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. 

 

Could we collect enough sea shells?

I haven't kept a sea shell for at least two years.

Today I picked up a shell and it had a perfect spiral--
spiral like the curled necks of osprey and
croissants in bakery windows--
 
the shell was falling into herself 
like the reluctant bed sheets of the tide
The shell would not sleep until they could meet
their dinner-plate lover on the place mat
of the full moon. The shell was a coin battered 
with in the street markets between the rocks--
hollowed out by the cupped palms of a heron
that was also a village potter--
sold her to buy croissants--

And the baker was also a sand dune
whose daughter wore the shell as an anklet--
she had wanted to drift into the sea--
she said she didn't want to be round and
sun blister-- "bury me deep like promises,"
she said--

only to lose the shell to the fingers 
of a human-- standing as with bird legs
in the sand-- wind walks across their 
body like a sand dune-- pulling off
freckles and tossing them into surf
like broken pieces of shell and unhatched
horse shoe crab eggs--

They want to follow the dune into
the sea-- wear the spiral like a portal
into a world where only the heron
remembers to buy croissants on Mondays.

Could we ever collect enough sea shells?
Could we really ever?

And I threw it back for the plankton
to mistake for a church.

 

Eat with me my darling tonight & in the morning as well if you can remember.

Eat with me my darling tonight & in the morning as well not because I miss you but because I was to be missed back. I wanted to be something to yearn for like purple twin Popsicles– I miss you– I miss you like strawberry sorbet

and painted finger nails.

I miss you like I how we’ve all been floating– you and I in the helmet of the cereal bowl moon– I’ve been poured across the Milky Way like clouds– like buttermilk in squash soup– I’ve been in search of a place for us to stop and eat together.

I want it to have a folding menu– one with a picture of a red bi-plane on the cover.

I’ve read the reviews for the place at the end of the avenue street with the cherry blossoms we pretend to remember. It’s folded near where we both wish we had grown up–

See it doesn’t really matter where we stop but it has to be perfect. It has to have cereal bowls. I know I’ll order a garden salad and you’ll order something that you can’t pronounce that has feta cheese sprinkled somewhere but it has to taste like nutmeg when you walk in.

Eat with me my darling tonight & in the morning as well if you can remember. We can share the cereal bowl of the moon and it’ll taste like a mix of buttermilk and stars.

 

I’ll dip

myself in

the yolk of each dawn

soaked into the crunch-crust

veins of greasy toast

skylines– wrapped

diner

napkin

silverware–

I’ll be the soup spoon

if you’ll be the fork and the

knife– we’ll eat evening

with out fingers

and thumbs.

I won't have to tell you we were only horse shoe crabs.

I won't have to tell you where to meet me on the shore
because WE already know-- WE have always known.
WE have always had the moon carved into the back of our
skull by the fingers of a God who etched in blood blue--
he wrote our names there Xiphosura 
and all of our mothers were
swallowed by a wave-- children of the round
abdomen of the moon and clasped hands of a wave--
we never had a father-- but God did make our heads 
thrown on a pottery wheel like bowls to fill
with constellations muddied by the last eyelashes of the sun.
I won't have to tell you that WE are older than sea shells
older than bare feet-- that we have seen the tide come
in like a bed sheet and come in like forty lashes
until the coast was bloodied and bent-kneed.
I won't have to tell you that WE were never more than
pottery but we climbed the shoreline like oil painters.
Don't move on without me-- I will be waiting on the shoreline--
I won't have to tell you where to meet me
WE just know. Do not walk with me back through the thumb
prints of our mothers-- WE will meet again
when she sets out stars like bread crumbs--
follow them with me and love me there
and then fall back into the sea--
serve soup with me from your cranium-- cradle
soft knees and channels of salt water blood--
bleed the sky and don't look back. 

"Humans-- they're like a disease."

--said my boyfriend at the time. He wiped
a dark smudge of oil or some sort of grease 
on his pant leg as we rounded a corner out
of port authority bus terminal. He never
liked people. He looked at them with
the scowling eyes of a gosh hawk-- 
felt that everyone was parasitic--
parasites of food, of love, and of rivers.
I think I've always wanted to prove him wrong--
no just him-- but all the people who
think humans are something so distant
from creatures just
because we learned
to make cars and lace up sneakers
-- that's where we're mistaken.
I will always only find myself as a blood 
platelet-- push me fast in a taxi cab
headed to catch the Bieber at gate
19 or let me drift slow like a paper
boat in kayak on the Mullica river
in between furrow brow of the Pine Barrens.
I was never anything greater than
a red-bellied turtle-- who runs at the sight
of strangers-- how do you jump into the water?
How do you hide yourself like a tree frog?
So that we can only find you by
the muffled patterns of a mating call
long repeated-- compare my throat to a banjo
string and I can speak in the tone of
how a yellow warbler tells my kayak to
just leave it some peace today. It hasn't slept
well and it's been thinking about oceans.
I have to agree though-- 
Humans they're like a disease-- they are a disease 
Once you fall in love you never 
see humans as anything but rivers.

 

I was never so in love as I was when I was a Red Knot and I stopped in Stone Harbor

only to find that all the store fronts were closed besides the fudge kitchen– I bought

a box for you even though I don’t think any of us really want maple walnut fudge

I thought it wasn’t really an option though– no an obligation but a nod to the importance of all the people we would buy fudge for if we had enough little white coffin boxes to fill with the confection– the other store fronts were closed anyway.

I thought about us. I thought about how I never wanted anything more than see the

town when it was thriving– Maybe a July night near my birthday when the little Red Knot were almost old enough to fly– I wanted to purchase a snow globe–

I’d take it back to you– I’d shake it and say that it never snowed n my wings when I was there

but it sure felt like November without you–And then there were the other Red Knots and they ate horseshoe crabs with me– not out of hunger but out of compulsion– horse crabs

taste like metal and blood–

I felt bad for the things– piles of them

on frayed reeds of the beach– scattered like unworn bike helmets– if birds ate fudge I might have nibble at it that day.

But I will be back to you again and I will tell you about the horseshoe crabs– though I might lie a bit. Maybe I’ll tell you the store fronts were open and that I ate oysters at a raw bar jostled between two friends I made on the journey who now purchased houses on the harbor. Maybe I will be a plover or a tern. I could be a terrapin for you. Maybe the horseshoe crabs will taste like taffy or maple walnut fudge.

1.

Invite

yourself to

recede back into

diatom patterns– dragon-

scale finger nails of

our mosa-

-ic God

2.

Build a

chain with me–

we couldn’t all be

ice so he spun some of us

in glass algae– church

 windows that

bleed sun.

3.

Find me on the other side

of bilateral

symmetry

and wait.

Kwek Stop Sunsets.

There's nothing more human
than a gas station stop on the high way.
The rusted hinges of 7/11 sinews
and caffeinated eyelids of the "fast stops"
of the turnpikes and freeways that
might as well by their own
countries--own nations--
hum hymns in their own vernalcular of
slushies and syrup fingers-- they have always
reminded me of love--I have always felt
unintentionally excited about them--
It's they nestle themselves--
poised in coves of
pine trees-- Krimpet wrapper
voodoo dolls standing guard--
they can be glistening atolls--strung out from a sum
of bites taken from moon pies.
We trade broken sun glass
frames for bathroom lines
and there was always something
miraculous about picking any snack
and drink when we were on
our way to Chingoteague-- 
And then we left-- send me a post card
from a Sunoco--
with a box of twizzlers and a 
blue raspberry slushie-- because 
we all know that's the best type
and tell me the vacation hadn't started yet
but the way their is always more exciting
than the sea gulls or the 
sand feet-- it's the sum of all the
potential of what a life could
be-- wrapped in tin foiled--
spun in a slushie.
Let's take a vacation to a Stop and Go
and I'll tell you I love you like
sleeves of a juicy fruit
and not even Krimpet wrappers
can stop us.