass box-- this is our first strip show-- watch the ladies pull their bodies free of chrysalis-- of fish net-- of white stocking-- blood on wing on bed-sheets-- before we saw them in blood we had taken the time to learn how they spoke-- listened from the edge of their terrarium-- taught them ABCs & the song we sung to remember the multiples of 9-- 9, 18, 27, 36 36 goldfish crackers on desk-- 27 cupcakes for my summer birthday-- no-- yes-- it's not july-- 18 little boys & girls to wait in line for a mirror in the bathroom-- 9 mornings of remembering how to build a cat's cradle to turn to liquid inside-- puncture wrists like Caprison-- no this was before i knew why the butterflies were bleeding -- we believed in caterpillars-- their skin was our own-- un-fucked & smelling like suntan lotion-- this is before we knew our own veins were full of sugar-- the caterpillars loved like us with Marconi mandibles-- mischievous feet & eyes that blink at glass mirrors-- we saw through our own faces & onward into purple glue stick -- into a broken crayon horizon april knew how to feed us with sun in the window & green leaves gnawed bare by anxious jaws-- it didn't take long for the class to discover they were ugly-- the caterpillars were ugly we were ugly-- the sandbox & the playdough fingers were all ugly-- what was it they were trying to teach us with little bodies in jars?-- watch the insect grow to hate itself so much that it resolved to never look the same in a mirror-- bathroom mirrors were we wrote our names with foam soap-- sat on a window ledge to grind leaves with our baby teeth-- how many quarters are you worth beneath a pillow? what was it that i learned for the other side of the strip show-- this butterfly burlesque of blood maybe mrs kenney wanted to teach her girls what it felt like to watch each other undress -- watch each other bleed-- this is the art of sympathy-- but don't touch them-- they can do it on their own-- taught us to dry wet wings-- trade mouths for siphons-- despite all efforts the boys never comprehended how to hold a butterfly without crushing it-- so i remembered now that when you're body grows long & full of leaves it is time to package yourself to be re-sold-- liquefy to sell your mouth-- when you wake up it doesn't matter whether or not your legs are the same-- your mind was a chrysalis that chanted goddess goddess goddess take away my mouth-- these legs i walk like a plague--i want people to mistake me for a brush stroke-- laugh about my escape from Eden-- call me the temptress of an april gust of wind-- taste poison in skin-- & that's what the blood on the bed sheets is for-- never trust a boy to watch the butterflies undress-- he's impatient-- to this day i can trace my face in foam on the bathroom mirror-- pierce morning through my ears like Caprison-- each day i feel more like a monarch-- liquefy sleep see you on the other side of the glass--
02/05
the night sky needs a mirror & the sun cracks herself in a cast iron pan-- they paint hunger into dawn she told me the sun & the moon are lovers-- only they're both girls-- they laugh at men's feet bound to grass & stones-- and we all knew the night sky was our goddess-- only we mistook our savior in a sun-- she's not your lion mane-- she doesn't want your gold to dress a sun-ray-- she's her to warm the morning-- kiss the forehead of the moon as she rises-- she laughs in the splash of cracked egg-- yolks in fingers-- the flame to eat the pot of oil-- sun taught the water itself that it could breath and at night she whispered across the earth for her lover to un-clip nebulas from her hair-- tossed down into a ocean chasm to light the bodies of jelly fish-- paint lakes in her own hips-- this water color is blood bled into a sunrise--sunset she the sun loved the moon enough to become her-- the heat on her face that puts the water into a trance-- the ocean is her own sky she built to own a mirror-- it's how she reminds herself that she is as real and as eternal as everyone says she is-- she some days feels like the exhale of an ocean vent-- the decrescendo of a whale carcass to the deep-- rest in then mouth another echinoderm it's taxing to wear the moon as a mask-- listen to humans misjudge her for the stones-- this man in the moon has always been a woman-- together in tandem sun & moon craft each other bangles to endow around the waist of the equator-- preen each day like a skillet-- mirrored reflects in silhouetted in the sea at dawn when their mouths are full only of yearning-- this is how you learn not to touch-- she remember's the sun hands like the hot grip of a cast iron pan-- she tastes morning hungry wishes to hold the sun like the soft belly of a crepe-- the moon lives as an empty plate-- a hollow mouth spoon gaping for a drop of horizon-- she tastes sun only in that reflect-- that burst on the water-- the waves distorting her image in a juggle of beams-- the coral gnaws at her face and the moon weeps tired-- lets go of waves-- sun rages into morning oh why oh why do we wear these masks so they believe us and the moon forget she was meant to be silent-- and the sun always breaks her promises and sometimes doesn't kiss the water-- and the moon tells herself at least she has the ocean-- the bowls of her own bones where she can save her favorite drops of stars-- this is where the moon keeps her body secret from the sun-- digs deeper in her own thighs to hid more stars-- more kisses she grasped on the cusp of Capricorn-- i love you more i love you more i love you more she says and the man tied to grass & stones is afraid-- wonders why the moon chooses burns from laying face up in cast iron pan-- wonder how the sun could love a thing so hollow she needs a mirror.
