Closed oven doors and girls who stay up past midnight.   

One morning I opened the ovens of my
own eyes and crawled inside. 
I had been baking brownies-- toothpick testing 
constellation-connecting the dots on the
crackled-face of the tray. We all have faces
like brownies if we spend too long
waiting for someone to slice us in grids--
I had wanted to be eaten by the handful--
fist carved into myself-- dough sticky 
and underdone-- brown muck of a box
mix from a sleep over we never had--
Did you remember to buy peanut oil?
Peanut oil is what makes the
taste like girls who stay up past midnight.
I didn't have a reason to finish the brownies.
They weren't much of anything
without the peanut oil or blue painted finger nails
bold enough to gouge out each square out
in a glump.
I got on all fours and I pretended
that I was fourteen-- still akin to scamper up the
stair case on my hands and knees--
climbed my bed posts using the vines ladders 
I grew from my ceiling-- I used to wonder about the
walls and how much space there was between the rooms
and how much space there was left
unused-- how much space there was
between bunk beds and how much
I have always felt like we keep getting cut into brownie grids.
So I crawled inside the oven-- shut the door
behind-- don't follow me Hansel 
I didn't enter to become a cake this time--
I crawled into the oven so I could live
in the walls of house that someone
told me was home. The house has the living room
of my house on Noble Street where we cut
down the evergreen trees by front windows 
the bed room is from the place on Main Street with the
green wallpaper and the raccoons in making
themselves homes in the walls, and the kitchen from
my friend's house where she taught me
how to turn on a gas stove to make
grilled cheese and peanut oil brownies 
that can only be eaten with your hands.
I had been right about the walls and the space
that was left unused and the way you can
hear everyone breathe from there. My face was crackled 
from the oven and I felt like a phantom-- covered
my face with my hands and cut my own skin into grids.
I watched the brownie face sputter from the other
side from where I sat safe in the thatched lines 
of the house they said was my home. 
The timer rand like morning through the wall's wide-whale veins
and everyone said it smelled like peanuts and chocolate
and morning but no one opened the oven.
No one opened up the walls-- tooth-pick
tapped holes to see if I was ready to come out--
they wouldn't have found my there anymore--
I would be where the evergreen trees had
gone-- rolled up with the green wall paper and
eaten from the blue finger nails of girls
who still have sleepovers and think call 
themselves girls. 
I crawled out again eventually and somehow
the brownies were done just through enough
to leave the edges chewy. I cut them into 
grids for everyone else who didn't know
anything about how much space we have unused.
They say the brownies taste like girls who stay
up past midnight and knees 
and staircases and closed oven doors. 

Windowsill spider webs in the corners of  
my lungs.

It's always the tiny spiders that 
manage to get mistaken for beetles 
or ants-- I let them build webs in the
windowsill because they're so small and
patient like me-- dangerous and hungry
dressed in their thin-lady-bodies-- mother bodies--
refugees from the bushes-- they aren't the fat spiders--
the teeth spiders-- jump-ankle spiders--
neck bite spiders-- they wish they were born
as ants so they could be squashed under thumbs--
They are yearning for a quiet death
in the nest of their own ankle hair--
pulling loose the strands from 
from cut pony-tails, snipped-tied 
snipped tied and snip-tied to weave
the quilt fibers of a blanket they
knit for their dangerous children--
quiet children-- their construction of 
a matrix to die quiet in-- the cat's cradle of their
beds-- sleep spider-children-- she hangs the hammocks with
her mandibles and knit-needles. I admit I am
scared of the windowsill mothers but
only when I sleep because I can't watch
them. I trust the spiders when I can watch
their legs-- their housewife matrix building--
for children they wish to be born as ants--
they know they have children only to feared--
I tell the spiders to be still and not
escape down my throat as refuges while I sleep.
Stay in the window where I can watch them
and the sun can show off their children--
They try to knit their homes
in the caverns of my lungs-- breathe with me--
bite venom in my lute-belly ribs-- hammer-hammock
in the stacks of sore vertebrae by the legs of the
spider-children-- xylaphone tones from their teeth--
play quiet when I breathe-- 
play careful when I sleep-- I know we all
want a place to be safe and we aren't all
fat spiders-- we need places for the children
to pretend to be ants. We can't all be beetles
but breathing is something I want to do without
so many legs-- was I a spider mother? Was I a
lute or a knit-quilt in the windowsill?
Were you scared of me sitting in the window?
Stop biting me when we breathe-- I'm trying to sleep.
I'm telling you that I understand that you're scared.
I know you're not fat spiders and neither am I.
We can sing like xylophones and lie that
we're beetles or ants even if only
for a night. Sleep next to me-- we're 
refuges in our own skin. Scared of the bushes.
Scared of venom breathing.
Scared of the nests in our lungs--
wrapped tight in the spider blanket--
together as fellow mothers with children
trying to die quiet under thumbs.

Hazelnut mothers and the perfect coffee mug.

One day or another we become aware that
we have always only been our hazelnut mothers.
There was never a change or a calling--
I didn't wake up girl-bodied and braided--
I was born by the side of a warm coffee
pot with two packets of Splenda waiting on my forehead--
We were black coffee blood brewed in the 
sputter of mornings-- her cracked eggs
dashed into a pan for pancakes or ketchup.
I used to drink dark coffee and now
we drink hazelnut. My mother bakes scones
and I don't sit at the counter anymore--
My mother has never been flaky like a croissant
or sugar-toe dipped like a glazed doughnut--
my mother is firm and hair-down-- she puts her hair
up sometimes with an angler fish jaw clip
when she's working. My hair is too short for
clips. I never have seen
my father drink coffee. My father cut off
my hair with angler fish teeth 
and spiked each strand like the prongs of a fork--
I don't know why I never thought
I would find myself hazelnut and coffee mugged--
We don't agree on creamer but we tear Splenda
packets like croissant curls or either side
of an everything bagel with vegetable
cream cream from the the Uptown espresso bar
where the college students left paintings
of naked women in black and white--
I didn't know we all had bodies like that.
I didn't ever think of myself as naked or 
deserving to be naked-- 
We didn't talk about bodies or how
my face looks like my father's graduation photo
and how I got the hazelnut of my mother's hair
and the hazelnut of my mother's coffee cups. 
How I got my father's depression 
and my fathers guitar string fingers and my father's 
broken television remotes under the sofa. 
We were all looking for the right
size coffee mug to be hazelnuts inside of--
the one with the right space left for cream
or for yellow packets cracked open like eggs
in the morning from the counter I no longer
sit on. There is no perfect coffee mug.
It was only a lie we told each other
while we waited for the pot to warm
us into women-- girl-bodied as I woke up
pulled tight and tuned in the guitar string of
my father-- no I never have been a woman
like the ones in black and white.
I have never been a glazed doughnut or a croissant 
curl to be pulled--  
but I do know I have been everything bagels.
I have been eggs. I have been coffee pot.
Cast iron pan. Angler fish-teeth.
And my mother.  
 

I walk on the trail enough 
to know where the dead blue jay waits
and I still look away. 
 
Autumn muck doesn't stop my legs--
the canvas shoed impulse to walk
on water-- we settle for the rain slush
in the banana brown leaves-- melted
muffin skirts pressed thin as if
someone mistook them for rot-roses--
we aren't growing flowers in our forearms
-- it's not that type of rain anymore
-- it's time for boiled pirogues and tree scabs 
all  swaddled up in the gauze-mouthed wind 
-- nothing's hot but the skin we start to stuff
inside wool and wet canvas shoes yearning
for water-- gasping-open-mouthed bullfrogs
who have always eaten blue jays when we weren't
looking-- I forgot that animals eat
each other and don't worry about bones--
Only humans worry about severed blue jays
in the rain-- wonder if they felt death--
if death was something to feel-- if it was 
murky or sharp or wet-socked--
Bull frogs slowly turn into tulip bulbs
cold stone-legged seeds--I am windup bird-- 
molted blue jay without
the egg shell snapping-sky or a throat-- fragment winged 
and sputtering like a top-- flitter jitter
splintered toy that the wind sloshed
too boldly against the maples-- she was only
playing-- I didn't think about how
blue jays could fall-- they have wings
so they don't have to turn into angles when
they die-- birds don't die-- they don't
get eaten or snap or break-- I was
never bird boned because even though
my femurs hollowed out with age I never was
able to make them grow feathers-- we lose
our feathers anyway--
Drop them like pirogues in the center of the
wet gravel trail-- like rot roses for another
human to avert their eyes at death-- snaggle-winged
turning back into a scab to be peeled again--
step over me and don't look back--
Only humans think about road kill and
dead blue jays and what that means about 
how hard it is to die and how even chickadees
die quiet on the ground-- veiled in muffin
skirts and the gauze of the wind.

French fry grave yards 
and learning to move like a colony of ants.

It was never my intention to meet
by the french fry tray-- step over
each others legs in a hunger-jaw
mess where all I could see was
us drones who drop their names
only to the queen-- was it ketchup
or blood where I lost you under
the snapped tombstones of steak fries
baked again in chlorine sun? Say your name
to me but only so I know that all these
six-sets of legs aren't just my own.
No one will sigh and tell you the truth
about how love and ants are all the same--
they tell you love is baked in the corners 
of a box-brownies or hand fed fondue diners--
I like to think maybe we love like monkey bread
you and I-- but-- even then you've left the sugar 
on your fingers-- on the counter-- somewhere
in your hair that dusts it on the pillow at night
-- and there's always the ants--
You can't hide sugar or tombstones from them. 
They will walk for the corners of brownies--
cruxes of backwards knees-- 
You used sugar diamonds and your legs to say 'I love you'
You knew my six black thighes and I knew yours
and we traced the walkways mute feet calliope
over each other-- sugar foot and fierce and 
confused-- bit my neck with your mandibles 
only to find out I was just another asteroid 
of monkey bread we dropped when we were kissing.
We can march thin if you don't think
we should walk two by two-- get pressed under
thumbs and turn into ketchup or blood
to dip each other into-- there is sugar even
in blood and they smell it already before I kiss you
Love is like ants and the French fry spills we
keep meeting by-- marching in graveyards of
sugar and yesterday grease-- wipe
your mute hands on my jeans and we
don't have to kiss-- we don't have
to walk over each other tonight--
just bake brownies with me and we can
each eat a corner-- leave the rest for the 
ants who will find us anyway.

Enough money from marigolds
to buy everything but the morning--

We could sell these things and make enough
money-- we  wouldn't have to work for anyone

He said in his wrinkled grey shirt to 
his partner in furrow jeans. They were matching 
"Earl's Landscaping" t-shirts-- crows-footed
at the seams of their bodies-- 
They are the kind of people who can 
hear their weed-wackers kicking endlessly at
the asthmatic arched backs of dry grass
even when they lay next to women at night--
At night when their windows breathe
When like flower necks or toad-stool cheeks--
they learn how to hold other people
from their intimate experiences with plants.
Lawn mowers haunt their hallways for how they
became Gods-- crafting the earth
with a pairing knife and telling it to dance.
The men sit on the curb like hollow flower pots.
Big-bellied and lonesome, they wait for mums or winter. 
He would sell the marigolds-- shake loose their 
roots and dust their fire skulls for spare change--
The men don't have children but they know they'll 
arrive someday like dandy lions or prickly-weeds--
to be yanked lose by their fathers leathered fingers. 
The smell of mulch under nails is an omen
to all the women who have ever tried to love a God
-- They think about girlfriends 
and finger nails and dirt and the firey heads of
marigolds-- and they think
about how small God must be to shape the
Earth like them-- peel themselves loose
every morning at the protest of the sun-- lite
cigarettes with the heads of marigolds-- he says
Enough money enough money enough money
in tuna salad teeth mixed with pieces of mulch--
he tells the shadows of sleeping women he will have
Enough money for dandy lions if they could
just sell flowers-- take their
roots from the oatmealy soil bed and
run away with the orphans-- a truck full of a 
kidnapped chrysanthemums and broken-necked
lavender. The flowers try to breath outside the the dirt--
roots naked and snaggly-- intestines or 
garden hoses or linguine. Enough money for paper plates
and name-brand rice crispies and children 
that make you forget about the dandy lions--
Enough money to trace blood into the shadows
of women at night and bake them wedding cakes
from tiers of moss or peat on the sidewalk--
plant them gardens instead of children-- light
candles with the marigolds to banish the smell of
mulch from every hallway-- weed
the dandy lions-- Enough money for filling
in flower pots on the curb with something other
than fire--Enough money
to let God teach the windowsill how to dance like
a candle--Enough money to plant seeds in backs 
of their truck like diamonds-- grow rings
for the blood-shadows of women in their beds--
purpose when it's winter and there's nothing to distract
anyone-- fall in love with something other than a
notion of prostituting the flowers to quit being Gods 
for one morning-- Enough money to buy the morning
and auction it off to the kicking legs of someone
else's weed wackers and pairing knives--
bleed the earth like the wrinkles of a t-shirt--

We could sell these things and make enough
money-- we  wouldn't have to work for anyone

Enough money to work for no one but the necks of
flowers-- exorcise the lawn mowers from the hallways
so the shadows of women can rest easy in the
oatmealy soil of their beds at night-- grow
marigolds quiet like church candles-- blow
them out with the morning-- Enough money 
to sleep through the sun like men 
instead of mulch fingered Gods
haunted by marigolds and dirt and
their own fingernails. 

Ice cream dates with a praying mantis.

I found you like a white oak finds herself 
growing green arms again in the spring--
mistakes them from parasites and scrambles
to tear off the young appendages she sees in
the mirror-- she had forgotten that she 
would be green again because winter had been
long enough to traces thick hula hoops around
her trunk-- counting the years in rotations
of her hips and how far the snow
slide it's fingers wild in her jeans.
I fell in love with a praying 
mantis in September. I think it wasn't
his devotion but his patience. It's hard
to find people with patience anymore 
and he never asked questions and he 
didn't suggest diners so I had to choose where
we went out to eat. He was content on the
wall ofo a coffee shop or
seated on my shoulder-- making fish-tail
braids of my short hair-- I didn't tell people about
him but I didn't need too. I didn't think
that they would understand and they might
just say it was because I was the type
to shove loud boys in my throat to
fill in all the spaces I have no fat left
for-- He climbed the
same white oak outside my house until I came
home. Never kissed any leaves but my shoulders
To kiss him was like biting the top of a strawberry
dipped in brown sugar-- he baked oatmeal cookies
with me when when first close the windows at night--
when the white oak forget she had ever worn 
green arms from her hips in April--
He didn't crack the egg or lick the spoon--
but played with my hair with patient fingers--
slide pauses down my throat so hear
that all I ever wanted to do was have
someone to listen to me sing in the kitchen
baking oatmeal cookies with my cracked-egg voice
that still hesitates to sound too loud
for fear that it might pour into muffin tins.
He doesn't to if I start to trace my hips in sharpie
or blood-- another circle. I knew him green.
I knew him leaf-lanky and shuttering even
when the breeze stopped. I knew
that if I tried to sleep I wouldn't feel him
heavy on my--telling me to sing from my
hips like other boys always have wanted--
Telling me fat girls can't throw-up planets--
they only vomit their oatmeal cookies to count
less rings on their hips in the mirror each spring--
I know he would wait for me to wake up.
He tells me to wear a jacket even if it would
be warm by the time the sun got to a suitable
place on the bruise shoulders of the white oaks.
And when his skin was kettle brown he would go with me
to the ice cream parlor for dinner.
I could play checkers with myself.
He wouldn't tell me what sundaes were best suited to 
my hips-- my preying mantis didn't say much
but he would tell me to eat
like everything was a strawberry dipped in
brown sugar and like we wouldn't be tracing
our hips in sharpie and blood that night.
He told me what I already knew about kettle-brown
skin and November. He told me death preying mantis
grew small and green each spring but they 
don't trace their hips and they don't remember
who they kissed in the fall when everything
was hazy and broken and cracked egg shell on the 
sidewalk outside the ice cream parlor 
when he told me that he was dying and that 
he never said much because he wouldn't have been
able to say as much as a white oak in the course
of a year anyway-- he played with my hair
and told me that if I missed him I should
eat strawberries out of season and stop 
tracing lines on my hips and when fingers
went down my jeans that I was always green-necked
in the spring-- no boy could touch me
wild enough to stop me from throwing up
planets-- hunched like a comma in over a toilet--
no I wasn't fat I was up to my neck in snow.
He told me that I didn't need to pray.
He told me that he had prayed enough 
for the both of us. I asked if we would
play checkers again-- and he pointed out
that I could play the game well
enough by myself anyway-- that I had
baked cookies to the cracked eggs in my own
throat-- that I never needed to stuff my
throat with loud boys-- that my 
voice was strawberries, brown sugar, 
and muffin tins. Come November-- 
So I buried my preying mantis-- kettle 
brown skeleton in a white oak tree-- and boys
still mistake him for twigs
because they're too busy counting
the red-rings round my hips
like hula hoops and Spring. 

 

Toad deities, waiting like cheesecake and midnight.

Whoever worships a God of doves and candles has never 
held a toad and felt it's belly-drum- pocket watch
tell you that it's midnight-- that
no one was ever late to anything. They blink
like the careful closing of a change purse--
wink quarters on the ground for their followers 
and give blessings of rain and rotted cardboard 
smell in the morning when you wake up 
in a film of rain-- scratch your toad skin
and remember when you had wanted to breathe
water like a bullfrog-- Don't trust bullfrogs-- 
They have learned to eat birds-- crush flight
like spilled quarters or the snapped wax neck
of a candle--  I can't tell you when I 
was first converted to believing in Toads--
but it might have been when we lived on Main Street
In the house by the park that felt like a slice
of cheese cake-- wax-paper wedged between the other 
townhouses-- all slouchy roofed from the raspberry sauce 
and the squirrel nests. My father and I sat on the porch.
There was a moth tangled lamp and a red sand bucket of Toads. 
My father taught me how to hold God-- gentle
and patient like the filling of warm water balloons--
counting down the minutes left until midnight 
on their stomachs-- hum to you to hurry up and slow
down before they burst into thunder and morning
-- we forget how fragile God is 
and how much like slice of cheese cake he waits for us.
From the porch we fed them mealworms for sacrifice
or penance for use of the red sand bucket.
I peeled loose jeans that night by the window 
and wondered if the Toads were still there below
the thicket of moths or if they had moved on--
made burial in the lawn like tulip bulbs or
jars of quarters-- more quiet than doves or
candles and muttering quietly beneath the soil
their benedictions for our days to come--
it is the Toads who have always prayed for us.
And the next rain they come back like a Sunday--
far and round and somehow always walking home
-- resurrect themselves with worm-full mouths
and tightly wound abdomens from which we
can count out the minutes left 
till midnight when we forget about the squirrel 
nests and pray to the Gods of rotted cardboard 
and cheesecake ticking in the rain. 

Our attic, plastic dinosaurs and 
other times I felt myself becoming too giant.

My brother and I were attic children--
stored ourselves in boxes-- mildew coffins
with our candy corn bones-- stacked
under slant roofs and blanket forts-- 
we reigned there-- between the jarred ashes of 
my grandfather
and his brother's stack 
of unclaimed purple hearts on a shelf--
a never-unfolded American flag.
an antique telephone-- crammed with missed
calls from the living room ghosts
who steal the rooks from chess sets--
a pocket watch still patiently at 8:32
a jar of rust-tinged paper clips--
Our attic was shoe box.
Our plastic dinosaurs learned to
eat gold fish and fruit leather 
from the hands these giants.
They bite fingers and thumb wrestle in the brush
--the flushed green of the carpet forest
floor between canted ruins of a Lego 
Parthenon-- and ship wrecked death star
beside meandering spilled marbles--
I am five-foot short and I have always
felt like a giant-- skin sown in the
earth from blood spit from clouds by Gods--
Did they tell you how giants hunch
like fortune cookies?-- We cracked
each other open by black windows-- 
plucked T-Rex up by the belly and 
gave him a straw hat and overalls--
no we don't play with dolls we teach 
dinosaurs that giants love is quiet and 
patient like an air conditioner or
a pizza bagel-- or a night light shaped like Mary--
Our attic had a drum set that we used to 
march when we were bold enough to stand and 
make all the dinosaurs scared of our feet--
shake the spine of the house like a Jacob's ladder
so that our parents looked up to wonder
how large their children could grow-- 
if we would still fit in the house--
if we would break through the rough 
and fall hard to the cement basement slab--
rain down the dinosaurs in their 
bonnets and bows and straw hats--
and pirouette of pocket watches-- 
smashed telephone still ringing with ghost
prank calls--
and we got too big to climb the stairs--
tipped our grandfather's ashes all the way down
to the basement where our turtle used to live--
We don't feed the dinosaurs anymore 
but we do answer phone calls from the 
living room ghosts--
we still feel like giants-- feel like shoe boxes
and attics-- Purple-hearted-- and candy corn
hip-boned-- broken fall on the basement floor--
We pick ourselves up in jars of paperclips--
stack back on a shelf 
by the black windows.

 

Breaking open chestnuts with flip-flop feet 
And living in corn mazes alone.

What kind of a boy opens up chestnuts with his
feet-- hedgehog hairballs hurled from the throat
of trees-- lawn landmines to make martyrs 
of our soles-- follow my bloody foot
prints back to my room and I'll teach you
that loving starts in the bottoms of your
feet and follows to your knees-- bend for
me and I'll kiss you with briers in 
my hair-- would you 
bend tree arms for me-- break green necks
and bite the criss-crosses of sampling ribs? 
How many chestnuts would
you break with your flip flop feet to prove
your devotion to a goddex of bloody feet
and corn mazes? They have called me a Minotaur--
and feed me into the labyrinth-- only,
I was lost there too-- no one teaches
the Minotaur where to walk-- they tell
her she is mystic enough to eat men-- they
left me with only embracing corn walls 
and chestnuts in the path for food--
interrupted me in blood from the balls of my feet--
Would you break chestnuts in half? Could you feed me 
right like a man who scared of Minotaurs-- Scare of how
I could decide to devour him there in the 
corn maze-- with my flash light or with my 
mouth that eats chestnut thorns and pulls 
loose the corn husks like hair from the scalp
of a doll-- People weren't designed to
eat chestnuts-- God gave us pink lips
and peach skin. Skin that rots pacing in the corn maze
while skunk mouths keep vigil for our hips to
grow bruised and brown and oozing like 
a flashlight or a cut-heel.
They're searching for the pits-- they
will grow trees to get out of the maze- clamorous
climb past chestnuts to their escape from the walls
into a balmy September night that
only tastes slightly like open-chestnut 
autumn-- if you can kiss me like a Minotaur 
I could believe you-- I have enough chestnuts
what I need is someone to get lost
in a corn maze with-- get lost I said
and notice I never mentioned our exit--
the Minotaur doesn't leave the maze--
that's for the skunks and the boys who
measure love with number of chestnut
shells they've broke for you.