Firefly widowers and warming apple cider 
with a porch light.

July leads the kind of death of a mother--
it takes till September for you to remember that
you can't wake her up in the morning for
chocolate chip pancakes and you won't feel
the coffee machine sputtering before you
wake up again. You become your own
hazelnut vanilla coffee to sip from
her arm of the sofa-- 
Watch a blank tv.
Hear the train whistles from the tracks
over the hill that always call louder
in the cold--
The black screen tells you that the fireflies 
have become widowers-- all of them sitting on porches
and waiting for the frost to click off
the lights still lit in the abdomens--
some of them carve their wives initials into
the apple crumb-cake dirt and train whistle 
songs that remind them of fourth of July
when we were all somehow ten-years-old.
I'll tell them I didn't know their wives
but that I'm sorry never notice fireflies until
they're already starting to die.
We don't see dead fireflies, do we? 
We see brittle grass and broken porch lamps
and an increase in stars--and when
I was ten I think there used to be more fireflies
but I might just have wasted my
sense of wonder on those summers when
catching a firefly was like reigning in a piece of a sun--
they quievered in my cupped hands like the coffee pot
full of hazelnut vanilla coffee-- Now tonight I warm
apple cider by a porch light and it's still
hot and soup-ladel summer but we all know that
autumn is already stuffing potato chip bags
with maple leaves to toss under our feet
in the morning-- ginger-snap through the field  
on twigs and the shells of fireflies
still glowing faintly in between the 
blades-- I'm warming apple cider with the porch light
and sharing it with the firefly widowers.
They share stories about how all of them challenged 
the fireworks on the fourth of July and
how they gorged themselves on trashcan watermelon 
that wasn't melancholy like gingersnaps dipped
in warm apple cider-- the last supper 
of the summer air rasping and coughing like
a coffee pot-- They ask me to shut off the porch light
They ask me if I'll have pancakes in the morning--
if I'd still make them alone for
the sound of a blank tv?
I tell them I won't-- that I'll probably
warm apple cider again and listen for train
whistles and wait on the porch
again for the Sugar Maples to strip for
me and shake their hips bare in the
swirls of their shredded dresses-- pieces 
of their sex in the August when
the fireflies first whispered about death
and realized that
summer is three months deep
and takes four years to dig ourselves out of.
And when she comes back I'll make
her chocolate chip pancakes and vanilla hazelnut
coffee and we'll sit on the porch 
lit by the sun and trashcan watermelon 
and firefly lovers still whistling 
from the night before. 

Hold still while I kiss you with fireworks. 

Kiss me in a gun shot hole kicked through the night sky
-- blow back the corn-wheat like wig hair
and the birds will follow-- they're the crows for my
wedding-- the ones who got dressed in white just
for the occasion. This sad union between a coffee-stained dress and
my body that picks her fingers full of needles and matches--
Darling, I've tried stitching the veil-- blast-bombed-- we'd torn 
the tulle like a lip-- bite-- pull-- seam us into wig hairs--
break these bell-groans with your police batons-- crowd
control of my bruise buttons up the back of my dress--
did you know what it means to be on fire?-- how did we
get away with bursting so suddenly without a fuse?

Come here. Help mash blue berries on my dress 
to match all the bruises I have
worn as shoulder pads or buttons up the elevator of my spin--
Raise steady so we can burn each floor-- but leave my
forearms alone. LEAVE MY FOREARMS ALONE-- no
matter how loudly I say it I always come back there
to a graveyard of my nails dug in as tombstones
therefore rest my red match heads-- 
Bust-blueberry blood vessels. Sprawl in firework embers.
did you check your hair for pieces of the gun-shot stars
we made just to kiss under and pretend that there's no such
thing as tulle or crows? Is there something in fireworks
that make us more prone to love or are we just
heart- beat- hair-pinned fast enough to forget
that we have so many bruises he might mistake for blue
berries-- linger just long enough for a flash-- camera bulb-- 
camera crew who tells you to take off the veil-- no one
care about veils-- we want to see your spine--
we light love like bottle rockets with those 
red match heads--

Please don't kiss me with fireworks-- 
I'll use the dress as a picnic blanket-- 
and we can forget all the times we'd
performed for the crows--

Did he tell you to pour yourself into him? 
Did he claim to be oil or fire? 
He did it so he could eat your entrails like funnel cake-- 
powder sugar in your hair to tell you that you that your skin looked better
like a paper plate-- he erases your forearms with a plastic fork
and tells you how sweet you are and sweeter you
are becoming with all that dusty sugar-- all the gun powder--
all that breaking that only he could make you do

Don't flinch when I kiss you
hold still. 
LEAVE MY FOREARMS ALONE.
hold still. 
hold still. 

Her bent knees and the mustard seed along with other time capsules.

help me bury my finger nails under 
the oak trees. I resolve to 
grow another time when the windows
are less foggy in the morning.
i will grow when the grass 
doesn't crunch like dipped glass--
bleed these feet like peanut shells--
no matter where i fall i could be spore-- scored
scorched scattered-- the mustard
seed choir who all fell on the rocks
and none in the garden where heaven
is supposed to grown before you 
get old enough to doubt God and doubt
gardens-- young enough to think about
all the time capsules your
grandfather might have left
you at the bottom of the sandbox
or under the Oak trees or inside
each peanut shell you peel off
like finger nails--
my hair still turns blue in October
and my feet still turn
blue and my nose still blushes blue
like the Sugar Maple trunks. These Maple-
ladies
in their
straining 
stretch-marked
thighs bent in their own
benediction to keep out the sun-- 
the legs say "she is worthy, she is ready"
and the sun is assumed each day 
into their pelvises-- reserve birth of
a rotted acorn-- mustard seed
sown into my forearm with ink--
did i tell you about the peanut shells
i buried like finger nails--?
the elbow bones of white bread sandwiches 
and squirrel tongues-- i've always been
afraid of how squirrels eat so 
fast and so worried-- eyes peeled open
to the sun like they're seeing death take
his measured steps-- death who scatters 
the mustard seeds under his rob
and tells us to grow ourselves as acorns
because mustard seeds are a myth used 
by man to sell hot dogs and 
heaven and white bread sandwiches--
what would you save for me in the time
capsule--? i can leave you something
blue-- like my hair or just a white
bread sandwich that could remind you
how we all have cracked peanuts 
like a squirrel-- eyes peeled back
under the nervous legs of our mothers--
did you go back with the sun or
wait for me here and how much did you
bury-- how deep did we go? 
leave something for me when the windows
stop fogging and the grass stops 
bleeding us like rotted acorns.
i'll be here digging with the squirrels,
eating peanuts with my grandfather 
and trying to plant mustard seeds
to grow whatever kind of heaven
can grow from our own thighs--
no we never need a garden-- we needed
our knees and our finger nails
and the mustard seed. 

Hours before high school I measured in the hypothetical 
tablespoon fulls of cold gooseberry jam 
I would have eaten on wheat toast if 
I hadn't been anorexic. 

Sway next to me on the crumb-counter top--
we can wear our bare feet slippers and rye-bread robes--
I'm here to make you breakfast if you're listening
close enough to hear my feet on the drafty floor--
fold cautious and sleepy with me into an omelette--
two eggs is enough to blur the 
egg-eye yolks-- blink fast like
a priest so they don't know that 
you're awake already-- blanket me
cheddar cheese melted-- my father
says to go back to bed-- and I counter
sway  alone and the television talks about
earthquakes and how a one-hundred year
old woman can still dance the polka--
before my father turns on shouting
about foot ball games never won
or foot ball games always won
in reserve-- reverse of a egg
thrown into a pan-- crack like a sun--

Tomorrow I'll have toast
and gooseberry jam and I'll sit
on the counter and eat.

so, We can pretend we're having a 
party here in the dawn musty kitchen 
before the school buses dig themselves
out of their caves in soppy saunter 
and we wake up before the sun knows who
his mother is-- blinks open
like a hemisphere of squeezed lemon--
bright and confused from birth--
thrown into the pan with the 
two eggs seeing with each other's eyes
wishing that they were both the
other while in the process of becoming
neither. 

I only need a slice of toast-- a table-
spoon with jam-- I know it's awhile till
lunch but the sun doesn't even 
know his mother yet--

Wrap your arms around me like
the thick lullaby lips of the lady
who chimes in repeat on the news
about the earthquake she'll explain 
after the break
after the break 
after the break
after the bacon commercial 
with the man lost-- fried-- crisp in 
the pan-- pan butter fried 
and cold gooseberry tablespoons--
after the break.
Wait for me after the break--

The news about the one-hundred year
old lady who still dances polka
still seems like a dream.

Did we wake up or
were we blurry as eggs
still in some lemon
dream from the sun--

"It's early" my father says.
"Go back to bed."

And we sway on the counter 
as drifty as crumbs or rye bread robes
or a spilled basket of gooseberries 
on the kitchen floor.

"It's early" my father says.
"It's early."

Marshmallow fingers and the moon.

oh you people are sticky-stuck in the fire-pit 
like twigs-- crinkle bag of baked potato-chip leaves 
and the dead-strangled grass still reminding
us that we have to mow the lawn and that August 
never ends herself quietly--
she's the type to stick her head
into an oven-- the type who screams 
like those fire works that make bells
of our ears-- Challah bread- baked braided girl
who didn't believe in the flyleaf
pages at the end of our book-- she 
wrote poems in the margins of September--
melted frost with her hot cheeks and sweaty hands--
look for that dead angel hair that has always started 
fires, smoked, and marshmallows-- 
are you a charcoal child who set sugar on fire and 
melted in the crater--? 
do you believe
in love like marshmallows or were you
worrying if the night sky was cooking in 
our little fire-- send a bottle rocket to
knock out the moon--
the stars blink like popcorn kernels-- it looks like burning 
we don't always noticed the boiled moon
waiting for us to kiss and mold ourselves
together with marshmallow fingers--
there's no such thing as love without
burnt sugar-- don't trust people
who are too patient with sugar-- those
caramelized creatures who skewer girls 
with sticks-- rub their melted wrists clean
with the still-green leavings who
never turned in time-- they're 
just waiting for the moon to be done cooking--
the great bowl of bagel-- we dug
the sun into our back yard and filled
it's mouth with calendars-- did you
burn August or did she burn herself?
i don't share marshmallows for my own
protection-- sharing can leave you as
brown as sugar ashes in the fire pit--
a cinnamon-soot angel-- did you put out
the fire with water? did you remember to put out
the moon? did it steam in the ocean
and melt on your fingers? did you 
share with me the charred marshmallows
and smore-squish me under the full
weight of popcorn super novas--
and did i kiss you like marshmallow 
fingers?
--you can pull them through this dead grass hair-- burned
in the oven-- 
our thumbs blending the black coal-smudged moon
back into the night. 

Kicking the the granola bars out 
of grandfather trees in my
pink and black canvas shoes.

I learned well about the art of
flying from the swing sets that squeaked
like my jaw and my knees-- 
the swing set at the park between
the roller skating rink 
and the ball field on the shoulder-
of the shrugging hill where
we used to big kings of some mountain
-- smack-crack of the aluminum baseball
bat in the dust with the
ping-ping-pang of tree hairs--
Oh! I was the blushy-flush autumn
that thinks she's becoming 
an orange creamsicle for another round of
heat to teem her toes in green--
mistakes the red lip stick
in her hair for the sun-- 
she's older now and grandfather
trees look especially wise
all tangled in the park. I push
myself into flight-- I'm not thrown 
by dadies or dinosaurs anymore--
I'm a close-eyed angel-crow with
the moth wings in my canvas shoes.
I land like leaves. I broke pieces of
honey granola bars-- the manna--
the mutch-cracker-- those granola bars 
we all used to think would make
us strong enough to propel ourselves
over the bar of the swing-- break
the chain and go up and and up and up
and just keep going until we found ourselves
entangled in the rotted elbows of a grandfather
tree still telling us stories about
when autumn was colder and when 
girls wouldn't wear ripped jeans
and canvas shoes or stuff their pockets with 
granola bar wrappers. 
I haven't thought about swinging 
but I did a lot back then
and I thought about kicking the trees
and if I was really as high as a tree
and if I would ever fall like a swing
and if everything could as simple
as the pumping of you legs into
flight-- 

Why don't we use more swings 
and less airplanes and bird-wings
and autumns?

Because there are fathers to push
us higher-- and grandfathers to 
catch our legs when we kick them
and granola bars in our jeans
so that we can pretend that we're
climbing a mountain-- 
even if only in autumn. 

my body is arranged marriage argument against bathroom lights
and sample cups.

they could have called me VAMPIRE GIRL
for how much blood i've drained the from myself

-- girl--
girl with blood-blushed cheeks and the fear of
sample cups at Walmart. 
with this body we were born facing 
ourselves in a mirror-- teaching ourselves
to be sample cups of tooth paste and shaving cream
we're nail-polished war paint--
painting black and white
and black and white 
and black and white
between each rib-- each vertebrae--

we learn that looking into mirrors for too long
is a kind of death we would live through again--
i wasn't scared of mirrors like 
a sex-girl
-- not like a magazine queen-- eye brow
arch to the other side of the water--
i wouldn't be dressed in mouse-click lip stick-- 
it's not so much my
face but the places i can see through it--

learn to avoid mirrors--
for the dread of what 
you'd have to correct next
highlighter in hand and
squeaky on your mirror face

become a medicine cabinet and hide beneath 
and under the cherry cough syrup you 
poured down the sink when your mother
wasn't looking-- we cough the cherry pits
and scrape off the blood with our
finger nails-- i burn
holes in the mirror with my match book
to make larger places i can
see through my skin-- this parchment--
written in highlighter ink--
-- prove myself vampuric.
it's taken till this long to argue with my skin
in the mirror--take the stand
under the interrogation of the
bathroom-- mourge-table lights--
my mirror ribs and my
finger ribs and my teeth ribs and
reflection of bathroom lights in mirror--
that false and snarled sun--
and i've spent too long waiting 
to be picked up from a sample cup
paper--paper-- hammock where i crumpled my ribs--
tooth pick snapped-- teeth picked like cherries--

do you remember how long it took
for you to look at yourself 
in the mirror without being afraid
of what you would have to go
over in red highlighter?-- blood
highlighter?-- arrangement and 
correction--and setting fire to and crumpling
like a sample cup of cheese
skewered like a sacrifice--?

well i know that i was born
with that bathroom light and i'll die
with that bathroom light
and the way it knows my skin like
the crater cheddar cheeks of the
moon-- show me where i've done wrong
and i'll war paint over it
using only my ring--
saturn ring married-- moon fingered-- 

i'm married to the me in the sample
cup-- waiting like a hammock sling
in the glare of the bathroom light--
i'm arguing that i love 
this skin-- that i'm tooth-pick solider--
solid foundation of the 
medicine cabinet-- there's no 
cherry cough syrup for this--
there's no way to avoid
the burning or the blood--

look at me myself my wife my
husband my partner in the cabinet 
i've been hiding in next to all
the coughed up cherry pits--
i'm beautiful--

i scream-- 

The Giant Chinese King buffet I remember in my collar bones
and in the warm trays of my thighs.

When I was twelve I thought
China was fifteen miles away with a big
red sign that read "Giant King Buffet"

chinese hibachi sushi mexican american
food for one price children free
on sundays with two parents
one parent or two children
or your uncle who also plays
the role of your father when
your father works for the moon
and eats general tsos chicken
from take-out boxes at 6am before
you go to seventh grade homeroom

I thought China was a plastic
water fountain where the tangled dragons 
dipped their claws for koi--
a kanji symbol that could mean
anything about rivers or a mountains
or moons or mothers or fathers 
or fishing in wooden sandals.
I was a chopstick-snapped-finger-- holding
onto the bends of my belly
between the sticks like the
girth of a shrimp egg roll.
Fry me lightly or rice roll me in Spring--
I was a koi creature for everything
but buffets-- my uncle and I were
tongue travelers-- draped myself
in silks at the head of a wobbly
table-- cheeks of buffet steam--
we were queens, the both of us--
only I ate more ice cream and stole
more chopsticks to put in my hair.
I still think China is fifteen miles
away-- it's the kind of China that
we could all believe in
the one we didn't want to know
the language of-- the kind
that never knew what gun powder was
used for-- the kind with french 
fries and chicken fingers in the
hot trays next to pools of lo mein
and sunbathed sandboxes of chicken fried 
rice. This was all before I learned
much about my body. Before I knew
how many egg rolls fit in my belt loops
and how much duck sauce it would take
to fly me to China. I learned that
there are few times in life you
can remember that you were once
a Chinese queen who stacked steamed plates
and ate honey dew from her fingers.
When I'm hungry I still feel the
same steam in my cheeks and I 
think about how many people
have become royalty over a bold
buffet lamp. 

Did I tell you that
I knew I was fat? It was the kind of 
thing that I always knew and at
the ending of the fourth plate--
slowly in China 
I began to realize my thighs and
how they rubbed together like
steamed pork dumplings-- people
don't love dumplings-- people eat
dumplings-- licked-plate and crumbled doughnut fingers 
I was not something to be loved--
I was a soy sauce packet and I knew it--
too bold to hold a fork-- I'll stab
the honey dew with the chop stick--
Boys,
stab me clumsy like an egg roll
duck sauce wrist-ed girl
who thought she could grow up
warm under the lights on the buffet table--
they never told me it was only a matter of
time before I would be eaten too--
dissected with a chop stick
piece by piece like a plate of
squid tentacles-- stuck to 
each other-- writhing in the
heat lamp-- HAIL Tso and his chicken--
HAIL Lo Mein and the thick noodles of
her hair-- HAIL koi fish and all the times 
I have fallen into plastic fountains
trying to escape the heat
of the buffet lamps-- sunburning my
cheeks-- 
Boys,
use these thighs as your trays 
as you may-- it's one price--
all you can eat with your mouth 
and your fork
Boys,
Get your money's worth-- stack your
plates high-- you Giant Chinese
King. 

My lamp light sternum and 
how i came to love watermelon rinds.  

i hope i die like the lamp light in the
corner of the living room. 

i have always admired a lamps
ability to listen. it listens
like watermelon rinds or
the thick belly of the sink.
it's the only one that
waits for me to come home from the
slumped couches of you high school boys
who still wear my skirts as a joke
or a wrestling trophy or a poker game. 
oh you boys who break the waist bands
of my underwear-- boys
who think girls are baseballs-- call my body
a girl or a home plate-- either
way you're thinking of it as a score
board-- finger-fumbling 
me into a rubix cube.
your best bet is peeling off the stickers.
call me "darling" call me "sexy"
call me "love". call me with
only your hands that turn
me into a lamp post to be
swung on-- dance in the rain with
me in yellow rain coats and red umbrellas
that hide my naked bones--
sing in the rain
sing in the rain
what a glorious feeling
singing in the street lamp light
living room lamp light-- light
in the ceiling of his side room
that made me feel like a watermelon
rind in a sink-- 

i had always been so unprepared to be naked
until i took off my dress in the lamp 
light. strip-teased myself and 
thought how much i was a honey dew--
a bite mark of sugar-- a green spine
wrinkle-rind watermelon
carved by the methodical chops 
of my father's dull kitchen knife.

i felt like a portrait. 
like a memory. 

they have always found some
fault with me.

is it the way the light
paints dull waves under each rib?
the bluff of my stomach around
my hips? my watermelon rind legs
left sprawled in the sink?
was there something missing 
without the pink fruit? 

did they only ever
eat us like porches or rubix cubes?--
pink and red and white seeds
what was i but a sink belly.

i will sleep on the watermelon rind
of the couch. totter on the crescent moon--
cut like a scar into the cheek bone
of night. 

i will tell it all by
lamp light and it won't ask any 
question. i'll eat the green rinds
in the sink that taste vaguely of 
soap and my father's hands.

i hope to die like lamp light.
quiet. listening. without
anything pink left about me. 

the white seeds won't grow
another one like me.

Cricket finger snaps and the dusty cereal bowl.

the room corners talk like cricket legs-- 
finger snaps-- thigh claps in the dark under
fan hiss and hum-- breathing something like
a boar and i am rum-ring eye lids in the dim of morning--
lift up my head like a fat clay mug and pour
out coffee grounds and nectar from yesterday.
have you noticed where the crickets are hiding?
in the bushes by the window-- itchy and leg-haired
they've slept somewhere between
my sheets-- the crickets are gossiping
from my spine now-- talking about thighs with a
crinkle of the bent-leg blues--some, prostrate
in prayer, ask for more cereal bowls and less
cloud today. they fight tight chest and 
finger nails on the window with the bushes that
slap their tiny leaves on the glass in vain--
they ask for cereal-- the sugary type
that remind us of coffee cake beaches and diners. 
the plastic jewelry Fruit Loops or board
game pieces of a bowl of lucky charms
-- roll enough dice to walk 
over the sand and not get any in your shoes
when you wake up to the talk of crickets--
learn to preach like crickets. they are
determined make prophesy of the mundane.
the crickets count something different every 
single day from dew drops to number of
cups of coffee the girl with no hair
drink from her end table--
they've made the kitchen sink into a homily
night robe pocket prayer books-- telling
the congregation to count them
"count until there's no more numbers"
"count until you have enough numbers to make
yourself feel like a person"
--oh! humans like me have lost enough hours of sleep
trying to figure out what the crickets are counting.
are they counting me?
are they counting on me?
have they figured out how many days i have
like to wake up to room corners 
that talk like crickets?
one told me a secret-- crushed under
the frantic palm of my hand-- 
he said that they never truly had wanted to 
count anything-- he said that 
they were sick of counting-- sick of the numbers
and the corners and the window-- that
they wanted to eat cereal in thick socks--
pour the coffee grounds out of the fat
clay mugs and wake up to room corners 
instead of talking the same word
again. again. again. until it meant something
to someone else.