The culinary expertise of 9 year olds 
and using string cheese to tie up your hair
in pig tails.

My mouth became a microwave oven.
We all stood too close to 
watch my teeth mutate--
morph into the stale marshmallows on
a dinner plate-- peel sticky 
from your thumbs-- wipe everything 
but blood on your
thighs--those stuffed bratwurst jeans--
your thighs you
haven't truly noticed yet--
They are only pant-seams and places
where you hide peanut butter and
marshmallows-- 
My mouth became steam-- a skillet--
a stove top-- belt loop tug-- the melted
butter into your own recipe for soup-- 
Did you ever
eat something like a 9-year-old?
You must have. We all did.
We used our mouths to cure curiosity
and now we fill them with kisses 
that still don't taste as good
as microwave marshmallows--
Because everything tastes good
in a 9-year-old fist full
baked chips-- forget
about the thighs--
I wore my hair in pig tails
tied up with low fat string cheese
I knew I was sublime-- god-like--
Your body was nothing but a tool
the alarm of your 
microwave mouth-- warm
the morning in a bath of butter--
This is when we learned about butter
and that the butter wasn't actually 
butter-- it was margarine 
most of what I taste 
is only a memory of when 
I was 9 because as far as I know
butter is only a myth that
we invented to stick
cinnamon and sugar to potato rolls
at midnight-- and string cheese
is good for pig tails because
it melts to make pizza 
if you roll it inside
a tortilla with canned tomato
sauce-- splash the sides of
your microwave mouth with marsh-
mallow-- or blood-- or canned 
tomato sauce--

Who was it that told you 
where your thighs were located?
Did they eat the string
cheese from your pig tails
to tell you that you had been
fat all these years-- that
no one was proud of boxed brownies 
and microwave mouth marshmallows?
Did they tell you no one
who was sublime had pigtails?
Did they wash your sticky 
thumbs with salad leaves?
Did they tell you that
you had butter stains 
on your jeans?
Teach my mouth to be 9.

I don't have enough hair
for pigtails anymore.

Dusting the freckles off my shoulders
and what it's like to kiss
an alien with blue raspberry chap stick.

I was your everything
bagel-- cream cheese smile 
like a smear of lip gloss--
When we were in fifth grade
we all wore chap stick
to pretend to be the women
we would never become.
I wore high-heels like a 
neck brace or a retainer.
My retainer was blue
and I lost it on purpose 
three times until the trash
took away the clasps those
white gloves wanted to use to
make me straight
I was a blue raspberry chap stick 
if there ever was one--
and you say that meant I 
was an alien-- frozen for analysis
of the freckles on my shoulders.
Each brown specks mirrors the constellations
from the planet I was born on--
abduct me but not
like a hitchhiker-- I've
walked long enough along these corn
fields to start to make crop circles
with my bare feet.
They're in the shape of bagels--
You said you don't kiss girls
with blue lips out of principle and I said
"Well good because I'm
not a girl--"
I brushed the freckles off my 
shoulders then like sesame seeds
or remnants of someone else's stars--
"Do you believe in life
on other planets?-- look
I hold stars between my teeth 
not that they took off my retainer."
And you ask if I ever eat the blue raspberry
chap stick because it looks like candy--
you say I look like candy--
maybe my shoulders are coated in pop rocks--
moon stones dazzle me like
Orion promised me from his belt
buckle-- what were we but fifth graders?
What are we ever but fifth graders?
Everyone is naked in fifth grade.
Do you want to go back?
Tractor beam to the stream where we thought
about being women and I told
you I didn't know how to 
shave my legs so I used my Dad's 
razors--
And do you follow my crop circles--
can you read my blue lips--
I'm not cold because I'm dead--
I'm cold because I'm as 
blue as I've always wanted to be.
You can keep the freckles
from my shoulders as reminders
of the different scars 
this hot-white star has kissed me with.

I haven't held enough toads in this life time.

We were waiting for April's leg hair
to grow again-- she had worn tight
jeans all winter and knit hats
to hide that her scalp was no longer
just peach skin and cat tongue --
we were waiting for the air to feel
breathy and labored like
the birth of flowers in the front 
lawn who knew they would soon
be decapitated like all the female
martyrs-- to bleed warm milk
from their necks-- rain 
water splashing from their
nostrils like faucets--
we were waiting for rain 
to fall like soup ladles. 
And it like creamy chicken noodles--
came just for the purpose
of waking up the toads.
They were each buried like flowering tea and 
lost keys to the garage door
that long ago broke off it's hinges--
We brushed the hand-cut noodles off the 
porch to see the toads waiting for 
us there. My brother, my father, and
I stood to see them all wearing their newest 
stone-skin and wishing well eyes--
My father taught me my hands were
a microcosm-- a cave-- a cradle--
a cage for me to eat handfuls 
of soil with-- but at least
it tasted like chicken noodle soup
when it rained in April-- there
was no chicken-- only rain and
noodles and some sort
of broth that made the toads
tell us stories of how far they had 
burrowed in the earth since we'd seen them 
last. Held each one tight enough
so that their face peered from between
our index finger and out thumb--
I kissed each one but not for a prince--
just for the secrets they told me
about China and the remnants of the 
old chicken coup under the porch--
They told me that I would always be
their first and their last lover--
because toads turn to stone
in October--
Maybe if I held more toads 
and collected less stones I would
know more about chicken soup and China
and I would eat less soil
and be reminded of the things my
father taught me with
toads and my hands and
the microcosms they hold
between my index finger and 
my thumb. 

When I die leave me out on the corner 
like a slumped tweed sofa with wine stains
or the Christmas tree still looking
for her roots.

I have to admit that I love the soil.
I love worms. I love the August
that makes dirt into oatmeal into
grits-- into cream of wheat-- into
split pea soup after a storm. I'd love
to live there. Buried
to my neck like a sculpture--
like how they found the Sphinx--
broken nosed and peaceful like
a prize in a box of stale crackerjacks--
Yes-- I compared myself lifeless body
 to  a lioness-- 
Sadly, I have a bias.

I think the soil is for growing.
Maybe you can just plant my thumbs
I'd like that. Out by where
we tried to grow sunflowers
that died in a drought-- they would
grow spearmint trees and my children
would return with their children and 
point the thicket and say
"And that is your grandparent."

"How did they get so old?"
 
As far as I know my dead body will
not be doing much growing without my thumbs--
especially not sealed up in a casket
like a zip-lock bag-- save
the shoe box for the dead sunflowers--
everyone forgets the dead sunflowers. 
 
I'm purposing the family walks me
out to curb. If you already rented a hearse
Instruct the driver to take everyone for a spin
to get ice cream-- preferably 
Dairy Queen in honor of me.
Don't cry. Ice cream and crying 
get mixed far too often.
Tell them you're burrowing
the hearse from a friend and
buy a pineapple sundae for me.

Sit me out on the curb like something 
honorable. Like a tweed sofa
left over from a dorm room--
wine stained on the cushions that look like
a birth marks or rashes. Don't let
the garbage truck take me--

I want to be sat out 
with a sign that reads
"Free to a good home"
like accidental puppies
or Christmas trees.It will be easier 
for the angels to happen upon me
that way (assuming angels will
be looking for me).

I've heard sometimes they disguise themselves
as garbage men
or mail carriers-- they can pick
me up by the collar of my shirt--
take me to sit on another curb
outside of heaven.
When they arrive in January to
clean up the Christmas trees--
dust pans in hand for the needles--

When you all come back from ice cream
I'll be gone. No shovels.
No oatmeal dirt. No tombstone
with death scarred into its face.
Remember me and how I hated 
the mailbox. Send me letters if you think
of it and when a spear mint bush
grows in the front yard 
remember your parent grew from
their thumbs.

Remember that I was taken from
curb side with the Christmas tree--
Both of us left behind roots
that still grow spear mint. 
Sit on the tweed sofa
and eat the pineapple sundae--
melted from the car ride home. 

If me and you owned a crab apple orchard.

When I asked if we could grow 
an apple tree my father said that 
crab apples don't taste very good--
He said I'd get sick if I tried them--
So I smashed crab apples like
daddy long leggers or 
coffee beans or blue berries under
my black canvas shoes in the driveway
of my aunt's house.
It was September but only 
in the wind chimes.

I don't think anyone ever really tried 
to appreciate crab apples though--
Not like I would.

You'd tell me that apple trees take years
while I'd get on all four and dip
each seed into the ground like
stitches in a quilt held together
with dental floss-- each push
of earth and soil and warmth like
oatmeal with dried apple on your toes
-- like pink gums in the bathroom mirror
after midnight was a regret
when even your teeth want to sleep-- 

For my orchard I would buy enough acres to hold the 
moon if it decided to land-- Crab apples
need room to scurry and discover
and feel and taste the earth
where their delicious red and gold
brothers rotted and turned 
to cider in the soil-- need 
room to breathe and gasp and
taste summer with their stems.
They need to learn what
caramel is from the whispers
of aging bees.

I would tell you when
harvest is coming. I will tell you
when we will start making cider to dip our
ginger snaps and apple pie as
warm as soil
to melt vanilla ice cream on. 

You will play along even though
you don't believe in crab apples
because you believe in me
and you believe in the moon.

You'll ask me how many crab apples
it takes to fill a pie crust
and how many crab apples 
it would take to fill the moon
if it decided to land in our orchard.

We'll pass the afternoons
making of games of hide and seek
between the thin trunks
of the trees that somehow
grew as tall as lamp posts
since late June when I planted them.

You'll tell me how the crab
apples likes me. How they miss
me at night when I sleep away
from them.
We'll take out sleeping bags 
to keep them company when the nights
start to make the soil shiver
and the wind chimes sound more
like bones that teeth.
We'll read them bed time stories
and tell them about the moon.
And you'll still only 
believe in me and quilts and
the persistence of Autumn.

Crab apple harvest happens
over night. In the full of the moon.
In the company of sleeping bags--
bodies entangled like roots.
Emerged in the frost melted froth 
of morning--

You would pick one apple
on the ground next to us.
It would be somehow the size of the moon
and sitting in your hand.
You'd ask what had
become of the timid stars we had known.
I would say that they becamse an orchard.
 
You would tell me that you
still didn't believe in crab apples
but that tonight we could make
cider to dip our ginger snaps into
and apple pie to melt vanilla ice cream
if I still wanted to teach
a non believer how to make
moons out of crab apples.

Who ever sang to you was lying
We weren't meant to love like music.

I don't think I've ever loved anyone
like a love song or a c-chord
wedged in the middle of a progression
like an unfulfilled obligation

-- believe me darlings
my sweet peas, my Brussels sprouts,
my mandolins--
I've tried to write songs
for all of you.

I harmonize Splenda packets on strawberries--
voice cracks like a c-chord
on the side of a mixing bowl--
I've lied with other people's
words, darlin, mandolin-- 
I'll snap my fingers like a D-string
and a thumb.

we aren't really  like that, sweet pea.
my midnight mashed-potato lover
we don't measure into  yellow packets
on any Tuesday-- 
I won't package you shut like separate sides 
of bunk beds we learn to sleep on. 
Take your blankets and I'll take 
mine.

I've tried to teach my throat 
to be a trumpet-- but I quit trumpet
in the fifth grade and 
now I can only play "taps" 

these lips can't bite into a chorus--
and my verses are the worn
away heels of our favorite socks--
the ones we don't throw out even
though we know we should.

chorus, chorus, 
"love me like forever"
"love me like a chorus"

I don't want to repeat this thing
tomorrow-- we can make
tomorrow tomorrow and today
today and next Tuesday 
a trumpet if we can remember

chorus, chorus, kick-line-base drums to the next
time I say goodbye like there was a plane
waiting for you at the end of my driveway
instead of a bus stop--

don't leave me with
my own wrists-- 
they scare me and hang me--
like string bass necks

If you stay
I won't lie to you with a love song
I won't write you a poem today like I could
put us in a Splenda packet or sleeping
bag or a c-chord

Don't hear me wrong
My darling, my sweet pea
my mandolin, my naked strawberries 
I don't mean that you don't make
me sing like the trumpets I can't play--
I just mean that it's not really
a song. 

In defense of stale Cheerios and 1/3 measuring cups
i fit into if i curl up like a cinnamon roll. 

On Tuesday nights my worries fit
into 3/4 of a cup and that's lucky
because my body takes up 
1/3 when i coil-- a pecan viper--
a cinnamon bun boa-- who has always
been scared of the cold-- you've taught me since

i learned to eat that these bodies 
were meant to be whole-- 
that when God plucked a rib 
from Adam to make Eve that
she wasn't ever meant to 
fully reside in any of the 
spaces she baked herself into-- she'd
still be 1/24 a sliver of someone
else's bone-powered measured
off to make cinnamon rolls--
that's what we do-- we measure 
and bake with our ribs--

take the knife
across my brow to level off the stray 
flour on my forehead-- 
in the sign of the cross--

we're baking
muffins you say-- as if it were obvious--

you don't notice
i measure every movement from
my feet walking morning
to the crinkle of my neck bone
against the pillow-- trying to burrow
deep enough to sleep-- to the 
stale Cheerios next to the coffee machine
that i don't eat for breakfast--

i like my cereal stale
because it tastes like yesterday
and forgetting.
it reminds me of the foam packing peanuts 
they used to ship me to my mother.
i arrived in pieces to be assembled
like a ikea bed frame

She told me she's sorry
she's still looking for one bolt
of the 24--

i was born into the 1/3 of a cup 
where i wake up and sometimes
you make me feel like 3/4--
like a tuesday-- like danger and
like overflowing-- we all measure
more sugar than we need into 
muffin batter if we're making them for
someone else--

and i think i've been scared of us 
because you've never noticed
how i take up 1/3 of a measuring cup
and i feel like sometimes i might
have 24 ribs when you wipe
the bone power from my sleeves--

you say that people we're meant for
measuring cups

it's hard because
i was born into one. 

That's why
i'm the baker and you're the chef--
there needs to be some order or
someone always forgets the
baking powder-- and then no 
one will rise but i know
love wasn't meant for measuring cups--

i just want to know
how much space we fill 

but i shouldn't
and i won't
and i can't

i'll scoop the stale Cheerios.
you'll watch and 
forget that i measure
everything but us. 

Summer wanted me naked--
and I showered in a thunder storm
just to tempt her.

Summer was the lover who used
my ribs like rungs on a ladder--
broke each step on her way
up to my lips-- where she poured
into me like rain gutters-- dead 
leaves ripped loose by a storm
stuck like scabs to my thighs --
like toad hand prints 
and sleepovers
and midnight.

Summer wants me waiting
but I have long been estranged
I only talk to her from the porch 
when the air is too thick for
me to walk away anymore-- when
the slit-grass scent of her neck
comes in whispers through the 
air conditioning-- and I am
cold and I want the humidity
to paint my forehead like an 
impressionist-- I have promised
to never be a muse again but
Oh! when she tells me to poise
and pulls my hair like green corn--

Summer wants me naked and hair
down to my knees-- tells me
to be her goddess again-- tells
me that she needs me
and that she knows that only
I can understand when she speaks
in cicada or wind chimes-- tells me that
winter made clothing for people
who have decided to settle on loving
themselves first-- she says that
I was never the one to wear
so many scarves-- she knows 
I look at myself naked in the mirror
before a shower-- she knows
that I'm not scared of my hips
anymore (or at least that I pretend 
not to fear them)--

Summer wants me downpour door-closed 
when she decides to hail-- held in 
the space between the double yellow
lines on the corn roads where 
I liked how to peel off ticks from
behind my knees--
Where I learned I could be naked
only in my own skin--
I learned I was watermelon rind 
and I never kneed her for
anything but the lust of fireflies

Summer sent me sea shells in the mail
and I made necklaces to bade off
the coming jaws of autumn.
I've never been ready to move
on from the kind of love 
summer teaches you to make
wearing nothing but your hips
in the bathroom mirror.

It was my mother who always told 
me not to take a shower in a lightning 
storm-- told me I was the kind of
girl who was bound to be a lightning rod.

Summer wanted me electric-- wanted me
rapture wanted me static and radio
garble-- and dead tree branches
across the stream that flowed
like lust and blood
and I stood naked in shower steam--
told her I was my own summer--
and sand washed down the drain.

Summer wanted me naked
and I dared her to touch
me through the mist of
the bathroom mirror-- 
shake me with thunder
but I know my hips now
and I know the cicadas 
go quiet for me. 

The dissection of my torso with a pairing knife
as if I were a seeded watermelon

I'd prefer to be cut slow and gentle
with a pairing knife-- the type of knife 
they only use for sickly-ripe fruit.
I wear bruised brown lips--
all syrup from the impact of kisses--
I'm okay with being taken apart
if you give me the respect
of a strawberry-- the wisdom of a plantain 
or the patient stubble of a white peach 
who was also my grandmother--
the a peach- pit encased in blood
and knee bone--
 
I will warn you that other boys
say that I don't come apart easy--
they gossip that my skin can be like a watermelon--
a seeded watermelon-- oblong and 
wriggling in the cage of the shopping cart--
Bruises on watermelons don't count.

You may have to use pliers--
I've been cinched up tight like
turkey necks and voodoo-- 
sewn shut wire-jaws of the flounder
at the market-- agape and still 
tasting salt water in prayer--

Snap the white lace bra I don't wear anymore--
make the incision 
at the base of my sternum-- 
like Christmas
or birthdays or
other days made for boys
to break bows with pliers--
the pomegranate beads
under my skin will paint the bra violets
the kind of blood only underneath a bruise--
I know you imagined we all bleed
like apples--

Oh! Boys are scared of dissecting me--
they're still scared of growing watermelons
in their stomachs and still stinging from
the last time they mistook an apple
for a rib cage-- for love-- for lips
for bruises-- for Eve-- oh Eve!
Eve who I dissected at the base of the
sternum like a pomegranate just to
see if she looked like me on
the inside-- Eve with the black
seeds and the broken pairing knives
in between her ribs left
over from boys who gave up--
they were always to dull to cut us--
to figure us out--

I was the watermelon and she was the pomegranate--
and we spelled temptation with fractured
bones and brown bruised lips--
she was willing to pretend I was a peach 
if I could forget she was the apple
with the purple blood. 

Cut me with the pairing knife
take your time-- there's lots of seeds. 

 





 

I have the affliction of waiting like a mailbox and 
only eating halves of everything bagels.

Sit with me on the stoney-chinned
front porch steps while I try to cross my legs
like the other girls-- like how they told us 
you're supposed to sit when you wear
a skirt. I sit like my own mother
in the grass in sweat pants with 
flour stains on the thighs 
from pancakes and pecan swirls
that peel apart in ringlets to the edge of 
this galaxy we unravel the gauze of
when we're ten year olds.
Learn how scabs and scars are like stickie notes
to write reminders on--
I've never been able to shake the feeling of waiting and 
waiting to be younger. Younger and standing in underpants
on the front porch in the rain. Older and waiting
to be sixteen and driving big cars and
marrying boys who know how to tie their own 
ties-- and telling myself I don't want
to kiss girls because girls don't kiss
girls
girls kiss boys who know how to tie
their own ties who like girls who sit
with crossed legs and pleated skirts. 
But girls don't have knees like mine
and I'm a person who holds everything
in their knees-- and in the 
wrinkles on their knees like
tree skin or cream cheese. 
I've got this mailbox head hung from
too many check books and magazines and not
enough letters from grandmother
who don't hold pens anymore-- too many newspapers 
rolled like pecan swirls 
thick and sugary with headlines
about next year and how next year
the world is going to end for
a third time. I've been sitting
on this front porch waiting for a particular 
letter and waiting to send another--
I've used my thumb print as a postage stamp
they know it's me-- 
I'm waiting for you to write to me--
the person twenty-years-tall who has
just as little answers as half themselves--
I'm sending a love letter to the person
who will find my knees endearing
and kiss my cheeks like bagels--
dust the sesame seeds off the counter
and count my poppy seeds like stars.
This love letter is for someone who
doesn't tie their own tie and I know
how wreckless that is but I've never been
able to eat a whole bagel so I'll
unfurl myself in two and leave
the other half waiting for
you on this stoney- nose porch while I wait for
the mail truck with answers
licked away in envelopes--
I hope you got my letter and recognized
the thumb print is the same as the patterns on
my knees. 
I saved you the fluffy 
top-half of the bagel.
And you said you loved how
my knees are wrinkled like 
tree skin and cream
cheese.