If you wait for me-- Don't wait for me to be whole-- 
I'll be here with my Amethyst and Monkey Bread

If you want to wait for me
by the bus station in Norristown--
stand in the white little tunnel that
goes underneath rail road tracks.
I've never seen a train
but I know there must be one
because the tops of the tracks
are polished silver from
destinations and sliding stops.

If you want to wait for me
look for a me in my
Bulky black winter jacket even though
it's May. I'll be carrying a blue
bag of stockings and square dresses
and a tan satchel of varieties of
oatmeal because I microwave
my sense of home at the bottle
of a white bowl.

If you want to wait for me
I will be tired. I'll talk about 
how my mom used to make Monkey Bread
when I had sleepovers and how
I liked to peel off the pieces--
even if just to pass them to someone 
else. I'll talk about my rock collection
and the little caskets holding
the corpses of sediments and metamorphosis.

If you want to wait for me
I'll smile and I'll love you.
I'll tell you how if you start
a bread crumb trail at my wrist
we can end up somewhere that feels
like August and not like March
and get lost in a snow squall
in April without it getting
too soggy. 
I might cry about how lonely the bus
looks as it saunters away-- a diaphragm 
heavy with breaths held in anticipation,
wonder, and the type of fear
that no one talks about. The kind of fear
that flutters-- delicate and sharp
like slivers of Amethyst.

If you wait for me I can't promise
I'll be whole. I can promise I will
be carrying a bag of oatmeal and that
I will find something beautiful about
the way you don't rush to greet me
like the movies because you know I'd know
that it's cliche.
But that's what I love about you--
You've never waited for me to be whole--

You take the misshapen offering
of a Monkey-Bread girl and look
at the cinnamon sugar like Amethyst. 

A Elegy for Babe Ruth, Sunflower Seeds, and My Thighs

When I was in fourth grade I wanted to be Babe Ruth.
I wasn't like girls who play
soft ball. They learned to peeled of neon head-bands--
painted nails-- shared shredded bubble gum
in the dug out-- wore Adidas sports bags-- 
Not me. And I never felt like a girl who played
softball. I pretended I played baseball.
Baseball like crisp hot dogs that wear mustard-ketchup braids.
I played baseball like peanut shells under sandals.
-- I carried my cleats in my hands and 
swung them around like jump rope or Strawberry
licorice on the windy jeep ride home 
on a night in June when we lost in the ninth
inning. I was the last to strike out. 
There was something that made
the ending of a night game seem nostalgic
and eternal. Something in the big blaring lights
that blurred out the stars--
We had m & m rice crispies after the game.
I proudly ate four and piled up the wrappers.
I leaned up against 
rusty chain fence away from the rest of the team
who was talking about how
fat our fifth grade teacher Mrs. Baron was.
I brushed the dust off my knees-- wore
the streak of dirt from sliding
into second like a battle scar. I ran my fingers
over the way my stomach billowed gently 
over the elastic of my baseball pants.
I thought about how Babe Ruth probably
never noticed being fat. I wondered if 
looked at himself in the mirror and knew
he would be an icon for chubby girls
who love food and batting clean-up. 
I asked my dad if Babe Ruth chewed bubble gum
and he said he probably chewed tobacco... but
that he might have liked sun flower seeds.
He bought me a bag and I practiced spitting 
them off our porch. I wondered what it would
be like if Babe Ruth was a girl. I wondered
if she would worry about how her jeans
always wore away between her thighs.
At bat I never sat on the bench.
I put my fingers through the fence--
watched every pitch tumble into a 
catcher's mitt in a timid flourish of dust--
waiting for my turn.
I lived between the chalk lines of the batter's box.
I have never felt a sense of vitality
like the moments before the pitch.
The practice swing-- the images of Babe Ruth
pointing toward left field and nodding.
I never thought about my thighs in the batters
box. I never thought about cheeks or how
other girls seemed to be born
knowing how to be beautiful in a way I never
wanted to be. I ate like a King in the batter's box--
I put relish on hot dogs and dug
plastic spoons into banana splits.
I was cracker jack- July- Jupiter beetles
and juice boxes in between those
lines. 

I haven't picked up 
a baseball bat for years but
I will tell you I still play baseball.
I still want to be Babe Ruth but
I lost his thighs and his stacks
of rice crispy wrappers and I
never even liked the taste of sunflower seeds.

On a night in July I still 
ride home in the jeep and my dad still 
pretends I play baseball and not softball.
We play catch just not with gloves.
I buy him strawberry licorice
and there's not lights to out sing
the stars. 

This time I watched.

I am the type to pride myself
with a body painted in rain--
A water-colored paper towel--
leave out the soap and
clean my skin with the basking
of the worms-- the thin sausage fingers
on tympani asphalt.
Drum on my head like a lake.

Last night I just watched-- 
I'm not the kind of person to 
look at things from a windowsill--
I like to hold the perspiration of
a storm in my fingers
I like to learn to breath water
I like to make the streets
into Amazons-- take a trip
in my soaked canvas shoes to 
the banks of the Mississippi
the taste like turtle soup--
fill up my canteen there
with broth for the road
and walk to a street corner
so I can feel like I exist
on an island somewhere
in the Caribbean where
there's only Iguanas and
great papayas the size of 
Boston terriers.

This time I watched.
I did not leave my wooden
desk chair.
This time I watched another girl.

She had brown hair and
she tied it up in a braid 
like a whip to shape
her veins into lightning.

I wanted to tell her
she moved like a body painted in rain--
a water color paper towel.
Instead I watched her cross 
a street in the rain like a movie
like a goodbye or
a goodnight-- and she took
the shore of another island
in a raft drawn by hoodie strings.

This time I watched.
This time I watched.

Of strangers falling asleep next to each other on buses

I've never met you before but 
I can tell that if you had five dollars
you wouldn't be able to decide between
African violets and the mini-cacti 
wearing the blue flowers
like old ladies in ornate hats--
You eat an apple at 11:47 a.m.every day
right before the bus gets there--
Pull back hair that begs for night time
and grey head bands
We've all had wrists for blue plastic bags
but you wear yours like bangles--
Haven't we all fallen in love
with someone at a bus stop?
Not for honeymoon but for pilgrimage
and the prospect of someone else driving
you off into their own forever.
Slept together like third grade sleepover
when you could touch everyone like
a brownie tray or a quilted blanket--
Sometimes on a bus I close my
eyes and pretend that I had missed my stop--
I pretend to sleep like it's Christmas eve
and my mouth tastes like sugar cookies--
I pretend the bus was inevitably headed
for the city-- like there is nothing
I can do but wait for my arrival
at at station poised in time somewhere 
between 1921 and 1996-- before I 
was imagined and dug out
of one of God's blue play dough jars--
Doors open to the station where
someone hands me a oboe and I can
play it even though I haven't played
one since fifth grade-- it sounds
like honey packets and melted ice cream--
drips on my shoes and everyone there knows
I'm a poet-- they all missed their stops
too and we sleep together like
brownie trays and quilted blankets
swing like blue plastic bags on
wrists that rustle like African violets. 

Instructions on getting to Someday. 

I'm starting to build us a day
between Sunday and Monday
out of wooden blocks
and how in the spring
the grass feels cold like
mouth wash.
I know it's rude but I won't
invite anyone else--
And you can listen to that
poem I wrote about us--
The one with the metaphors
And too many repeating
lines of "I love you like"s 
approximating a feeling that 
could only ever fit between Monday
and Sunday.
No not that one--
...
Yes! That one!
The one where I say I
think about you like flyleaf
pages where there is enough
space to write a sonnet
or draw a picture of a
soup bowl I saw
flipped upside down in the sky.
The one with hummus platters
and our fingers practicing
cartography on each other.

So I'll meet you there between
Sunday and Monday.
I'll sit in the grass 
and I'll bring a beach towl
because it's still a little
cold in April-- Just follow
the map my index finger
left on your palm. 

I have apple skin.

Hips-- course from crates
toss me like a worn baseball--
you won't taste the bruises
in the pie crust--
simmered down into a sauce.
I've got cinnamon under my cuticles.
Never mistake me for a Mutzu--
I was only ever a Macintosh--
microwaved in closeness of
October afternoons-- warm
like marshmallow innards.
He thought I was a red delicious
and I used to think of myself
as golden--
Stuck a sticker on my forehead 
for the shelf-- never pick
me from a tree-- for get I had
a steam and a mother like
every other fruit.
We all could have been Winesap
of Gala or Ambrosia if
we tricked ourselves for long enough--
bodies filleted at the market.
I could have been Fuji
honey crisp-- sun crisp--
tart granny smith waiting for 
a cup of sugar, butter, and simmer--
I could have been. 
But I am a Macintosh-- wrap
myself in corn husks
and dry sun.

If only for a moment I want
you to remember that me and you
are nothing more than bodies--

the caverns of whale carcasses 
traversed by divers like rivers
to the life after this one--
I was a mermaid before
they cut off my tail
to make into sushi-- spun me
between sticky rice and nori--
sliced in hex-sign wheels
like a spinal column.

I like to think someday
they'll walk through my
body like a subway station
and mistake my ribs for
a cathedral whose
stained glass melted like
gum-drops and sinew.
Just so that they know
that someone wasn't supposed
to live here-- I have
been a plastic bag who sleeps
underneath the park bench.

So for today walk this
body with me-- I'll show you
where my legs grew back--
kiss me on the verandas 
of my vertebrae and we
can pretend there's still
stained glass-- catch a subway
to the life after this one
with me-- on a train with
hex-sign wheels and end up
pursed between the lips
of a whale. 

What color is the scent of shoe laces?

Yellow. 
Newspapers in the attic of
a cinnamon-tangerine-peppermint
house. The attic.
The musty museum flea market
glimmering faintly like fried eggs--
Blue like a bent-knee father 
on the sidewalk who 
skips with the rabbit through
the hole-- but you're too
busy tasting alien flowers--
"You should know how to tie them
by now" was my maroon second grade
teacher who was always a type
of red. 
There's a lot of people
who smell like red or
scarlet or crimson--
never auburn because auburn
smells too much like
dried leaves to let in smoke--
Green. Spearmint candy crystals
that pour out June from
their jeweled lips.
Like dead purple worms
around my ankles in violet vines--
Would you still tie my shoes for me?
Even though I'm auburn now
and red too.

I'm afraid of the cold, the silence, and the wind chimes.

When I was in sixth grade I was afraid of dying.
I used to go to bathroom when I heard
the medi-vac helicopter pass over the school
watch it out the window 
swing blades like frying pans
like wind chimes
like maple leaves and whirly-gigs.
Some how it always seemed like
it was headed for my house--
firetrucks always turned left down
Noble street-- and I wasn't so much
afraid of being alone
of losing my parents
so much as the prospect of dying.
I was scared of hearing my own
heart beat because I knew it meant
the perhaps of a silence--
The scotch tape mending my
grandmother's metronome--
always a skip-- click-- wind chime-- 
I know it's morbid for thirteen year old
to worry so much about the cold--
the stillness-- the silence.
I'd never been to a funeral because my 
family is one of urns
and attic ashes.
I was afraid of dead bodies not
of silence-- I was afraid cold--
not being alone.
I'm still terrified of stethoscopes.
Of metal.
I my parent dying and me being
too scared to sit with them--
I'm scared of hospitals--
I think what I'm really scared of
it the cold of it all--
I'm scared to die inhuman--
I'm scared of machines-- of silence.
I hope I die like wind chime.
I hope you're there with me.
I'm almost 20 and I'm scared of the cold. 

I am a girl of lightning rods, purple carrot-root 
veins and counting the seconds after the flash
1.
My father taught me about love
in a lighting storm.
We sat on the metal porch
and my mom said to come inside
because she knows that my father
and I are lighting rods--
There was a yellow-jacket nest that
scattered like refugees 
There was fire in the sting
of the rain drops-- 
There was a bolt that snapped like
celery and barbecue chips
and my hair dangled drenched
over my face like dead leaves.
2.
My father taught me about love
in a lightning storm.
We drove his blue jeep into the
downpour as soon as the lights 
in the house started to flicker
and ground quivered-- shivered--
with every sliver of slick
silver that descended from 
a sky we only said was heaven
on Sundays. I asked my dad if
God would strike us down and
he said that he'd never been
that lucky-- and he laughed
so that I knew he was half-kidding.
Drove into the fields--
stood like lighting rods
and watched God sting the earth
with purple-carrot veins--
and the corn thrashed like neck hairs.
3.
My father taught me about love 
in a lighting storm.
"1, 2, -- it's so close" he said.
"Should we go inside?"
"No." and we sat on orange paint
buckets in the garage
between flat-tire bicycles 
he taught me how to ride and
collapsed hula-hoops that 
were used for dragon circuses
and sorcery. We say nothing else.
Watch the rain make a dead sea
of our drive way-- we can
swim in paddle boats
made of black Chuck Taylors--
And then comes the flash again--
and they're taking our picture 
like two poets meeting 
in a cafe to discuss each other's egos.
And he's a better writer but
I'm the one who writes.

1.
My father taught me about love in a lighting storm.
2.
My father taught me nothing about what comes after the flash.
3.
Neither of us bother much with thunder. We like celery 
and barbecue chips and we snap like carrot-roots. 
4.
And then the thunder.