Thumb, thumb in this earth –
I could fit my entire soul in there instead of apple-fetuses!
Perhaps purée the soil down like a lockbox
and give it to my love to unpack
for when I age, it gets too big, I must rise again from dust.

Beds moaning in a give and take
some sort of car crash outside, morning’s roadkill
people choking on their breath during sleep.
I exhale words I do not mean to say then swallow them up again
          just battered croaking –

all these sounds spattered like a Victorian print.
I feel the air of another person whistling on my backside:
he will climb vines to get in my bed and eat me.

I hear night-noises, and that is what I think,
there are cannibals at the sill
big green tree-looking men who fit me whole in their stomach.
                My bedroom, like a cupboard
                         and me the same, we open without a key.

Across the street
there has to be a factory of some sort

where women are put into jars for jam and their skin’s the toast –
they get pregnant by ear. One hundred decibels
given by my father’s snoring moustache
and fifty for an ****** that causes leopard print sheets.

               Then, I am in a dream in which
   someone large holds me
closer than a criminal, but we just ballroom dance.

Then, I open those eyes again
                 and dogs bark in southern accents
                 and my house sweats from a nightmare
                 and the hour hands me sandbags
                 and wives finally get to pawn the rifle for thousands
                               but not before I hear a shot.

A decade of trains that lost track
have just turned up in my esophagus,
they are all bile as I am all hands.

This is why I was never frightened by ghosts
and sea specters:

they have been inside of me
the whole time.  

Sometimes, hot coal would hit my cuticles,
I could see the steam.
I could feel something like wheels
spinning a web on my nail-beds;
something sat in me like I were a flowerpot.

All that remained were the sticks
of my skin, blood bubbling from below.

But they have been there
the whole time.
I have been a ship in a bottle,
I have been a conductor without knowing.

Fever outlined my spine with its fingers
and I felt I was being kicked by
a fetus.

I was a hallway for phantoms
that believed they still have their limbs
and if not, quills
or a fish with gills and a fin
or locomotive. Mechanical movement still.

How could I not realize
they were inside of me the whole time,

soaking up the nutrition from my throat
shifting the razor while I shave?
Thousands of train-ghosts
crawled from me by an engine of *****.

Not one knows where they are.

A ritual, I shape an acacia from your flesh and blood –
the fluff rather concealed. So are we, though your insides decorate
a globe just shy of blonde cornfields.

Tomorrow, you can be the columbine’s milk,
split drops deserting her center: now a park of petals on the edge.

But I examine every exposed hipbone, your clavicles rosy by me –
there is something around a jonquil about this image
you spread so I can embrace you, answer coils like a telephone
and want as much far away as I would close up to flaxen.

Hand me a celandine capsule or periwinkle bow –
all of this tied in a knot, originated from a bend of your hair.
I have recollections and joy from imminent meadows, girl and boy.

This afternoon, I smell like a hungry gardener
a green thumb with a wart attached:
both perfumes of a rose are discernible. The soil, the falsetto sweet
reaching up onto your nostril fur as monkey bars
until it can scatter seeds, some wild and collected by fruit.

Mother asks why my knees are shaded.
I have been on them, I say, breathing life into green berries.

Free them from that cage, their wire straitjacket
and breed breed breed:
this afternoon, everything I touch will stay alive, including me.

my arms outstretched, I give your oxygen back to you
and cannot stop the anger when your lips
are too far from me to kiss

break these bones to touch me, do not let me hate you
or I will really want to.

Here, I am interrupted by being the only woman in the room –
the seventeen year old woman in a lace gown
that strays from her kneecaps, untouched but by air
and launching in the breeze for twenty sets of interested eyes.

Give me their heads on a platter
so that no one will ever finish watching me waltz.
I am a bachelorette, but taken by all these mouths that tell me
who else I am or could be, supposed to be in this ether.

Heel, he says. I am a dog. Roll onto your back. I am his *****.
But we shed our skin like snakes in a corner no one sees.

Log-trucks reel these houseplants.
The dog will bark, weeds flood a window –
tires resonate as though in a metal pencil box
                  but at least I am not alone.

I am cutting all of my shirts this summer
to change each seam into a headband,
one that matches my stretchmarks –
twenty-two, in fact,
that are in perfect style for anyone to see.

1.
the walls are built of shapes
triangles and circles and hexagons that do not
fit together
like we once did

we are these mislaid figures now

2.
the moon comes out at dark
but when I feel dark
I will not come out of my room

3.
the oilcloth catches my tears now because
you are too busy
to notice that they fall

it is like I am trying to hide
the weather

give a big umbrella to clouds in the sky

4.
the veins are taunting me
again

5.
the password to my email
is the last syllable of your first name
how average of me to want to **** myself and
keep talking from underground

6.
can I still apologize for holding your
heart hostage
as a dead-girl walking

I have on a pearl necklace, the beads like cabbage
stonewashed by sun

and sitting upon this veranda I
watch wind feather a hilltop where your sister
lost her virginity to a man while she was but a girl –
the sort that marries nothing besides memories.

She would wear what I do if I remember correctly.
Your sister had taped posters on her wall
of which she would stay up late to kiss goodnight –

I heard their rustle
through the plaster, through your hair covering my
neck when you hid me next door
pouring my secretions onto your mattress.

Somehow, she was younger and older than you:
chopsticks in her whiskers twice your age
**** a scalp whose hardly brushed one’s headboard.

You and I, on hiatus
and she and I were always clean –

skimming our knees together while you had another
girl in the shower-stall, who cried when
she ate a sandwich
or abbreviated the name I wished never would end.

In the valley, the willows cut a dress your sister would
wear with my pearl necklace, and
I think I will marry my memories, too, if not you.

So many girls have that waterslide nose
the one you had, the shape that tethers on the end
a curly-cue your teardrops pool in sometimes:

so many girls could look just like you
and I might actually acknowledge their blue eyes
not assume they are as brunette as the wool
below their clothes

but none of those girls would know my secrets or
obsession with Build-a-Bear bunnies
because they were never open on our birthday.

Tuesdays remind me of third grade
and so does astrology.

Our tables formed a pentagon, it was me and the beautifuls:
come the good-looking maid called Destinee
with two e’s, not one and not even a y, she had two e’s.

I modeled myself after her cerulean lenses
eye sockets that were pulled back by dinosaur bones
and gave wrinkles to her forehead prematurely, six speckles
like ostrich eggs gathering under a stratum of mud.

She was dark-headed, she wasn’t fair.  
She had sorcery in her collar, fairies in her pulse.

Her mother had the name of a Chihuahua or evil witch:
I secretly cursed her for having a daughter so lovely
who I could not peck on Tuesday field-trips to a menagerie
just because she was as feminine as me.

That is how I learned about destiny
and Destinee, so pretty pretty.

Let us go to that market on Broad Street, the one by Little Theater
where I got mad at you and refused to scale your wrist like it were a skyline –
I did not even knot your knuckle-hair with my sweat.
I was so angry, but I want to go by there again. We can search for some
nectarines and decide which share of our bodies they appear, feel most like.
One will have to be rotting, because your cheeks are an old peach,
black fuzz on the ends of something round, enflaming –
another can be as young-looking as I was when you first touched me.
Then, you will hold the door open while we prance into the House of Pizza,
find that corner bench where painted lighthouses dawn the walls:
I have kissed you here before, once when I was sad and another with a grin.
Sometimes, I wonder how many places I have loved you
but that would be as impossible as counting every way I have known you –
sometimes you are a moon off the axis, sometimes you are a plum
sometimes you are bobby pins in my curl, sometimes not
sometimes I rest on the bench where you licked frosting from my cheek
and sometimes just going to the grocery makes me miss you enough.

Think of the lightning bug you smashed
when you drove me across town
and rolled your window up and down
to blow the skirt above my knees.

You said, “that is the only part I missed
when you quit smoking cigarettes.”

Me, I have nostalgia for the drag –
a cylinder riding my tongue.
I’ll never get to **** your **** enough.

Tobacco and *** once swam in me
in layers like those Russian nesting dolls.

In my heart, there is the littlest:
someone of a different gender than I
who cuts their hair and papier-mâchés it
where your teeth discolored my thighs.

This runt takes the size of a firefly
but he has no freckles: he must be adult.

Sputter, “I think you’ll smash something
again I think it may be me you wreck
because I am not an insect behind glass.”

and I know you enough to hear you say
you can unravel me like cloth anyway.

I published my first eBook yesterday and thought it would be appropriate to inform my Hello Poetry crowd. :-)

Currently, it is published on two websites - Lulu and Amazon. I am using any profit from this to manufacture hard copies. Really, I just need to get my feet on the ground as an author. Any interest helps/makes me happy enough to kiss your faces. Links are seen below. If you'd rather purchase on the iBookstore or for Nook, message me so I can show you when it becomes available there.

http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/woman-child/13772994
http://www.amazon.com/Woman-Child-ebook/dp/B00C9Q4GPS/ref=sr11?s=digital-text&ie;=UTF8&qid;=1365524909&sr;=1-1

June–
                  battle

     a market of sores


                       on

        a fourteen year old body


wears a cotton slip
          over head


and form


             sleep in the hospital wall
   cotton and death

all over the place

                 get a lighter sheet



she

    is a girl

        she is the reaper


she will latch herself

             and not let the poison out.

Pilot your mind out of the graveyard
all of your friends are alive:
you slurp on hearthstones, you forget to make tea
every cocktail at your funeral shall seem like a broken-
hearted woman. “She was once lovely
wrote verses about riding trains and breakfast.
She had the arms of an aircraft shattering its engine
she was killed after too long of a kiss.”

I would rather you poke holes in doughnuts than yourself
but this control-center flurries like a moth
and then stalls like a blood clot.

I would rather steer the plane home for you.

Put your ear to the concrete, now.
It has the same rhythm as watercolor,
            our souls have the same consistency as dirt.

La la la. Everything is plowed in the ground eventually –
      every ticktock shows Atlantis a friend.

This balcony smells like violins, like a comet, like waifs
                          & has the sound of crowded prose.

    A man will spit, spit, spit on you:
  a girl will crawl from a bottle of effervescence –
      both carry their flask
one is so red, do worry about communism.

                                We will all have our canteen
microwave like a thermos & aerate into
                    our crowded spit bubble, big finale la la la.

Said, I can show you around the blackberry bush –
I planted it last summer, you know, that June you coasted
to university and stopped having crushes on cousins.

Said, you grew your hair long.

I toss it out the window many mornings:
dewdrops as a conditioner and tease strollers with
a crease by my armpit you like(d), my flab on the side –
I impress others now, men cling to the bottom of my skirt
and suckle on the hem to make each thread fray.

Said, but your knees feel dusty up against mine.
There is no big wide world, no plum summit skies below
the cuff of another person’s dress shirt –

just a watch. Remind me how much time I have left
until extinction, no hand held or hug goodbye:
this is a kingdom where nothing can die
and when it does, seeds are sown in the pelt of your heart.

Said, no, I bred this world for the fireflies.

Said, there are berry-droppings on your chin.
You look as if you’ve eaten licorice or caught lung cancer;
I wish you had, I wish I had never called you sugar.

Summer was
******* on sugarcane and cinnamon peels
handed from your grandparents, occasionally mine
when our roller-skates made love to cracks in
                             the sidewalk
          our knees were drunk on its feathers
so many specks of moss get caught in there, too

    you taught me not to cry
or have that formaldehyde-chugging look
until I hit the bunkbed; your sheets made my sweat
look so much worse
                          we got anything we could want.

I wanted to kiss you when your wore your
Popsicle lipstick, a freeze cracking the crib of your
       mouth and circling buzzards around.

But how does a girl say
   she would rather have someone than a cigarette  
      stick of candy from the ice cream man –
the ones she would twirl like cherry stems
    and feign middle school maturity?

  We would whisper about things at night
with the lamp off, our pants down
                                                   but never ever love:
love is for adults. Love is Mardi Gras in the city
           not powdered sugar from beignets
   or the kind of beads you settle around your neck.

I wanted to be the bayou you swam in,
cast your fishing pole at the underbelly of and
  counted how many seconds it took to lift back up.
I wanted to be a chest you put
         your personal belongings in, a treasure box.
Most of all, I wanted
                          to be your personal belonging
              the treasure you immediately thought of –
        but that is not what Summer was.

Our first kiss tasted like bad days, and so did our last:
we are moon flowers. We bloom when the sky becomes a
big tentacle, my lips strawberry pillows speckled
by dead flakes red skin you chapped with your tongue.

Everyone is in bed and we are in each other,
everyone is awake and we are swallowing more pills.

We walk, we blink, but we just think, think, think
of whatever dream we had last night when it all wore off
our lovely bones sounding like mouths bleeding love
                    or your train arriving at a station of sunflowers.

insects sleep in dead trees
the dead trees still stand because they
have small guests to entertain

bugs are beautiful
even when they sting me
take little nips from my neck and ***

ants crawl five feet below
but they still make my forehead hot

bugs are beautiful
they do not **** anyone, bugs remind
me that I am alive in little bites

for them, I will
take my fever and put it in a shrine

pregnant bellies, love bellies, I love my round stomach
but wish there were an adorable parasite inside

I would never be lonely
if I had stretch marks and soccer practice in my gut
even if she keeps me awake at least
I feel something inside, love bellies or an empty belly

I need to be full, not just round

pieces of you do not feel like pieces of glass
or pieces of last night’s meal,

they are not shards they are not crumbs

they do not cut they do not disappoint

you are like velvet tipped roses
or green fuzz in the bed of a swimming pool
seeds planted, nearly peeking through
a new orchard has belched

where my impressions of others have been
sliced by thorns

I am not quicksilver but I am developing
two toes at the exterior of my cocoon
I am changing

up to my ankles in you
all these fragments, finally a family for them

remind me it is a non-invasive procedure
if only for a tongue in my belly button
or beanstalks in my mouth

soon, soon, soon I’ll bloom, bloom, bloom
fertilized from my pieces of you.

I used to fall asleep at night
thinking about your hair
how it looked like
trees, chestnuts, branches
allocated enough so that I
could loop them into braids

wide enough to drape
like a curtain for eyelids as
eyelids are for sockets
when thin skin does not hide
sun from my pupil’s range.

I used to believe I could kiss
the very lip of it, smooth
and forgiving when I
palm some locks out of place:

I used to believe no one
would bury it with you when
you follow your grandfather
onto the meniscus of
afterlife

and I used to believe I’d
receive a phone call
then a paper bag on our
balcony with a note that says:

she loved you
keep her hair in a vase by the
bed so you can sleep again.

I used to believe that your
roots and leaves could never
discover death, rather
would twirl and twirl and twirl
around tear-ducts like a hedge

to disappear the darkness
and sponge midsummer’s rain
with a honey-colored braid.

Lonely girl, I know you wear songs on your lips
but when you smoke those cigarettes,
you sound as if you are in a cloud of  fog –

it makes me think, makes me wonder.
Could we live in one of those bouncy airplanes?
So natural, lonely girl, you would fit perfect
floating and crying every drop of rain
onto the heads of people who won’t talk to you.  

I would drown them with mine, too –
unaccompanied in our river, not able to sing
while you’re ever in the company of my shadow.

When this building stopped existing as a merry-go-round
and the patients came to and from another abode,
someone planted daisies in the hallways
where, in slumber, brothers thought of their sisters or
shared their blanket with the more sad person next door.

Some of the daisies have their axis half-picked
like mooncrests and all appear like brides in a snow white
too pure for this place where no love was made –
rather a home for bad loves to be pulled out, taken away.

But before the doors were locked and sealed
some alumni snuck in to lace between a blooming layer:
I dipped in a toe, you dove headfirst, she used hands
to strain uncontaminated soil upon a paisley pattern
and said a novena for where we became blank slates, too.

this is a love poem
for the parts of yourself you despise.

how I believe you are a man
more so than any other man I have seen

because you do not bribe wasps
into not giving you a sting:
because you do not touch fragile things
rather lend little strengths and
because your sweat smells like incense
or raspberries on trees who breathe.

god, nature opens the
whole wide world but keeps me from
you

but you did not complain when
I appeared,
this red-shouldered placenta globe girl.

I love your inward feet
because you can walk faster to me
I love your pleated hips
because they have handlebars for me
I love your thunder laugh
because it means summer to me.

me, me, me

I love how you love me
and do not care when I cannot seem to
remember or believe.

this is a love poem I will never
finish writing.

wavelengths, not centered
must have taken a wrong turn or otherwise
built a bridge where school girls
sleep on their backs, spread their legs in grass

he sings so close
the lullaby becomes my earring

it hangs, it hangs, it hangs
drip drip and drip going into the latrine
I am a sea

I am wet and wide and opening
to a grey by breeze and through age
he has as much youth as a leaf still on the tree
we are farther from

each other than we are from the sun
but honey does not spoil
so neither will we

yes, yes, please do not leave

this skin? it is rosy, not bloodied
when you spiral it between your fingers
the pores become *****
though they are not gunshot holes  

this mouth? has more to say than
just whimpers and whines
more than just wounded cries
I am a woman not just someone’s wife

these limbs? their shift without strings
what controls my legs is not seen
there is not a trigger to mash
when you feel entitled to **** me

my body is not a battlefield
my body is my shell, my body is alive

my body is mine.

Love on my toes, love in the cabinet, love jumps off balconies
it is an eighteen year old succubus offering spinal taps.
Bring the gentlemen their evening numbness before next
morning’s nightmare and ******* are scheduled on God’s map –
he just steps out for a moment, settles his sleeping mask on.

God is so unhappy: he understands nothing of love.
Get this recipe recited so we shall feed them pink and blue pills
which knobs can sting boys in the ***, a fleabite or bow
soon our leather heels chime through their ears like hooves.

The master may question their nutrition so hold out a paper cup
sloshing in female nectar, our vaguely cerise saliva
sustenance that comes from between slits carved for such –
these acids are love, love, love. Love from cavities, love pearls
knotted in the roots of a mother clam, fallopian love tubes.

Every shoebox offers warmth, complementary wakeup calls
a petite blonde to peel him out of his pajamas, too –
lay your husbands down into the doll-case if he has no love
as God is not watching here. Oh, how happy our gentlemen are.

Ugh, you boys. You marry,
you take the wife that is given to you –
she gets married and is your gift.

Well, I think your breath tastes like brass
and was embalmed by a penny.
I think you like your greed.

You think the woman, like coins,
should be aplenty.

Perhaps you could tie me
in a big old rubber band but in any case,
I will not happily give you my hand.

Ugh, you boys.
Why couldn’t you be granted to me?

I deserve an object, too.

How many times have you shot this rifle?
It rests on you like a young lady asleep on your lap.
Occasionally, she hops in her slumber
and you think (hope) maybe she is dreaming of me.

This pretty pretty thing, her barrel spread like a
dress upon the petticoat’s pillow:
so tempting and so prepared for your touch.

You think of her so much
and spill your own blood just to have her bullet hid

                     where she could see your love.

Patchwork, these lightning strike scars
thundering and unkissed
as though in some sort of burlesque swing –
attractive enough to be fondled, still throbbing.
I do not have bandages,
I do have a gun, I do have a tongue
to slick each wound like an envelope I close
shipped cross-country and not to my postal code:
gave foreigners the tornado –
now, we have the flood. Their lungs must
be strong enough or I’ll need to patch them too.

Suppose we were lunar,
ventriloquists and sisters and bed-sharers still:
your mouth would open so mine
did not possess that dry cement quality.

If my toenails were painted,
those fingers would be a shade as pastel.
You sophisticate. We would dangle
our limbs on each other like they hung over a

bridge and could not betray us,
the fall would be interrupted by delicate lace
or that photograph of us in twin hairdos.

And when you hurt me,
I had to scrub your stench from my bones.

thank the humid place between my legs
for being the only ***** of mine not to take it personally
perhaps because we are so safe and secure
you would have to unfold me, trim the weeds around
                                        this secret, secret house  

somewhat abandoned
and no longer the host of such hopscotch games
because once your round thumbprint made me so sore

I do not forget the care you took to separate petals
like eyelashes caught on a dangerous rim
but now it is for defense, such a mechanism
something to prevent intruders, beggars, from barging in
                                  these lips, an alarm system

oh, I do hate to make you leave
but my ****** is the only ***** I have that does not take
everything personally

My hegira, the sweet parasol of which wind takes hold
it walks me in a gingham pattern skirt and
I have enough pills stashed to swallow for months:
a jingly bottle beneath my cleavage
the cups of my bra overflow, is like a Christmas meal.

******* have enough bounce to make me seem happy.
Content, at the least, beginning this journey
to rinse away as a paint stain or something worse
use a sponge to separate and sort all the fragments.

He does not mind: he does not see.
And I still have a piece, one cloudless psalm needs us –
“Of all the things you **** I’m the most empty,”
I say, my body is but a slave for a bundle of nerves.
Turning head left skipping right speak cry *******
to the thought of anything full, even wine jars.

The human form sure can deceive, I am a pink corpse
and corpulence is all my ***** will ever be –
but! I shall discover a new life with chiseled wings
when the breeze comes along to grab my umbrella so.

My hegira gives this hollow spine a tug, a tug.

Minnows **** the throb out of my eyelids
where I jumped in the great pond and was filled with brine
each fleck, a pebble for them to slurp like soup.

I will remember this moment by the clothes I wore
take it out on yellow ruffles, navy strata  
hung attractively on metal shelves but would faint if I were
to wear either once again. The accessories were similar.
Had a fish unbuttoned my blouse he would see
buttons where another female’s ******* would coarsen.

All I had meant to do was water a plant, feed the fish
but their container had grown wool:
I must dive in! It is better to drown than consult a quiet god.
Upon arrival, I realized that this was like entering
another species’ bloodstream. The waves sway your torso.

No wonder these blankets have become pink.
Behind is a freshwater sea, accustomed to the float but not
the dreaded sting. I have even drowned a few times:
I shall curse the flounder who resuscitates me at bottom.

it is exhausting to love something
too far to touch

& like their body is made of glass
when you see it
you are afraid it will crack

but they insist on making you sore
they know what
you want & what you like

even if it means risking their neck
breaking tonight

& like you are a house of worship
for a quiet man
he has no name but loves

how you make it sound
on the base of your throat, redness

when you know he has cut you &
gave you something only to
take it away

as soon as you see how exhausting
needing it is.

I do not want to be Sylvia Plath anymore.
Her skin cannot fertilize my daises in the oven
or make rosemary’s taste improve
because she has it swaddled in a grave –
the rest has wilted. She has burned and died.

I do not want to be Sylvia Plath anymore
though her words were eloquent
and her waist was very thin. Those insides were
polluted as soon as Hughes discovered them.

Does anyone personify depression?
I would, I think, if I let myself be her again.

Her pretty limbs dangling beyond her head, the
torso conjoined with crimson bars
once metal or iron, once acquainted to
little pollen flakes she swallowed I am sure.
Is anything as pure as a woman above the floor?

I do not want to be Sylvia Plath anymore
but I am sure she is still pure, too.
I bet flowers grow through her throat and exist
in the young body she so hotly removed.

Little beads, baby blooms, figs
writing poems from a nucleus’ dull flicker –
thyme ablaze in patterns of words she has said.  

I once wanted to be Sylvia,
because most of the time I want to be dead.

Your body took mine on a slow dance, slow motion
four days milliseconds stopped to whistle.
You, in my ear too, with your songs of the weather:
we meet the hurricane with camellia headbands
to water from left to right. Some of your
vessel had fell into mine – it buoyed, that naked sea.

I only knew about your skin and bones
how it bubbled when burned, a bacteria bathtub
and that your eyes became less than caramel
rather a stern grey. I gathered sand.
It made you a beach devastated by summer squalls.  

Next morning, a fog was caught in my throat –
thieved from those red-veined orbs.
The sheets said you tossed and turned while I dreamt
but I still awoke to your lips coupling my neck.

Lovers do not walk or limp, you maintained
and so there was a waltz beneath rain – time paused
as we sped up but the tide did not stop crashing.

The moon is a door
to tick marks on our headboard –
act like a bachelor, it says. Pretend this is a new girl.

Your flat tongue on fresh fat
she quivers as if uncovered from a freeze.
My days, she must have. The candlelight keeps
being bit by lightning
then slowly dulls to the heartbeat of an aged hound.

You feel like sunscreen
melted, molding the color my skin –
first red and then black and then a healing blue.

This is what it feels like to be new.

I am not a poet today, but a ghost.

These are nervous hands that open walls and
create cracks in their foundation:
I apologize, I will use the wood to build your child a treehouse
where he can create a reservoir of his girls’ perfumes
or the happy moments in your unhappy divorce.

If he jumps, I will catch him.
He thinks he is a friend of the wind but I am just a girl
who hates violet bruises but loves pink rogue
nevermind my translucent effigy, he is picked like an apple

saved from garments that bleed if dropped.
I will catch your little man and remember how you wanted to
catch me. A lessening song,
he comes rushing to you, “Father, father.”  
Just like you, a story-teller, “some kind of breeze saved me.”

I am not a poet, but a phantom.
But, no, there is nothing between you and I.
The dead are dead and you and yours are alive.

hung your reflection upon our cave
the moonshine, the tiny peats
you only exist in these natural rags –

it smells like incense and
I am so alone.

Braided our hair together
our minds touch, for two strands of curls
and a single smidge of mine –

let me read your thoughts and know
                    we’ll stay alive.

Oh, it is awfully high from up here –
a power surge, the slit of my skirt intentionally ripped
and yet no one wants the slightest peek.

The man I love must be entwined in the pleats
or is watching the carnival children with more interest
than he has in creating normal infants with me.

Am I not a woman, not fertile?
But my concern is for a bloodied male –
intestines escaping from an abdomen like his coins.

He has been robbed as I have, an empty wallet
while I have an uninhibited ****.
We whirl alone on the ferris wheel and want to get ill.

For when the ride halts, I could climb the
parachute and die with that defeated man on the side –
just not quick enough to be wanted like a carnie.

Becoming an atypical sort of sideshow,
write wishes with a ride’s ***** on my arm, a lovenote
leave with someone whose faith in which I restore.

You never told me your wish
so I do wonder
if I am making it come true

scavenge for your sweet hands
pin them, bite the freckles
off

I do not just want you
inside of me
I want to digest you and

be
what you want.

The blonde rain
little daisies from angels say
you love me, love me not

you love me like a stone
we did not skip
but sheltered in a wooden box

with
plastic holes as skylights.