The promises we make only by nightlights
candles and glow sticks.

There is something about nightlights that
have always made me want to confess my sins--
I usually want to tell the world
I'm sorry each midnight when I stay up
to watch the paper calendar peel
into into a new dark morning like
a scab yanked too soon-- I'm a bloody
marty for the sins I'm not sure are even mine--
we're growning rose bushes on our heads
these days-- I'm just vain enough to make
mine into a crown-- I'm sorry
because there were things I didn't
change and others that I didn't want to--
I'm sorry I'm not sad about being 
the kind of creature who takes penance 
in the form of measuring cups.
I'm sorry about there were people
I didn't tie-shoe laces for 
and other ones who  could only
see me as the fresh jar of clay
who is waiting for the slip to dry--
It might be because I was raised
in a cul-de-sac of candles and white
robes that could make any body
into a roll of paper towels
adorned with charcoal crosses 
made from ash and palms-- charcoal to write
the details of soul-- cracked
like a glow stick over
a bond fire when I told you I only
like to set fire to marshmallows--
I don't have the patience for
anything but fire-- unfold to 
to times I've wiped matches
from the green chalk boards of my forearms--
Oh lord, my mother Mary with 
our lady daughters in candle crowns
made of the dead stars that find themselves
in heaven-- 
I tell you I am dust and to
nightlights I shall return to 
tell my father by my bedside
that I was a dinosaur today at recess--
I wore T-Rex costume and felt too
big to fit under a maple tree
that was bleeding from gypsy mouths.
I tell him I am crying because I'm
so old already-- because I realized
that glow sticks only last one night
and the fireworks they're bathed
by die faster than that-- I'm crying
because I learned to pour
out my confessions each midnight
while starting the list for the next
day underneth my tongue-- 
I know I will promise
to stop saying I'm sorry to more
people than I can count-- I'll break
glow sticks and light candles for
each of them because I know I never
will-- if you don't want my apologies 
that's good because they were never for you
-- I am an apology for the nightlight
who has to wait up with me
and the silk still trying to dry 
on the rim of this jar of clay--
I am audacious to apologize 
for everything I have done and all
the things I have not and if 
you can't wipe off the charcoal in
the morning with me then roast
your marshmallows slow and I'll 
be the fire-sugar and always return
to ash-- I always knew that you'd 
break me like glow stick-- remember
I was blue.

Prank calls to pay phones and 
times no one answered but the Minotaur.

In elementary school a pay phone
was the opening to a tomato sauce
can of urban legends and a suspended
reality that still keeps
me in the back of my closet
looking for lamp posts
or a rendezvous with angels--
the ones the Bible doesn't name.
It's the belief in the in the outside--
the belief in bleeding milk
and a Minotaur that walks in the
hall at midnight-- the sublime that
compels makes me want to walk
alone where there is fog 
in the morning-- I call it my 
own ascension but I never pretend 
to be a saint--

1. I called the payphone
we all knew was on Normal Ave. 
because I saw the number on ruler
from geometry-- I had planned to make
a prank call but not actually planned 
a prank call-- because I just wanted 
the sound of a voice-- I in fourth 
grade and nothing scared me
but I just starting to knew
what ugly meant-- it was like
my thighs and the worn insides
of my jeans.You didn't answer
but I pretended we talked about
boys and how sometimes 
I didn't like sleepovers 
because mornings without showers 
leave you feeling like sin.

2. I called the same payphone.
I learned to put orchids in my hair
and that sometimes I didn't like 
my own ankles. I learned that
cupcakes were greasy and that
telephones always remembered your name.
I called the same payphone
only this time it didn't ring--
it had been disconnected like all
the other veins into oblivion--
we talked about the back of my closet
and babies and blood in purple jeans.
I told you I didn't know what was
wrong with me-- but I knew I liked
orchids and I liked them in my hair.

3. I called you from the payphone
in the lobby of the middle school.
It was disconnected too like the last one
but it still felt good to ask where the helicopters 
were landing because I had become
acutely aware that everyone
would someday be taken away
in a helicopter in handcuffs or
in white veils made of sea foam--
I told you I knew I didn't like
anything about myself anymore
I told you I was ugly and that
you could arrange meetings with
angels but they never showed up for me--
left mist on the windows and told
me to keep faith-- called me
Clare and Catherine-- perspired 
on chocolate milk cartons.

4. I answered and it was you.
The pay phone on Normal Ave
where the wires were frayed and 
only connected to a kind of hope
we only ever found in payphones
and in stories about bleeding milk--
the kind of blood that doesn't stain 
purple jeans and doesn't remind
you how people melt like
campfires and go like fog morning
without calling to say goodbyes
over the payphone line--
And there was no one around but 
the people who read the bulletin 
boards outside the library when you called
so no one believes me that it
was you-- the Minotaur-- 
I had always been so afraid
and whose foot steps reminded me 
of the seams of my jeans--
And I was lucky to at least have
you to tell-- 
we've all needed payphones
to remind us we're 
not alone even when there's
nothing but the Minotaur and
the dial tone
of helicopter blades.

Have you looked into the butterfly bushes today
or asked about when God would be ready to burn them?

The the oracle was in the tall grass
or so my father always said--
and we washed in ticks and leeches
to forget that humans weren't meant
for the edges of trails--
We have gravel in our sandals and in our bones--
I could feel broke-stone in my heels--
Purge me of this syrup blood--
Let them make me a hyacinth to
sip nectar from, measure out
my veins like a sugar bowl from
the mandibles of the ants--
I want to bleed like the rubber trees
and form scars of cedar sap--
So like good prophets we filled 
the nap sacks with toad eggs.
hatched them with moon lamps
and the heat of burning newspapers
and calendars never filled in--
we raised a colony that only eats porch light.
The toads wait to be fed metal bottle caps
from the hands of my father who
took eight years to learn to
speak their language--
I told the reeds I wanted to 
be a fox and eat water melon rinds
and talk to the swallow tails about
how many times they had visited 
God this week to deliver reports to him about
what they had seen the people doing--
I wonder if God was disappointed 
that I had only looked into the butterfly 
bushes once this week and it wasn't long
enough to hear what the cicadas  were
saying they had seen while they slept.
I asked them if God was feeling generous
or if they would burn this week
like Phoenix ferns or pussy willows--
I asked if they would be back
or if He had forgotten that there
are still people who remember that the
prophets sleep in the tall grass
and make holy water of mud and stagnant 
rain water. I told him I would always be
a person who looks for burning bushes
just to find swallow tails--
the kind who feeds toads bottle caps
and peels ticks from the backs 
of their knees.

Trances of lighting bugs, fire flies, and unlit paper lanterns.

Lightning bugs have always taken 
me into a trance-- something whimsical
but eerie and distant and uncontrollable--
they form a crown of tea lights on my head
and tell me not to tip too much
to the right or to the left-- tell
me that they raised their daughter better--
tell me I have to walk like a princess in
the barefoot grass of bee carcasses 
and hollow bodies of raptured fireworks.
Fire flies like to braid my hair 
like stale soft-pretzels or Challah
bread in the soaked cracker-jack evening 
when we eat raw green beans on the porch.
I have soy bean shell knees and sun-boiled 
peaches in my cheeks. 
They trained me to be the heiress of corn husks
and veiled street-lamp moons--
told me to kiss boys on the 
double yellow lines to make
a sacrifice to the notions of July
and the sick syrup of humid love--
They hem the sky line 
with the garden hose. I have always
worn their thorny cowl of mosquito 
bites and dry grass-- waiting for 
the fire flies to sprawl out 
on the back yard like candles 
floated on ginko leaves
or the feet of Jesus outside a boat
of apostles who might as well
have been barn owls or bats--
ate fruit and honey like a last supper
and told me that God spread
himself thin on nights in July
in the delicate abdomens of
the lightning bugs-- we hold
him in jars like holy water.
There's a reason we never lit lanterns
my dear-- I wasn't yours to fly a lantern for--
we were raptured fireworks-- a brief
glimpse of man trying to break
the night like the scattered glow
of God in the bellies of bugs--
and we were never fire flies
And I'm not sorry because someone 
had to get kissed on the double yellow
lines that July-- save the lanterns
and never forget that lightning bugs
see more than street lamps. 
 

The raspberries, blueberries, and peach pits
for dinner plates. Wash your hands with seat cushions. 

I don't want to make jam this year.
I don't want a card board crate 
with congregations of blue berries.
One July when I was eight I imagined I was 
on an island of blue berry fields--
that I was picking for my family
in cool cave just over
the shrugging shoulder of our vertebrae of
the Appalachians. 
I don't want bushel baskets of free stone peaches
huddled together like choir girls.
When I was too old to imagine myself 
on an island but not too old
to appreciate the mystic nature
of orchards and summer noons
My mother, my brother, my father, and I
concluded each peach on the ridge looked 
too much like amethyst not to pick--
we greedy-gathered villages, parishes, and
sewing circles and looked
at them all on the kitchen table--
a fuzzy, chalky, fruit skined-tablecloth for dinner.
I still didn't want to make jam or apple butter
or scones. I didn't want to peel them--
never liked the sight of boiled blue berry mush--
the skin unfurled like lavender petals
or amathyst veins--
And then I remember the time when I was
thirteen that my mother and I took
murder on our hands and picked 
raspberries from the farm down
the back road where you couldn't see
Arby's or Burger King or the Mini Golf Course
so we could both pretend there wasn't a 
highway for us to drive home on.
And we didn't take any raspberries
with us-- we sat on either side
of a bush and ate with bloody hands--
the hands of raccoons or pioneers or
beat poets trying to write something
meaningful about death-- made a dinner
setting from the tilled earth mounds.
And there was no raspberry jam.
And there was no raspberry scones.
And there was no teal pints to take home.
There was blood on our hands--
But for that late sunset we escaped
to nothing but berries, and fingers
and blood like amethyst.
We wiped our hands on the 
seat cushions of the station 
wagon on the way home-- kept
our crime in the raspberry
scabs under our cuticles. 

A elegy to instruments I no longer know.

In fourth grade I was completely 
disinterested in everything that had to
do with the oboe other than 
the idea of playing the oboe.
I was the counterculture kid
born with two different colored
Chuck Taylors and short
brown hair stiff from my
father's blue hair gel. To play
guitar wouldn't subvert expectation
enough for my ten-year-old standards-- so
I bit double reeds and learned the 
noise Gila monsters make when they're
trying to imitate jazz musicians--
That instrument shed silver
keys like snake skin and I left
my oboe's carcass in a case
at the back of the music room--
I took on the fabricated audacity
of brass when I played trumpet for
less than a year-- it always sounded too
loud and I worried who I was waking up
with the anxious declarations 
coming from my bell.
I played taps on the porch 
for no one and the birds scattered
from all the limbs of the big pine tree--
I blew out the spit valve 
on the carpet and kissed the
wide mouth piece like a sibling.
I still waltz brielfy with the ghost 
of my brother's fiddle in the
sleep-walk hands of an impatient 
artist who could never wait
for the instrument-- held it down
and told it to sing like a seraph--
I pretend there's not a Bedell
with abalone fret board in 
a body bag in the corner
of my bed room at the house on
Noble Street. I kept a piano as
a mistress-- slept with her on 
snow-day mornings.The blue guitar
was always for my father--
the man who tied my Chuck Taylors 
and told me that John Lennon
was a God and that punk
was a prophecy brought to 
us from sex pistols and 
pinned down by the fret board
of Kurt Cobain. 
But I went to Scarborough Fair 
with my Bedell and I broke
her string sometimes but she
always forgave me-- she
told me that there was something 
to love about a creature
whose fingers were often
slippery and whose thumb
pushed on her neck too hard.
She told me I would be okay
and that I didn't always need to
practice. She told me my lap
was enough for her and 
I am most sorry to my
Bedell who caressed the scars
on my hips and burn mark
on my forearms. She knew I would
never be a musician but
she knew that I could hold
myself together with dead
chord progressions. She used
to love how I bushed her unshaven
legs without a pick-- pulled
my thumb on the base note
and plucked her strings like
a harp-- she thought she could
have been a harp in another life.
And she is a quiet woman
now. I left her my widow
and I make songs with poems now
but she will always be
something like Parsley, Sage,
Rosemary, and times
I pulled music from her throat. 

The art of telling stories about 
people you never knew and 
remembering things they might
never have done.

My father's family
keeps its folklore under
the paper place mats
set on the dining room table
in a house that smells
like Keebler M & M cookies
and rose perfume that
you can taste on the spin
of you tongue.
My father's family tucks
tall tales under the spoon
that has always served 
coleslaw or macaroni salad.
It falls off plastic forks 
and in between the practice 
swings of a decades of 
Philadelphia Phillies swings.
That's when you can get
my great aunts to talk
about dead people.
And Aunt Flo will say something
just sad enough to cause a silence
and Aunt Mary will laugh and nod
her head. But, it's My father who
has always told the best
stories about my pop pop. 

I don't know how much 
I really would have liked
my grandfather in practice
but I love him as a character
and I'm hoping someday 
he will drop a bomb
on a whale in a short story
of mine-- find himself again
in a bar in Brazil far
away from where his brother
was collecting purple
hearts in his pockets
at Okinawa. Take snowy owls
from bird cages for my 
father catching turtles
like a stamp collection.

I don't know if my grandfather
would like my short white hair
or my blue lips-- if he
would eat banana bread
or chocolate chip cookies or
if he would change the radio
when we drove in the car together
or if we would watch thunder storms
Really, we'll never know 
if he really blew up a whale
in world war two. He might
have been discharged for
a senseless retreat back
to a home an ocean away
Blew up a sperm whale
with his memory to relocate
the folded flag of his
brother to the attic
next to the Christmas
decorations. 

I do know that my father and my brother
can fit into a pair of his jeans
and that the night he died
he had opened a fresh bottle
of whiskey.   
I know he wore
glasses and that 
he fell asleep
and never woke up.
If only we all went like 
that. Quiet legends for
three grandchildren un-named.

I know that he lived long
and short. I know I would
have loved him in some way.

The irony of empty living rooms
and feeling alone in the world.

I like the living room
of the house I grew up in.
It has a different color on
every wall and I like
to wake up to it empty.
I wipe the counters like a waitress
or a tour guide to a museum
that no one remembers to visit--
drink coffee like a World War One
veteran trying to remember 
what he had fought for and who
he used to drink coffee with
when he came back to a small town
that only had one church.
I think we all crave sadness
not in masochism but just to be human.
We look for spaces that have always
tasted like stale cheerios
and most of us long for some 
sort of a past made up
of cut-corner memories. The 
pieces of a scrap book
we make to tuck under our
pillows and read ourselves "goodnight."
I re-tell the story
of watching a lightning storm
on the back porch of the 
house we rented on Main Street.
There were bees on the porch
and I sat between my father
and my brother who talked mostly
with his eyes.
It was the house next to the park.
The house with a sliver of a
backyard that we all knew 
was enough kingdom for
any seven-year-old with bare feet
and hair wet from a garden hose.
I have told that story a thousand ways
but I leave out the crying.
I say my father was a lightning rod--
my brother has always been a rabbit--
I say my mother was the windowsill
and that she watched us from inside.
I leave out the crying.
I know it had been for something
but over the years I round out
the edges of a tale of two
children who were eternal.
I find myself saying, "I don't
remember why I was crying,"
even when I do-- I don't want
to repeat getting hit with broom handles
and the scratch on my cheek
from door hinges undone--
pull thorns from my heels
and make a crown for my head.
Oh and we were all just human.
I think we're too scared of 
feeling sad. I don't want you to 
tell me it will get better because
some mornings what we need is a 
sadness that melts like caramels
on sundown sidewalks.
I want tell myself I'm alone
in the expansive infinite wingspan 
of other people--
I want to cry when the there 
is a breeze in an empty living 
room that reminds me of
a memory I'm making up as
I got along-- my scrap book is
my own and I will remember what 
I want to-- I can still cut 
my hair with scissors if I 
want to.
Don't tell me it will get better--
tell me that it's sad.
Tell me that you know I like
stale cheerios.
Tell me you remember
the curtains differently
and I'll say
"So did I, so did I."

Blue Aliens, Vampires and Viking Crafts to Venus.

I think what I miss the most is being 
a blue alien.
My uncle never questioned me
when I confessed to him I was a blue alien--
he knew that four-year-olds
aren't old enough to lie.
Or maybe I just miss how I used to eat 
honey mustard sauce on chicken fingers 
and how my uncle recited my order-- knew 
I needed exactly 8 ketchup packets
when we came around to a window
that was also a portal to a space station
somewhere outside Venus.  
--Kethchup packets are like pocket watches
or pillows. We took
vacations to Burger King 
and to the diner that no longer
has an airport.
Today it has the scarce rib cage of a hanger 
and a runway to the edge of nothing--
fall off and find the star where I was from.
I told you we would take
an airplane one day. Those Bi-planes 
used to congregate like honey bees 
out the diner windows.
I told you it would write
my name in smoke like you see in cartoons.
My technology was advanced
(even for a blue alien)-- I was a 
creature of tin foil time machines and coat
hangers that steered Viking ships
at carnivals. Oh! And how could
I forget that you were a vampire?
And even though I was an alien
I drank blood sometimes
from bar counters that
were also intergalactic confessionals.
I would not call us an unlikely
pair. No one really 
believed that we were a vampire
and a blue alien but you
understood enough for the both
of us and everyone else
who ordered club sandwiches 
from swivel chairs at the diner
that is still somewhat
of a space ship.
And yesterday a girl with
a pink romper told me
in the honestly only four-year-olds
have that I look like an alien--
Which makes sense.
Because I am. I guess
that makes you a vampire.

What will we say to each other when
I've told you all my stories?

I have recently developed the
completely rational  
fear of running out of stories
to tell-- yesterday
when I peeled open 
my notebook like a clementine--
picked citrus from 
under my nails--
I found
every page was a joker--
you don't play black jack 
with jokers-- and I'd 
lost my queen of hearts
to the card counter
who also waters the 
roses I walk past skeptically
when it's still morning
to me but everyone else
thinks that the sunset means
dusk. I think it's all just 
always been a sunrise
even in the hollow
bird bones of the new moon--
and where those jokers are
is where I had written
about us yesterday-- I had
called you "you" like
I always do because when I
say "You" I really mean 
"You with the broken flipflop"
or
"You with the hair in a 
tight bun that looks like
a chestnut"
or
"You who I was in love
with in sixth grade"
and 
"You who I will meet someday
in line waiting for
a strawberry sundae
that smells vaguely like
clementine peels."
You see I feel citrus 
in your collar when you
kiss me and I wonder who else
you have loved-- and I'm
not jealous-- I'm just
finding there are maps
I'll never read about
you-- there are foot
steps that not even your
mother remembers in the infinite 
driveways of our
crackled tangerine skin sideroads.
Park here over night and
sleep in the car as if
it's a hotel room
and I'll tell you stories
about the makers of 
billboards  advertising God.
We can use the jokers 
as coasters for our
empty coffee mugs--
fill them with black coffee
and Splenda packets. 
If I run out of things
to say I can always pretend
my deck of cards is a 
prayer book-- just need
to make stories faster than I
can write them down
in the form of orange peels
out my car window--
You don't need to pretend 
like they're all good.
And if you've heard me tell
the story before
pretend like it's new for me.