Hunting for an evergreen, choking
on tinsel and
the ghosts of statues outside the window.

We all woke up earlier
than usual.
We felt winter ponderous our stomachs--
laden like statue thighs-- like
quiet cashews-- like chocolate box lids 
like stir-fried tinsel--
caught in our throats so that
all of our voices sounded like
cracked bells--
silver bells silver bells 
silver saw blades on the kitchen table--
The wind came with us to conspire
when we met around the 
the boney hearth of the radiator.
We spoke in murmurs and shooed
away the ghosts by lighting
the advent candles early-- 
In retaliation they rattled spoons on 
metal surfaces trying to drown
out our plans-- breathed
heavy and yanked the last leaves
off every maple tree--
They knew what the snap of winter was for.
They knew our melancholy task--
the infamous annual expedition
to hunt down an evergreen tree
to keep watch over the living room--
keep the ghosts of the naked
sculptures from crawling
in the windows at night for warmth--
we all knew it had to be done.
We all knew it was my father's job
to hold a saw blade.
The statues had already
given them warning--
rustled and whirred their
voices through the veins of 
the trees to tell the evergreens to
hide themselves-- cover
their breasts in dried leaves--
shave off their needles-- and 
pretend to be oaks or birch--
curl themselves into wreaths
and die slowly like the bees--
My father told me to wear 
two pairs of socks and 
my old ripped Chuck Taylors--
We were too nervous to sit
down for breakfast so we
stood at the counter and ate
while the statues ghosts
watched us out the window--
my father ladled
Cheerios with a soup
spoon-- cracked his diet
coke can like a geode on the counter--
slipped the yolk down his throat
and reported the taste of tinsel--
and told us we didn't have much
time-- 
Even the windows were sighing with
all the ghosts who wanted 
to put their stone feet on the radiator--
We check the frost for foot
prints.Cast more ghosts 
from our lungs to try to 
smell needles bleeding in
the rock-bitten air--
My father nodded and held high
the saw blade-- we had never
liked the saw blade
though we knew what we needed it for--
we needed it for tinsel-- for
family-- for radiators and 
to keep the naked statues out of the 
living room-- we needed it for
advent-- for blood-- for penance 
and Pentecostal fires where
we could talk quieter than the 
cashews or the chocolate box lids.
Evergreen are terrible at hiding--
we only needed to flow the odor
of their fearful sweat and the 
timid trail of needles she
had tried to wash down the drain--
no the evergreens can't wear enough
dead leaves to trick our family--
we are trained well in the hunt.
It has always been my job to corner
the creature-- her back up against the garage 
we begged my father
to let her go just once--
just this year and my father 
raised the saw and my father cut
and my father slit, slashed, gashed
and lacerated the evergreen free
of her own legs.
Everything is quiet after something
dies. The ghosts stopped their protest
and went back to sulking outside
our living room windows-- picked up
piles of leaves to cover their bare hips
and tried to warm their chests 
now open to the freshly
cracked winter--
in a low hum they sang about silver bells
silver bells silver bells
silver sticky-blood saw blades 
so that we could only feel 
apologies in our stomachs as cold as statue
throats or tinsel.
We helped our father drag
the evergreen by her severed thighs
into the house to keep watch
while winter played spoons
in the pipes of the house
and on the windows-- we washed
our hands in the frost-- and my
father said silver bells silver bells
silver bells 
and swept her leg hair down the drain. 

Dear brothers,
I became a vampire to avoid 
brunch buffets and photography.

No, I have nothing against
the sunlight-- 
in fact it's the thing
I miss most about
being human-- 
--other than you
of course--

I collect
rays from my window 
using the bouquet of
triangle prisms you left for me.
--Unfurl them to grow sunflowers
under a new moon. I pretend
I'm nothing but my brother's shadow
that he chases at recess-- fade in
between shrugging elm trees--
I wonder who will tell him
his sister resolved to 
become a vampire--

I tan this skin pale
by lunar sun dance and have no need
for mittens or coat pockets
-- I drink blood
of bird feeder blue jay and 
feed off innocent back porch
feral cats with paws of milk--
I collect pebbles to feel
less lonely-- because
their flesh is like my own--
no we're different now
and I don't want to be warm
plates or family portraits--

You tell me it was cowardly.
You tell me it was selfish suicide
to become a vampire
but I became this for 
both me and you--

You know I wasn't buffet
blooded like the rest of you
-- and what else would
that leave us with? Arrange me
on a plate and I'll be the edible 
flower--I'll be the fork and the spoon
if you'll be cilantro and 
planks of wheat toast-- let's scrape
jelly from our hair--
I never trusted the size of buffet plates 
and I don't believe in dessert tables--
they have always wanted to carve 
me in slices of a heat-lamp brisket--
take pictures of me in a Sunday dress
all freckle-punctured and napkin
on my lap like a trampoline
or a blue jay belly--
You know I love pancakes-- but
I'm scared of getting trapped
between the layers-- scared
of them scrambling me
into the comforters of egg
whites and saliva of the yolk--

No one wanted to watch my skin
thin out and drip drip drip
from my skeleton 
like blue jay birthday candles or
like butter bricks perishing in
a skillet--

I didn't want to be your picture--
a freckle prick or sunflower--
Didn't want to know what a camera iris
could see in a girl-body 
who had resolved to melt--
no, no you won't watch me in another 
picture-- but you can still
peel me from out between the elm trees--
chase your shadow and wait for it to 
turn around and become
your sister-- can you forgive me 
for the feral cats? For the blue jays?
For the hands and elbows 
I traded for moon rocks--

I miss you here but at least 
I have stones-- and blood
doesn't taste like anything without
a tongue so I hope you eat pancakes
for me-- hold edible flowers
and play with them in your hair
before you eat them-- 

I still see you in every sunflower
I grow from my prisms
I still see you walk on the haunting 
smell of bacon from the diner up the street 
I still come to watch you play at
recess and take pictures of you
to fill my buffet plates--

I eat moon now-- I eat
love and I eat your shadow-- 
No you won't find me in the old pictures
you have to pull
me out from beneath the pancakes
cut me thin slices from 
brisket-- 

Oh! Forgive your anorexic 
vampire sister-- I just
wanted to escape the buffets 
and the photographs-- come back
for me and we'll eat cilantro and
walk to each other across
silhouetted planks of toast.
 

Now Hiring:
The Night Shift Waitress
and Other Ghosts

For three years the Collegeville
Diner has been hiring
for a night shift waitress 
on the weekends-- 
They call to her with 
square letters
settled on the billboard.
A prophecy sun faded
like smoker's teeth.
The stop lights
perform across the diner's 
face each night in the melancholic 
dance between green, yellow, red
green, yellow, red--
red-red-red-red
and there's no more pickup trucks to
stop to watch the lights arabesque--
The cars have all crawled home 
on their hands
and knees to avoid the ghosts here--
the one who re-reads the same
Inquirer from 1967 at the bus stop--
the ones sitting on their bicycles outside 
Quick Stop-- they spill slushies 
and hurl stale pretzel twists every night--
we all learned to read these acts as omens
--some order caramel ice
cream sundaes from McDonalds at 
four a.m. in November--
leave the spoons on the curb
like finger bones--
And of course
The ghost of the last night shift
waitress keeps guard over
her duties-- refuses every replacement
her boss brings in-- girls
with chipped nail-polish, 
blue lip stick, and square glasses
on string-- everyone has quit before
their first night's end--
they don't want to compete against
a phantom-- the night shift waitress
holds onto her black tray-- shuttles
The cherry-topped heads of
vanilla milk shakes on her hip--
refills the fountain sodas
of men curled like rusted
springs in booth seats--
The manager tells her
that it's time for her to go home--
he throws out her time card every week
and she always makes another one--
fills out her hours but never
demands a pay check--
She continues to turn on the waffle irons
too early-- scoops batter
while the manager tries
to exorcise her spirit by dumping
the tip jar on the floor of
the kitchen-- he tells
her he'll pay minimum wage--
he'll give her more smoke
breaks-- he'll give her Christmas Eve
off this year but she doesn't listen
anymore-- she's learned 
not to believe in anything but
clocks and the constant rotation
of cherry and meringue pies in the 
dessert display--she shuttles burgers
to the ghosts of truck drivers--
steals homefries for her dinner--
writes her name in ketchup and mustard 
in the sinks-- stacks 
waffles next to the towel rack
-- drizzles the syrup-ed 
strawberries over the cash register
and laughs and laughs and laughs.
She alone watches the arabesque of
the red stop light-- 
bakes the whoopie pies just
to roll them like truck tires 
out the front door.
The night waitress gets off
at the first sights of the sun.
6 a. m. she perches on the porch
and counts the money from the tip jar.
Take tomorrow off
Take tomorrow off
the manager pleads--
and she looks at the smoker's teeth
of the billboard and cackles before
she leaves to re-read the paper
from 1967 before her bus 
to return again the next night.
The manager counts the red stop 
lights-- wipes the strawberries
off the register and counts 
the stacks dollar bills
for comfort-- looks 
out to read the prophecies
the ghosts wrote in slushies and 
stale pretzel--
sleeps whipped cream and cherry-headed
with a the night waitress
lingering above his bed like a 
stop light. 

Bone blue prints I write
on paper napkins and  
in the back seat window
of my mother's blue station wagon.

No one means to fall in love
with an architect.
I'm sorry you got written 
into the blue prints but
you have to know I'm a poet 
of fictional floor plans-- I highly
intend to live in each of these futures--
grow old wrapped in the 
cartography veins of another
one of my 
road-maps unfurled on my mother's dashboard-- 
she drives me to Chingoteague--
holds her breath across bridges-- 
she wakes me up early from 
topographic nightmares
so I have time to trace our way back home from
another psychologist appointment 
where we read billboards like pro-logs--
I write out the trajectory of my bones with
steal beams of simile
-- of onomatopoetic assonance--
personify this park bench for us to kiss on
someday when I'm too old to 
say Iloveyou and too old to construct the outlines
of beach houses with a blue crayon-- 
I measure my stories by crafting the
shoulders of our walk-in closets--
tape-measuring our porch knuckle bones
kneading themselves
into cottages and clutched clumps of moss--
these femurs we'll bury with 
hand-shovels by the lake house
of neither of our grandfathers--
lay brick shins behind the eye-lashes
of evergreens-- 
You should know 
I drink warm mug handles and cup
people close to me like coffee mugs--
I start work late in the night/morning each day in a diner
that used to hurled bi-planes
over the quarry in Kutztown--
I labor over the blue prints for
houses no one will live--
I pick them up by their foundations
and push them like thumb tacs
all over a planet that has
only ever sat on a desk for me--
I live with you on
the coffee cake coast of Maine--
in a penthouse as tight as a knee bone--
we own an apple orchard and I bake
pies-- they cool on the back porch
still trembling-- steady as a rib-cage
but without as many bars--
I live in a toy shop window 
and you sew up my wrists even
when I burn them again and again-- I write
my daughter's name in the fog
of a back seat window so she 
can wipe away and become an architect 
just like her parent
I breath asphalt into the roads 
that clip belt buckles onto
the mountains we will climb
To shout new names into the 
pale face of the clouds-- 
I finish the day by folding my
paper napkins into triangles--
tight as the knee cap of our
apartment door in Manhattan--
I tuck them into the glove box of
my mother's blue station wagon
in case we get lost again on the way 
to Chingoteague or a psychologist
and the the back window forgets
her promises. 
Take out one and we'll follow
it like bi-plane tails. I'll
hold you like a coffee handle
and when your done you can walk
away-- wipe your name from the back 
window-- or hurl it into
the laughing face of a cloud. 

This Wednesday 
Democracy reported the hate crimes 
Democracy named her rapist.

Show me black lips and 
star spangled bright bruises.
Today
we we walk to 
hold high 
the underwear our rapists thought
looked like packing tape--
Try to ship me past boarders--
package me again and again--
you can rape me but you can't rape
democracy from this country--
We paint your walls with rainbows 
and Trans-pride flags-- we climb 
your brick borders
in crowds of ivy-- bare finger blood--
-- we speak
Mexican-- we speak 
Muslim brother--
We speak trans sister 
we speak black-- we speak queer--
we speak love-rainbow-stonewall-broken-
police-car-window
We speak for naked Ellis Island 
who washes her face in a park bathroom--
Lady liberty on her knees
naming her rapist for the first time
to herself in the dark of her bedroom--
face lit by the hourly passing
of the Staten Island ferry
all the bodies push against the ship's
railing and sing-- we believe
you we believe you we beleive you--
We speak for burning Los Angeles-- 
We speak louder than the NYPD gunshot
that finally broke the liberty bell 
in two halves--
You can rip me white stripe and
cut me like blood
lines dug by slave knuckles--
shoot me 50 times for each star
these white men stole from the sky
to pretend they could count freedom--
count freedom in black body wounds--
count freedom in a night club
in Orlando where we thought
we were finally allowed to be Queer--
Show me burned forearms 
and write your slurs on my forehead
in sharpie-- in switch blade
in confederate bayonettes --
This dyke
This slut
This whore
Call me call me call me 
Call me your rape doll-- your hate crime craft project--
AMERICA ELECTED BACK KING GEORGE
AND THOUGHT THIS QUEER DYKE WOULD
EVER ACCEPT HIM AS MY PRESIDENT--
My president will denounce racism
with her foot steps--
she'll hang flags upside
down as a distress signal-- echo 
the voices of the centuries 
of oppression that reverberate
in all our blood lines
I refuse to listen to another
white man tell me what my body was
for-- I refuse to be his desk doll-- 
And to my father 
who voted for HIM
your vote tells me you want to 
decide what your child is
name me "daddy's girl"
and call it a day--
Here's a memo asshole 
Your child is a proud
strong queer poet who
wore black this Wednesday
and until these fathers learn
how to spell something other 
than toxic masculinity
other than racism
other than white fragility--
On Wednesdays I will wear black--
On Wednesdays we will speak silence--
On Wednesdays we will
not let this country forget
that we witnessed her rape-- we will
not stand by while they write
racial slurs on her front porch-- together
wash our faces in the park bathroom
Wear black. Wear black. 
Wear the underwear we were raped in.
Democracy wears black with us 
this Wednesday.

I teach Boys how to eat through 
the core of an apple and speak poetry like a snake.

Oh! Did you think you'd get away 
with just calling me Eve?-- kiss
the poetry from my lips and speak
it like your own history?
Don't waste your cat calls
in  these forty days and forty nights 
of rain-- Don't try
to utter her name like it's pretty
like seduction--I am the
girl-necks you twisted like
apple stems-- Winesap-skin 
pinched dolls pinched from
the trees where our father filled
our heads with too many words--
too many footnotes-- too many
definitions for what we were allowed
to call rape--
Do we fit for definition--
did we have enough seeds to 
grow more pies for your kitchen tables--
don't name me Eve  if you 
want to learn to articulate these apple-cores--
I guess if it's all that suits you 
go ahead-- call me Eve-girl
or apple daughter-- or say what mean
and call me original slut--
the applesauce cup cunt 
who couldn't keep their damn mouth 
shut-- 
I don't take a offense because
I can be temptress but I'd rather you
call me serpent-charmer--
the snake lady under the lake--
Yes-- yes-- yes fine call me Eve
I know that's just what you name every girl-body
you see but I'm not a girl-body
I am cold blood--
and apple cores-- no I didn't
take a bite from a Golden Delicious 
just to stand here and let you call me
Eve--
I eat through the apple-- 
the seed the sinew the vein--
I eat words and I eat poetry--
I eat stems and the necks of all
the girls you hung from the tree 
to name Eve--
What do you know about scales
and what do you know about 
kissing someone like a page turn?--
No there will be no apple
left for you if that's what you're
afraid of-- the rattle-snake skank  
kept them for them-self so
you can keep eating peaches 
--cramming confessionals on your knees--
No! Boy Adam-- that's what I'll call you
if this is the game we're playing here--
No! I will feed you no words
that you do not know how to ask for and 
you'll find no applesauce here 
if you're waiting just to 
call all of us Eve-- and here's the 
secret Adam boy-- You stem rapist--
you apple voyeur-- you McIntosh misogynist--
You can't just sit around and wait for
the snakes to eat the apples
and tell you what poetry they all found there--
that's not how it works anymore--
this is isn't another Eve--
This is what it's like to call
someone snake-- throw your Adam name
into the lake and drown your 
Eve-body thoughts in the cores
of apples-- yes Adam can speak poetry 
too if he can get drunk 
on these apple cores-- feel
the scales-- shout
SLUT at yourself in the mirror--
ate through the core and don't
share your apples-- this is poetry 
this is re-building with scales--
We bury Adam and Eve under the tree
today and plant apple seeds
in their eye sockets-- see poetry 
with our mouths-- yes kiss me
like a page turn-- like a serpent--
page turn me mouth poetry.

Distortion peddle baby 
and un-learning how to play a guitar--

I was born in the crack of a distortion peddle--
and they had to pull
bar chords out of my hair-- capo
on my neck-- this acoustic noose-- 
and I spoke
in the flower bud language of Sex Pistols
My second name is Eleanor Rigby 
and I could mosh-pit before I could walk.
The first time I held my father's
black and white Richenbacker the
strap bent my shoulders and she told
me to plug her in so she could scream--
but I played her on tin-string mute--
and she cried quiet and kissed my
finger tips with red lines trying
to bud into callouses.
I performed in a John Lennon t-shirt
that came to my knees-- hair wet from 
the bath tub standing on the stage
of my parent's king sized bed--
I taught her chords she didn't know
her frets could hold and there's nothing heavier
than your father's electric guitar
on your shoulders-- carry me lithium cross-- 
I playing with plastic ponies 
from bar stools and drinking sprite
from Manhattan glasses-- I told
the bar tender-- On the Rocks
when I just wanted to munch on ice and
pretzels
I watched my father yank words
from her mouth-- braced for the
for snap of the distortion peddle--
my voice-- my gravel throat-- 
her voice--
I was raised a Creep
A weirdo 
A Day Tripper through the 
fret boards on the railroad that howled
past our house every night like
the ghost of guitars my father sold
to make more spaces on the walls
for his children to mark their heights 
--our walls were his fret boards--
stretched our house taller with his
callous fingers--
I was always too small for an electric guitar
and always too nervous to let her play me--
I was trapped capo-neck child--
umbilical silver string cutting
my fingers red-red-red lines
--rose callous and Sex Pistol--
and Gows don't read music they
scream it--but guitars have always
bent me over the ledge of another
mattress stage-- I made her sing for
other boys-- made promises on 
her railroad tracks-- I made
her sing love I never knew and
capo strangled her mouth-- and
now all I can say is I'm sorry
and I left my plastic ponies on
the bar stools-- tangled
myself in guitar straps and pretzel
legs and rose callous kiss
my fret board--
I became the abuser-- the
reason why she slammed feet
on distortion peddles-- I have
been a terrible lover of these
guitars who muted herself to 
teach me how to hold something heavy--
She stretched and un-untuned each string
under the pressure of my grip
that loosened and loosened until
until she shed capos and rusted her
hair-- snapped in the percussion of a bar-chord--
Shaved her strings naked for me
and wrapped the strap around my legs
to make stay--
she said
Distortion peddle baby 
why don't you play me play me play me
You were Sex Pistol
You were Eleanor Rigby
You were meant for mattress stages
and somehow you unlearned loving me
And I coughed up the bar chords--
cut capo around my neck--
I told her I should have warned her
I was a fickle fret-board lover
and that guitars were always too
heavy for me--
I howled like the ghost train--
-- sat naked without strings-- 
 kiss me rose callous--
sing me scream.
  

You and me in the Marianas Trench.

I didn't expect to meet
you here. This was supposed
to be final. I had prepared
for this reverse-assumption--
return to mouth of my mother
Mariana with her hips widening 
deeper and deeper with each tectonic 
trepidation as the earth
makes love to her in fire--
I wanted to be
submerged-- to be quiet as the 
triggerfish--to burn holes in my
forearms over hydrothermal vents--
I opened the window to my bed room 
and set free all my blankets--
took my stuffed animals to the 
pier and taught each how to sink with me--
contorted my lungs in to crucibles--
held my breath in the bathroom
sink-- counted 42 extra seconds
everyday until I could
spend the whole night-- face submerged
in warm sink water-- breath
hand soap and tooth paste foam--
float and dream of angler fish and 
Xenophyophores in my hair--
The ocean came to find me-- clown fish 
and seahorses wriggled one by one
from the throat of the sink 
called me-- sea nymph-- called
me sister--
and I knew it was time to go home.
I left nothing for you but
my oatmeal and pillows--
chained all the books 
I've ever read around my ankles
to help bring me down even though
I knew I was heavy enough to 
sink from my suffocation bones alone-- 
You weren't supposed
to meet me there-- 
this is me--
this is my space and silence--
my place to be eaten by the crustaceans
like sea jelly skin--
I wanted to talk to angler fish--
grow teeth and look up with the
crustaceans at a blue water heaven
without morning or night--
refuse the air from my bones--
There I could
re-read every book and let the ink
melt into bio-luminescence--
blank page nightlights--
this girl-body who went deep enough to look
up at the monsters under their bed--
all blue and sauntering 
breathing soap foam between dagger
tooth brush teeth--
I wanted it to be quiet enough
to hear ever wave clasp its hands desperately
on a shore-- crying lover-lover-lover
I have always known you.
Why didn't you just let me sink?
You came here with your
oxygen tanks and your seaweed hair.
You were here like sea horses in the sink-
and I asked you how you could
be heavy enough to meet me in the 
mouth of my mother and you reminded
me she's everyone's mother and everyone
wanted to sink home some nights
but that clown fish play games
and sea jellies are jealous of 
lungs-- you told me breath with me
and I said I was happy enough with soap
and you taught to eat photosynthesis 
again-- combed the Xenophyophores
from my scalp and together we re-wrote
every book I ever read in water-proof
ink so we wouldn't forget what the poets
had taught us--
wrapped my forearms in sea weed from
the hydrothermal hemorrhages
and spit out salt water until we
both sat dripping on the pier next
to all my stuff animals-- you had brought my
blankets you found set free
out my window-- dryed my skin--
dried my hair-- talked like angler fish
--like the clasped hands of the waves
and the shoreline.

My poetry is 
birthday candles, acolyte arson, and
match stick forest fire.

God struck me hot like a
match stick-- set my head 
on fire called me a TOM BOY--
Because it's okay of boys
light fires-- burn
off the limbs of trees
to make canoes-- cross
a river and fish for blue gills--
blue-girls-bluelip--blueblood
mix me into your gasoline stove--
Blue-hair boys call me until
they get too close
and I ignite--
How did you know I wanted use you
for tinder?
the first time I played with matches 
I burned an orchid behind
my ear and renamed myself
in the language of scar and blaze
-- melted each finger tip
down in green and blue wax
on the white face of 
another birthday cake I didn't
want to eat-- do we bake
our own skin into birthdays
or was this all another fire
chronicle? I learned about
burning from your forced
combustion kiss--
you blueblood--bluelips
I learned 
from how God strikes inferno 
on my tongue every time I
ignite in another poem-- 
We swept up the ashes around
the barber stool and everyone
else blew out my birthday candles--
Sung me seventeen--
sung me baby-- sung me into arson--
told me it was beautiful to see
me turn into a match-stick
woman at the age of five
-- a shaved skull of
fire-- to the boys who
ate my hair like birthday cake
or spaghetti I thank you--
to the sacristy matches I used
to light a church-- we learned together
that God smells like sulfur and 
incense-- did you see the 
holy spirit's smoke-tail--
did you see me as the bell acolyte--
who rings three times at the call
of another man's hands-- 
Did you burn off the limbs of
the trees and leave behind forest fire?
Escape to the other side
in a canoe filled with bluegills--
bluegirls and a bluemoon to bake
a birthday cake-- Have many 
match-sticks old am I?
How many times did I want you
to kiss me? I ask because I've
had so much fire I'd rather
be kissed than swept up in ashes--
this is burning-- this is howl--
this is blue hair
this is how age and how
I ice birthday cakes only
you're the one who counts the candles--
writes my name is green and blue
wax-- 
My church has six candles
if you count the hair of this acolyte.
If you county the forest fire
of my forearms-- if you 
count self-harm as self-reclamation--
these were my tree limbs to
make into a canoe-- these were
my blue gills to kiss.
Now boys, it's my birthday so
save you kisses for me
and we can spend the next ten years
figuring out if I ever wanted them.
Your mouth with be seared 
and my tongue will be embers.

8 years later and the pizza boy chronicles 

We pizza when I was twelve.
This was when I had one brother 
and shaved my leg hair with my father's
used razors-- When my mushroom feet
rejected socks and when I didn't know
there were nicknames for vaginas.
I sat on the porch-- legs open in a pleated 
black and white skirt with the telephone
in my hand. The pizza place knew
our address by my father's voice.
so it was surprising that the pizza
never arrived. I called back to the
hollow hum of an empty phone only moaning
about the distance between so many people.
My brother and I ate porch potato rolls
with peanut butter and I snacked on
the bag of grapes-- fed myself like
the dirty mushroom-foot goddess I was
and wondered where the pizza boy went.

--

1. 
434 Noble Street 
Kutztown PA, and I'd been there to deliver
pizza before.
I drive a 1996 dusty-bruised Oldsmobile.
They have a chubby girl with
black curly hair and a boy who thinks he
is as small as an apricot. The father
wipes paint on his shirt.
Somewhere between the fire station
and the mouth of the corn fields
I missed their green front door
and the car kept going.

2. 
I always thought about them too much--
I know it's just pizza, but I wondered
about them. 
Every now and again they ordered
Italian hoagies and the girl 
got her's with mayo--she was sometimes
on the porch drawing pictures 
of their neighbor's tree at different 
angles. I wondered if she was
looking for something with the pencil--
the boy arranged army men
in rows set for a war never intended
to begin. She wore
pleated skirts like pants.

3. 
I passed their front door again
and again on Fridays--
banged hard on the glass of the 
car window. I haven't left yet--
the vessel seems set for some 
predetermined destination-- I only wish
I could stop passing their house it
makes me feel guilty-- I wonder if they were
hungry or if they shared fruit on a porch
three years ago. I wonder if they
still get pepperoni or if the 
uncle orders pineapple.

4.
The car stopped this year.
Parked itself in the middle of 
a corn field-- only this corn field
wasn't in Kutztown. I couldn't see
the bald heads of the silos or the
industrial city of the battery factory
always lit up and dangling
in the night sky like Christmas.
The pizza was still warm but I wasn't hungry.
I wondered if the family ever got a dog
or if they still ate pizza
or if the mother worked late
or if they ate pizza at the beach.
I sat on the hood of the car-- warm
pizza boxes on my lap and counted
the stars-- there were exactly
434 every night.

5.
The car started with me on the hood.
I clutched the pizzas tight and flung them inside
the open front windows of the car--
the hull was full of 
lightning bugs and I shooed them away
to reclaim a seat. I sat shot gun.
I wasn't going to pretend to drive
anymore. The lightning bugs kept
trying to carry the pizzas away.
I waved my hands wild as if they were mosquitoes--
The pizzas were still warm through the box.
We passed the house again.
There was a wreath on the green front
door and the house's eyes were wobbly
like candles.The girl was shaving her
head in a mirror and the boy
washed his hands in the sink.

6.
This year I only passed drawings of
the neighbor's tree. I never noticed how
thin it was and how much like a girl's body.
I have grown accustomed to the warmth of
pizza boxes on my lap and the way the
headlights have began to flicker as they
plow through another night in the
mazes of cornfields bleeding into the
celestial skirt hem all around.

7.
I wanted to open the box very badly
today. I'm guilty enough to be seven years
late-- let alone to peek at
their food. I wonder if they'll hug me
when they see me-- bare feet on a porch--
I bet they will have forgotten about the
pizza. I would. I mean I would have forgotten
too if this weren't the only thing I could think 
about. The headlights went out last night.
It makes me think that I might be close to getting
there. Passing the house doesn't mean anything--
but I think I'm getting closer.
Next week will be eight years on Friday.

8.
The car stopped at the end of the driveway
and I couldn't help but look before I handed it
over. I felt something for the pizza. I felt
like it was my friend and at the same time
like the house was my house
and the girl my daughter and my sister.
The father-- my father-- my mother
drove a blue station wagon full
of discarded Wendies bags--
and my son and apricot brother
who must have been as round as a peach--
I had to look. I knew it was empty.
I had always known it was empty.
I left it on the door step.
I kicked off my shoes and sat on their 
sunken skeleton of a couch.
No one was home and it was Friday.

--

And sometimes on Fridays
I still find empty pizza boxes
washed ashore
on the back step of my dorm room.
For some reason they're still warm.
I collected them in piles under my bed
when everything is cold in November.
I think about the girl body 
of my neighbor's tree
I think about the paint stains 
on my father's shirts.
I think about folding pizza
and grape goddesses with porch feet.