Pizza slices I've folded myself into.

Mamas Delight Pizza knew our address and our order 
when we called for delivery.
The delivery boy was Mike and 
he drove a red car that resembled 
a coca cola can that had been
kicked up and down main street 
for a decade or so.
He carried the boxes on top of his head as
he approached and tucked the 
flying saucer dish of cheese fries
under his arm-- 
this man a mozzarella marinara 
ballerina poised at our front door.
This was back when
my dad "made" dinner" from
the holy trinity of the Airport Diner,
The Kutztown Tavern, and Mama's Delight Pizza.
We each had out method.
criss-crossed legs on the floor--
watched the termite tampered bones
of the house on Noble Street grow plumage
from my father's paint roller--
dipped it and handed it to me
to paint white the box
that was waiting to become a rain forest
waiting to become a kitchen
a staircase 
a corner 
a windowsill
waiting to become a family who folded
themselves into pizza slices 
and now paint their own bones
into themselves with the rollers
and the brushes-- sitting
on the floor in a circle--
suburban refugees stranded without 
cable television 
We told stories
and I folded myself
and my brother folded himself
and my father folded himself
together-- passing the crusts
like the bones of my grandfather
still walking back and forth
in what would become my room.
My father told us stories
between mouthfuls of sauce and cheese
and cardboard box and fry fingers
told us about what the night sky looked
like in Canada with his own father.
Somewhere mother folded herself
into a car on the way home from
work to fold herself into our circle too.
I made up stories about school
because I didn't have any real stories
to tell-- I was a dinosaur-- saber tooth
a girl in a blue hat knit by my mother
pouncing
on park benches-- fearless because
I didn't know I was fat yet 
Didn't know I wasn't supposed to
hesitate at how many times I fold myself
into pizza slices
I didn't know I was anything other
than a dragon tamer
and a paint roller 
and a cheese fry shoe lace string
pulled tight on my black Chuck Taylors
Just like daddy
I could still fold myself like
a pizza slice or an airplane
into anything-- tell my brother we
were Indians and rain dance 
in the rubble of the driveway.
I miss that house of bones where
my grandfather still lived in the
crusts of pizza and my father still
folded himself into the circle 
on the living room floor with us--
He asked me why I took the cheese off the 
pizza and I never had a good answer
other than that I liked how
squishy the dough felt beneath--exposed
and raw and so much like my own
skinned knees-- my own gums-- my
own blood pulsing to give
that house's bones feathers and 
femurs and fat in it's cheeks--
Our house has heavy bones now.
Collects orphaned mittens in the corners--
holds my elementary school crafts in her
belly-- eats all the cheese
I peeled off when pizza slices
when I was short and fat and skin-kneed--
filled her closets with times she meant
to cry but couldn't find a place to be alone--
keeps my grandmother's cat statues in the cabinets--
plays cable television like a 
elegy each morning.
My grandfather knocks on the walls
of my closet as he waits for
my father to order pizza again on a Friday. 
I never ate the cheese
and I don't eat pizza anymore
and my house is heavy heavy heavy
with all the pieces of ourselves
we've folded into her since the paint rollers.
I don't eat pizza anymore
but alone in my room I can still
peel my skin off like cheese--
remember my skinned knees
and tell stories to myself about being
a saber tooth girl or
an airplane--
Open my closet to find my grandfather.
Eat pizza in my poems.
Grow fat and heavy and fearless.

Attention
and other reasons why 
why we let ourselves get 
raped.

We all got raped for the
attention.
For a headline
For a front page
face ink stained from
sweat that crawls down
our backs when we sit up
from an another nightmare
where you don't hear us say
NO NO NO
but we like these dreams
asked for these dreams
sweaty and thick between
comforter where we fold ourselves
safe as pirogue filling--
mashed potato these bodies into 
midnight until there's no more
stains,
for the attention. 
You know-- the flashlight faces--
the stares of our fathers 
who tell reporters we're 
broken
we're 
different 
we're
shadow
We're
The magpies waiting to flush
And don't you dare call me sister
as if the only way fucking
me with my arms pinned down
would be wrong would be if we
were tied by blood
some sort of an incest
I'm not your fucking daughter
I'm not your mother
I'm a calliope of magpies--
ink-blotted dove-bodies refusing
to wear white
None of us were born virgins
you just taught us that's what
you wanted--
but it was too late because 
we were already little whores
who wanted your attention
attention attention--
Yes that's what we wanted Mr. Trump
Attention--
That's what I've always wanted--
You know?
I wanted hands and mouths 
and a collective of men yelling
at my body to give it attention--
grabbing my arms like purse straps
Like door knobs--
At least you have to invite a vampire 
inside for him to take everything.
We all started
to wear bras in fifth grade and by
the end of the first day the boys
already knew how to snap them--
lashes on the backs of girl bodies
learning to be quiet
and take the attention with grace
the fifth grade boys laughed because 
there was another 
place on our bodies for them to 
use as a handle--
I want you to yell at me from your car windows
I want you to call me "Baby"
Call me "Little dyke"
Scream "Yes, yes, mama, yes!"
I'm not your mother
and I have been raised to know
I'm not a human either-- We collect
dolls when we're young to teach
our daughters how to take
care of themselves when they
feel like everything has been 
siphoned from them--
close your eyes only when you lay down--
No-- not all of us had our arms pinned down
when you fucked us
but we all know 
what a car window is for 
and we all know what
dolls teach us about our bodies
and we all mash 
this skin like potatoes before 
we try to sleep-- pretend 
that there won't be nightmares--
sing like magpies from carved out gourds--
keep the underwear at the bottom of
the drawer-- don't wear the skirt
again but remember it folded in a triangle
on top of our dressers--
Yes we all came together here today
for the attention--
because one voice crying rape 
isn't loud enough and eight voices
lets us know it's just
another women's problem--
Another flock of magpies
the diagnosis of hysteria
asylum rooms cut out of the boxes
they squeeze us into along side
Cover Girl Ads in a People magazine
Pucker up and try to tell them
consent is sexy
because if nothing was in it for them
then what would the point be?
Yes, you've caught me.
You've caught all of us.
We did it for the attention.
We love the attention.
NO NO NO  
I'm not your mother.
I'm not your sister.
Don't you dare fucking
call me daughter.
You can call me shadow
Call me magpie--
Call me whore.
It's what you mean.

Turtle tracks and the other side of the hydrangea bushes

We named our turtle Fred.
We picked her up by her
shell in an attempt to teach
her how to fly but she never grew
crow-wings. She could cross the yard--
bent knees and head down
humming something about a creek 
something about a sister or a brother
or about the color of the leaves
floating on the water in October like
boats down the river sticks.
She was crying something about 
where she thought she might have been born.
Between two rocks. There was water
and there was the sound of trees
cracking their knuckles.
We watched her crawl-- 
shift-- stagger-- moan to the 
edge of our brownie-pan of
scratchy-grassed suburbia
looking beyond our neighbor's hydrangea
bushes and calling "stream stream!
do you see me mother?"-- 
only to be lifted back to 
the blue and purple kiddie pool where
she spent her summers.
She scrawled poetry with the claws on 
her back legs-- tally marks
in the plastic hull of the pool--
doggie paddled around the parameter
of her sun-bathing rock. She
patrolled-- tucked war paint 
in the streaks of red behind her
ears and grimaced with her beak
when I tried to smile at her. 
I called her "sister" and she hissed--
caressed her shell with my palm
and cooed, "darling, darling, I'm sorry..."
I sat on the stone by her cove
and waited for her to peer out from her shell.
She blinked and shed tears
for the goldfish she had eaten--
their scales still sticky on her chin--
fins floating around her head--
I played harmonica and asked 
her if she liked it. She waddled
over to me and told me that she
knew her mother was over there--
over there past the hydrangeas
past the lawns
somewhere between two rocks
and creek water-- that she
knew a God there-- a sister--
scratched--scratched--scratched at 
the walls of the kiddie pool and 
cried
Eden, Eden, Eden, Eden
She waited out lightning and thunder
in that pool as her mother shrieked 
to her from the clouds calling her
past the hydrangea bushes.
It's been a year since she followed
that voice over the wall of her 
pool and her pool is still there
haunted by the ghosts of devoured
goldfish tails and tales from lightning
cracked shells and shed turtle 
scales and I know it's been a year
but I'll follow her
tracks from the corner of the yard
meet her in Eden, Eden, Eden, Eden 
And she'll tell me she found her 
mother and her sister but that they 
were only stones-- rocks 
caught under the bellies of October
leaves-- she had been clawing towards
that Eden and the water sang harmonica there.
And I told her I was sorry she had
seen so many storms from the rim 
of that kiddie pool--
in cased in plastic
and she said it was okay that
she had missed me-- that I should
climb over the hydrangea bushes.
I'll go someday-- I'll go back to my mother--
someday someday someday
become a turtle writing poetry 
with my back legs through the summer.
Become a stone.
Become a sister. 

   

Sticky bun girls and the tornado burger.

My uncle taught me how to be a sticky bun girl
and we plunged elbow-deep into diners to
fold paper napkins on our laps 
like clergy-- like the holy union 
of spinning diner stools and steak-cut fries.
Defeated tornado burgers spun wild and free-verse
and cursing about the steam off the grill--
Blue tooth-pick tassels on our sandwiches we
let hamburger buns talk about the wars they 
harvest purple hearts from
-- let the ketchup
complain about the sidewalk 
and the sauteed peppers  
muse about the bench in the alley where the chef
sits to smoke a cigarette when the line
out the door of Letterman's diner thins around noon--
We made pickle-poetry-- paged
past the flyleaf of our napkins and 
bound up each meal with mints
spinning us both like windmills
on the hump-backs of the corn fields--
breaching at sunset and calling to their
mothers for hashbrowns--
We could all be food poets if they didn't
teach us to sit like LADIES
eat like LADIES
throw up in a bathroom sink like LADIES
learn to order salads at a diner like LADIES
hide from tornado burgers in the 
cellar like LADIES
peel off the outer most edge of a sticky
buns like LADIES do and give the rest 
to a man who earned his place in poetry--
No there are no LADY-poets
only poets who had been called LADIES--
Had menus scold them 
when they were ten to not lick 
the bottom of a bowl of tomato soup--
to be tape measured and led into the cellar
to let the tornado burgers pass overhead--
pull sauteed peppers from their hair--

Before they learn how
to talk I want to teach my children
to eat-- speak-pronounce proclaim
the words scraped from a grill with a spatula and
pulled writhing from hot tubs of sunflower oil--
the poetry of
our teeth and hands and mouths and 
tongues-- 
I will stand on the dining table and 
tell them to throw their utensils
on our kitchen floor-- 
Beat the bellies of the pasta pots
with forks--flick spoons
at the fine china--
we never needed china plates anyway 
because there was never a wedding--
We only ever
needed our hands. 
Burned diner menus that offered us
salads--
My children will say "Where's our mother and
where's our father and where are
the wedding pictures set out on the 
coffee table like a trophy?"

I will tell them they told me to 
sit like a LADY and eat like a LADY
I will say
my uncle tried to teach me to be a sticky bun girl--
I had triumphed in tornado burgers
with paper napkins on my lap--
licked glaze from my
wrists and used my fingers as soup ladles
and they will call me kitchen sink
They will call me sunflower oil
and ketchup and when I bake brownies
they will hear whole kitchen smell
like broken china plates--

I want my children to think about
food like poem-- write sorrow into
their jaw bones and eat the brownies
that remind them of the mothers they
never had.
Sit like a dinosaur I'll say 
Eat like a tornado
Share steak-cut fries in the cellar
spear sandwiches with blue tooth-pick tassels
and spin yourself on the diner stool
to the core of the sticky bun--

The bees knew I was more than an apple.

And you thought I was just an apple--
The temptrex seduction for which
we will all dance the Charleston in hell. 
Yes but wasn't it worth it
Adam had nothing on me and he only
kissed Eve because he hadn't known 
an apple yet-- 
Oh! Eve's fruit! Oh Rome! Oh Macintosh!
Oh Adam who would never eat
enough apples to learn how to love Eve--
Adam man and Eve girl get on your knees
beneath the branches-- look
for me like a wedding ring on
a coral reef-- I'm rarer than apples
and redder than Winesap-- my love
Brew me cider and thick stem-- 
Look for me like the backs of
your sister's ruby earrings-- like paper clips
like pumpkin seeds lodged again in
the gut of their mothers
like penance and Pentecost 
like sleeping under the apple tree
in sin-- like being chased out
of the garden of Eden 
by drunken bees 
and 
you look under the tree limbs--
the shade of the leaves 
where the largest fruit
resist wasp queens-- Oh! What it feels
like to rule a kingdom where
your people have to kneel to see your
sunburn face-- blush bruised from 
the frost and gospel hymns they
sing from the bottom of the reef--
I was there
too with you on the ground in that rot.
We waited 
in the mouth of a yellow jacket--
All those bees who keep singing 
about how many more 
weeks of frost they could live angry 
and drunken off of fermenting apple
froth-- up to your feet sink 
into
the soil and become a sapling--
I'll teach you about sin and apples
and we can share Adam and Eve. 
Tell them to dance the Charleston for
us when we're bored and the crooning of the bees 
is so loud we can't hear the other sisters 
falling
falling
falling
It's our job to help the bees die softly 
before they frost over
in November-- did you count
how many were left?
How many could still sing and how
many were looking for their wedding
rings on the reef-- did they drown in
the cider or in our blood--
were they looking for rubies or 
the backs of earrings?
Oh they knew me like Adam and Eve could not.
They didn't dance but
they sang and they crowned themselves
in pumpkin seeds and Pentecost--
Oh! The Garden is burning and you
thought I was only an apple here--
thought I was a mouthful of desire
and decay-- Oh kneel Adam Oh cry Eve--
Where do we bury the bodies of the bees. 

My father and I as nowhere men
between gun shots and gummy worms.

My dad says that the days
are bad now because when he wakes up it's dark 
and when he gets home it's dark. 
I ask him what I can do
for him and he says 
SHOOT ME
and he laughs like he always does.
SHOOT ME
I don't tell my father much anymore.
I don't tell him that I feel that way 
too like
SHOOT ME
I don't tell him that when I'm sad
I think about eating gummy worms with him
under a willow tree at the farmer's
market. I remember how we play with the radio
until it sang to us from the GREEN APPLE
Beatles CD
and I don't tell him that when I feel
like I want to run away I imagine 
that corn field in July after
karate practice when he stopped our
jeep just so I could fill my pockets
with lightning bugs.
I don't tell him I think there's less
lightning bugs now.
I want to tell him--
me too
me too
me too
me too-- I feel like ice cube trays.
Me too I spin myself in the afternoons
to the turn of a
Beatles record with John Lennon 
singing 
Nowhere man 
nowhere man 
nowhere man 
I used to think my father wrote that song
but now I knew we're both
just NOWHERE MEN
I think we understand each other
through some sort of thing called 
melancholy-- it's the language
we talk over telephones-- 
in between the notches of a record--
and from the front seats 
of the van.
I see us in the same
morning saunter between
a kitchen counter and a digital 
clock. My father doesn't eat breakfast
and I eat grapes from a measuring cup
at the kitchen table-- perched like
a bottle cap on from porch--
My father doesn't watch the news but
we can compromise on watching 
Arthur on PBS from opposite sides
of a slumped sofa. I learn to drink
coffee and when he opens his
diet coke it sounds like the cracked 
knuckles of an ice cube tray.
And the radio in his jeep 
sings 
Nowhere Man, please listen
You don't know what you're missing
Nowhere Man, the world is at 
your command
We talk melancholy there until he
asks me if I would be ready when 
the sun came up--
and the digital clock reads 5:55am
and we walk out into the back yard 
for the last time as NOWHERE MEN.
The same back yard where I practiced 
karate with my father who was
always a sensei--
The grass makes our feet
wet with dew-- we don't
wear shoes and the sky is orange
and yellow
and burnt like lightning bug tails.
he pulls out a gun and so do I
point at each other
we both close our eyes
when we pull the triggers 
and it sounds like the opening 
of a can of diet coke and 
the digital clock is screeching
6:00am 6:00am 6:00am
we're both late to nowhere--
and we wake up on opposite
sides of the slumped sofa
after the gun shots--
look at each other for an instant
and go back to drinking coffee
and diet coke.
I perch like a bottle cap and he 
hangs his head like a willow tree.
SHOOT ME
he says and he laughs like ice cubes.
SHOOT ME
I say and I pass him a gummy worm
while he hums 
Nowhere man, nowhere man, nowhere man.

The apple tree and my body that grew inward.

You shouldn't eat so many apple seeds
They say 
because I eat through the core--
through the sinews-- through the marrows 
of an apple each morning before the
sun dries itself out in the sky-- broiled
tart-- baked in cinnamon and butter--
bubbles and spits sugar down on us
standing earthly bound and eating through
the cores of apples
while the snakes warm their bellies--
You will grow an apple tree inside you
They say 
because they've seen it all happen before--
Seen girls cough pollen for weeks
and weeks and weeks-- 
kneeling and trying to make themselves
small as thimbles or oven mitts
feel the fruits grow underneath their lungs--
breathe low and cautious like a mother
spit out apples the size of Jupiter's moons
in their hands each morning only to eat them
again while the snakes watch from the corner--
grow more seeds
grow more apples 
prune back the leaves 
with your ribs until you bleed
cider and butter and cinnamon blood 
broiled blackened on the sidewalk.
I asked if the tree grew from my
womb or my stomach and they said that
there were seeds in both and the apples
were red and mustard and greed and rug-burn
kneed and lipstick flowers on wrists
and your grandmother's worn golden earrings
You will learn to grow inward
They say
because that's how they teach us to survive--
close our eyes and pull the strings of
our spinal chords to turn on the lights
we've been saving underneath our clavicles--
GROW INWARDS 
Seal your lips up with needle and thread
and keep the apples for 
yourself-- leave the extras in the sky
to find themselves as more moons for Jupiter
to fashion a belt out of--
prune the tree each morning
and build book shelves
from the extra limbs-- write poetry 
about thimbles and oven mitts
and carve the skin off your womb 
to make a baking oven-- one not for
thimbles-- compose your own sun 
as an apple tart and shower in cinnamon 
and butter when it rises from the oven
each morning.
You're selfish to keep an apple tree from
     all those boys 
They say  
Because they know what apples do to 
girl bodies-- we invite the snakes to
watch us-- learn to speak only
in poetry--our apple-seed code-- talk
to the snakes and leave lipstick
stains on their scales as they slither
away with slices of our apple tarts
They say we were good bakers 
but that we should have saved more
time for thimbles and oven mitts
and less time for book shelves
You'll have to cut down the apple tree if
     you want to be a person
They say
Because it's so much nicer to use
your womb to bake cakes and your
lungs to hold up Jupiter moons
than it is to breath and give 
birth to more apples each morning--
And you know your can never stay a tree
for long-- never eat enough seeds
turn your skin into bark--
But today be an apple tree with me
let it curl out of your mouth and speak
poetry to the snakes--

Eat through the core.
Grow inward. 

Out damn COFFEE MUG girl! 
Do you remember when he made YOU a headline?

Little girls in their
plastic princess shoes talk about growing
up to have someone make them famous.
Comb each hair of their Barbie into
lines and practice walking on tip-toes--
sucked in stomach in the mirror--
taping headlines on their walls
in frames of glitter glue.
The thane of Fife had a wife: where is she now?
Oh! KINGS WILL BE KINGS AND
BOYS WILL BE BOYS WILL BE BOYS
WILL BE HEADLINE MAKERS WILL
BE rape STATISTIC thanes who
will BE BOYS BE BOYS BE BOYS.
Be a girl when they say
on sleepover blankets:
I want him to be a politician--
to call me LIBERTY-- call me court 
cut me out of my pencil skirt on 
a desk and tell me I can pick
up papers for the rest of my
life-- heel-clamor at slammed doors 
and remember him calling me LIBERTY 
call me COFFEE MUG to fill
me with princess shoes.
Write the chorus the thanes all sing 
YOU WANT IT YOU WANT IT YOU WANT IT
YOU WANT TO BE MY COFFEE MUG--
wipe the stains from the headlines
and bend like a good SLUT
like a coffee handle remind us
all the he was a good man
a GOOD boy a GOOD thane a GOOD king
What, will these hands ne'er be clean?
Be a girl when they say
as they out grow plastic shoes:
I want him to throw footballs--
throw me like a vase out a window
to land on a sidewalk and have them
pick up the pieces of my sweat
shirt to ask me why I wanted to
let him break me so many different ways--
You know as well as I  that we were all
just waiting to be famous--
Be a girl when we ask each other
how much we want to be raped?
Some of us get lucky and get to choose
whose blood stains our headlines--
Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why,
then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? 
Oh! Don't say it-- don't call it RAPE
and how many headlines they'll
use to clothe us in yellow tape-- because
if your famous someone must be FUCKING you--
You slut-- you whore-- you curse of girl-body
who thought they could ever be a LADY
You're a microphone-- a spatula-- 
a stove-- a pen cap-- a coffee mug
-- a necktie lynched around a waist 
like a princess leash-- 
YET HERE'S A SPOT--and the headlines
will say: What is it she does now? 
Look how she rubs her hands.
So say I in my headline 
Come, you spirits-- you flash-blubs 
you cameras-- you naked in newsprint--
that tend on mortal thoughts
UNSEX ME HERE
-- and I won't wash my
hands of any king's blood--
and they'll call me a CRAZY and a HYSTERICAL
SLUT-- 
and brand PATRICIDE on my forehead
but at least he won't have made me famous--
Oh! The girls laugh when I tell them
I won't be a rape headline-- 
they say: It is an accustom'd action 
with her, to seem thus
washing her hands. 
I have known her continue 
in this a quarter of
an hour.
but it's only because I already have
been-- we all already have been-- 
there's too many spots of blood to
wash but look what you've done--
there's nothing left to take
COME THICK NIGHT
so the my keen knife see the wound it 
makes-- write RAPIST over
BOY WILL BE BOYS WILL BE BOYS--
will be rapists. 
Yet who would have thought the old man to
have had so much blood in him?

Bathrooms without shower curtains and other
ways to hold a funeral for a house.

It was a Tuesday because it's always a Tuesday.
He washed his face in the mirror and then
the man turned out the lights in the upstairs 
bathroom where he had always
left one light flickering like a earthbound 
star-- belt buckle of Orion to hold up
our fathers-- the red light above the
tabernacle. 
son and wives had watched for the glow
behind the veil of curtains  
and thought about
lighthouses and Christmas--
and their father who always left too
many lights one.
Front door closed like a jar of raspberry jam-- 
tighter & tighter.
The man walked away from the porch
between the two elm trees in the front yard--
one still holding the burden of a child's swing.
The house blinked
He was consumed-- swallowed-- submerged 
into the licorice veins of damp streets.
Sewn into the contorted sauntering of cars 
crawling on their hands and knees
through a foggy morning--
those basilisks or demons.
The house felt herself hollow-- caressed 
the space in her torso where they
had once laid the tweed couch
-- touched lightly
the scars from 
the children's watercolor paintings 
that had once hung at the 
end of each of her hallways-- she felt
larger & larger but still
tighter & tighter from the absence of 
foot steps & foot stools
under the staircase in the basement.
She waited-- vigil on into night and
the bathroom remained
dark and shower sat stripped naked without
a curtain. No one washed themselves
to let her cry there-- 
only then did she know she was dying.
There was a window left open downstairs.
In came the mourners already-- glinty beetles who
casually invited the moths and the chipmunks
and the raccoon who dropped
raspberries on the hardwood floor like
blood or broken down stars--
the last thing she could remember was
the sound of lightning bugs
turning their lamps on & off
on & off and she had wondered if
the man would peel her open by the front
door ever again-- fill her with warm
footed children and sofas and scars--
He could nail portraits to her vertebrae and frame
posters of rock bands across her forearms.
The next morning was Tuesday--
because it's always Tuesday.
She didn't wake up-- lay there
mouth open in her windows-- 
The raccoons wondered if it had been their
fault that she had died like that.
The two elm trees outside were startled by
the rotting wood beams on the porch--
looked at their own trunks and wondered
if trees lived longer than houses &
longer than people-- they had forgotten
to keep track of their age through all these
years and they nuzzled their roots closer
to her corpse for comfort-- held her body in
their limbs and sang to her
about humans & about fog & 
about how the lightning bugs had 
learned to severe off pieces of stars
to turn on & off their lamps every night.
The elm trees forgot about time again
and forgot to be worried about not waking
up-- scheduled a funeral for her and laid
vines that raptured into white flowers 
in April-- the bees made nests in her scares
and the wild raspberry bush outside
crept into the living room where
she used to feel the whole family come
together on the mustard tweed sofa--
filled her belly with glinty beetles
and they all wrote songs about the light
in the bathroom and the feet of children
even though they had never felt
them like she had. Her stomach bled with
berries and in that was the summer
she lost what was left of her eyes-- 
the shards of glass collapsing inward until
she was nothing but open eyes-- air paraded into
her hallways enough to rouse the ghosts of
each water color paintings 
and blow up the skirt of the shower curtain--
she shivered there.
Lit the light in the bathroom.
Washed her face in the mirror.

Noah's arch and the animal crackers.

None of us were ready to pair off
two by two-- we held on to the hem of
each others skirts and tried to pretend
to be aardvarks and seals-- we crawled on our
bellies and barked at a new moon peeking over
the edge of the prickled-backed corn fields. 
I had always liked warm rain. 
This rain was the kind that
steamed off the tilled soil
like a lid lifted from a pot
of macaroni and cheese
for days 
before it resolved to fall.
This rain hung in our sugar bones and in our
ridged fake cheetah tails-- We put on masks
to be crows-- flapped our arms and tried to
jump high enough to convince them we were
capable of flight. Squawked on our knees--
Begged to be to let  
on board his arch that was only
a white bowl resting on the edge
of the counter top next
to the boxes of fruit loops and raisin bran. 
Some of the other creatures broke their
legs and fed their pieces to the camels 
and the lions-- smothered frosting on their
backs and tangled sprinkles in their matted
fur to be something desirable for the journey--
nibbled at their own femurs--
shared knee-caps and their mother's bed time stories--
dipped elbows into milk.
We laughed at all
the goldfish crunched under sneakers
on the kitchen floor.
We swept up their 
cheddar scales and salt bones. 
It had been comforting to think how there
would be more room for us in the bowl--
we counted the people who turned 
out to be goldfish and the people who 
turned into crumbs before
the rain came.
Some of them wanted their parents to be
the ones to eat them if there wasn't
going to be enough room-- 
broke off each limb one by one until 
they were nothing but cat-tails and 
crow masks and elbows and frosted-fur
We walked two by two and pretended and
to be doves-- everyone needs doves
in a cereal bowl or an arch or
a rain storm--
poured in tomato soup and milk and
steam from pots of macaroni and
cheese-- camels fractured by the 
prickled-spine, lions clamored-- mouths 
full of frosting and cheetah tails.
We found each other and held onto
each others skirt hems-- crawled into
the bowl as elephants or crows 
or doves-- no one believed we were doves.
We had always liked the rain--
held each other's trunks and pretended
to be a pair-- two by two
and two by two and crumb feet 
and cheddar scale in Noah's cereal bowl
perched on the counter top.
I had always liked the rain--
two by two and broken elbow and
watching for the black new moon
over the lip of the bowl.