Jazz foot steps of summers only left
in our veins.

I have two brothers
One is seven the other is sixteen.
BUT sometimes I feel
like a have one brother and one accomplice,
sidekick, and scout-- one partner to
walk the parameters of our half--acre yard
as if it were something to guard--
A cement stepping stool out of the ocean
on a military base in the Caribbean--
The older of the two is Billy--
he is and always will be my accomplice, 
sidekick, scout-- scapegoat to my fifth grade
experiments gone array--
There is something passed between
people who share summers with each other--
some sort of a understanding that
was injected in our shared veins
in chlorine fireworks and chocolate chip sandwiches.
We had mastered cabinet cuisine--
lunches of a pizza wraps and ketchup toast
sustained two explorers of day time television
and our own backyard--
and there were still things left undiscovered--
In the summer everything is infinite 
and yet already over-- we woke up
each morning to the visage of and older self
staring back in the mirror somewhere
in the the shower fog
reminding us that summer is as long as 
the Susquehanna and shallow as the
creek that we used to pretend was the world--
the creek that's other side was elsewhere.
Billy and I have blue rasperberry Popsicle veins.
We ate celery out of boredom and we're still
waiting for our peace prizes in the mail
for our work in Dragon orphanages.
We built tepees from tri pods and held
potato roll feasts at sunset.
I'm still sorry for making him drink tooth paste
and I'm still sorry I've never been
able to tell him that sometimes he's my older
brother too-- through nights of a bed sheet
tents in the attic when the house would
crack her knuckles to wake me up--
I would nudge him with my foot to wake him up
so that I wouldn't be alone. He wouldn't
say anything-- just open his eyes like
a rabbit and every monster in the creases
of the room not touched by night light
would quake at the notion him.
And I would go back to sleep.
And he would mumble about the next
day and what we would do before
resting his head on my shoulder
and cradling a stuffed shark like a 
life raft.
We walked through more summers
than we have years-- we walked 
to the foot steps of Jazz fingers
and bass strings yet strung--
we walked in bare feet and dirt
and the cracked cement on the porch--
between our father's beer bottles
and the corpses of attempted summer gardens--
parched parsley in between our toes--
we were children of thinking 
about how beautiful were the weeds. 

 

My father and I share a black belt.

When people ask me for a fun
fact I lie and tell them about my
black belts-- and they think
it's funny because I'm short
and spaghetti veined. I'm stringy-
like flimsy hair of banana 
peels or clementines. I've always smelled
like a corn husk doll and I startle like 
a blue bird even though my father
taught me how to spike my hair like
a blue jay.

But I've never been a blue jay-- 
Sometimes at night I would crawl
up the stairs on all fours as if
descending back into the primordial 
soup-- turn the corner and flinched to see
my father in the same night saunter--
holding a beer bottle like a door knob
and he would say "There's my black belt--
all those lesson and your only defense
is to fall on the ground."
And he would laugh and I would
laugh different.
And we would say nothing more. 
But it's not true. I am not a black belt.
I'm half a black belt-- 
the other half wears his cut out
of fake leather-- practiced katas with me
in the strangled hair of the back yard
using stones as markers--
my father new the forms before I did.
My father was a sensei and a sparing mat--
cut my hair short so I could
"fight like a boy" and I always
wanted to fight like boy I've 
never fought like anything other than
a pixie-- maybe I liked the katas
best because the grass was cold on
my feet in the yard or maybe I liked
to mess up sometimes so me father would
correct me-- because I liked the sound of
his voice-- maybe I've never been
a black belt at all-- I've always been
a person of white cloth and 
short hair-- 

When I broke the last
board during my belt ceremony I missed
the first time. I wasn't sad because I had
missed. I didn't care.
I cried because my father had saw me 
miss and I was so scared
that he had trained with me for nothing.
I looked up. I remember my foot hurt.
My hair was sweaty banana string
shoe laces on my face--
He was still smiling and standing
crossed armed in a patient stare.
And I broke it--

we broke it.

My father and I share a black belt. 

 

On violence against flowers.

I have wanted to hate the God
who took a rake and drug it across
the soil to make the streams-- that same 
God who lights fires in brake lights
and tugs out our hips from
seat belts. The same God who sinks 
cruise ships in the Caribbean and
lets the only death be a boy who
was twelve who played the cello.
And his mother will wonder why he played
the cello and not the guitar
and she will want there to be something 
of it and she will watch
the instrument wilt in the corner 
of the living room.
The same God who painted my eyelids 
the color of the underbellies 
of violet petals-- the same God 
who taught my brother to hunt for dragons.
The God who writes everyone's elegy
and birth certificate with their left hand--
The God of pagans and red candles.
The God of falling off window ledges
and living.
The God of tripping on a curb
and shattering like a mirror. 
The God who wouldn't let my 
Grandmother go-- held her with
oven mitts-- oh there is nothing
I want more than to hate the
God of untied shoes-- but he went
made the creases of book binding--
and there is no one left to blame but
the wild flowers who are always too
happy-- and I sometimes think 
that God didn't make the wild flowers
even though I know he did. And I 
will say three Hail Mary's for
every decapitated daisy-- but 
I will say that they deserved it
for smiling at a scared human orchid neck
who wanted to make the trail into
a church aisle to walk
like a perpetual acolyte because they
don't go to mass enough anymore.
And yes I killed the flowers-- but
at least they were martyrs.

 

Become T-Rex with me and still feel small.

i'd like to invite you all today
to rolls up the bottoms of your jeans
and help me plant evergreens like tooth picks--
the ones with little neon hat-- the ones
my uncle handed to me from bar stools--
pull your thumbs through the trickles 
of stream to wipe off the dirt when you're done
and i'm sorry to tell you that 
you'll never fit anywhere again--
you'll break bird necks when you sit
and quash generations of a Jupiter beetles 
with your tailbone-- wipe them away with 
a field of wheat--
Oh! Darling you will feel so large and so small.
even though we are all feeling so large and so small--
and some of us build sky scrapers in an afternoon
and some of us untie a knot in a show string
only to hang them from a telephone wire
in execution.

my uncle used to tell me about having a 
dream that he was a T-Rex.
He said everyone made him stay outside 
the house because he was too big
to fit. He said that we were scared of
him-- that we wanted him to go away--
And I knew then that I had been a T-rex too.
I knew I had broken maple trees and power
lines and had my toe nails tangled in
white picket fences--
We have all been a T-rex and a Jupiter beetle--
eaten cheerios with the paddle of an life raft
and boiled eggs with a tooth pick.

we have been small enough
to be buried in a match box-- to sleep
in a hot dog bun-- rest easy with 
tulip ear rings-- ketchup on our knees-- 
we will point to the mountain that is
somehow always on the horizon 
and tell them that's where the 
T-rex is buried inside
a match box under the ridge.       

 

The Nirvana for people in leaf life rafts in creeks
up to their ankles.

Today if only for the bird mingling morning 
i remembered with my feet
the distinct possibility of falling into 
everything.
become quiet with me like the death of gnats 
and butterflies-- whose wings we loose
between the forests of grass.
i remembered that if i were to determine
to relinquish my name and all the blankets
and old woven bracelets and all the
receipts in my purse like scrolls--
saving them like they might someday have
a message for someone other than myself--
maybe God writes us prophecies in white
ink between .99 and vanilla pudding
i have used bracelets and pudding
to try to pry myself from world of soil 
who calls me only each time my foot
touches the lawn-- and the earth has
never moved for my feet-- only bent 
her elbow to giggle at how
i thought i was a giant to
a forest-- and i think i will die like
a gnat and you don't need to give 
my wings a grave stone-- i want to say
goodbye like summer-- gone so long
but still in our heels-- die like fireflies
-- like blown out candles at the end of adoration.
This morning i don't need a name--
the birds would never call me 'Sarah'
anyway-- and my gnat wings look like
everyone else's.
i'd like to be nothing but soil
i'd like to be quiet like creeks--
hum to myself from the edge of
a leaf boat life raft--
bare feet in the water.

 

So far in summer and pleasantly dirty skin.

So far I've been born 20 times 
even though I'm 19-- because my real
birthday doesn't have a date--
I was born each time June
took off her black-lace wire bra
and hung it on the arm of the sofa--
Put up her street-soil dusted feet--
Sprawled herself out for the heat
to make her pours into
gaping mouths of fog-- So far
the soybeans and swash of the corn
haven taken to
lighting cigars in their pollen to let
the foxes know that I am alive
again. That June has decided
to unfold into time warp
humidity that blurs us all
into slow nostalgia-- like 
ticks and honeysuckle--
 I do not rise from a pile of
ash like a phoenix but from the
wrinkled belly of a mulberry tree
who knows each summer I'll be a different
kind of wildflower-- professing love
to boys who never even I was barely 
ever a girl-- a fairy-- a nymph--
I've been a born a lover and a queen
and a grave digger. I've been 
born an old woman in a paisley straw hat
with a weed garden and 
thankless feral cat children
eating the butterflies--
Born uncut grass and shorts always 
too short for me legs-- I've been
a park water fountain for the pigeon
boys who folded their wings 
from Twix wrappers.
So far the only thing the same is
the summer and pleasantly dirty skin
a vein of curbs and park benches--
the dead skin of a snakes and
a menagerie pix stick dust.
So far I have loved no one more
than June-- still laying on the couch
and wearing mulberries for earrings.

 

Weed blooms

from my brows–

sew sunflowers in

the fat soil of my nose–

our daffodils wear

promise rings

like scalp

tattoos–

I won’t try

to compare us to

a garden– we are lions–

spore wishes– at best.

roar with me

in June.

There are two ways of saying "goodbye"

1.
We could depart like the fraying of threads--
like refrigerator magnets that once
held spelling tests to the fridge.
We could depart like gum wrappers out
car windows or like hemlock lovers.
I could drink whatever poison you wanted though--
I had always hoped that poison
would taste like black jelly beans--
we could leave like scabs or like
the palms of maple leaves in a hail storm.
We could kiss like an albatross
and turn our heads like the neck of a heron.
Yes, we could depart heavy. We could
depart on the rain and leave our umbrellas
inside our glove boxes.
2.
We could say goodbye like I do--
the one who saves spelling tests because
I like lady bug stickers-- the one
who saves forth grade
art projects because something of girl
who wanted to wear two different
colored converse each day 
still lives between lines of felt-tipped
Crayola markers. We can depart like comets that 
pass on an untimely cloudy night once a century--
wave with their tails and we think
we heard them say "i love you all so much"
but it could have just been wind chimes.
I have the throat of a comet tail--
the face of a watch. We can say goodbye
softly-- and you don't have to look
back because I'm already the magnet 
on the fridge of the house
we've yet to buy together.
Sometimes I'll wear two different colored shoes
Write your name on my hand in
Crayola marker-- "goodbye, but never for now".

Did I tell you I was once a black rat snake?

Before the pine tree in my backyard knew me

or even my mother knew me

I had been a black rat snake– a licorice ribbon–

a linked stringy menagerie of scale

I learned to crawl on my

belly like most people determined to be

women– ate the roots of the trees

to make me grow longer– spread out

poured myself into the hot grittle

like a pancake– make me thinner

make me thinner– so I can

unhinge my jaw and consume everything

I’ve ever forgotten.  I had found myself

under feet and whispered that

broken feather ribs were my fault

for not climbing the shad berry bush

on my belly– I pretend to have hips

but there was only bone.

— I was supposed to be a stair case

not a railing–  I was supposed to listen to

the herons but I always liked

the voices of the Fowler’s toads–

Oh and how I wished to be a copperhead

but I could only be the inky veins

of poet strewn about the trees–

an unfinished brush stroke–

I would not expect you to think

that I’m a black rat snake now–

but I still crawl on my belly

and eat tree roots and often wish

I could be a copperhead–

but only end up here with the snake still

alive in all my veins.

were you ever ready for the flood?

we were still wearing knit hats and goulashes when
there was the first reports of the storm.
we were still cooking turtle soup on the
stove top next to the microwave.
we were still waiting for the school bus 
each morning with scarves because
our mother had told us to bundle up
even though it was May.

it was a thick type of cold-- like
refrigerator pizza.

the first one to notice it was the osprey--
he left us a basket of homemade jams
and a note that said "departing"

"departing for where?" my brother asked.

but we both knew he was leaving because
of the flood. next arrived a re-gifted 
cheese and meat platter from the past chirstmas
with a collective note from the song birds
and the opossum explaining another departure.

the gifts became a daily pleasantry--
like a succession of christmas mornings
and dangling christmas eves--
but each day we would pretend like
it was something queer-- even though we knew.

there was a stuffed red teddy bear with
a jar of cookies from the coyotes--
a dying orchid from the rabbit who split the
cost with the hedgehogs.
farewells from worms, from ants, from spiders
came in the form of un seasonal wool socks 
with purple hearts embroidered on them--

and when the turtles left we knew we had to say it
out loud-- and we didn't take any of the
jams or the cheese or even the oatmeal
cookies from the coyotes with us.
we took out hands and we took our knit hats
and goulashes.

and we were never ready for the flood.