It’s not the first cool day of autumn,
but it’s the first that won’t end
until April, if ever. The hail covers every crack
in the sidewalk. I skate across it, turn into rain.

Later I’m standing in the mud, counting.
Julie calls to say the surgery didn’t work,
third one this year.  Doctor referred her to some
research hospital in Ypsilanti, but she won’t
be studied. She’s on a new diet instead,
only avocados and citrus. She says,
That’s why Sudan has the lowest cancer rates
and there’s still lots of time but please come see me this weekend.
I take off my shoes and look for a place
shaped like my feet.  I tell her I’ll build us
a sweat lodge on the Auglaize, I could learn how,
I’ve seen it done. We’ll sing Kirtan
to Hanuman and sage the hell out
of you, that’ll do it. I’m sure.  

No she says build me a school
for the things beneath the things, inside, around,
the scaffolding. There are walls
inside these walls. Enough space for all of us to pray
for certainty the way it prays for us. *Fear
is the cheapest room in the house. I would like
to see you living in better conditions.

I lift the little body from the tile,
wrap it with white butcher paper, masking tape.
I roll him up and roll with him.
We’re sticking to different sides
of the paper, both covered in my parts.
I’m tired, it’s cold and I need to do laundry.
There’s a 30-day money back guarantee
At the meat counter of Lucky’s,
they never open the paper to see
what’s inside. A bad roast, left out too long.
Just apologize and hand you cash.
Did it matter if the eyes were closed
or open? Crooked honey spine, little pink
pork knuckle, curled into itself. How many
people have I kissed, how many strangers
in the last year, and now this one, taking
up the whole bathroom, all my air and blood
for nothing, for smeared red thighs, dinner
for the butcher’s dogs. Kettle of pain in my knees,
scrubbing my insides from grout lines.

We pull our knees in and listen to stories,
wait for our own name to appear. Floating by
on a six-panel door or stitched into fabric scraps
still raw at the edges but slick
as mirrors or chalked on the ceiling too high
to brush away even with a telescoping hand.

Our name comes marching from the five
o’clock shadow tree line howling itself
and blocking the light switch.
We lag on hinges but keep it outside
never asking how it came and where
from. It can’t break and enter
if the door is already open. Only enter, listen
for bootsteps, for hot handprints in the snow.

We learn to slide our names under the door,
crawl back behind it. Shove our fingers
into locks, feel around for the trigger. We are
drainpipes thickening with sediment
bit by bit for years, everything passing
through, waiting like an open mouth.

Our name leaves stepping
in its own tracks and we follow,
find solid ground. We build bridges,
draw maps to it, curl our edges in around us.
Since we are not cartographers--we cry
too easily--our whole lives are spent
killing time, searching for seams, more folds
to get lost in. Lives spent like pennies,
faces pressed hard into the fountain bed.

He reads
my cuticles
the way Daniel
reads palms
and knows
that I am
not worthy
of wifing.
Cutting
the peeled mango
flesh, the body
knows how
to hold some things
even when it doesn’t

have the angles
or hands
clean enough
for a child
of its own. And
I’m still
bleeding
and bleeding
and giving it away.

He proposed to me at Disney World
   and I loved him anyway.
He’s discovered his own brilliance at 22
   It’ll ruin him early and completely.
The Ouija Board said he’d die at 33,
   like Jesus he’s living fast and loose.
His sleep is a menagerie, a night-
   time sound machine, all owls and lions.
He drank 2 liters of gasoline
   and lived to tell it, used the fuel like sickness.
He punched his arm through a window because
   of the gasoline. *******-shaped scar tissue.
He is at least 9 feet tall
   and contrary as a tree limb.
He bought me diamonds and I lost them,
   he bought me more and ******* them into me.
He liked to clamp his lips around cold cat ears
   when he had no air conditioning.
His voice was an engine dying, choke and hold,
   growling for new air and old adages.
His name walks in front of him, announcing
   the second coming and the first going.
When he was sick or scared sick, he’d wrap in
   his sister’s pink scarf, only that one, only pink.
He told us to be strong like men but act like women
   so I wanted to be a doctor that always did the dishes.
His love was a closet too small for two peoples’ clothes
   so I packed it in boxes and burned it on the sidewalk.
His eyes harbor the whole world: bombs, bicuspids,
   A wink that could **** a small school of children.
He makes proverbs that tell the time
   not minutes though, but centuries.

She found a propeller in Portland
and carried it all the way to Eugene
under her arm, this western artifact.
Says she’ll turn it into a necklace,
use it to press through the crowds
of people reaching at her hems.
They hold the sidewalks down
as she passes, waiting like wildflowers.

On the first day, we are all just hydrogen and time. Filling these hands—
this one mirror angle, one small wrist. One afternoon’s picked-over bones.

The second day, I spun ten times. On the grass, sky turning
its cosmic ballet. The axis of the world, there in the front yard.

On the third day, a hangman’s rope of pantyhose. Easy choices
like stop, and get a ****** or don’t stop, and get a family.

On the fourth day, tick-a-tick-a-ticking. Since I learned
to tell time, cradling has been inescapable and immanent.

The fifth day, I wanted an ovipositor that would glide
and bed, know it’s way around a dark brood pouch.

Day six, caught stealing ancient definitions, stuffing my pockets
and shoes. I’m told zülf  is the wisp of hair falling over my eyebrow.

On the seventh day, I shelved myself and gave back one rib, honey
spines of snakes. What tiny handprints they’d leave if they had hands.