The Abundance of Uninhabited Birdhouses
and cinnamon chai tea.

I'm entering into the housing market.
The buying and selling of bird houses that 
finds themselves neglected on grandmother mantels
and in mildew-laden cardboard boxes tucked under
Christmas decorations in the basement.
There are a great many people who
have painted a bird house without ever having
the intention of the home being inhabited
but yesterday morning I was informed by a pair
of swallow tails who sat with me for cinnamon chai 
tea that there was actually quite a shortage--
that since before they could remember 
homes for birds were rapidly diminishing--
The cardinals telegraphed explaining 
how they had sat at the entrance to many 
craft stores in the hopes of making
a down payment on any number of the ornate
and blank bird houses that lined the aisles
only to have the retailers waive their
hands at the couple furiously. They were
holding temporary residence in the hollowed
out knot of a birch tree--
The blue jays blamed the squirrels for the issue
and the blue bird couple with the
adopted chickadee for a son tried to calm 
the blue birds down before they rioted--
seeing as blue birds are the type for violence.
I didn't even need to take the bird houses outside--
I just opened my windows wide and let the
waiving of the blue curtains beckon in the birds
from up past the strip mall and down to the
park when the cardinals went for the best 
brunch of mulch worms. They negotiated my
payment in stolen rings and keys 
to garages  without addresses-- I figured I 
could make them into earrings. 
Only the blue jays complained that the 
home they were able to afford only had one
fake chimney instead of two--
and each morning the birds sat with me for 
cinnamon chai tea and bickered only
in whistles and chirps so that they
could hardly be heard over the tea pot.

For who did you leave the table set for tea
and re-fold the napkins every morning?

There is a porch dangling off the corner
of main street where a table is waiting for
tea. The tea pot is the color of strawberry milk
and the napkins are green like spearmint leaves--
dried up and waiting to be steeped--
The tea cups lay on their sides--
crooked smiles of forgetfulness in their saucers 
and I left a folded note asking
if someone would come out and sit with me
if I waited there-- or if the
two settings are pausing in memory of people
who might not have time to steep tea anymore--
I wonder if they bickered over which type
to put in the pot-- I don't think I've met
a pair of people who could pick one flavor of tea--
one party always has to relent.
A reply letter on my own front step
explained they drank crisp teas--
early grey or black or breakfast blends--
I wouldn't reveal I like my tea mist to 
bloom in ginseng and lavender-- mincing words
with mangoes and apricots--
I would drink anything to see those
napkins and saucers held in warm hands instead
of sprinkled with yesterdays and rain storm grit. 
So the next day I arrived in the chair. 
I picked up my cup. I knew it was mine
because it was the one with a chip taken
out of it-- I perched it in the saucer
and poured imaginary earl grey while I anticipated
my companion-- she could come
draped in a night gown printed with
mangoes or lavender or alley cats-- 
maybe he was from the west with an accent
from everywhere and no where--
Maybe she wore glasses at the precipice of her
nose and maybe they drank tea for show 
and coffee for purpose. 
Whoever they were they had known me--
the space was for me all along and I knew
because I could see dried ginseg leaves
in the bottom of the chipped cup. I read
my future and my past in them and they 
explained how this was the chair I would
always drink tea in-- so as night fell 
I kept a vigil for my tea partner and 
she or he or they were too shy to arrive
on that day-- I left them a note 
telling them that the tea alone was nice as well
and that I had poured earl grey for them
but that it would be cold by the time
they came to it at our table. In the morning
I folded the napkins.
before I departed I took a last sip of
the earl grey-- cold and nostalgic 
like the empty place setting across from me.

Drum beats of bird skulls and the art of stealing
her husband's clothing.

What could have been bright enough to break
the cardinal's beak that night
when the window became timpani?-- 
said the man who lit the fire place 
to his wife who made scrambled eggs.

Oh! The lady bird she was brown 
like all the woman birds whose husbands 
wear blazers woven by their wives 
from raspberry or blood stained
dish towels. She sings less because
she was never meant for a show--
she wears the brown thick dress
of her mother's wedding night--
tucks flowers in her own plumage
in the evening out of envy of her husband
who preened at the edge of the nest-- 
The red-vested man coos, "This 
look was meant for me and look how
bright I am-- and what taste you have
for a husband with such crimson plumage--
no wonder you found me-- I was like a fire."
He laughed like a wind chime and said
"So what does that make you? Wood?"
And she kept knitting his red sweater
for the coming October when he would 
complain about finding her hiding in between
the hues of dying leaves that decorated their maple.
Of course there was that human house that the cardinals
tree overlooked and the big broad window
by the fireplace-- and the lady bird always waited
for the fire-- she was awakened by it's earliest blaze
on a September night when the children
begged for it and the man used the 
matches from his back pocket.
It was September when the window became a timpani--
she sat on the edge of the nest that
was recently rid of nestlings tucked fallen
feather from her husband around her neck--
oh they looked so lovely and there were no 
more flowers to decorate. He preened and 
looked on into the fire-- fire like
feather and fire like turning leaves and
fire like raspberries and blood--
So she beat the window like a drum face--
her head her own mallet in the relentless 
pulse of a bass drum line-- the thump of
her crest shook the foundation of the cottage
and the children shrieked and the husband bird
preened and did not noticed his wife gone.
He thought she was there in the bark of the maple--
she drummed her head hollow and her bones
broken like drum sticks and her beak
snapped like a snare drum head in a rhythm like
rain or raspberries until she fell quiet into the
the bushes in the cinders of her husband's blazer
and the refuse of rotten raspberries.

Oh, she didn't know there was glass there
she thought she could come in--
she looked sick anyway with those brown feathers--
The man said to his children when he put out the fire.

It was fire. It was always the fire.
said his wife. 

Did you feel your body change at midnight?

No matter how old I get I still
have the childlike belief in midnights--
I think it began with how my father
had dubbed 'midnight' "the witching hour" in 
all his bed time stories and I had 
been a child who was more likely
to befriend ghosts and witches than to fear them.
I made invisibility potions from glitter glue
and cantaloupe on kitchen floors--
my second belief came from my mother
who called Milano cookies and fresh blondie
brownies the Gow's honored tradition 
of "midnight snacks" to crisin blankets in
sleep with something sweet and heavy
and also an excuse to stay up
for fifteen more minutes with tall glasses
of 1% milk seated across a table from
your mother who was also trying to believe in 
midnight-- that flip-- that switch into something
new-- a midnight is an excuse to believe
in anything-- in ghosts who bake
blondies and my mother who taught the ghosts how
to bake when we're all in bed--
Midnights are "I loved you a whole year
long and where will be this time a year again"
"Will you still want to watch me like a clock?" 
Midnights kiss you like an overdue
apology or remind you that crying can
always be annual if you want to remember. 
I have the ancient affliction 
of trying to read clock faces and 
holding their thin fingers while
they pushed into new days-- I watched for
Christmas and for New Years always
expecting to be enveloped in some sensation 
otherworldly-- and for some reason I feel
like my skin should be different each birthday--
should I be blue or is my hair enough?
should I eat celery for midnights now or pretend to like
Jane Austen? Should I wait for the ghosts
to watch for another clock face to kiss 
tonight or do twenty-year-olds stop trying
to turn invisible with glitter glue and cantaloupe?
Am I supposed to teach the ghosts to make
blondies and show them where the oven is?
I can at least tell you that I do make my
own bed times stories and that witching hours
will always be included. Tonight I will
set out two glasses of 1% milk. Four
raspberry Milano cookies. Two for me.
One for my mother and one for my father
who also watch clock faces and believe
in midnights. 

Postage stamps and the portraits of our un-visited past.

My father collected stamps for
the number of places we only went
inside our heads-- botanical gardens
to bi-planes on their faces-- I thought
that his stamp book could be our memory museum-- 
in one portrait we sat beneath cacti in
Arizona and smoked cigars there
from the rib cage of our blue jeep--
He pointed out that the snakes slither
sideways and whip themselves like
licorice ropes and when he turned off
the engine there was silence with the caress of
arid breath across the sand--
we ran our fingers through each grain and built
a sandcastle fort on the shore of the 
Galapagos where my father would find me
the dragons that had their wings plucked
off like dandy lion heads-- we roared with them on the
shore of the creek where I learned that
both my father and me had eye lids made 
of stamps-- paper and soft that get
sweet like the pink packets of sugar approximation
on the counter of diners where my father made
air planes from napkin holds-- took
me with him on flights to Australia where
we could find toads the size of dinner plates--
eat supper off the kitchen table we made from
our own thighs-- seated on the bumper of the
blue jeep that held our bodies like the mother
who was waiting for us to come home--
she held potato rolls and crock pot pork chops--
at the door and talked about soybeans and porches--
But before we came back we needed to make a stop
in Canada-- cross the border at night so no one
would know we were vagabonds that hovered
on the fringe of postage stamp frames-- mailing
ourselves to zip codes with the nostalgia of the unknown--
he told me that the stars were as bright as they 
were ever going to get and we found constellations
I had only seen in planetariums.
We always saved just one stamp to return home 
(before midnight the witching hour)
We saved the postage from the final pages
of the stamp collection-- yellow-tooth protraits of Fleetwood 
that made the old melted main street look like a parade
in sugar-bloom-- with shiny wide-eyed cars and women
in hats that looked like wedding cakes. 
Most days I believe I have been there-- in Arizona 
and in Fleetwood, dressed up with my father to parade me
down main-street past the grand central tap room
where my mother orders crab cakes--
when I page through the sleeves of the stamp
books-- our scrap books-- we have been there
and here and before and after and still
home in time for dinner-- warm hand fulls 
of potato rolls.

I love you like raspberry thumb print cookies
and the pieces of my jawbone on my pillow in the morning.

Darling you called me shortbread
and you said we were egg yolks--
tossed in a bowl of flour to powder our necks
white. I said that I love you like 
thumb print cookies and I pressed in our 
cheek bones like panic buttons-- alarms--
my arms-- You said we're jam not jelly
full of seeds and all the reeds at the end of the 
raspberry bush rows-- where we ate
the berries from the tips of our fingers 
and something from there lingers
in the divots of our faces filled red--
red like blush and bone marrow-- I never
told you how I wake up with my jaw bone
like a boomerang-- my teeth dropping like
powered sugar-- in between my fingers-- on
the floor-- we closed oven doors to forget
what it felt like to fall apart as dough--
you called me shortbread because you know
how I crumble-- fixed my teeth with your 
thumb prints on my lips-- we slipped kisses
like raspberries or egg yolks between
each other in a bowl-- listen to me
when I explain my jawbones come back like
boomerangs-- my teeth are only sugar--
and we panicked like jam in the oven--
bubbled and broke like the browning 
of shortbread-- I said we should have used 
strawberries but you said that we have
always kissed like raspberries and that
it's okay to lose teeth if you pick
them up again off the pillow in the morning.
We were golden brown-- you and I-- 
we were oven fresh and powered--
we pushed into each other like panic buttons
and used each others thumbs to 
fill our bones with marrow-- with jam. 

Skin like roasted peaches and ice cream we
used for the scares.

No matter how hard we try to escape
we cannot escape the sun.  
We'll pack away all those stuffed animals
in the belly of a Greyhound bus and drive
to the little island off the coast
of Virginia where I learned to drink salt water
and lick ice cream from wrists but
we cannot escape the sun. Even in the dizzy
pulse of the shade there is still the sun
and there is still me and there is still you
-- oh it was only inevitable
that me and you would believe that we
could escape the sun if we could break
ourselves off a chunk of land like monkey bread and 
tell ourselves that we would play 
guitars on street corners now-- you would eat 
oysters and clams and I would eat only
peaches. We would plant the pits in the front
yard even though we knew they never grow trees.
I never tasted peaches that melted so
much like blue cotton candy-- and
we wore our skin like everyone who 
tries to escape the sun-- bare and shaven
like the meek pale flesh in the white peach--
cut open and waiting to be caramels--
we thought we were candy-- didn't we?
Thought that we could encase our syrupy 
skin in a clear wrapper and be candies 
sleeping coldly in the crystal dish still
waiting in my my dead grandmother's 
sitting room-- we bruise easy though--
we're not caramels-- if anything we're 
over ripe peaches drunken from the blaze of the sun--
isn't strange that we don't always feel our
skin burning?-- only in between the sheets
at night can we feel our flesh sticky and seared--
do you remember what it was like to kiss
with sunburn faces and rub aloe over 
our freckles?-- we were Velcro and roasted
and falling out of love slowly like
over-ripe peaches-- we never ate them before
they turned to caramels-- but it was only
fitting that we would kiss each other's sun burn--
tell me you love me loud enough to block out
the sun. And the next night we ate soft serve
from the lobby of a Dairy Queen-- used the red
spoons to apply the ice cream as ointment 
and the pineapples in my sundae stung-- 
and I told you I didn't want to share-- and
the aloe did nothing to keep me loving you
but we still kissed with sunburn noses
and finished sundaes that tasted like
the overripe peaches and caramel.
 

Backyard seances and the fear our own reflections.

My mom says we can't use an Ouija board
but my uncle tells stories about trying
to talk to his mother with one-- on the floor
of the aunts house with his brother who chose 
the questions while he road
shot-gun-- hands over the printed planchette-- 
They ate chocolate chip cookies 
with m&m pieces between attempted phone calls--
hands hovering in a desperate thrill of anticipation
only know by children who believe in ghosts
and Ouija boards and dead mothers--
we are those children who buy wooden crosses
to keep under our pillows and who learn
to repeat the "Our Father" in order to exorcise every
sigh and moan from a farm house in late August
or bitter January when the foundation cracks 
it's knuckles to keep warm.
My brother didn't like to be scared but 
I could talk anyone but my mother into attending
a seance with me-- I refused to go alone-- 
my brother told me to stop holding his hands-- 
and we made up magic out of pieces of hymns and 
bites of chocolate chip cookies with m&m pieces.
We sat in the backyard where there had once been
a plastic baby pool-- a circle of dead grass--
an omen and Billy said he knew that it 
was from the baby pool but that it still
was scary and that he didn't like it-- I told him
we were too far-- that we couldn't stop yet--
that we had to hear them. The only sound was
our own quickened breath and Billy taking bites
of his cookie bribe. There was always a moment
suspended in time when I truly believed that I felt
something-- felt someone else with us and I would
whisper the line from a ghost story my
uncle told us before bed, "Are you with us?"
"Are you with us? Are you there? Knock if you can hear
us--" I said-- the middle-school medium who
talked to ghosts like Gods or prayers--
"I don't like it! I don't like it" Billy shouted
and I said "Don't be scared-- it was one of us."
Till this day I like to tell myself that
maybe we would have heard them talk
if Billy wouldn't have always pulled his hands
away-- I believe that for an instant they
knew me and I knew them and we talked about
bicycles and how everyone had eaten 
chocolate chip cookies seated on the floor--
they tell me about times when cars had
wide-eyes and hats had floppy pizza crust rims--
I tell them I'm not scared of ghosts
as much as I'm scared of being one
or what the ghosts might see in me-- would they
like me or would they think the way I use measuring
cups to eat baby carrots because of my OCD
is a waste of the little time we have to 
walk around in skin-- and of all the Ouija boards
and chanted spirit circles nothing
has frightened me as much as my own 
reflection in the blackness of a bathroom--
we weren't scared of Bloody Mary or the baby
she was supposed to be looking for--
we were scared because there were no hands
to hold in the bathroom mirror-- only the 
blurry reality of how dim our eyes looked--
how our faces could somehow be not our own
in the darkness-- how we could be alone
with the thought of being ghosts and what we would 
spell out if someone called us on a Ouija board
from the backyard of a farm house in the 
dead grass circle from a baby pool.

Alien abduction and unopened peanut butter crackers.

I'm not the only one who's been waiting to be abducted by aliens.
I've thought about them since the age of seven when 
I first saw a blurry image of a flying saucer 
on a daytime History Channel series-- I wish
I could tell you that I've developed a mature sense
of skepticism but instead I keep a disposable camera
in my back pocket and look at the pupils of the stars
through my brother's telescope still
in our sunroom-- see my self near Orion--
cradled curious in the hammock I make of the little
dipper. My backpack is ready 
(in case it were to happen to me today)--I store supplies
in the bottom below my laptop and Shakespeare text book
so they won't know that I've always been ready
I'm stocked with a blue faded notepad 
and two packages of peanut butter crackers.
I imagine aliens eat from toothpaste tubes that taste
vaguely of metal and okra. Maybe we can trade-- like
packed lunches on a bench in fifth grade.
I know aliens aren't green-- the reports confirm
my suspicions-- They're grey-- grey stone-skinned 
and speaking like radio static in my ears and I 
try to tell them to take me with them-- that I 
won't take Polaroids or attempt to 
fillet them open with scalpels-- that I just want something
more than those blurry photos from
shakey-handed men on roof tops looking for
a glint of saucer and for their own breath in the cool desert night. 
What made you crash in Rosewell and did you try to run?
Did they hold you down and did you wish you had
packed peanut butter crackers? I think of you-- 
I think of you like me-- like we both dream of
how the little dipper could hold us the same--
you can put a chip under my skin and I won't
try to take it out. You can track me and you can jar
just one of my kidneys-- I think we only need one 
and if not maybe you can use it to learn how
to speak to us so you don't sound like radio static--
I think we all sound like radio static sometimes.
I wanted to tell you I've held vigil for you by glow
stick and by telescope. I think that your family
somewhere between the Magellanic clouds on the cusp
of the Andromeda galaxy is holding the same service.
Were you looking for us or for corn fields or
for peanut butter crackers? 
I'll tell you what. We can make bracelets-- the
woven ones that humans make in fifth grade.
Sometimes we call them friendship bracelets--
we can make each other one and that we
we can never forget that everyone wants to sleep
in the swallow tongue of the little dipper
and that enough string can make everyone's voice
clear of radio static.
I'm here. I am here-- here in the front lawn
of a house on the little blue planet where
we write in notepads and take too many blurry pictures--
and you were here with me and one of the packs
of peanut butter crackers was for you.   
 

Lemon-lime soda and scars from jewelry I no longer wear.

The first piece of jewelry he gave me
was a bracelet of mosquito bites--
he wore one identical to match with 
beads in the shape of kidney beans, 
chick peas, and frozen blueberries--
and he told me that we didn't need
aloe-- that the longer we wore the bracelets
the more they would fade if we forgot
to itch them-- awaken each jewel he
had placed under our skin with the 
syringe mouth of the mosquitoes. Those creatures
have always followed me for my sweet blood--
the lemon-lime soda that flows through
the canals of veins I carved out with a bendy straw
from years that I used my blood only
to transport guilt and a creative
number of ways to apologize for existing--
stored red cells with the sum of "I'm sorrys" from
spilling glasses of cola on the porch.
I picked broken out of his heels afterward.
The ants would follow the brown syrup 
to the space beneath the folding chairs
and drink cola and talk about how 
mosquitoes prefer the taste of nectar to
that of cola and that cola was better in winter
served warm.
He gave me a necklace too and this time
it was just for me-- placed it around my neck
like an Olympic medal for outstanding
achievement in the fear of dying alone
crushed between book shelves or
bled dry from mosquitoes who came
to know me as a juice pouch-- punctured me
through my forearms and in rows on my sides
to try to get every drop out of me-- I've
always thought my blood tasted metallic and 
slightly like apple juice. 
I came to know the necklace as a noose
like we all do and the bites formed themselves
into a rough chord that I slung over my shoulder
so that I could walk with it-- and he asked 
me if I liked it and I always said I did
but each time the necklace only got heavier until
I could no longer walk away from mosquitoes 
and my skin became a mine field of buried
blueberries and orphaned kidney beans.
He told me that I walked too slow for him
and I repeated my practiced "I'm sorry"s 
that I had stored so long like hard candies 
in the corridors of my veins. He ate
them and told me they tasted like
root beer barrels and reminded him of summer.
He asked if I wanted rings to match
my bracelets and my necklace and I told
him I was going to fill my veins with
aspartame-- that I wasn't going to keep
counting the wounds from bendy straws 
that I wanted to have skin like a piece
of printer paper again and crush mosquitoes
between my index finger and my thumb--
and I would drink diet soda from 
juice boxes on the porch in bold
bare knees without bracelets or blueberries.