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

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...

Fly away little bird
Sleep around
This country is too beautiful
To settle down

There's new grass
Growing where the Bear
Laid in state interspersed
With fine chaining dandylions
And quick cutting ramps
Lou's wool socks hang
To dry on the porch, the
Color of her

If I asked nicely, the sun
Would not quit today
Pulling up green shoots from
Her death bed
Yesterday was fodder
Yesterday was mama crying
At the close of another time
The wind pulling my hair and
Telling me secrets

Nature is gentle
A pillow of birth
Where the Bear
Laid in state

See?

*all things are new

He stood there
Howling
Yowling
       Cracking his whip
Beating and flailing
His horse in the dust
Collecting flies
Bloating in the sun
And he was getting nowhere fast

i. You are lying in a bed with no sheets and you are convinced your friends' parents are alcoholics. You are convinced that your entire life has been woven of slimy, sloppy lies and half truths. And you are convinced that you are a werewolf.

ii. At the chili cook-off two years ago you were wearing red flannel and a bandit hat and you were watching your entire home town get wasted, looking at you like a museum. You are convinced that you have been lied to.

iii. It was a full moon and you wanted to tear your clothes off. Except for the bellbottoms which you wanted to carefully hang up with a finicky crease for next time.

iv. You notice that down the street the Hy-** has closed and you are unsure how to proceed because you know that normal people do not get upset about such trivial things as midnight blue pies and insomniac coffee. You want to sob, but people will talk.

v. You are convinced you are a werewolf and you have been lied to. Everyone is smoking around you and you want only to make it stop. This is where your mother grew up. You say nothing.

vi. Drinks seem to appear in your hands, unsolicited. You have forgotten your ID, but everyone knows you from the papers anyway, everyone knows your family and they sort of apologize for spilling beer on your boots. Sort of.

vii. You crave pies at midnight and this is a "beautiful city" with a square that does not quit and causes quite a few accidents. This is a "beautiful city" filled with people who will never get over the high school quarterback, people who will never admit they have a problem with Stag, though the cans lie all around you.

viii. You are a werewolf and you are convinced you have been lied to about alcoholism. You are upset about the Hy-**, more so than you should be. If you took off your flannel now, you would never be able to get your heart back in your chest and Belleville would laugh itself to sleep.

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

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

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

Belly churning

        Gurgling

               Roaring

      And they’re dying to get out

But the only door that’s open

            Is my mouth

And they come flying

      Flapping

                           Sloshing

               Soaking

                      Spewing

         Fighting their way out

In a steaming sunny pile

A heap of butterflies and bile


Since I met you all I can think about

             Is kissing you clean

Square on the mouth

With my molten butterfly breath

             All hot and bothered

My golden belly

Glowing empty

Growing full

Of hot air

Churned by frail wings

                                                     And I can’t help wishing

                           That they’d cause some tidal waves

               Natural disasters

        And ignite some panic

               In your stomach

                                                      Half a world away


     If my world is ending I hope yours is too

            In a torrent of butterflies

                   Vomited out

                        Perpetual stomach flu

Men can't build anything
That compares to the vastness
Of stars in the sky
Or the loneliness of the desert
At night
Depths of canyons
Tops of trees
Sunshine
The solitude of wilderness
Is better than a hymn
Being wild hasn't left me yet
I worship the moon
With the wolves
I run
Barefoot
Through the fields
Of my church

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.

"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.

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.

Often passion is drawn out of the earth
Through the feet and it radiates upwards
Through the body, tracing the limbs
Finally it bottles at the neck,
Never making it to the head
Where it can be reasoned with

Taking out our corkscrews
We pop the bottles and
Drink in the ecstasy
Like wine

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

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

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

Tuning his piano
Lid open
Musical mechanical
Guts exposed
Ear to strings
Plucking
Humming
When his cat
Knocked the lid closed
Human mechanical
Guts exposed

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 ******."

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

I grew up like you

              with you

         taller than you

             a country girl

                     through and through like you

long summer days

        a golden haze

                     of corn

                     and wheat

                      and barley

frozen winter nights

                   instilling us with fright

                            when we'd hear the coyotes howl

                             and spend the next day

                            wondering what they had done

playing outside

           in the mud

          in the sun

           in the fields

            in the smokehouse

           on the roads

there were no cars

              no people

               no noises

       to distract us from our fun

now we're older

     adults I suppose

     I'm still a country girl

But you're an everywhere girl

        I'm too afraid

        to pick up and leave

        my roots tie me down

         and I can't escape

       this life I have not even tried to make

But you

            you're an everywhere girl

                   at home

                        cities

                         towns

                          near and far

                          across the world

                                 alone in concrete glass and steel

                 you are happy

                  you are alive

                   you are filled with wonder

                   so bursting with emotion

                                          that you forget to call me

your sister

                     alike

                         but unlike you

          who doesn't need to hear your voice every day

          your friend in silence

                     your friend in conversation

           who understands your need to adventure

                        who wishes for her own stories

but is too scared to move

                 go too far

                          from what she knows

I wish that I was an everywhere girl too

                         loving it all

                      free rambling

                   independent

                          always smiling

                       You're a record store

                                   full of music

           You're a Wonka bar

                         hiding a golden ticket

                    You're a bonfire

                                       keeping everyone warm

                                 shooting sparks into the night

      Looking for nothing

            but finding EVERYTHING

You're an everywhere girl

                  and I'm learning a lot from you

You're an everywhere girl

            and I want to be too

Pretend that you are a snake

Pretend that the ground you slither on is live coals,
the lilacs are in bloom,
and there is an old woman after you with a shovel

Pretend the coals burn you, belly down,
and the old woman's rusted shovel finds the back of your neck
like a blade

Pretend the lilacs are the last thing you see
as your head is severed
Pretend the coals cremate you more or less instantly

You can be reborn a bird
if you burn all the heaviness
out of you and you can fly away

You can be reborn with legs and feet to skip across the coals
and you can dance quickly so you never even feel their heat

And when the lilacs bloom
in May on Helen and Constantine's feast day
you can wear them as a crown

As if you've never been burned and never felt the sting of change

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.

She fell
And she was on the floor
Calling
Forty minutes till I heard
She fell
And she was on the floor
Lying half an hour
Till I pulled her up
And tucked her into bed again
She fell
And she was on the floor
My arms weren’t strong enough
My legs went weak
From so much strain
My shirt was dripping
Making it rain
But
She fell
And she was on the floor
I’d have broken my back for her

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

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

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

We talked about ghosts at work
There are slaves in the attic
Where the floorboards creak
We have seen glasses and plates
break, untouched, Our house was built on Southern ground
in 1861

We talked about premonitions
There were brothers dead in train crashes
Where the steam boiled and metal buckled
And sisters finding body parts in their sleep

When I dream
I see my mother
Are you real? I ask
I can't be asleep again
Just more so now...

She takes my hand with cold soft
fingers she smells like her
hand cream her eyes make little 'm'
bird wing creases her face is smiling
the way it always has she does not
bother with mascara she sits bright
and hunched in tallness

Are you real? I ask
I'm real. She says

I wonder if tonight I'll dream of slaves
The floorboards creaking
Or of brothers
And their hands thrown in train crashes
Landing under metal somewhere
In the woods nearby
Of wholeness,
Whatever being haunted means

I am scared that nothing I do makes a difference I am scared I feel all of history pounding in my head I am happy to see her even being less real, sleeping
**even if she is *more so now

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

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

: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.