there's a stack of
cheap pianos at
lowtide in County Louth,
Ireland

that reminds me of all
the ways music
should be heard

i don't want each month to
become a benchmark
i can already feel
myself like a steel stiletto
scrawling each day off

anxiously waiting for time
to heal when it's only been
the tick of a metronome to
Scriabin's best

holding the slick undone
slivers of myself together
as wet kindling, an offering
that I hardly know how to give.

would he love me
with a bounty on
my head, with two
six shooters and the
audacity to leave

would he love me
with scars scribbled
down my back, the
tacit agenda of every
one before, every thing
ever said,

would he love me
would he love me
with a bounty

can medleys
be self-aware
could i recognize
myself in all the
people i've met?

I ain't ever belonged to no one--
not even those that came before,

those frightened immigrants and spanish tangerines tumbling
below deck, toppling into the scattered bed rolls that still smell
like cumin and tarragon, sea and spiced salt seeping through the strong lungs of every youthful San Fermin boy in Pamplona
the raised voices in Seville singing San Jose and my mother's
maiden name--

i fumble in the dark for things to keep me rooted
the strong arms of working men and their weak hearts
barely beating
secondhand boys breathin' dollars an' truck exhaust
lookin' for their match, someone that'll fit
or do 'em just right
sharp things that'll sit pretty and
look good in lowlight,

and me with my tulip bulb heart
plantin' myself in wax, in muck,
in Utqiaġvik, Alaska
during the Polar Nights,
in my palms, beneath pillows, sproutin out the lungs of
those unassumin' who think i'm healin' them
of all the silly, misplaced  ideas

but they got me creepin' out the sides of their cheeks
hookin' these delicate stems
leaving thin perforations all along their sheets
gratin and sharpenin they's teeth--

used to think i was the sun
real pretty and smooth like them stones
you find down near the river
or leaves just 'bout to fall, clingin
to low hangin' branches
just askin to be plucked or swept away
but i'm not any of those things

just a girl
lord, the awful truth
just a girl.

there this old
zipliner who wheels
through town, you see'im
ery'where-- at Brother's
and on the corner of Kate's now
Neon's and up just about ev'ry
street in the middle of the night
long hair brushin' the back of his chair--
he's prolly in his late twenties maybe
but they say he came down from the line
and cracked his back on some big stones
near the gorge
an' now he's paralyzed
they say he don't like no one
pitying him, but neither would I, really.
sometimes when I drive past and it's around nine or so
I feel his anger press all 'gainst my doors
over his arms pumpin' up and down.

the construction
outside my bedroom window
finally stopped--a groaning
heaviness that rattled my
insides, made me feel like
there was air missin'--
a sound of normal i'd
lost

i turned over in bed
sure as the moon
that it was sunday
up at the dried sycamore seeds
still clinging to the tree
climbing the north facing
wall, twizzling down
against the double paned window

i imagine once all of this is over
that's what it will be like--
a sound of normal i'd
forgotten.