i would love to find you growing wild out by the woods

The Poisonwood Bible

Holy days do not matter.

It seems that Father needed

to counterfeit enthusiasm.

Four men performed

(there weren't any women.)

Father managed to kill God,

hopping into church, carrying

whole, dripping legs,

more or less our daily bread.

The women at the door

hold up our dinner -

we could get by.

never get to know

he'd sing, make me an angel that flies from montgomery, and then he drank himself to death

hey matt

if you're reading this

i really miss you

Self-Portrait on the Night Shift

Sharpened elbows push flesh
further into flesh, bags are flinging, folders falling-
I hear it like a muffled cry.

They leave in search of chamomile steeped
in water. They'll be too tired for sex,
kneading lotion into feet instead.

Calls are made, heads tilt sideways,
shoulder to phone, numbers pressed into pink cheeks;
I stay here. This is the night shift.

+

The revolving door falls asleep again,
wrapping itself in the sadness of hair and dust and caught scarves,
an endless stutter.

I abandon my duties. I steal three company
pens and find a couch and curl-
it doesn't last long, but sometimes I dream,

and usually it involves the small pony I rode
as a child. His name was Kirby, his eyes were
planets, and he loved me.

+

Dawn files in like a group of schoolchildren
who fidget out of line. I begin to droop just as
I unlock the doors, turning the key with proud exactness.

The doors yawn to life once again,
falling into themselves
over and over.

At home I'm rocking myself like a baby.
After locking and unlocking for hours,
I'm too tired for sex.

Whale Watch

[After a weird "why/because" assignment]

Why do I feel lost?
Why do I feel broken? Am I a sweater poorly sewn?
I am dropping berries, one by one,
into the front of my shirt - my billowy basket -
but they fall as I walk through the wet grass
and all I have to show
is the red ripe drool right near my hip.

The slugs are out in earnest
after a weeklong catharsis of rain.
They die in quiet piles, shrouded by steam.

"I'll call," you say, blowing into a coffee saucer,
fingering a packet of sugar, looking rather anxious to leave.

I hope you take some pictures
on the Provincetown boat.
Keep your camera safe from the saltwater.

At your departure,
there's a tickle of ecstasy in my throat,
like a beer coming back,
because we recognize ourselves in whales.

The Fossil Record of Prehistoric Gnawing

[After a recent headline]

Just as a small twist
of the hand unscrews a bolt,
the fossil record of prehistoric gnawing
is unlocked with a pirouetting fork.

(This is a century of sipping and slurping, of
dripping, of grazing. This is quite serious.)

Mimi pours olive oil on
the gnocchi she just doused with water,
obeying the French cookbook because
it's French. We cannot even smell
the garlic anymore.

Look carefully. My father is kneeling on
the pale green carpet, feeding raisins to the dogs.
Spencer clenches his jaw (which pulses like a blender)
each time the subject of school is raised. Haley
does not bother with introductions
and presses a pistachio into her mouth -
whole - and her lips will twist like a washing machine
exhausted with dampness for
endless
minutes.

We know what you will say: Something scientific,
a family dynamic.

It's insulting; I've seen the gnawing.
I have seen the wet raisins on the floor
and you have not. I'm still recovering
from the Caesar salad two Christmases back.

(All our jaws were quiet.
It all started with a fossil.)

five-day forecast

elmer's glue-all melting in the kitchen sink

i wish you'd keep talking.

i don't need time to think.

it's too fucking hot. the windows are sweating

and cursing and writhing,

and letting me see

that vibrancy lives beyond these sordid walls.

for now i am working my way out with awls.

3000 miles

maybe you're just wary

and maybe i am just naive,

but we'd never agree

North on Mills Avenue

We're all taking off our clothes. We're all sitting around talking about it over coffee. It's all very straightforward. The nurse has left for the day and she won't be coming back for months, she'll be watching television balancing a Mike's Hard on her stomach while her cats slowly starve underneath her bed. My best friends are waiting in car. Carlo Marx doesn't give a shit about any of this. He's got someplace to be.

Not everything has lost its novelty. There are a few parts of all of you I haven't discovered yet, right down to your collared necks, your hairpins, your odd striped sweaters. I don't want to know what you're reading or why you're covering your mouth like some sort of perpetual yawn, because there are more interesting things to see. See, we do it all over again with different names and maybe more or less facial hair, but nothing's really changed, and that's the way it's supposed to be.

The nurse left a note on the door, as she usually does. This time it reads: "WELL, WHERE ARE YOU? I DEMAND ANSWERS TOO." Her letters are huge and hurried.

Farewell to the most fucking bizarre year of my life. It ended nicely and I will start right up again. The bottles in the vending machine will never run out. I'm turning it all over like engines in my mind. I'm letting myself think about it for a little while.

ojmu

I'm so sick of my own writing and hearing myself speak...here's the coolest, smartest bitch I know.

red sunday

We bought a pound of them this morning,

maroon as if tipsy from wine, and now they disappear

one by one in a wooden salad bowl, stained and sweet.

It isn't dark yet. You're making this difficult for me.

How do these lips smile so slowly?

Your mouth moves like a washing machine, with

the idle chatter of a cherry. There are cigarette butts

on the floor and maybe one of them was yours -

maybe last year when we found ourselves small

in the summer grass, your lips were moving, quiet

and sweet. Maybe mine were moving too.

(how foolish. I never noticed you.)

-

you can ask me how i am

and i'll give you the response you want,

brief and smiling with my teeth.

but one of these days i'm going to grab your skinny shoulders and say,

"hey, i'm really fucking good. just ask olivia-jane, because she knows. you can ask matt, because when we're both spinning too fast we tell the other to stop. matt sings us funny songs and we laugh, and then he sings us heartbreak songs and we fall silent and look around and realize we love each other very much, and meanwhile matt's fingers don't stop moving. matt calls me and we are lemon yellow in anticipation and purple with hesitation and we talk about our crushes until the drowsy warm night nearly crushes me."

then i'll tell you about this boy i like

but we can save that for another time if you want.

i'll tell you about all these people i've fallen in love with,

the ones who love me, and though it would be rather

tedious to tell you their names, i will:

i am bright blue and

i owe nothing to you

for you, for me

And suppose it was merely

a drunken lullaby? Well then,

sing to me throaty and deep

with cold feet

and a stomach glazed with rum

(something off Loveless).

But if you can't lay me to rest

just yet, I am at your doorstep

looking for a vital sign -

find me quickly

Bees

The bees are out in earnest this morning,

failing to fly under the wet weight

of her first rainstorm.

They aren't black and yellow, as the picture-

books suggest, and they dart like Bok's vowels

through the bushes -

she floats with them, fuzzy-haired,

far from satisfied as the rain ignores her questions

of its origin.