They plant gardens in flattened patches
–where you used to lay like a handmade quilt–
and send you sweating sacks of overripe fruit

They attend the funerals of strangers
and weep openly against dark wool shoulders
of other lovers, all of them lost or losing

They learn inertia in seven languages
and play their voices back on tape
until interpretation wears to static

They build intricate tangles
just so they can practice at unknotting

They seek like missiles toward the heat
of your present happiness
snub nosed and bullet straight

They can’t leave well enough alone
They have so much to talk about
Finally, they have so much they want to say

When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. They would carry on as if changing the locks was a game all parents played with their oldest child, to trick them into resiliency. They let my little sister have my bedroom one day while I was at school, to make room for the new baby that was on the way. “This house is only big enough for two daughters,” my father told me with a shrug. At night I would sneak in and hide under my old bed, and when my parents would come to tuck my sister in for the night, I’d mouth along the words as they read her my favorite bedtime story. My father tells everyone he has two daughters, their names are Pride and Joy. Occasionally I’ll bump into him in the supermarket, both of us perusing the citrus aisle, and though he can’t remember me, his eyes will linger on my face just long enough to make us both uncomfortable.

My body is an ever-changing clock—
spastic springs and gears never settling,
never keeping proper time.
Bodies carry bodies in pockets, on chains
like skin-scented heirlooms. When my grandmother
died, she left me her first kiss, the ticking sound
of summer asphalt and peach fuzzed legs.
I see my mother’s handwriting on the chart beside
my bed: Sarita has always been a dramatic child.
Her face gathers humidity like tears trapped behind glass.
Dr. Winnicki advises me to rest, but never to fall asleep,
while he looks for cures in different time zones.
His clock is all bent and rusty snow, melting into
creeks where salmon spawn alcoholic fishermen.
Clocks line up on barstools in Wuuhstah,
“Ayuh yoos, haws abouwda beeah?”
Nicotine-stained vowels, romancing beers like wives.
Before becoming wives, girls sway to the music,
twirl their skirts like love. Their pink and red fingernails
tap out the seconds between handsome wristbands.
Tell me what you’re really thinking…I don’t want to know.
Nurse Alma sees too many words in my future, where she says
nuts chase the squirrels, and clocks are ever-changing bodies.

I do not love you–except because I love you,
I’ve never loved another before you.
A verb–to love–subject with no object:
I loved my love not knowing how to love.

Love is modified by what isn’t known
and dangles, suspended in the lack like
silence distributing its weight over
miles between driver and passenger seats.

You don’t know how to love, object tells subject.
How many times can a heart bear the words
before relinquishing its grammar?

Lov-ing, Lov-ed, improperly assigned
muddles significance like question marks–
tentatively asking, “Do you love me?”

(first line borrowed from one of Neruda’s love sonnets)

Using her toes like finely tuned weapons
she moves on the balls of her feet,
knowing the choreography by heart.
Like hidden halves of ivory keys
she taps out the chords that
reverberate and swell.

His eyes trace her calves
like the roads on a hand-drawn map.
She moves to the pool’s edge and dips
her left foot in, skimming it through
the water’s surface like a weighted
teaspoon.

Her insides are a nest of electric
wasps noiselessly stinging and generating
the heat that flushes her cheeks.
She waits, her back turned, for him
to fill the space
just as he waits for her to turn
back and finally meet his gaze.

I took pen to paper
Wrote down what I had to say
My hopes, my fears, my thoughts and dreams
My heart and soul neatly punctuated and grammatically correct

I thought you might be interested so I sent it your way
No return address, no second guess
The words hold more meaning after they’ve traveled the miles
From one end of the country to the other
Not the fibers and wires of the telephone line
With the pauses and sighs that don’t express but confuse

Each period, a definitive statement
A new paragraph, a new sentiment
But now I can’t remember how I signed
With Love
Much Love
All My Love?
Those one or two words tacked on the front make the biggest difference

You should receive it pretty soon
You don’t know when it’s coming but there it will be
Unless a problem has transpired
Through rain and sleet and snow
The letter lost its way or even worse
The envelope tore and gaped
And all the points I tried to make came tumbling out
Faded and anonymous somewhere in the middle of us

If I could have I would have sealed myself inside that envelope
I did my best, even still
You won’t see me smile or catch my tone when you unfold the paper
The words aren’t an embrace or even a stare
No questions will be answered
No gratification received
But keep in touch
And paint me a picture of what I’m missing
Across the miles, I’ll do my best to help you remember me

Posturning

Girls trying so hard

and boys pretending not to

try at all

No women or men

but children

posturing

pretending

trying on personalities like

a mother’s 4-inch heels or a father’s striped silk tie

molding themselves in play-doh

life size re-creations

of the people they want to be -

the people they think they are

April 19, 2008

My teacher can’t read Bukowski—
The lines in his poems are a bathroom with
a stained toilet seat and dead wasps behind the sink.
Open-mouthed musicians with
yellow fingertips and sour breath.

I can’t go to the drive-thru car wash and
watch soapy water pound my windshield.
I can’t use green shampoo that smells of
cheap cologne and is meant for people with dandruff.
I can’t accept a gift when the giver tells me,
No strings attached as I untie the bow.
I can’t date a man who thinks Docksiders and
white athletic socks are a suitable combination.

My teacher gets her car washed without
ever unbuckling her seatbelt.
She accepts gifts freely and writes brief
thank you notes on cards she buys at the drug store.
Green shampoo doesn’t bother her
as long as it makes her hair shine.
Footwear isn’t an important factor for her
when it comes to choosing a mate.

Bukowski is my favorite poet—
his words always mean what they say.
If he was there when I brought home
report cards, all C- and D, he would have
smiled and said only, Don’t try.
Then he’d turn back to his broken down typewriter
and drain his last sip of red wine.

There was a girl who ate nothing but butterfly wings for an entire year. Monarchs were best, like astronaut ice cream. Moths were easier to come by, but tasted like church pews.

The girl caught her meals in baby food jars and peeled wings like artichoke leaves. She let them dissolve on her tongue until all the colors turned to brown.

After a year and a day, the girl came down with a horrible sickness. She vomited incandescence, the smell of rotten tea bags. Her mother and father were worried and begged her to eat normal things like trout fondue. The girl refused.

The girl locked herself in her room and lined her windowsill with jars. She called out to the butterflies with a song in a language no one else could hear. At the end of the day, her belly was full and her carpet was strewn with wingless bodies all resembling guinea pig turds, but shinier.

A woman constructed a hammock out of candy wrappers. She’d lie on it, look up at the stars, and wonder, “Why does the sky have so many wrinkles?”

She emptied all her lotions into a pot on the stove. Mixed in Brazil nuts for richness and beetle shells for shine. She heated the whole mixture until it pulsed and whistled like a neon sign.

The woman stared at her husband until he left the room. He muttered the word Desolate under his breath. She scooped his chewed fingernails from the table with a soup ladle and sprinkled them over the pot.

In bed that night she slipped out of her husband’s grasp. In her absence she left a pillowcase stuffed with warm cream cheese.
The woman climbed a stepladder out on the porch. Her knees wobbled under the weight of her heavy pot. With her fingers she scooped and smeared the mixture across the sky’s crows feet and laugh lines, everything smelling of tire rubber and mosquitoes.