I’m knitting something new,
it feels good.
The new ball of yarn unraveling like time
but I’ve still got plenty left.
There’s potential in this dark teal wool
and satisfaction when I decide
the way I want to weave it.
I make mistakes, I change them
to become part of the pattern.
The stitches are like a song in my head,
I sing them, I tap them out with my foot
and whistle along to the tune I’ve made up.
I thought it might be a hat when I saw the skein
but now I know it will be an
infinity scarf.
My six inches of beaded rib is a metaphor for my worries.
Working my hands intricately help me forget them.
I have time.

It’s started up again
just in time for winter
lighting fires on Wednesday nights
watching the sparks fly up to the sky
wondering what would happen if I stepped in
and became a spark too.
The train rolls by six times a day.
Six times a day I see myself under the wheels.
I stand a little too close. My hair is ruffled by the speed.
The rails still sing as the last car rolls away
steel polished clean by speed and weight
and heat.
I look at it leaving. Hop the ties and keep moving.
Carrying a pair of glasses in my hand I feel like some kind of omen,
as if anyone on this street would notice.
see more clearly
Threadbare white t-shirt and my three nazar bracelets
protect me from the evil eye to
see more clearly
Give me luck this time, in the tradition of my ancestors
but not my parents.
The paint on the sides of the receding cars
remind me of my artist breathing in deeply,
exhaling grey smoke. He says it opens up his third eye to
see more clearly.
It’s not my problem
This clouding of the mind though
I can’t see my heart and my soul  when the world around me starts to rot too.
Muscles obey other voices sometimes
near the knives or rail ties
rubber car tires.

Life is not always what you planned.
We were in the back yard of the abandoned house next door to his watching his two mutts chase each other around the perimeter. House after tiny peeling white painted house line the street “Summerbelle” with roofs covered in crinkled brown leaves. He runs his hand through his too long ***** brown hair. Tall and blue eyed, he could have been handsome maybe.
I had stopped by to pick up my glasses from on top of his coffee table. I don’t remember how they had gotten there exactly but at some point last night roasting-marshmallows-and-a-bonfire had turned into mango-juice-*****- forgetting-your-glasses-party with all the neighbors.
We were talking about fall, how the colors and the smells are beautiful, but foreboding, warning that winter and depression are coming. It’s a problem we have. On my walk over I had stopped to pick up a particularly beautiful leaf to give to him. It was just the sort of thing he would understand.
I reminded him we have to dress up for class on the 6th, and asked if he even had a suit. He then launched into a ten minute story about how he used to work on a senator’s campaign, 18 hour days and everything.
Not something I would have expected.
We gradually shuffle into the house, and I pick up my glasses from right where I had left them. The door is never locked in his house, but no one usually steals anything.  The walls are covered in crayoned drawings and quotes, over the top of it all “Fleetwood” graffitied in orange and red. I remember that is what we had decided to name the house last night. I had been sitting on the couch with a beer admiring the artist, bringing him a new Blue Ribbon can periodically for a kiss.
“Are you and A together now?”
I shake off the hazy memories. “Hm?”
“You and A.”
“Oh. We’re…yeah.” His signature grin never faded but his eyes had dipped to the floor. “How could you tell?”
“The way you spoke to him.” It was all the explanation he offered. “He’s a good guy.”
“He is.”
My mind wandered back to the morning, waking up next to the artist brushing my hair off my face, kissing my forehead. Surreal.
There wasn’t much left to say, so it was time for me to go. Turning to the door I saw what I had written on the wall last night, hidden under the windowsill, part way behind the couch. Under the song lyrics, clichéd quotes like “Be good or be good at it” and messages of peace, love and adventure it was nestled.
*All the same, we are nothing.

Tonight I married a graffiti artist.
This is the third time I’ve been proposed to
at some ***** house party.
This time there was an ordained all-faith minister
on the porch smoking a cigarette. That was enough.
I said yes.
We’re all strictly first-name-basis here, nicknames are even better.
So to him I’m just Mimi. Focused intently on my hand,
he draws my wedding ring with a permanent marker
and kisses each finger as he finishes.
There is a tiny replica of his tattoo on the underside of my finger
in addition to my gigantic drawn-on diamond.
It is my favorite part.
We talk politics and eventually art.
Turns out he’s sort of an amazing artist.
He said he’d put my name up on a wall but I don’t believe him.
Intricate, passionate, and thoughtful.
His smile is adventure.
That’s why I married him.
He asked to read my poetry and in my fuzzy judgment I let him.
Maybe he even liked a few phrases.
And he was polite as a hopped up boy can be.
Getting me home before three,
lending me his jacket without me asking.
I know he’ll forget to call, or that he even has my number.
and that we won’t watch Pulp Fiction
tomorrow.
That I was really just a glorified
snort of some white powder,
I am like all the glitter that fades in the morning
like smiles do, or permanent marker
after a few washes.

Not to confuse anyone,
but as more and more people read my work,
I think it's best
to use a pen name.

It’s three am.
Or actually 2:58, right exactly now.
Sitting in bed with my cup of mac and cheese
I made in the microwave
and woke up my roommate,
because if I’m getting sexiled until 2 anyhow,
I’ll make some ******* mac and cheese.
Blowing on my plastic fork
listening to Bon Iver sing about his skinny love.

That’s something that’s been concerning me lately,
Skinny love.
But I’m eating anyway.
Because rolling on the black top of the playground
(dark and secret, with just enough irony)
with a newly blue-eyed boy
made me hungry.

I am up so late
the Yankees fans next door
screaming through the cinder blocks.
Infected all over. I am
exhausted and done with this.
I would  like to go shoe shopping,
but there is 5.00 to my name.
I spent it all on medicine
for this sad little heart.

I lock my door at night because I’m scared
you’ll sneak in quietly and kiss me on the forehead
or traipse in with the morning and bring me coffee.

I wouldn’t put it past you,

the way you smile when you look at me.
Put your arm around me in public,
and offer me your milk when I run out.
You tell me I’m such a sweetie pie, you can’t get over it.
but you don’t know me, and you don’t ask questions.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to hear another cutsey nickname
and if you tickle me one more time I swear I’ll
break your ******* nose.

I’m trying to tell you, to warn you
“No, I’m not a sweetie pie, you’ll find out soon enough”
you’re just not enough, and you’ll find out soon
It’s like you’re afraid to break me when I let you kiss me.

Break me, please.

I’m just dying for some danger, for that boy from Ohio.
You hold me good at night but a bad girl can’t live on snuggles alone.
Seriously.
I would sass you until you put your hands on me,
but you're not worth the effort.
Nothing is intense or brave. You are not an adventure.

This is happening more and more.
It’s ungodly early and we’re tripping on bricks
a pack of feckless teenagers still.
That never changed.
The tall one, skinny with rosy cheeks
and the eyes of a fighter
is holding loosely onto my hand
his nose won’t stop bleeding.

We follow the broad intimidating one
in a red sox hat,
he’s punching every stop sign we pass
and just hollering
how we’ll always stick together
you don’t mess with family
(I’ve known them all for three weeks)
his accent is getting thicker through his swollen lip.

In the rear the shorter one, but still much taller than me,
his hair stuck up in all directions
is still getting his breath back from that sock to the stomach.

We all love that frozen moment, when first punch turns to full on brawl.
Peter says even if you get hit, at least you’re feeling something.
We all taste like bourbon, cause this is the South now.

I’m draggin’ them home in my favorite blue skirt,
two heads shorter at least.
Saying, soon we’ll be home boys, I’ll fix you up then.
Because they’ll fight for me, I fight for them.
Saying stop punching public property, Paul and
Stevie, I’ve got you, don’t cry
The Pats are on tomorrow boys, and we’ve all got work to do.
just a little longer

I find family where I can these days.

The storm came in with a face in the clouds
looked like old father time.
Or God leading the way.
Turned the sky yellow and the trees blue.
Very near got blown away watching
that tree trunk split, how it groaned
and smashed down onto metal bent,
road blocked
and I hollered along. I stomped and soaked
in the shards of glass raining down to the street
hiding under trees in the garden like an animal
letting the vast plane of nature assimilate
feeling my roots be put down into the ground
I am this screaming wind, clean and new, angry and vengeful
like I was rained down from the clouds myself.

This place is so quickly home
in my cinder block palace
the leaky sink, the naked boy in the bed
across from mine.
I am triumphantly queen of these gravel-roofed blocks
dragged back, bladder bursting
to my little kingdom.
my people wait up in the hallways
they are dazed and blurry eyed
the 4 am incarnations
of what we promised ourselves we’d never be.
curled up in corners
shivering away from reality.
I have conquered nothing
but my parent’s expectations.

She might be a woman, bronzed face turned upward
worshiping in a small pool of dappled sunlight.
But she is most like a girl still
carrying along a pink blanket,
engrossed in her newest book,
legs crossed sitting on the porch in a
mauve and lace sundress.
The other colors of the world,
she fits into them, she wears them well.

The green of the trees in its last intensity,
beginning the parched death into the fall.
The blessing of a blue sky,
and the belladonna lilies have reached up
announcing the end of summer
(bliss, contentment, inherent joy of living)
with their bare stems and slip of pink.

The quiet charm of summer afternoons
in company with the restless spirit autumn brings
she sits to wait, remember, cherish the summer.
The cold will be on her soon.

The yellow ones
buttery soft
floating on tiny wings
hanging on new tendrils
Out of the corner of my eye
one rests and keeps me company

I’m sitting in the dirt
planting the garden up new

another sits to drink

I wash my naked feet

There are rainbows in the sunlight
and in the dirt under my nails

the brightness blinks through
my eyelashes damp

four summers ago
I suppose it was that long
that I didn’t watch the
butterflies
alone.

In the last days of school, the first days of summer, we pile into a car. All these people I'm not close to suddenly become my best friends. I'm contented to go where they drive, my head hanging out the front seat window into the distinctly summer-tinted air. We pull up to the city gardens with a pizza, dancing to The Strokes and the beating of the world's heart, alive around us. I make everyone clover crowns. He is the King, his thoughtful brown eyes outshining his careful smile. I am the Queen. One and Another, the Prince and Princess he with his pleasant, measured voice and her trills of brilliant laughter. And the too-old senior tagged along for who knows what reason, is the Jester, loathe to wear the effeminate flowers above his ears. We climb things. We somersault. We throw loving insults up to the wind like kites. We hoot and holler at the blue blue sky and the koi fish in ponds, dancing along the stone borders. So close to falling into the algae.
We sing the summer in.
The Jester has never known true right from wrong, he is learning to live on his own, with the scars on his arms and face. He is not welcome at home anymore. The Prince is moving back across a world into the arms of a now unfamiliar life, nothing waits for him there but the promise of his next powdery high. The King's mother has three months to live, all we can do is wait. The Princess and I, the Queen of the wild rumpus, finally lay down to count clouds.
We have nothing left.

Driving to your apartment
and waiting
for the call
“your daddy’s leaving”

and then you have to go across town
to your old house

might ***** your roommate while
we’re waiting
for you to come home

something like 2am
sopping in tears
when the call came
“your daddy’s leaving"

silence

I don’t think we believed,
but now we have to.

I wanted to be your same color
living in a world where back roads racing,
fathers up-and-leaving,
mothers smoking in the house with the baby
is taken into caviler stride-by-stride.

**** your hat a little farther to the side
and tell me this all don’t matter.
But it comes at you in vivid splashes,
when you try to sleep under
the lumpy comforter
in the bed that I made for you
while you were in the shower

And you call me your beautiful angel,
in stark washes of fluorescent lamplight.
You’ll take the pills to sleep at night
and I won’t
I’ll just lie there pretending
until you wakeup late and groggy
And you leave me.

There we sped down the highway
leaving town, windows down
going north.
You drive like a bat out of hell, twenty above the speed limit
one hand sneaking up my skirt in the suicide seat.
Can’t keep your ****** hands to yourself.
My head tilted back,
Ignoring you a little bit
to watch the light from the western sun
glint off your new rosary:
semi precious stones and Jesus
dead and ******, oversized in bronze.
Oh, our resounding love
and church qualified sin.
It’s a little too much
how the juxtaposition of our separate lives
crash together in the summer,
when it’s too hot to wear your
penguin suit
little black dress
cassock.

I’m not bitter.

God your car smells terrible
running errands Sunday afternoon
windows down, driving fast
on the north side of town
feeding you peach rings while you drive
listening to the Lady herself.
Smile your sharp-toothed smile and
I’ll remember mine
Darling, I want you to drive off the road
so I won’t have to tell the world what we’ve done
You and I both know
these burning secrets at the bottom of our hearts
eventually come out to see the sun
Shining in our eyes on a Sunday afternoon

He planted the heel of his foot
on the paper declaring my D+ in math
didn’t notice didn’t care
not with his hands on my hips
up against the bedroom wall
even with tears hiding behind my eyes
this is more important to him
this is what he comes for
so I keep him a little longer for myself
to forget, evaporate into
a girl wanted for something
a little less than ladylike

And we lay there under fast moving clouds
sometimes-revealed stars
in the reclined seats of my mother’s car
outside of the other boy’s house
hands behind our heads
let the wind from the open windows
blow the humidity from our foreheads

I find you so handsome in the weak moonlight
the strong bridge of your nose standing out
from underneath your shaggy hair
the bright whiteness of your teeth
as you grin, amusing yourself with words

Our conversation is give and take
Neither speaks more or less than the other
give each other time for thought
in a delicately held balance I find comforting
just like when we were so young

The days when your mother drunk dialed
and your father tried as hard as he could
when you clung to me and my words
walked from North Platte to Lincoln
to escape her long red fingernails
and fall into my open arms

All I ever wanted was to see you smile
the same as now
while we wait in the car
but you left me when your mother stopped
when you found yourself stable, happy even
I became irrelevant, despite professed love

I know you further than
the other girls.
far enough to sit in the back of my mother’s car
seats reclined, watching shadows pass over the moon
looking at me like you used to
you see right through to the center of me
of course I still love you.

You drove away and I thought my nose would bleed
The lump on my head makes me wobbly
Or whatever they stuck in my drink
The roar of that old red engine ringing in my ears
Go die
The boy who doesn’t know how to be in love
Leave me alone to get drunk
On the tears you leave me to
It always ends in tears
Don’t leave me like this
You always leave me like this
Go die
And leave me to mine
The lump on my cerebral cortex is getting bigger
Swelling by the minute
And I’m drinking water
And trying not to let whatever you stuck in my drink
Get the best of me
But I think I’m leaking
Leaking salt water and your own ****** fluids
Leaking my dwindling supply of iron
I’m bleeding
The lump on my head swelling to golf ball proportions
My heart turned to a solid lump
I wait for you to come back and apologize
But you never do and you never will
So maybe if you woke up the next morning
And I didn’t.
Maybe if you heard the words
“her brain hemorrhaged in her sleep”
Maybe if you had to go on without me
You wouldn’t complain about the way I fall in love
And the way you can’t feel ****
You don’t know ****.

We’re like tramps living in this half-furnished house
taking two-mouthful shots outta that big old bottle
playing 8-bit games in between smoke breaks

And when we feel like dancing the house will shake
letting the primal urge take we throw ourselves around
the basement room empty save a couch, the speakers
and some ****** art installment we are still painting

There’s a pile of us on the extra mattress in the laundry room
talking about hopes and dreams for a new life
****** out of old nests, we build our own in the ***** clothes
someone starts crying
I swear I’m in love with every person in the room.

It’s time for another pack or two of smokes for the boys
So we wipe our tears and snot and leave the nest
to run down the 4 am streets with no shoes
sparkling in starlight like vagabonds.

And I turn to my shoeless friend and say:
We could live like this.

Home to a half-furnished house, muffled in sleep-sighs
the couches, the chairs are draped with passed out kids
I cover them with sheets and blankets and kiss every one goodnight

Even the mattress in the laundry room is full
so we lay out a blanket and throw pillows in front of the ****** art installment
sleeping in just shorts, as the heat wave holds the town
the boys let me on top of the dog-pile because I’m smallest
and because in the morning I’ll wake up to make them breakfast.

Your washy grey eyes only meet mine sometimes
when you’re being really serious.
On days when you laugh we talk about how
when we’re old and rich, I’ll buy you a green
Lambo and you’ll buy me a red one.
Or, how one day you’ll be president.

I try my hardest to make you smile on days like these
they don’t come very often anymore
your cheeks are hollowed deeper
whispered to me late at night about that needle
because you trust me for some reason
you have decided I’m the one you will trust
and I think that’s why I try so hard to make you smile
on days when you laugh.

On a Wednesday, Thursday driving
by your father's house
I come bearing gifts
but no one is home.

And all I want to do
is give back that
effeminate powder blue shirt
and say good riddance
to your mother's house.

We like our steaks ******
my daddy and I
wear plaid and glasses and slippers
and hibernate in the winter.
I steal the pens out of his desk
and lose them.

I steal the wedding rings out of his dresser
and stare at them on the bedspread.
Sometimes I wear the gold one
and remember that time I found it
in the glove compartment
with the rest of the loose
change.

It is ritualistic.
and it makes me aware
I’m scared to become him.
But I know he did what he had to;
I will do what I have to
when my time comes.

My time and the easy way out,
I am already so much like him.
But at the end of the month
there will be a new package of roller *****
in the desk drawers
and he won’t say
a word.

You and I are best at night,
or in the lazy elbow of sunsoaked afternoons
curled up somewhere
talking books not television
religion not politics
in person not technology
honesty not reservation
life not death.
Sometimes you’ll hold my hand
mostly you’re looking the other way.
When we’re together it’s deepest sentiments
forbidden thoughts whispered
cinematic meeting of the eyes
carefully constructed
because sometimes you’re more theatrical than me.
More grammatically correct than I
maintain at three am.

I
Sleeping in your bed till noon
a silent prayer
redeem me
naked angel pulls you up
bathes you
and says make one wish

with her uncommon beauty
the combination of the
sharpness of her teeth with the
sharpness of her words
you cannot help but
wish for
her

II
His head is heavy when he wakes
Redemption is curled like a child in his arms,
put to bed with a bottle of *****
but lemons killed the taste.
She didn’t mean to wake up.

III
The thin blues of your eyes wash over
The blessings are small and smooth
Redemption waits for you at the bottom of the stairs
the delicate curves of her feet
buried into the grass,
she bristles out to become all encompassing
running towards the sea.

Supple skin, insides of elbows
we scratched til they bled
split lips and scraped knees
I would follow you anywhere
Burrowed in your old clothes
you didn’t wear dresses
so neither did I.
Curled up on your too-green carpet
watching the fish in your tank
commit suicide one by one.
Can we stay the same?
Before Momma’s on the phone
shouting about faulty vaccines.
Before the world descends upon us.
In the night
you would slowly voice the thoughts:
what is the value of a human life
if it is miserable. If people laugh and mock,
if that life is silently and hopelessly
alone, and suddenly aware of it’s own strangeness.
It takes hours, to string this together
creeping towards 3am in the pitch dark.
we are sitting on the floor,
I promise with all of my eight year old honor
all of my fighting might,
I will not abandon you to this cruel world trapping
you. All this unknown grief
for the emotions you cannot understand.

Over the bridges to the north side of town
fluorescent flickers, the beer billboards are bigger
Where you live.
We don’t really have billboards on the east side of the rail yard
Where I live.
But I don’t find you in the elementary school
shut down, infested by the deadly spiders.
or patriarchs inebriated, stumbling back to
cinderblock houses where no one really waits up anymore.
Every soul a flickered star. Maybe dying,
finding last comforts in the black velvet of night.
No, I don’t find you hiding in the hateful corners
of your brother’s triangle folded flag that rested
on a coffin.
Or the alcoholic bottle your mother hands me with a friendly smile.
Tiny threads of crumbling concrete barely connect my world with yours
I might be dreaming, at night lying in the grass of the tallest hill
Where you live
Holding me selfishly, the night is black in my eyes
and the view is not so clear back to
Where I live.

Late at night I am creative
in the form of a fizzing soda bottle
pomegranate deep purple liquid
poured into a glass tumbler three fourths full
standing on a chair moving cereal boxes

that tall glass bottle in the back of the cupboard
splashing it in the tumbler clear and sour

half a teaspoon of sugar and a squeeze of lime
mixing until I see the pink froth on top
drinking it down before I realize what I’m doing

Flash back to a few hours before
“you smell good” is what he said to me
leaning in, whispering it in my ear

Well how do you like me now?
breath full of fruit and something sharper
I can’t say you’d approve of the way my brain buzzes
but I know, secretly, you would understand

I used a thesaurus for this
I wanted to have the right word
for when you look at me
and laugh
because you’re amazed
I’m in front of you.
I wanted the right word
for when you unexpectedly
grab my hand
and say what I’m thinking.
For the way grape and melon slushies
or ice cream with too many sprinkles
are things for only us.
For all of those times I’ve said
“I know”
when I don’t.
Spitting off the tops of parking garages.
When I try to tell you what you are to me.
Trying to describe the deeps of your eyes,
my strange love for your nose,
and that smile that launched a thousand blood cells
or something.
The broadness of your shoulders I imagine curling
into sometimes
when I’m feeling tired.
VITAE
I wanted to fly kites and sing
directly
on
key.

December 30, 2010 1:00 am

Am sitting, as always
at the left edge of the couch
clutching my tall glass of water
forcing myself to drink
the weather is so dry out there
forcing myself to exist
the weather is so dry in winter.

December 30, 2010 1:13 am

Barely illuminated, I search
my dead grandmother’s eyes
for wisdom, familiarity
but they tell me I look like
the French side of the family
which in reality,
Never existed.

December 30, 2010 1:27 am

I smell too much like you
but it is late, I cannot stand
long enough to shower
without my knees buckling
my heart beats in sets of three
the doctors cannot fix it today
so, I am like another inch gone
at the rim of my water glass
******* to the jugular
of my feeble, thorough
existence.

The world sifts through my window screens
warm, soft air pressing up against my bare legs
a neighbor girl laughs through the black night
it’s to late to be neighborly
but still they talk
and the dogs bark
my brother’s piano music floats up to me from the first floor
and I wonder if the people walking
stop to hear Chopin’s light tones
turn to jazz and then to something distinctly more baroque
as the thunder clouds roll in.

If you can hear this
I don’t know
Been waiting in a cookie cutter hotel
the sheets turned down starched white
scratchy
So you’re not coming today?
that was both rhetorical and sarcastic.
Today or tomorrow
the next day, no
I crossed off your name but
I don’t know
If you can hear this.