I pray to the sun god a lot. For warm skin and fresh basil.
You pray to the stars. You pray for the sky like a yawning mouth. You pray for my father. For my sister and the parts of her she keeps hidden. You pray for people who are terrible at hiding, too, who leave themselves open, ripe as peaches. You pray for fall this year, for the harvest, that it will be consummate and yield bushels and bushels.
You pray that you won't forget anything important: keys; your mother's birthday; how to just keep breathing even though you're convinced your heart is shrinking. And you pray that you will live your life loosely, forever outside. You pray for that tightness in your chest to go away and stop bothering you at night, and for a scythe like they used to use for farming.
You pray that God is real. The Sunday school God who loves you and killed off his protagonist so that you might live like a soldier, unsure of what you're fighting for, but fighting nonetheless.
You pray that God is real but you have serious doubts about any creator who allows colorblindness and then makes the world and the sky and girl you love look like this.

Fog covers my eyes
Sores cover my tongue
My lips are chapped as
Sandpaper against the nights
Last night I died,  I don't
Remember
Losing my chapstick
I don't
Remember getting home

Birds outside my windows
Bellies already
Gorged on worms and
Sunlight
And petals spread wide and webs
Spun silk in the tired light
Yawny as the day goes by

I'm in love with a boy

Who makes me feel like fried chicken on a sunday

Like the Meat

That I don't eat

I'm an animal

I'm colossal

I'm the ballrooms in his eyes

I'm in love with a boy who makes me feel

Like pancakes on a weekday

We don't do that

In my family

We do grapefruit

cereal

oatmeal

We do not do orange juice

ever

I'm in love with a boy

Like honey in my tea

To take away the bitter

Take away the hunger

Amplify the wonder

And the way we grew together

All the tangles

All the thunder

All the things I never let you--

All the things I should have said to you

I'm in love with a boy

Who feels like sin in the morning

And sweet all the time

Like violence at night

And the freckles on his shoulders call me with words he'd never be able to find

Words that make me blind

The way he makes me feel is like the sun in my eyes

I'm in love with a boy like peaches in the summertime

And apples in the fall

He makes me feel like all the songs

I've never played

All the cobblers I should have baked

I'm my apron

I am taken

I'm the muffins that I baked him

I'm in love with a boy who makes me feel like candles on a birthday cake

Right after they hit the lights

And the sparkle

When the flames jump to the birthday girl's hair

And the scare

And the faces of the parents

All the horrified stares

I'm the 30 unburnt pieces, 45 guests

It's never enough

It's always too much

But I'm in love with this boy

He makes me feel

Like robbing a bank and making a clean get away

And worn out boots with no soles

From running hard and running fast

He makes me feel like guns

And a red hot sun

And the worst blisters of my life

Like fleeing in the night

and I'm your girl, right?

I'm in love with that boy like the first day he saw me

I'm in love with our mythology

and I want him to know

I'm still that girl

It's still that first day

Jaw harps and pine boxes
The day I chipped my tooth
Was the day she died
And Abby ran three miles
In record time
I hugged Dave
Like I had known him my entire life
I saw you in a suit
Ran my tongue over my broken tooth
A hillbilly at a funeral
In the back of the church
God came and found you again
Abby was still sweating
And I was trying to cry
Watching you age before your time
Feeling my tooth
Searching my crowded purse for the harp
Kneeling at her pine box
Pretty girls
Go to heaven
Pretty girls break the hearts
They leave behind
I felt my tooth one more time
Caught your eyes with mine
Abby took me to the car
To cry
About jaw harps and pine boxes
And growing up too soon

Is driving home from his part-time job
Answering IT phones for some college
And he flips a lady off when she pulls out in front of him
And he thinks "I shouldn't have to deal with human ****."
And he thinks "When I get home,
I'm gonna smoke a bowl."

There's another message from his ex-girlfriend
On the answering machine
"James, why haven't you been fighting crime?
Why haven't you been saving citizens?
Why haven't I seen you flying through the skies
in your red tights and mask? James, remember
When you saved my life? Remember
When you saved the whole city? Why
Did you stop caring? You've been given all these gifts
And you sit around drinking, thinking
'I'll let someone else get this one,' but who else
Can leap tall buildings and lift burning schoolbuses
Off of screaming children? And who else out there
Has x-ray eyes, but a gentle touch? You're a hero
And you need to act like one. You're an *******,
But a super one."

BEEP

"Thank God," he thinks
Deletes it
Pulls a six pack out of the fridge
His broad shoulders sink into the couch
On the news
Someone's been shot
Someone's been robbed
He turns it off
"Not my problem." He says
Finality in his voice
Finishing a bottle

"Passion is for the weak
Caring gives me the creeps"
In the distance his sonic hearing picks out a scream
His radioactive muscles tense
Ready to spring into action
The feeling of responsibility dissipates
Like it always does

"Not my problem." he says
Another beer is gone
Another message blinking on the machine
Her again.
Dumb broad.

If I'm invincible,
What is there to worry about?
If I'm invincible,
What is there to cling to?
If I'm invincible,
Why should I give a **** about mere mortals?

He calls his nemesis
"Let's go out later. Let's get wasted
And break things with our super strength."
He hits a cat on the way
Backs over to make sure it's dead
The night is a success already

I can't tell you how many times I have done this before
Sliced tomatoes with a dull santoku
My ankle bells jingle
My hips swivel
And the tip of my pinkie
Is gone
"Will this erase my fingerprint?"
I ask
"No. Only acid can do that."
Like from tomato juice
Like from chlorine in a pool
I am swimming in my own blood
Practicing flip turns
Watching it clot
And drying off
I turn a blue towel purple
It was just a tomato
It's not as bad as it looks
And it tastes even better
When I make panzanella

:AQUARIUS:SEPTEMBER:

Last month you saw Marilyn Monroe riding sidesaddle on a bicycle. Her cream colored skirt billowing as she passed you by. You noticed she had aged. She was gray and lined but still beautiful.

Last week you saw Tupac walking to work. He clocked in a few minutes early and kept his head down. During the lunch break he talked to you about settling down and starting a family. He used the word "suburb" and you almost gagged.

Yesterday you adopted a dog who had been hit by a car. You gave her a name and a yard and a bed and grain free kibble. She's fine now. She doesn't even seem to notice her stitches. She sits on the porch and barks at squirrels while you fold clean clothes.

Today you realize you have learned to raise the dead. But only so they don't remember themselves. Only so they have no recollection of who they were before. Only so their lives are blank boards.

You are afraid of your newfound powers, but with Mars in your house you will learn some control.
"Don't bring back your mother," you repeat like a mantra.
You won't feel restraint until the 21st.

Oldest of two
Responsible for none
She was always a daddy's girl
And a morning person
She quit a lot of jobs
Before she turned 20
And when she wasn't planning to marry someone
Exactly like her father
They were ripping each other's heads off
Over nothing

She had strong shoulders
Not as broad as her sister's
She started swimming later
She was always more of a runner
Than anything else
Her parents should have known
Not to let so many hopes
Ride on her

Because life savings didn't translate
Into education
Her nose was always sniffing in the wrong books
Nothing on the booklists
Flouting authority was her favorite thing
So all of daddy's money
Couldn't buy her a degree
And all the lectures
She didn't attend
Couldn't make her see a dream that wasn't hers

Truth be told
She wasn't aiming all that high in the first place
A sturdy library
A cottage in the country
A dog
A tattoo sympathetic
Honest-eyed husband
And then she picked all the wrong ones

With every broken heart
And every finished book
She called home crying
"Dad, I can't do this. I am so lost. I see the destination but not the path."
She'd been drinking again
Frequenting tattoo parlors again
It would be a lie to say he wasn't disappointed
When she could have been
A professor, a musician, an author
Or president by then

"It'll be ok," he said
And when she asked why it couldn't be better than just OK
He asked "have you been taking your meds?"
She hung up

And thought back to a time when the whole world tasted like
Beer and pretzels
Before she even knew what beer was
It was a picture on the wall
A curly-headed
Naked girl
Tiptoe on a stepping stool
Making pancakes with her daddy
So when the sun came up
Breakfast would be ready

My father believes my mother is a hawk
Circling above him building bonfires
I think my mother's soul was born again into my dog
I can feel her there when we hold paws
My sister believes in a heaven
Where good people get their everything
And float
Over streets paved in Tiffany diamonds

I am outside.
My dog barks at a bird in the sky
I twist the ring off my finger
The stone flashes in the sunlight

Uncertainty lingers in hearts and minds
I was Butch Cassidy in a past life.

Before the universe
Exploded onto this canvas
There was a crawlspace
A cave
In a church basement

A pinprick of strange matter
Floating unfettered
In space
And after years of careful planning
Years of careful manipulation

A balloon pop
A BIG BANG
Of people places things
Life and solar systems to fill the church basement
Fill the void

God had blueprints and maps
The universe conspires
And the stars align
God mad picket fence plans
Painted this infinite canvas
Just so I could meet you
And we could become us

Lulu pulls me down the
Sidewalks, keeping me
Dangling a leash length away
She's in training for the
Iditarod and she's
Breathing hard with her valentine tongue
Lolling about
Across the street she
Spots a squirrel and
Climbing the tree after it
She bends the trunk
Arched like a trebuchet
"Should I?" she
Asks me with her chloroform
Eyes "sure, " I say
"Why not give the neighborhood
A new sport,"
Lulu's snowshoes flex and
Let go and
Before we know it
The whole district is
Placing bets on how far the
Coconuts will coast
Before falling back to earth
In flames like
Vacation-scented rockets

In the end they're just men; they're not the products of a Disney dreamer's imagination.

And I'm a three-beer girl with tattoos, trust issues, and a heart of gold.

Doubt grows in my mind
Like earwigs
Nesting
Reproducing
A new generation
Chewing on little
Pink nerve endings
Slowly poisoning
Taffy pulling
All the sticky
Memories out
When you say you have your doubts
I hear mosquitos
I read broken glass
In my crystal ball
But all my tarot cards are wands
Hmmm...
In my head I'm already gone
Like that Eagles song
But to Santa Fe
Because slow is not a game
That I play well
The dragonflies in my stomach
Are ringing like lunch bells
And the doubt is
Curled up on the couch
Purring softly
Shedding everywhere
And I don't own a vacuum
It's everywhere
But I want to be with you
When you kiss me
It melts my insides
Little drops of mercury
In pills on the floor
Banned books you loaned
Burning up my naive little mind
Henry Miller took my innocence
A long time ago
I would never ask for it back
From an ex-pat
And the note taped inside the cover
Said You are divine
And I want you to be happy
With a pocket full of dust or a million dollars
But the doubt
Is like a dam
Bursting behind my eyes
Flooding every one-horse town in its path
Thank the Bureau of Reclamation for that
I may doubt till I die
But here's the thing
When you kiss me
It's like every little piece of me is tingling
Is ringing
Like those grade school
Lunch bells
And I'd make a crossroads deal
I'd sell my soul
And fill the emptiness with your blues
I'd do anything to get rid of the doubts
Curled up softly
Purring
Sleeping soundly on the foot of our bed
Shedding everywhere
The can of doubt food on the shelf
May contain arsenic
The closet may be cleaned out
Ready to hold our new vacuum

After this climactic
Three-way
Mexican stand-off
Once the orchestra
Dies off
And the treasure's dug up
We should probably just
Lay down
Enjoy the sun
Let it scorch the earth
And bake our bare
Finally poncho-free skin
Because all I need to be
Happy
Is the western sky
Burning me
Biting me
A polka dot bikini
Clint Eastwood
And the most delicate six-shooters you've ever seen
By my side

Your voice is like sweet ether
On a ***** kitchen rag
It calms me down
It knocks me out
Knocks me up
I am pregnant with the sound
That 6 strings produce
And the beauty of your words
The fire walkers in you
Your fingers always knew
Know?
Have known?
How to pick the smiles
From my insides
Pluck the kisses from my lips
Draw the nectar
Sweetness?
Sugar?
Out
50 Ways to turn me upside down
50 ways to be knock-the-wind-out-of-me
Put-me-back-on-my-feet
Incredible
In the beginning it was dark
And you said
"Let there be colors
Let me have a guitar"
In the beginning
God colored me
Full of red blood cells
And vitriol
Carefully
Steady hands
Inside the lines
But with shaky hands
There's so many more shades
Blooming
Cascading
Lightning strikes
And this is the last time
I swear it's the last time
I will weather these storms
My daddy said there'd be boys like you
Boys who could make it rain
You know when I'm with you
I lose my mind a little
Who is this kid?
And how is he under my skin?
He's a tattoo I don't remember getting
Maybe I was drunk
Maybe I'm in love
Whatever that is.
Dog hair on duvet covers
Avocado-flavored lollipops
Antique shops
Every song about a different girl
Like 32
24
36
Bursting at the seams till I
Can't take no more
Jackie
Madeline
Taylor
Adrienne
And probably
Certainly
Girls I've never met before
What you do to me doesn't make sense
My intestines turned up at the corners
Pelvic thrusting on the couch
A little bit louder now
A little bit louder now
The mortars are screaming
Down
I'm quickly losing the war with myself
Jericho's walls
Are crumbling
And I'm told we have nothing to fear
But fear itself
Nothing to fear but ourselves
And a boy with glasses
Writing checks that I'm afraid will bounce
Singing softly to me
On the couch

Men with rambling fever
Are born not bred
Their diagnoses are terminal
No cure but to go
And they sell their souls to the devil
For a train to hitch a ride on
And they'll die along the highway
While their women stay home
Remaking beds
That have never been slept in

I slept in this morning
Even though I didn't need to
I stretched my limbs
Out into the ocean
Trying to stay afloat alone in my bed
And through my spyglass
I still couldn't find the edge of it
No body of land to stand solidly on
I concluded that beds must be round
Orbiting microcosms floating through apartments
I got up and didn't tuck the sheets in
I got up and didn't make it

I didn't make it through college
Because as soon as I got settled
Into my air mattress
I un-made it
Everything called my name
I tried to ignore the voices
I tried to avoid them
But the mattress deflated quickly
The sails inflated cleaner than a cloudy day
The maps on my wall needed navigating
I had too much exploring to do

I've read about explorers
Men who made their fortunes
Hunting gold and looting temples
Never returning home
Because the beds they left, they had already met
Men who mapped the oceans
And gave their names to continents
Practically for free

I will freely admit that I'm like them
Unable to stop myself
From risking it all
For a chance at nothing at all
Unable to stay in one place
For long enough
To make my bed and lie in it
I will freely admit that rambling fever
is not ladylike
I will freely admit I'm an
Unsettled woman
I will freely admit
I shed lives and beds with purpose
I shed lives and beds like skin

I can feel spring
coming and my new
notebook has
flowers on it
and today my line
breaks are not like
I remember
that almost fall end of
summer night sitting by the
fountain on the steps
feeling like a college
kid again
thinking this is how it
ends this is
how it begins
and this is
the chin and the
shin bones scraping
together and these
are the eyes and those
the ears and
sprained ankles that I'll
have for
the rest of my
life and I'm fine
remembering old lips
that night and
that's all it is: memories
and I'm fine
I'm all right
things are just
different and I tried
French toast the other day and
it's all right, he's all
right, I'll be
fine
Spring is coming and there's
flowers on my notebook and
then blooming outside
soon I can smell the
honeysuckle and the
spring turning to
summer nights
and I'm all right, in the mornings
He's all right
I'll probably be
fine

Aren't you a medicine man?
Aren't your lungs full of blue smoke and jars of dust that your mother collected in Idaho?
Are you confident in the permeability of memory?
Confident in your snake oil cures?

I think I know you
I think I've been waiting for you patiently sipping my beer and humming "golden slippers"
I think the best thing about home is that there are almost no poisonous plants here and the bees rarely sting me

You sang the second verse of "Home on the Range,"
the verse that nobody knows
And I couldn't breathe thinking about what my life would have been if it hadn't been this
narrow

I went ahead and bought the miracle elixir

25 and broad shouldered
the sun hits his eyes
23 and half naked, my chest,
the top of our heads

The ocean throws boats off
the edge of the world
the horizon stretches
longways, a hammock

In the water eyes open,
his grin, luminescent,
In the water eyes closed,
the taste of salt, the quiet
way the waves go on and on

I'm a matchstick
With a sulfur head
Dying out quick as I'm lit
But God
How bright I burn
For those few seconds in
A darkened mine
How I shine
Reflections in ***** eyes
And lantern light
How I singe the fingers
Of black lung victims
Lying underground like
Spent matchsticks

I saw you on TV
specifically
your ***
and I just wanted to say
NICE HUSTLE

Flash of modesty
As he gets dressed in front of me
Fast hands and mismatched
Buttons
Hiding white skin and brevity

He began by taking samples
Little things at first
A photograph of summer freckles
A strand of hair
Fingernail clippings
And my favorite polish
Turquoise and caicos
Footprints
On the bathroom floor
Nothing I would notice
Nothing I would miss
And then he went bigger
My lips concealed
In his underwear drawer
My fingers and toes
Still painted
Stuck in the yogurt
The peanut butter
Full of ears, a nose
He grew bold
With surgical precision
Moved my ribs to the fridge
Chilling
Staving off listeria
My hips he displayed prominently
Framed by the headboard of his bed
My head serving as centerpiece
For his infrequent dinner guests
Shapely legs holding up the table
And believe me
THEY ARE THE SHAPLIEST
Arms supporting arms
New tattoos on his favorite chair
My alarm clock heart
Beating wake up
Wake up
Get out of bed
From his desk
And meaning
Nothing more than that
"I wanted you for my collection,"
He said
"You're the most extraordinary
Specimen I've ever met."

Imagine having daughters
Trying to let them know
You trust them
Enough to let them make their own ruinous decisions
While keeping them close enough
So that the world doesn't
Touch them
Inappropriately
Imagine having daughters
Like small incisions in the heart

In the fall there were two of them. Wild animals, I mean. New driver's licenses of shiny, longways plastic and long limbs that hadn't filled out yet. She was filling out her Freeburg High School T-shirt pretty well he thought. He was taking it off her innocent body in the parking lot. After the lights at the football field shut off and she kept drawing monstrous hearts on the fogged up windows in the back seat of a car it was almost as if she could let it all go. Hardly thinking about him at all as his hand slid under her waistband and she woke up as he was fumbling with a ****** wrapper. How awkward, she thought, to be a teenage boy with a ***** how tragic, not knowing how to handle a latex balloon when you have it. Like the Hindenburg, she thought we're both going to die some day so it might as well be an explosion and I might as well put on a show for it. She could feel his heart beat in his ***** the way that nobody talks about it and she laughed a little at their nakedness and it was tinny in the climate of their hot breath. I love you, she said.

As if it would change anything anyway.

Ex-virgins wake up in the morning
And they cry
Feeling no different
At having lost
Their intangibility

When he says he wants a family
and I say I want everything is it
too much to pluck the moon from
the sky and carry it in my back pocket?
Rather than his hand there I like
the feeling of not being pregnant
I like hot air balloon rides and
sinking into the earth after rain
when he talks about the future
it's a pie chart and a clearly labeled
and concisely drawn graph and
when I talk about my dreams
in the morning they are vapors
and LSD my words mean absolutely
nothing I weigh less than a slice of
bread mostly meaning happens in
between things or when I hear Paul
Simon whispering lightning in my ear.

*Our children would be green-eyed monsters

I prayed last night
For the first time
In a long time
And I didn't know what name
To call God by
Something that rolled off the tongue
And tripped the switch inside
Beer
Felt right
Fear of the unkown
Maybe God's name is Celexa
Buspirone
Prozac
Any number of things that come in pill form
Night time thunderstorms
Waking up with the sun
Driving to church
Or Krishna
Vishnu
Shiva
Allah
Yahweh
My last gold dollar's
Got something sacred with it's spending
Or maybe Miranda Lambert
Or mom
Or the back of a car
Just before curfew
Saturday night
For the first time
A 40 mile hike
Your trusty red bike
Maybe the feel of strings
Under your fingers
Or a frozen snickers
Maybe the way your wife
Of 30 years
Stays appealing
Or maybe God's just a feeling
A million words
Humanity needs
For the state of being
Alive
Amen.