Mine are grapefruit halves
Bitter
Salted
Easing the transition into awake
Perfect juicy handfuls
But I know girls with cantalopes
Seems to me you'd need a map
To navigate those
And hands like
Melonballers just to make an impression
Raspberry, Blackberry, Cherry *******
A fruit salad of peaches
And mangoes and apples
It's a world made for peelers
And paring knives
I world where a sweet tooth
Can thrive

We plant our women in orchards
Cultivate them in careful
Organized rows
With expert farmers and the latest fertilizers
Leading them on
Into ripeness
Harvested at just the right time
So that no man ever need know hunger

"I LOVE LOVE!" She shouted, speaking to herself in third person.
It was then that she seemed to float away
A balloon on Macy's Day.

It seemed I was the only one orbiting earth,
watching those performances of daily life applauding
for a well-flipped omelet a superbly
fitted glove a full tank of gas at $4.00.
I couldn't believe my luck

Terrestrially, there were husks sipping coffee
and rasping and rustling at each other
desiccated.
Privately, she was buying real estate on the moon
I LOVE LOVE! she shouted
Dancing like an egg on a spray of water
a declassified military satellite who through some dumb luck
had escaped the pull of gravity and won
Marveling at the moon rock
on her finger, even a stubbed toe just seemed
like the ideal opportunity for extorting kisses.
And it glinted in the light.
Everything was fine.

Down on earth it seemed all the wine drinkers
were toasting to us cheering as we terra formed
the moon. *We couldn't believe our luck
as we rolled back our stone.

Killed himself when Thomas Edison beat him to the punch
And went down in history as nothing much
More than an obituary

He was the best hide and seek
Player in the
Second grade
There were whispers
Rumors
He could beat the 5th and 6th
Graders
Nothing was ever lost to him
But time spent
And that was worth it

I hid and
When he found me I told all his classmates that he had stolen my lunch money.

There's something beautiful about freckles and blemishes and imperfections before I'm made up in the morning. There's something right about naked in the mirror; flaws and scars and age that accumulates with the years. I am a story to be read. I've got skin like a song.

Is it supposed to be nice on Tuesday?
Because I have a date
And I'm hoping
It will be
Good hand-holding weather
And I'm hoping
There will be sunflowers
And I'm praying for
Fireworks
Or sparklers
Or at least lighters
Maybe shooting stars
And rocket launchers

I want this to be the last first.
I don't want this to be awkward.

Almost heaven, West Virginia
Printed on mudflaps
That reek of Appalachia
It is almost heaven
Not to have you
Holding me back anymore
It's almost heaven
To forget your face
Your stupid workouts
The 300 ways you found
To never say anything
That pinched drawn unhappy look on your freckled face
I feel grateful
And I'm thankful
To be a human again
I hated the way your
Silences sauntered into a room
Ten minutes before you did
I hated the way stale I love yous
Hung around your head
Buzzing like flies on the dead
I hated the way dreams were something to be laughed at
And subsequently given up on
It's almost heaven to have mine back again
I love the way you dumped me
Through text
Like a little kid
Like Sorry this is what my mom wants
Like Sorry not sorry
I'm not sorry you left me
It is almost heaven where I'm at now
I peed outside twice
In West Virginia
And you weren't there to be embarassed
By an Appalachian woman
Who wants to have almost heaven
Every day for breakfast
And truly-loving-life-in-love-with-a-musician
This is what heaven is
Every day for lunch
And maybe just beer and a song for dinner
I'M SO HAPPY
It's almost heaven not to have you
It's heaven to feel alive again

Dewey Dell Bundren
Had her baby
And ran off to college
Worked single-mother hours
To keep her ****** apartment
And never missed a class
She married the first theology professor she could find
The kind
With the horn rimmed glasses
Drinking imported scotch
Discussing literature around the fire at night
She got a degree
At Northeastern
High honors in history
She never knew all those books were about her
And the people she came from
The places
Had their stories told
In the pages
Shaped everything she had ever known
She was grateful
For her history
And once a year made the trip
Back to Jefferson
Mississippi
Put flowers on her mother's grave
Still tasting
the bananas
Hearing herself saying
"Hadn't you ruther"
Still hearing Jewel
Cursing softly
"******* you, ******* you"
"You sweet sonofabitch"
Still seeing the mules
Swollen
Floating
Bellies up
Past Cash and the coffin
Leg broken
In that biblical spring flood

Tonight we’re aligned with the stars
I’m wearing Orion’s belt
You’re drinking in thirsty gulps from the big dipper
The little one’s in freckles on your chest
And now I can hear the wind chimes
On the porch
I can hear the leaves
Of the Bradford Pear
I can hear the cats and dogs and coyotes and deer and owls
Making nighttime noises
I can hear mom snoring in the house
For one of the last times
I can hear the trampoline springs creaking with age
And feel it bouncing and swaying under us
Like it did in its heyday
I can hear you sniffling, sister,
I can hear you crying
Your warm wet tears
Are drowning my ears
Like all those summers we did swim team
When I take your hand
It’s smaller than I remember
It’s Abby circa ‘99
Though you didn’t let me hold it then
And I never tried
Now our hair is curling in swirling halos
Around the same face
Mom’s face
We never did look like Dad
Now we’re gazing at the same stars
Under the same March sky
Thinking, saying, “God is good”
Saying, believing, “How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
Believing, knowing, that it’s true
Even while our hearts are rocks,
Our hands are clay,
Our minds are swarming
Teeming
Buzzing
Hives
But “God is good”
“How can He not be?
When the sky looks like this”
When our mother is a fish
How can He not be?
We know:
“God is good.”
While we’re reading the Braille of the sky
Two foxes slink by
Now we dismount the trampoline and go inside
Where we hear Mom snoring
For one of the last times

He couldn't stay for tea
He was afraid he might feel something
Upstairs instead of in his
*****
If he had been thirsty
I would have shown him a metaphor
For dehydrated relationships
Gallium spoons dissolving in any hot liquid
Solubility tends to complicate things
We lose pieces of ourselves
At body temperature
Boil down impurities
A reduction of our leftover parts
Our leftover lust

When  my mom was dying
We put a bed in the living room
Fresh from the hospital
In front of the piano
Behind the rocking chair

We still called it the "living room"
I didn't mention the cruel irony in that
And the living people
Who knew my mother
All came and sat around her

And we weren't allowed to touch her
Cause the morphine lost its memory
And every bit of her was falling down
Dozing in a straw house
When the weather man called for hurricanes
She was right there
But miles away from rescue efforts
And hand-holding daughters

Marilyn Monroe went the same way
In bed, I mean
Facedown
Her pill supply run out
And I imagine her room was a beautiful mess
Full of roses and tokens from insincere men

An icon deserves better than that
A pin up with no one
But ex-lovers and sheets to hold her
And a pillow stained with last lipstick kisses
All those little white beads of forgetfulness
Crawling on the floor
And happy birthday Mr. President

Billy woke up bawling the other night
In bed with a girl
Who was not my sister
And he called and told her he loved her still
She hugged my dog and cried into her fur
She finished the roll
Of toilet paper blowing her nose

There were three of us in bed that night
And two somewhere else
Continents, nations, states apart
The air in my room was like asphalt
And allergies weighing us down
Lulu barked at our crestfallen hearts

Under the supermoon
I turned into a twentysomethingwolf
Keen senses acute defenses
And all I could smell on my sheets
Was the kitchen I work in
I wanted to be human
Taste the fear and perfection
Of being a ******
In bed with a boy who is not family
A teenager whispering under sheets again

I stayed at home alone
Soothing, sighing, and howling sweet nothings
To my lonely bed
Telling mom and Marilyn Monroe
The fever dreams in my lone wolf head
Praying "please God, send us someone"
"Please God, let love burn us quick and strong"
"Please God, don't draw the blues out. We all buckle."

She fell asleep thinking not of her
Boyfriend, but of the moon
Like the tides, her
Passions were tied to its
Waxing and waning
At its fullest she could
See around corners
Identify people not just by
Sight, but by scent
She watched, enraptured, as her
Fingernails grew and sharpened before
Her eyes
And for maybe
Not quite the first time
She felt alive

The strange symptoms
Of her youth
The pawprints in the
Yard, the lust for Jack
London, the undercooked meat
Calling the moon by her
Boyfriend's name
When her phone was ringing
With his number lighting up the screen
Calling her boyfriend
The moon
And thinking about sinking her
Teeth into him
The people who loved her
Pushing for a lock up
Questioning her sanity
The people who loved her
Trying to understand

It was all so
Unsettling, it was all so
Mindbending how much louder the
Wild called to her
And how it knew her name
Without any introductions
And naturally her instincts
Took over
And supernaturally her instincts
Wanted flesh

Finally it was just two
Wolf hearts
Beating in the
Dark, all those wild
Thoughts racing across
America and destiny was
Manifesting itself faster
Than they could chase after it

She had turned him and
There was no going back
Just forward into that
Rabid
Unnatural
Unknown
Forward into that
Toothy grin

Those sleepless summer nights
Sweat pouring from every crack
In thinly layered sunburnt skins
It was all *******-on-the-floor
Blood-on-the-sheets
And *******
Living out highschool fantasies
Like the cool kids

Life before 22 was all a dream
Of midsummer swelter and
Salt water
In the mind of the dog
Chained up in the universe's yard
Tethered to the ether world
Racing rabbits through space
While I was turned into an ***
Staring at the mirror
And my expressionless face

This must be how cancer feels
Growing increasingly smaller
In a world where cabinets
And aspirations grow increasingly taller
She met the devil
For coffee on diagnosis day
But the deal they made didn't take
Her hair fell out
And her body atrophied anyway
She found herself
Floating far far away
Her blood coagulating like
A broken thermometer
Of mercury

Salvador Dali painted this fall
The house of salvatore
Minds gone to roost under warm eaves
Staring fireplaces
Hungry couches and singing windows
It's all ******* drooping like clocks
And derailing thoughts
The local biddies
Cluck their tongues
At the absurdity of infinity
And the girl in Ace Hardware
Buying shoepolish to hide her tan lines
Yawns, as her boyfriend feels her up

*Meanwhile I collapse
Like a house of cards with a flick of the wrist
Thinking about life's mathematical beauty

We don't choose love
Love chooses us
And I am unhorsed
At the thought of
It's never the right place
Never the right time
Lance splinters in my eye
I am blinded this time
A well-placed blow and
I'm mired in the mud
Hooves in the rush
Pounding hearts
Scoliosis
Beating the wrong names
And places
Under suits of armor
And all the wrong words
Collecting in the dust
We are lucky
If love chooses us
If the battle is lost
And the armor is tossed aside
I'd give my kingdom
For a horse to ride
Fighting and dying
For blood, love and country

Under a big tent
Topped with stars and
Smelling of elephants
A couple of daredevils
Toss in their trailer
Restless in the Midwest

Their golden suits shimmer
In the Iowa half light
The cornstalks talk in
The breezes passing by
At night the daredevils whisper
About what it would be like to really fly
And not just on the trapeze
They kiss goodnight and dream of impossibilities

Times are changing
Since the war it's been mostly women
In the crowds the circus draws
They scream at the lions
Roar at the strongman
Gasp and applaud the two daredevils
Enthusiastically
Happily
Making love in the sky

Times are changing
Since his number came up
She's been lonely
Oklahoma, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri
Her gold suit is covered in farm dust
Growing nothing much
Her husband is on a bombing raid over Nazis
He's finally flying
Helped by an airplane
B52s and bloodshot eyes
No longer dreaming of impossibilities but
Missing his safety net

Since he left she's been thinking about cannons
Popcorn, scrap metal
and hoping against solo acts
She's been dreaming of
What it's like to be shot at
Really take risks
Really feel out of breath
And her husband's been writing her letters
About white picket fences

"The daredevil life that we wanted is so much worse than we thought it would be. Let that sweet silent net catch you and lie quietly thinking of me."

Times are changing
And so is he
Times are changing
And she feels like world shaking
She can hear the wolves blowing it down

But she keeps up her stunts
And keeps up her spirits
Till one day the bearded lady is screaming
Her name from the floor of the tent
Up on that tightrope she pauses
A second
There's two grim faced servicemen
Her daredevil husband is dead
Flying a mission over Dresden
Just another casualty of a world at war
Another daredevil in a dogfight and
Now one less mouth for the circus to feed

Suddenly she's high up in the stratosphere
Breathing fumes
And from the tightrope she faints
I've given him my heart, given him my onliness
She rests in her gold suit
Cradled by the safety net he warned her to hang on to
And in her dreams she can't help thinking
Maybe she dodged a suburban bullet

Times have changed
And since the war's end
The leftover men
Have gotten married
And she's been doing nothing
But lying awake in her bed
Thinking
Picturing cannons mauling
White picket fences
Her body in a gold suit
Broken on the green grass
She needs distance and airtime
To cull this restlessness
Get out of the Midwest
**** his conspicuous missingness
And come up with a solo act
To keep her fed

In the morning she finds the ringmaster
Hungover in the hay of the elephant stalls
In the morning she's made a decision
To fly like a cannonball
Through a dreamland
Times are changing
And since she woke up
She's dressed in her gold suit
Setting fire to the average
Dreaming of impossibilities

You fall too hard and you fall too fast
Don't you know you had what lasts?
And I say had
Because it's past tense
I'm sorry that "til death"
Did you part after only a quarter of a century
Makes a man think
It's ok to be scared of loneliness
It's ok to be afraid there's no more shared happiness
It's just a neurosis though
You know that right?
It's ok to feel like you're swimming in the ocean of your bed
And the coast guard is
Not on the way
To save you
Being single after taking vows
Is more than unfortunate
Worse than divorcing
She died
And I think you should be selfish
Just for a while, dad
Because you fall too far
And you fall too fast
Don't you know meteors burn themselves up
Doing just that?
Don't you remember
Camping out in the laundry room
Explaining falling objects and gravity
(which I still don't believe by the way)
Pointing at the sky out the window
Teaching your 6 year old
About the iron:nickel ratios?
Saying "Don't wake mom."
And dad, moons will glide in and out of orbit
Around you
And the vacuum of space
Will at times be filled with your loneliness
And longing for the past
And you'll keep falling fast
Burning up in the atmosphere
Leaving little craters here
And there
From the impact you have
On her
And her
And her
And your highschool girlfriend
And your daughters
And that woman in your yoga class
It's ok
You fall too hard
And  you fall too fast
Don't you know
Only superman could survive an impact like that?

I love you like peanut butter
Protein makes me strong
I don’t know how to get along
With anyone else

This is for all the men
Who tell me I am beautiful
I can't hear you
Through all those years
Of being an ugly duckling
This is for my dog
Big blue eyes
My baby snugglebug
Sniffing for donuts
Chewing my hands in the morning
And the nail biters
And the chefs
Who lose fingers to the meatgrinders
And the farmers
Staking lives
On a drop of rain
I am vain
This is for the men
Who have faith
I am not the ****** Mary
Just another pretty face
Another lacy thong to take off
This is for the underwear makers
The firecrackers
This is for the characters
Who explode in the night sky
Like the fourth of July
And ordinary people
Are blinded by the colors
This is for the mothers
And the big brothers
And the Prozac poppers
This is for the bees that have stung me
I've eaten their honey
And my cakes would not taste
So sweet without it
This is for the surgeons
And musicians
And fishermen
For the men who have bought me dinner
And never seen a return
On their investment
This is for the beards
And chest hair
This is for my little sister
Who is finally growing up
The word "love" on her tongue
And this is for America:
Land of the free
Home of the mancave
Beauty is only as deep
As your mineral rights
The copper and coal mines of your eyes
Beauty flies as high as kite
Melts away like cotton candy
After a baseball game
This is for the men who called me beautiful
For all the beauty in the world
All the beautiful
This is for you

Fifteen uniform clouds
Roll across the prairie
In a neat little line on the horizon
Kicking up dust storms as they go
Hurrying along
Silently
The settlers driving their wagons
Keeping their lips tight
And their eyes sharp
Because there are Indians
Lurking behind every rock
Bandits and thieves
Waiting in the hills
Snakes
Scorpions
Buffalo
Guns
Disease
Separation
Heartache
­ Might surprise them at any moment
Might make them victims and this moment their last
The settler’s hearts are racing
At 120 beats per minute
Pounding out a rhythm
Unlike anything they’ve ever known
Their hands are working at nothing
In the thin dry air
Twirling, twisting, pirouetting frantically
Their jaws are clenching tightly
Spasming, biting, drawing blood from their tongues
Their eyes are wide, unblinking, terrified
Seeing it all as it really is,
Really should be
And secretly, perhaps subconsciously,
Unrealizing,
They hope life will always feel this alive
But then,
In a few weeks
When they’ve made it to the city
To the town
To the shelter and comfort of ease
Civilization opens up her greedy maw
Swallows them whole
And licks her ****** fingers clean
So as not to stain her tidy white frock
And the settlers do nothing
Complacently allowing themselves to be digested
But they are thinking
“This is what I wanted?”
The voices in their heads have reached fever pitch, disgusted, screaming,
“This is what I wanted??”
And still they do nothing

Solving every problem
With a belly full of tea
And your feet
Hitting the treadmill
Shoulders taking on
The rowing machine
When dreams of mom dying
Keep you up at night
Who made the molecules
Behind your eyes
That shine
And glitter like Aztec gold
Through the green foliage
The right angles of your face
Looming like the himalayas
Annapurna and Everest
In the minds
Of mountaineers
And ex-boyfriends who can't forget
Your perfect china doll complexion
Rosy cheeks
A fake shade of delicate
You could hold up a bank with those eyelashes
Reaching for the sky
No time to call the police
Just put your hearts in my hands boys
And no one gets hurts

Put your toes on my shoulders
Sister
I'm always here for a boost
Take that leap sister
The world was
Made for you

It's a take-your-top-off
Kind of day
And I'm getting naked
In the backyard
Merle Haggard rambling
Feverishly in my mind
I'm letting the sun
Get a little frisky
Kiss me anywhere it wishes
And the lilacs whisper
Fragrance
There's a new cadence
of Grasshopper sounds
I'm gonna change things
I'm gonna be that girl
That everybody falls in love with
Everybody knows her name
Dark-skinned
All muscle
All smiles
Living life outside
Kissing all the boys
And making them cry
Living life famously
Shamelessly
Physically
With a closet full of jorts and cut-off tees
I'm gonna be that girl
Because
It's a take-your-top-off
Kind of day
And I'm already naked
I'm a wild mustang
I've got nothing
To lose but my shirt
and my inhibitions

Celebrating father's day early
With Billy in his black lab tee
And Abby passing cards
Under the table to me
We close down the restaurant
The sky falls in sheets as we're leaving
And wet hair chases me
Into the wine shop down the street
Where I decide to be polite
Not just dry
And I buy a corkscrew
Now I can drink the wine
My ex boyfriend made me
Now I can get tipsy and
Finish the book my current man gave me
It took 8 years
2 deaths
And too many well-timed broken hearts
To bring us together
Collaterally
It's almost too much
And on my drive home
From dinner
A dive that's now our
Family favorite
With a menu I met
Chasing a boy before I came to my senses
And my stars aligned like white picket fences
To make May and my new man
Taste like heaven
A car swerves in front of me
The license plate reads
SRNDPD
The ***** cut me off again

When you made preserves our house
Didn’t seem so haunted
Our kitchen seemed bright and inviting
Instead of white and sterile
The window above the sink seemed so far away
And the curtain above that
Even farther
They were
Peach
Turquoise
Brown
And they made me dream of Indians in their teepees
Lonely desert nights
Though I had never been there
Arizona
New Mexico
California
Colorado
I had never been to those places
Those were your places
That was where you fell in love
Dad told me
And the pictures in the laundry room told me
I always went in there to look
For a part of you I had never met
But sometimes when you were making preserves
You were that girl again
With a crazy mass of curls that you’ve never tied back
Cuz you hate your ears
After two kids, you were still skinny
And taller than I’ll ever be
And in the heat of the kitchen
Tiny drops of sweat beaded on your forehead
You’d roll up your sleeves
Tie your shirt at the waist
And laugh and play in the steam where you boiled the mason jars
Pretending you were at Yellowstone again
Watching Old Faithful erupt from the earth
Right on cue
Holding Dad’s hand
Back before he grew his beard
I tried to count your freckles while you were reminiscing
You’ve got a lot
A lot a lot
I thought you were the prettiest woman I had ever seen
As you turned those scalding mason jars upside down
And told me to wait till I heard them pop
You made it sound like it would be magical
Elusive
Like if I didn’t pay attention
I would miss it
And I did.
Everytime.
Cuz I was in the laundry room looking at pictures
Of someone I didn’t know
When a symphony of popping would ensue
From the kitchen
And I’d come running
But I missed the mason jars rattling
And shaking as they played their tune
Raspberry preserves in c minor
I missed the butcher’s block by an inch as I slid on the linoleum
And nearly knocked over the coyote cookie jar
I missed my chalkboard easel
By the Grace of God
My earliest masterpieces remained intact
But I did not miss your face
Or the grin that lingered
When the popping ceased

I. That summer the radio
Played nothing but Cat Stevens
While I hummed harmonies
In my first car
It was a wild world indeed
when kudzu overtook
The cornfields
All the ears were foreigners
The leaves basked in light
That dead-ended on route 15

II. That fall we spotted UFO's
Shining over the municipal
Park
We chased them across the
Ballfields
To the high school cross country course
A dirt track running
Through the woods
And when there was nothing
Alien lurking there
Our hopes fell
Faster than the stars

III. The following winter
Three inches of ice cut the powerlines
Impounded our school supplies
With the outtages
And the temperatures plummeting
Seventy percent of our hearts froze
All the parts that were water
Expanding our chests
Like balloons
Expanding our vision too
We thought this was the beginning
Of the end of St. Clair county
We though we'd all get out someday

IV. By spring the graveyard smelled
Like lilacs
And dead town elders
Came out to dance in the scent
We played capture the flag there
On school nights
And the cops could never catch us
Behind the headstones
Of our family plots
We wrote our own epitaphs
"I was water and I could have been
A fine wine"
*I fell asleep in sweet green clover to the sound of smalltown sirens...

You see sod busted up by a long, sepia-toned farmer. He is pushing a plow that belongs in a museum of the prairie. You feel as if this is happening to you. To your insides, I mean. You feel a squirming pancreas, and a dancing spleen. You feel a change coming and you are happy about feeling, about movement, agriculture. You catch a glimpse of yourself in a window and realize that you have grown to be 10 feet tall. You are looking down on the corn; at eye-level with the barn. You imagine  your father, the farmer, would be very proud of the tree you have become, and the windbreak you afford his fields.

So I miss you in the spaces
Where your hands go
The between times
In our sleeping
Where maybe we aren't even touching
But I can feel you
Hear your breathing
In the spaces in between
Sweetening my blood
Flowing thick
Like mesquite honey
Hummingbirds in my stomach hovering
And drinking
their fill

And I'm enough for something
Sustenance for something
Other than me
Enough for someone
Who sees my betweens
And puts his hands
Where they need to be
Warms them
On my belly full of flowering mesquite
Nectar for the humminbirds
And bees

There are men in the yards
Boys, really
That teased me endlessly
In school
And now they are grown up
Angular in their carhartts
Corn fed
Sun red
From bailing too much hay
A little extra money on a weekend
They are clad in camo hats
Soft denim
Work clothes

When I knew them they were farm boys
Who were never looking for more
Than a corn fed
Country princess
A pair of cowgirl boots
To take to bed
And now they’re driving fire trucks
Tractors
International harvesters

Their princesses
Have fattened up
Wide hips are good for children
Easy enough to let yourself go then
Cute clothes are for the rich city *******
Who still fit into a 2

And their kids
A new generation of
Freeburgians
Are drawing with chalk in the streets
And the older ones
Are riding bikes
Long outgrown
Scraping their knees
Getting stung by bees
Shoplifting from the motomart

They will grow up normal
Grow into their work clothes
Keep that small town pride alive
Keep the corn fields, keep the rye
Keep the beans and wheat and barley
Growing high

And I keep running right on by
I never knew these people
Though I wear boots too
And my hands are calloused
From working with the soil
In the distance I can see the steeple
And my car
Parked for a quick getaway
Another day
Avoiding this place

Me and John lying in bed
And on the train tracks is a
Groan and shriek
A metaphor for rambling

O, that whistle sounds like Holly
O, that whistle sounds like John
O, that whistle sounds like going
O, that whistle sounds like gone

Me and John lying in bed
And on the tracks is a dying away
And on the ceiling are familiar shapes
The moon makes

O, that whistle like my mother's voice
O, that whistle like a charge
O, that whistle sounds like running
O, that whistle sounds like God

Me and John lying in bed
And in our minds are separate thoughts
And in our heads
And in our hearts
A metaphor for getting lost

"Oh, that whistle,"
Whispered softly
"Oh, that whistle,"
He agrees
With a quiet understanding
With a nod
O, that whistle calling
As our lives are getting gone

"I would like to see the world someday,"
He said

After one bite
Of grimy
Teeth sinking into
Mottle red (and green and brown)
And yellow skin and crisp
White flesh

An explosion of giraffes
Full of shrapnel
Chaos
All the colors
Gazelles jumping
Into and out of and through and around
Flaming hoops and elephants
And zebras and hurricanes with names
Names she never knew existed
And existence like a bolt
Of lightning struck the very heart of her
Churning her insides chaos
Theory and all the colors
Hyenas laughter
And painted ponies leaping out at her
Grinning as her insides
Cooked like thunder and she
Found herself
Screaming like a panther
Hiding under dappled leaves and strung out rain-flecked hair
Crying like a baby over
An apple core

Everyone knows what my name is
In this little **** town
And I'd really like to give them
More to talk about
The drop outs
The tattoos
The break-ups
And the people-making-excuses-for-me-just-because-my-mom-died
Will never be enough
Gossip
So here goes
Every barn from Freeburg to Smithton
Up in smoke
No more kindling left to burn
In the middle of the night
And here goes
Every corn field
All the sorghum
All the wheat mowed
Cut down before its prime
Grain-based livelihoods
Grain-based lives
Gone.
And here's to all the old-timers
With their shot guns out
Sitting on the porch
Here's to all the life savings
All the small town banks
I'm about to knock down
Here's to cops who are
Terrible shots
And here's to getting out
Freeburg Famous
My name on everybody's lips
Giving the lifers
Something real to talk about

That frat boy’s
Bill Nye
Bowtie
Has got me thinking
Do kids these days
Even know who Bill Nye is?
Or **** Van ****?
Or Andy Griffith?
Some of my heroes from way back when
Is Eli Wallach
Ever going to ride his horse
Steal corn from Mexican villages again?
Do kids these days even know food comes from the earth
Not from a can?
I can’t imagine growing up
Inside
Except to watch Bill Nye
The science guy
And play Oregon trail
Home alone
On Friday nights

Cancer
That grew so
Big it swallowed the sun
Mercury venus earth mars jupiter saturn
Like juicy blinking pacman dots
And pluto a non-planetary cherry
On top

"Kiss me," you said into the
Microphone *"I don't want to die
a ******."

I find cannibalism intriguing
2. Bee stings
3. I haven't heard that speech that every boy needs
           to hear to be a man

4. The love that bottlenecks in your throat when someone dies
5. I have to be heavily medicated
                to enjoy my life
       and it feels like cheating

6. A tube of toothpaste, all squeezed out
7. Raising a second generation in my hometown
                It's this place
         That keeps me down

8. Jack the Ripper shows
               when I'm home alone
9. I've read every Sherlock Holmes
           and I am jones-
       ing for another
                   story to make me think

10. Same God, different names
11. Is language to blame
                  for misunderstandings
           or is it just human failings
Faith is a frail
       old woman
              feeding her 1,000 cats
     1,000 separate bowls of milk

12. The class of 2009
13. When I drive home at night
            I pretend to be someone else
       singing along with the radio

14. Ghosts of friends that walk right through you
15. Maybe the past never really happened?
     Maybe I was someone else back then?
16. Men
            Who leave me and fly off to
             Never never land
      Boys, not men
            Who don't want to grow up yet
            and probably never will

17. Ladybugs

On horseback, they chase you,
But you are light and you are gaining distance. On horseback, they chase you, and you laugh along with the hoof beats.
Your smile catches sun, and you have never been scared of bullets.

I wanted to remember your smell
Even after we stopped having
Anything to talk about

I wanted to remember how your
Skin shivered, warm and desperate
Even deep into my dreams

There was a day when you rode on my
Handlebars and we moved like
Water through canyons

There was a day when we traced
Each other's shadows as big as
Gallows in the dust

I keep having this dream of the spring of 1887: I go out to bring the cattle in, but they are all dead. Frozen to death. And floating down thawing rivers. I keep having this dream of Bolivia: we are cornered after robbing a payroll and I am glad you are not with us.*

The last thing I remember is your smile catching sun

Souvenir/To Remember

Je me souviens innocence, but not what it feels like anymore.
Just that first french kiss, enough to do my childhood in.

Tu te souviens buying your first bra.
Unsure of whether to wear it or not.
Confused about the clasp and all its pregnant meaning.

Il se souvient collecting kisses blown from his mother.
Storing them in mason jars covered in stickers.

Elle se souvient picking watermelon from her daddy's garden.
Rolling them inside when they weighed more than her.

Nous nous souvenons keeping secrets from our loved ones.
Waiting for God to punish us.
Living with the guilt that followed.

Vous vous souvenez a time when the appendix was not just vestigial.
Remember a time when you did more than med school.

Ils se souviennent the night they met.
On a segregated 8th grade dance floor.
Their cheeks red from all that not asking.