Ave Marie, drowned unicorns,
and prayers to the oatmeal goddess 

I don't know when I began to
pray to the oatmeal goddess because she's
not like Jesus-- she's not like
rapture or forty-day flood
or drowned unicorns or 
wiping lips off a wine 
cup of blood--
She waits quiet in a white bowl
like knee-singing 
Ave, Ave Ave Maria 
Sing like Aves like 
white bird like red candle--
like purple robe altar--
like lamb blood welcome mats 
and honey locus dinners--
She waits to 
give birth-- loud and unafraid
in the mouthpiece of a microwave
-- pew-bruise
hips-- 
She's just Ave Maria 
She's never been gold but
she has been naked just like
all of us-- she's been
maple and brown sugar in between
her toes-- she's walked to
burn her lips on another rim
of a cup of her father's blood--
She curled into herself
and waited as a fetus 
in a white bowl-- lay in oats
-- microwave
for 40 seconds and forty nights
and eat 
with a soup spoon-- dinosaur egg
mother and cream peach pew knees--
incantation circles around a bowl--
Ave, Ave, Ave 
Ave oatmeal, Ave eat me, Ave 
I can eat again and I tongue of fire--
And I Ave Maria
In herself she grew cranberries
sewed the blueberry thicket
where I ate my palms purple
and naked 
and planted mustard seeds in the rocks--
The white birds grow in place
of babies--from the cranberries 
made me a believer in kneeling
in front of microwaves for rebirth--
I wash my hair in her raisin seed soil--
The oatmeal goddess is sneaky.
She doesn't tell you to pray
she gives you a tongue
and uses it to sing her body
naked and as beautiful as
an empty mirror-- my goddess gives
me penance in the form of mustard
seeds-- washes my match-scarred forearms
in oatmeal and tells me that we
all have to curl into 
bowls and grow white birds in the fire--
that we all are naked
we all are Ave Maria
Wipe our feet on lamb-blood door
mats-- say our prayers in packets
of maple-apple-crisp-peach-walnut-sugar
kneel before a microwave and pray by accident--
pray haphazard-- pray naked and empty mirror--
pray to wipe away our lips from cups
father blood-- father who drowned
the unicorns-- Ave Maria 
who planted the blueberries
and taught me to kneel.

An open apology for everyone fed doughnuts, democracy,
and pints of their own blood.

They opened the box of doughnuts for
us at the polling booth-- curly-hair
smiled-- told us to raise our voices louder
louder louder louder
with the chocolate glazed and powered
truck tires revving down our throats
told us how sweet it was to live in 
a democracy with boxes of doughnuts
to let us know that our vote was 
worth something sugary-- 
put voting stickers over our eyes
and spun us around three times--
pin the tail on the King
because there was only ever-- 
Kings for us to vote for--
Kings and royal rape-collectors--
our parking violations for these vaginas 
They
laughed and told us vaginas 
look like 
Doughnuts-- like cream Boston 
like filled jelly gypsies--
Giggled about all the ways boy-kings
invent to eat our ballot bodies--
and when we asked if
they heard what we were saying with all
the doughnuts in our throats
they told
us to proceed
Proceed to the polling booth-- the
throne-- blood pressure cuffs around
each arm-- electric chair style--
take another doughnut and this time
measure out the worth of your
organs against the blink of voting
booth lights--our pulse--
our filled jelly blood-- they didn't tell 
us that it would take needles--
didn't tell us that we would
sit there and slide democracy into
our veins-- cold and chocolate-glazed
and searching for your cream Boston
for your rape joke grins--
Isn't voting funny and cute
like powered doughnuts and knees
and rape?
We couldn't see the needles with
the stickers on our eyes-- 
Flinched and wince:
I vote-- I vote-- I vote
I vote blind and doughnut tongued:
How many pints did they take?
I didn't see-- I couldn't keep
track between the doughnuts they
fed us one after the other
told us we could ever rise above
misogyny
above glass ceilings where
we see our reflection--
the beeping of the booth--
did they watch?
Did they peak behind the curtains?
Would it have mattered? 
Did we even vote or did they just
use us for blood?
I'm O negative and AB positive
that democracy was another doughnut--
and empty hole--
This is my apology for us. I'm sorry
for the doughnuts they fed you--
fed us-- 
This is my apology for 
pinning the tail on another
King 
This is my apology for what we thought
was democracy and was really just
another harvest-- another transfusion--
Let's eat doughnuts and take
back our ballot bodies-- 
Walk out of the polls with
a back pack of doughnuts as reparations--
hold our blood in our hands--
This is the tax collection for
our identities.
This is our apology. 
I'm sorry I put all of my
queer-- rape surviving-- anorexic--
blood raptured-- poetry transfused--
cat-called-- boy-groped-- vagina 
bearing body into a button.
I'm sorry that wasn't enough.
Eat doughnuts. Bleed jelly.
Collect our brothers pints 
in backpacks-- pull curtains 
over our closets and 
peel off the voting stickers
from our eyes.  

Waiting room birthdays and what
the fishes knew. 

Let her eat cake!
they all said.
I had hoped they wouldn't
do it in the psychologist's 
waiting room-- all decorated 
with sun faded pink streamers
they had saved from my 
arrival home from the hospital
when everyone decided
IT'S a girl
IT'S a girl
white cloth
over the coffeeless tables--
My family had even
put party hats on the ferns
and taught the fish in the 
aquarium to play plastic kazoos
to congratulation me
on this new birthday--
They re-named me Cured
and wrote it in RED
icing on the glaring face of a 
yellow square cake-- white frosted 
and buttercream rose ankles--
candle wax counted me
as only one day old--
One day:
Fixed, Remedied, Mind-medicated
Tongue-fire forehead-- sugar ribbed 
speak to me like a leper
and hold me down to feed me cake--
The fish knew it wasn't my
birthday-- they felt sorry.
Let her eat cake 
said my parents from the 
arm chairs next to me--
laughed and tossed tissues 
on the floor-- they  
joked and peeled through 
waiting room magazines
to find me what my new smile
should look like-- white frosting--
buttercream chin on the face
of another girl who could
eat cake with her fists
and still be
white and Cured and thin--
Happy Birthday 
Sing Happy Birthday
to your ex-Anorexic girl
who tries not to 
count the petals on each rose--
laugh and paint her lips
yellow cake
laugh and toss the tissues
in her face-- she
doesn't cry anymore-- we don't
pay for that. Cure her face
of eating and 
Let her eat cake 
for you
Leper, leper, and leper
How many psychologists 
words did you have to swallow
before you decided that you'd
rather name yourself Anorexia?
I am
E.D. Queen and Waiting Room Goddess
No one asked you to deem 
me 
Cured.
Don't tell me I 
look alive--
I've only ever eaten cake
for boys and for
the chant of waiting room.
You're wondering if I'll get fat again.
No-- My name isn't Cured and you
don't love me if that's
the only word you want to devour
-- eat me frosting shaved
and hungry-- eat me apple cores
and burnt candle forearms--
I'll set your streamer on
fire-- melt these magazine
smiles out of every page
and talk to you with my sugar
tongue of flame-- talk to
you goddess 
talk to you lepers who pretend 
to read waiting room magazines-- 
the fish were right-- the fish played
kazoo and cried when I ate buttercream
roses for you-- for you
boys who wanted me Cured and skinny
and pink streamers--
Love me your Anorexic goddess.
Let's celebrate days without scars--
put candles in the apples
and sing
Let them eat party hats
Let them eat magazines
Let them eat tissues  
Let them eat--dream--love--kiss
Let them call me candle wax
and love me for my sugar ribs. 

Spilled cereal bowls, geode scream,
and the obsess compulsion box of my brain.

Did you have to spill me and
the box of Cheerios this morning?
You know how many pieces I come in
and how many strings of 
cereal it takes to wrap three
times around these wrists--
tie me tight and make
me watch all the little Cheerios 
crawl on each others faces--
bend knees-- dirt crumb and 
and obsession scream--
stuck--the geode in my throat--
shout loud enough to crack the diamonds
into cereal on the floor-- 
Don't wake me shaky palms 
leave me alone my torment brain--
this box of haunted numbers--
count me-- add me-- remember me 
this bedevil chant inscribed
in the flaps of the cereal box--
written in the cheerios arranging themselves
on the tile floor-- chant 
consume us this plague-brain--
crack the compulsion geode--
my fear of all the little
circles rolling and rolling and rolling
and disappearing into this tile floor--
and the boxes fell into themselves
on the shelf-- coffee drunken 
and laughing at the way you make
my hands shake when you tip me over--
slowly slowly-- make me 
compulsive like a waterfall
obsess over me and how far I scatter
when you tip me over-- skin scurry 
crowd me into another bowl.
Like this-- like this you know what my skin does--
you knew I scatter like
ants-- beetles-- crinkle in
the knees of centipedes scatter--
Snap the geode on the side
of the cereal bowl like an egg--
you see I don't lock my knees
when I fall so I drop myself nice
and pretty and diamond throat shriek--
Go ahead-- I know you want to
shake this cereal box brain full
of possession plague-- geode fixation
of the shimmer crumbs all smiling across
the floor. Oh how
you spilled me-- and Oh how
I counted myself again
and again.

Curbside Wizardry, perhaps people,
and Red Queens.

At some point we've met everyone
at a bus stop and told them 
we loved them-- 
and I don't just mean
goodbye mothers and 
cross station boyfriends 
I mean perhaps people-- the 
waiting for their bodies to unfurl
into voices from
the seats next to you--
for their phone calls to their
wives or music in
their headphones singing tinny and 
distant like the ghosts of wind-up birds.
He taught me to
read everyone's palms while they sleep
and tell them how many children their
hands will branch out to love and 
how many window seats they'll sleep on
He taught me
the forces of God
breathe diesel-- fill the empty spaces
near windows and the distance
between all the perhaps people
sitting oceanic centimeters apart.
I met him on a curbside
but I had always known him 
as another perhaps person-- the man with
the wizard hat who was either
your father or a prophet or
a wind-up bird who sang like tin--
he measured time with a deck of cards
made of only RED QUEENS and 
JOKERS-- because they're
the only cards you need to play 
WAR-- 
or so he says 
And he guessed where I was from
by the way I held my mittens like
toads and he knew I was scared
and he knew I kept Sundays
as holy as oatmeal and apples--
the curbside wizard pulled 
kittens from my suite case and
corn snakes from my back pack  
and called me MOTHER MOTHER and 
RED QUEEN and OATMEAL GODDEX
and I said that I knew
what I was. He named me
WINDOW SEAT and removed his
white gloves to show off his blue hands--
I told him it was cold 
and he said 
Not in August 
and put each glove over my
wind-up bird fingers and pronounced 
me Sorceress and August. 
He said 
I would fall in love 
with more RED QUEENs if I didn't
learn how to keep time
with the kittens and the corn snakes
and that there were only 
so many jokers to pull from
a deck and only so many ways to
wear a wizard hat and not fall into
a star-- die a perhaps person 
on the curb and let people 
breath you diesel and poetry.
I told him to take a window seat
and I'd keep safe the aisle so 
we wouldn't both fall into everyone's
tin-voices and the thrashing
wheels of God driving us to home--
So of course he kissed me--
like all bus stops do.
Told me that window seats 
were named by girl-bodies like me--
that he was a curbside wizard--
that he was only ever a perhaps 
but that I could write my
name in fog windows-- sing in everyone's 
earphones and do palm readings
by the reluctant Morris Code of street lamps
through the city-- asked me to pick a card--
any card and guess what it would be.
Of course I said
RED QUEEN
and he laughed and pulled jokers 
from my sleeves-- out came 
KING and JACK and SPADE--
I windowsill and white glove
and perhaps girl and perhaps 
queen picked up sidewalk cards
to find him gone-- wizard hat
on the bench
I RED QUEEN and curbside.
I perhaps am left reading my own palms 
and counting the minutes
at the bus stop with a stack
of jokers and red queens. 

We ate only ice cream 
and became Sunday nights.

Was it you who called me
mint chocolate chip?
Discovered my green hair
and how my body orbits with
flecks of comet
set on intimate courses for
collision--
Did we collided in the 
crossing of spoons?
--Fed each other from opposite sides
of a red cushion diner booth
where we 
We both said STOP
and we both said NO MORE--
but we both moved plastic spoons
to each others mouths mechanically
and repeated THERE'S ONE MORE BITE
THERE'S ONE MORE BITE
Did we find each other in
the soft serve twist of the machine?--
your knees and my knees and your
shattered prism sprinkles and my thick
iridescent cherry balanced like
a stack of books on your head--
you call me RED PLANET
and BLOOD MOON--
stem soaked
in nostalgia or blood-- the syrup 
of the strawberries
we left melting on a porch
in August-- feed me like August
and root beer curbs-- like the
bed where we laid between bananas
and you told me this is what the ocean
is like-- this is why we came here
to split each other between bananas
and burn our wrists with fudge.
Can you count the number of banana
splits you've eaten 
on your fingers and who was
with you when you submerged in them?
I ate my first banana split 
after I snapped cinder blocks
and wore my black belt-- 
sat on the edge of a plastic 
boat with my father who called
me RED PLANET and SON
and shaved my hair off into
the bay and we talked about the desert
of Arizona.
Every other ice cream boat
I sat with boys who tried to eat
them for me-- severe banana
spoon by spoon and I said
NO MORE NO MORE
And he pet my hair and called me
BLOOD MOON said there was 
no such thing as love without
sharing spoonfuls of each other
until there's nothing left--
Full bellies and laying wedged in between
the another sliced femur of a banana--
cover ourselves in the peels
so we don't feel so melted 
and naked and cold and August bodied. 
How did we end up here on
another Sunday?-- the night
that dangles her legs over the 
side of another plastic boat--
We melt our wrists here. Melt
our kisses and drink the remnants
like cough syrup and
you say 
NO MORE NO MORE
and I say ice cream for breakfast
and ice cream for lunch 
and ice cream to sleep through the
afternoon like strawberries--
Did you remember me August?
Like our feet on the planks of a beach?
Like our fathers who shaved our heads
and taught us to eat?
When did I stop being mint
and chocolate freckles?
How did we think we could eat only 
ice cream. It WAS you who had
called me mint chocolate chip 
but you also called me 
Sundae
and RED PLANET 
and CHERRY and BLOOD
and AUGUST and fed me
one more bite 
ONE MORE BITE from
the other side of a diner booth
on a night that hung like a Sunday. 

Our God of Gumball Machines
who had a sun and 
witnessed the birth of all the blue planets

Did I ever tell you what quarters are? 
I'm sure you have
heard his pocket change clamoring
when our God walks
the curb of the horizon like
a hitch-hiker each night--
arms butterfly balance beams-- 
this God who
thrives on rides from strangers--
I know you've heard the clatter
and clang in each foot-fall-- 
snapped your fingers to his steps 
and wondered why God has so many quarters.
Wondered if he likes Gumball machines--
Sing the coins from your living room 
and spend every cent
of the hour as 
He takes His pilgrimage and 
His hum drawing darkness and star over a day.
You pick him up in your blue jeep and he
tells you to take him to 
the edge of the woods again--
you give him your spare change
and he laughs at how the quarters
feel in his endless pockets emptying
into the Marianas Trench--
stack and stacks and stacks 
of quarters and pence and yen 
and rupees and pesos and 
and shillings and drachma that
he has been saving for gumballs. 
Before there was dark
Before there was light
There was only God and himself 
and the Gumball machine--
it blinked neon in the corner
of nowhere and it irritated God
to the point where he had to sleep with 
his back facing the other side of forever.
Somehow he always woke up staring at it
and it's empty shoots and slides 
The worst part was its bulbous head swirling
with unborn planets that mocked
our God whose eyes hurt 
from lack of dark and light--
he said to the machine
Give me a sun 
and the Gumball machine
laughed and glowed brighter
so our God could not sleep-- but
he did not give up. He kept vigil 
over the Gumball machine-- listened
to the neon patterns-- counted every single orb
until he had named each one and all
their moons and all their solar systems--
He said
Give me a sun
and when the machine laughed
this time God broken his
arms into quarters and pence 
and rupees and drachmas and fed 
each piece of himself
to the greedy creature
one by one by one by one
He said 
Let me have a SUN
He said
I will have a SUN
and the machine lurched and the slides
pulsed and pulsed and stretched 
and hurled down
a glowing piece of light for
God to pick up in his
hand-- still warm and soft.
He put the sun in his mouth and 
blew a pink bubble from which he 
would destroy the forever nothing.
And the Gumball machine cried and scorned
Him as it felt all the planets falling
from it's skull-- come Jupiter
come Mars come Moon come Neptune
come planets quiet and X-named--
God worked his jaw for seven days
and seven nights until each one
was hanging where there used to 
be forever nothing.
At last in his palm he held the
blue one-- delicate and quiet 
and sweet like the nights when He used
to sleep away from neon-- God
watched earth born from the swinging metal
door of the Gumball machine and he said
We will all one day laugh about
this-- you and me and the Gumball machine
But now let me have a blue planet 
and another
and another
and let them find me on the curbside
of the horizon and in the sun. 
and let them have a sun.

The chocolate box dissection
of my body
and fathers who still
collect stamps.

You don't like it when you
bite me nougat or Belgium cream--
you're a boy who wants all
his girls praline-- read the bottom
of my body of chocolates 
and taste me full of holes--
This confection dissection I've been
built for-- I was born for--
they arranged every part of a girl-body
in a box for you to choose from--
leave the white chocolate squares
of these bird cheek bones-- barren 
and pluck my chocolate raisins
one by one by one 
out of the limp vine of this spine
until we both break like cordial cherries.
This is sex now. This is blood.
This is what love is like for boys
who learned from their fathers stamp collections.
Blood-- like this raspberry mousse--
No you never could stop yourself--
you were trained that these squares 
were cut for your conquest-- for your
unsent postage-- a binder sideways
half-eaten apologies.
Please  
Leave me naked.
Leave me virgin rum. Leave me kneeling in 
the frame of another postage stamp--
Who taught you how to read girls backs?--
point out the pieces that you
want-- love us à la carte and lick 
the glue off our backs like your fathers
did with their stamp collections--  
hold us here under box lids--
in these ruffles-- under these ruffles--
eating these ruffles
your pantie packages-- with all the 
gold hems-- and when you kiss me
like caramel I could have almost
believed you weren't just another
stamp collector-- another boy
who lined every's body up in boxes--
in lines-- in chocolate raisin 
vines-- I am another still shot
in the book of your father's
stamps--
paste me between the biplanes
between the Pekineses 
between the ladies who tilt
sunhats towards Model Ts--
take me take me
and don't depart me eaten
in halves of butterscotch
you didn't feel like finishing--
Was I too thick for you?
Too sugar? Too glue? Too 
much like the address of your 
father's biplanes--
Ganache and jaw bone-- 
You didn't think that I had a chest
full of marshmallow
these fists of pecan
and these elbows 
cracking with cashews--
paste me and post-mark me in the 
pages among all the stamps 
you've neglected to mail
your teeth back with--
Did you think I would
wait for you under a lid just
for you to decide what parts
of me were worth all these wrappers?
I'm opening up
your father's stamp collection
and mailing you back each kiss
I ate from you-- and I won't
try to tell you that you were
an envelope for me-- 
I never left a square of your
body uneaten-- I never saw
a boy as a chocolate box or
frilled frame of a postage--
I saw you like a raisin vine-- 
like your father and your father's father
and like scientists who say
they have to cut things apart
to figure out how they work--
then tell me how I loved
you and left nothing uneaten?
Tell me how I kissed you cordial 
and cherries.
Tell me this is sex-- this is squares
this is your father turning 
the pages of our elbows 
this marshmallow 
this is praline--
This is me telling you 
I ate the unfinished chocolates
you thought you could taste half of
and close the lid.
This is me unraveling the stamp
collection of your father to 
send you my wrappers.
This is postmarked.
This is where we live now.
In ruffles. In squares.
In my our bodies of chocolates
and stamps
and closed the lid.

Let's lay low like pie crusts-- 
we roots. we apple torte. 

Knead me with your dry knuckles
my sisters my mothers my grandmothers
who unravel the skin of granny green
apples in pirouettes-- those dancer ribbons
I once held out the window of a blue jeep 
when I was seven-- trade my ribbons
for purple carrot shavings--
for the peels of red bananas
and honeydew I ate with my 
elbows rooted on the kitchen counter-- 
my feet bare as cinnamon and apples--
we were born in nutmeg dirt
in the blizzard of confectioner's
sugar that was snowing and
snows
and snowed-- 
the blizzard of 96' that 
baked us all into apple tortes
on the radiator--
kneaded my mother sweetly 
in another pie pan from the
seat of a blue jeep still waving
the ribbons of green apples--
I was only thumbprint in crust--
and my grandmother roasted 
butternut squash and the 
fat finger roots of sweet potatoes--
of her own mother who 
also had dirty feet
and elbows that rooted
themselves in kitchen tables.
We were all there
hiding under a blanket of pie-crust--
sugar--butter--flour-- vanilla 
call me the child of tortes and
crumb muffin-- call my body the scone
we name our own--
make love and girl-bodies with me.
make us sweet and dirty like
we were meant to be. 
Live our lives brushing
the sugar from our daughter's foreheads
and telling her that she will
always be inspected for burnt edges
and for the cinnamon and apples she buries
herself beneath-- don't clean your
feet
daughters. My mother-- let's be dirty
like cinnamon sticks and unshaven carrots.
Let's lay fat and bearded in the oven--
we are the bodies of root and gourd knots
cold and huddled in the 
glass sternum of the pie dish. 
We won't tell them that we kiss under 
the dough and under the apples
and under the snow and under the sugar--
we won't tell them that we peel off
the skin for show-- a strip tease--
this burnt burlesque 
we won't tell them that we love most
the burnt edges-- the places
where we failed to be hidden by 
the crust or by the snow.
We pie dish feet-- we flour hands--
we kiss and squash neck.
Lay low with me in the pie crusts--
pour the cinnamon and apples
over our heads-- slice me out of the 
grave plot next to my mother
and my grandmother
and my neighbor who accidentally
had a daughter too. Slice me out of
girl-body-- out of
the veins of the potatoes-- 
dig us each out of
dinner tables.
Oh, Cinnamon feet! Oh soy bean!
Oh porch!
Oh mother and snowed and snowing
and snow. 

Grilled cheese, 3a.m. gas station donuts
and how to avoid falling in love with girls
when you're 11.

I don't like girls
I say bold and sixth-grade-girl-bodied.
Shoes still on-- laced up 
to my thighs-- to my neck--
knotted in my hair--
one black chuck and one pink
I lay awake-- pirogue belly towards 
the ceiling of my room that is 
painted to look like the sky--
trace girl bodies in the clouds--
reach under my pillow for a slice
of tangerine gum and chew
until my mouth no longer
tastes like grilled cheese or powered 
donuts and stricken matches
I don't like girls
I like the way she crouches close
to the creek-- traces
circles with her index finger
in the water
and catches frogs with one hand--
I don't like girls 
I like how she opens
tasty cake packages with her teeth and
splits each doughnut in half
to share with me--
We learn to hide our 
powered fingers in each other's 
mittens-- hold hands like statues--
Walking home from the Turkey Hill
at 2:57a.m. she tells me that we're 
out past curfew and for the first
time of many I feel like we
have become part of the dark stomach
of the moon--
the side not so white and glossy 
like rows of powdered doughnuts
under neon lights--
we move like centipedes beneath covers 
of a quilt she pulls me into with her--
we watch a sleepover unfold 
in a warm brownie tray-- between us
we can lay to rest these
sixth-grade-girl bodies--
peanut oil on our knees and powered
doughnuts like snow globe salt
on our gloves
No you don't want to kiss her
You don't like girls
She smells like incense and
the silence of stricken match
You don't like girls
She asks you what boys 
you want to DATE MARRY OR FUCK
You don't like girls
and you can only think of her
You don't like girls
She makes grilled cheese
on a gas stove every day after school--
cuts the sandwich in half with 
the spatula and you learn 
to eat your body in the shape
of a melting triangle--
kiss her like cheese-- and peanut oil
and ripped knees of jeans 
and the stunned body of a frog 
blinking under the grasp 
of our mittens-- 
You don't like girls 
You don't like 
girls.
I learn to tuck my face into
a pillow-- dipped into the
quiet match-stick- black side of the moon
and repeat
I don't like girls
I don't like girls.
I like shadows 
I like the moon
I like grilled cheese
and I like being held in her one
hand like a frog
and washing snow globe
salt off my hands when I get home
to my sky ceiling
in my pink and black chucks
still knotted up to my knees.