We all cut ourselves in orange slivers and lemon squares. 

Everyone once dropped musty cherry blossoms in a creek-- rubbed
them between fingers like a perfume swab-- kissed the petal because
it tastes vaguely like skin-- wondering what skin tastes like
really without tongues-- maybe if we write poems about roses and daffodils our skin will
be sweeter-- unwrapped in holly-red throat-coat candies from pursed 
bulbs of in our handbags-- floating skin like a life boat-- like an SOS
SAVE OUR SKIN-- 

Everyone once tore apart a Styrofoam cup-- didn't know where
to hide the pieces-- thought about landfills-- thought about sea gull feet gruesome
gut patterns-- wanted to eat the flecks of foam out of shame-- laid them out
like continents playing Pangaea-- planned a vacation across the strait of 
Gibraltar-- played Indian on the islands-- made fire from the foam--

Everyone was once peeled the bark from trees and to find worms-- cowered before
kingdoms beneath our own skin-- wanted to put it back-- centipede cuticles dripped
in moss and morning-- pasted back their own skin with tongues and tasteless 
cough drops wrapped in Styrofoam-- coughed on the fragments-- crossed the stream
on a boat made from bark and cherry pits.   

Devour ME.

Cinnamon raisin swirl-- i was was once a pale girl with butter-roll cheek bones
served Sunday-hot in my scalloped-potato skin.

pull apart monkey bread-- faus-knee-knots baked in lead. i am peanut pancake.
pillow palms-- fryed egg flake. Shake ME like apple-jacks.

knead ME- i want to rise-- kneel before stale-cold fries-- stinging microwave eyes
puncture my thighs-- set ME on high-- i'm serving tea.

The steps

down to the

basement chirp like dead

robins, poised marionettes

dangling between cherry blossoms like

a sickly greeting card sent to the wrong address.

waiting out February on dew petal paws.

a circle on moist soil basement floor

calico cats conspiring from

attic cahool like

up to the

The stairs.

We are

people of

fallen-tree bridges

 over goose-bump streams in March

cross the ocean on

a maple-

leaf raft.

Pretend

the stream is

Pacific coastline

pluck jellyfish like mushrooms

coral branches like

deer antlers

we float.

Take a

walk with me

between sea urchin

needles– we can collect fresh

pine cones– hold acorns

like clam tongues

hold pearls.

Take the

bridge with me

between tendril arms

 of a sea-

lily.

An Open Letter for Those Who Love a Poet

A poet is the epitome of the unrequited lover– agape– open-eyed manic at the craned neck of night– entangled in the unfinished verse that never relented– never turned their head in caesura, trailed off without punctuation.

A poet is in love with a concept they do not want to have a definition for, they piece it together with their walks alone on brisk mornings that make their faces prickly Velcro– peeled off like unhealed scabs. They write it in syrup on burnt pancakes.

A poet wears binoculars around their neck in case they catch a glimpse of a stanza pacing the telephone wire– the chirp of chiasmus in the throat of a chick-a-dee– indented metaphor moaning in a morning  dove.

A poet is making notes underneath their tongue– muttering sonnet titles in a game of whisper down the alley with themselves– thinking of your lips like litotes–

A poet will never feel solace in an end-stopped line. The line kisses them goodnight but never guarantees their affection will still be somewhere in the sunrise.

A poet is nervous and sifts similes through their fingers like panning for gold in a droughting river– uses fish-nets for flip-flops so as to not miss a fleck of passing language between their pinky toes. Follow their eyes on the sidewalk–

Touch the base of their neck when their unwritten ellipses at the end of the day keep them from sleep. Tell them it’s perfect even if it’s not.

Tell them you love it.

You love it.

Who taught you to play hop scotch?

i play hop scotch on walkways

behind the mausoleum that I still think

looks like a museum.

i am a child of catacomb bones

that ring like wind chimes

in November. i like thumping

in the throat of this farm house

at midnight– my breath quick

like i am alive somewhere inside

my own coffin.

When i was ten i discovered

rigor mortis in the body of a dead bird

— i couldn’t put it down.

i am a girl who

makes a coffin on my desk

out of posted notes–

an undertaker of unfulfilled plans

to walk across a bridge so we can count

fish waiting patiently

and ringing bells above their heads.

I’m not thinking about suicide.

I’m thinking about dying

not like the fixed letters on a gravestone– in an unexplained

wincing of a door frame kind of way

like wearing your dead grandmother’s gloves

seeing your dead aunt in pictures

tasting an element of her smile

in a stale package of M and M cookies.

In the pause after you hear a dead person’s name–

that passing though

And they’re not here anymore

But they were.

I’m not thinking about suicide

I’m thinking about haunting  the creases of this house

and kissing your cheek in curls of steam

escaped from tea cups.

Of remembering sleep

Splice me like the segments of a worm–

in between hearts

wriggle in two pieces

to be tapped on the shoulder

by my other half

who is also someone else’s twin.

I don’t know where I go

tips of thistle on a window frame

I am the shards- the angles we take

between dropped dish plate

bones on the red tile floor

whose speckles hide like landmines.

They say we don’t remember sleep

but I do. I stand at the side

of my bed as if waiting for

myself to wake up or die– or both.

I call myself a dormant sleeper

my soul quakes in lava-thunder bellows.

I walk away from the girl who rolls over

thirteen times each night

who counts heart beats like ripples

who closes her eyes like

licked envelopes

and stamps seated in the corner.

I would return only to find we are one.

Somewhere between body

and ghost– somewhere between

lips of chalk and fingers

that drop bread crumbs

out the window like dying

stars.

Of Books half-read and days Half-lived

I don’t know how many books I’ve only read the first page of, I’m kind of ashamed of it actually– like introducing yourself on a busy Baltimore street-corner in august when everyone is discovering somewheres. Introducing yourself only to turn back into the crowd and avert your eyes– like meeting a former elementary school classmate in McDonalds– bumping glances– not even passing hesitant hellos.

My unfinished books are as haunting as days that you wait for night to come– days where I live on the perhaps of countries I don’t speak the language of or the prospect of living out of purple backpacks with torn straps on the beach we sued to visit when I was 7 and 8 and 12 and 14.

I know I’d be lonely even though I say I want to be a hermit so I imagine you with me, I know that’s selfish and I don’t know if we’d be happy but I can promise I’d wait for night to come with you. I’d whisper the cliche “Times moves so fast… It’s moving so fast…” and you’d read my unfinished books and tell me I didn’t miss anything even if they were your favorites.

Regret turns us into street corners, rounds our edges like the arched eye-brows of each question mark. I don’t want to regret dusk. I have never regretted running away with you to July beaches and the ruffled necks of pine trees on Sunday nights when I feel like leaving all my books unfinished– you pick them up, turn the page and out loud until it is dark out the pursed lips of the window.

I repeat the cliche “Time moves so slow… It’s moving so slow.”

“And I love you.”

I like humidity– film like espresso hairlines or Elmer’s glue skins on 3rd grade thumbs– wear it like crown of larkspur or hyacinths– kiss it when I roll over in the night– whenever I wake up before morning I’m at the pancake beach house– the one with the unpredictable ants in the kitchen that laid eggs in the sugar bowl– the ones we mistook for chocolate sprinkles. Where we peeled off each morning like a fresh clementine veins– boiled them to dismantle the hell of another person’s house that we occupied like the mucus arms of a sea anemone. At dusk when the storm gnawed at the pen-cap lighthouse I wanted the structure to fall– a spoon into the bubbling soup of chicken broth-air. I woke up with the odd feeling that I was swimming on earth– skin unfurling like a porch-flag or broken eggs in a pot of salt water in a pot without a handle– I like humidity– I like my skin as your skin. I like to wake up from insomnia to look out the window and watch the storm’s jaws gnashing across the channel– the pine trees cells as my cells– your dead skin peeling harsh like a tangerine into mine– share my white veins wake with me in the storm– pull your fingers through the crema of my hair and go back to sleep simmering with me– orange peels lost like ants in the soup pot with out a handle.