TRANSPARENT FRIENDS POSE AGAINST THE MONUMENT

I fell asleep planning boots to march in: zippers at the toes. I fell sleep to the shape of the oval alarm clock, tangerine still bright through the black. Throughout the course of the day, sweat changes scent. I’ve read books where fists are pounding down the house walls but in my neighborhood there is a silence as sober as clouds. You rode the subway downtown with the sign in your lap. On the way home, high school kids were folding pamphlets into paper airplanes. 

THE CHILDREN SWING IN ALL DIRECTIONS (COME OUT AND PLAY)

Take any square inch and narrow in to where there are monsters, to where there are reductions, to where there are cartoon reckonings of your love in a house coat, and a self-portrait hovering high up in the canvas corner, making shadows with wingspan. Telescope to a colorful time where dad fell asleep in the sand and all the screaming sounded safe in sunshine. 

TRAVEL JEEP PARKED IN TALL GRASS

You took him on adventures. You paid money for them, but still, they were adventures. Skimming the white water. Gathering round the ranch donut.

I am not her, but I feel akin: girl with the massive gum bubble growing out of boredom. I blow more air into it, sure that it will burst. Pink, purple, sour green. I had dreams about the ship titanic, and a floral scent. A red stamp proved to me my best friend was dead. The grief was mostly frantic.

Girl at her job.

 I had dreams about reservations of parties of six or more. I had dreams about Okanogan. I woke up with a pain in my throat, symptom of running all night for things without a price. I work for free for lemons, ice, napkins, straws. Flash rock on to Paul in his usual seat. Grimace and shriek. Shimmy into a bar stool. Carve my glare into an icicle.

Those clouds were not painting clouds or candy clouds or food fight clouds. In foreign contexts you cannot categorize the clouds the same. I wake up and think I am in the bathtub. I wake up and dream that I am dreaming, somewhere in some backseat, someone taking me somewhere.

WOMEN WAIT IN THE SCHOOLROOM

I could bawl and bawl just thinking of the ankles, the birds, the electric organ soundtrack to the imagined mornings, and the sunshine, it must have been fierce and cubist, teasing through the station wagon’s windows onto their faces..

Did the light gold eye shadow spread easy over the lid, or did you need a special set of tools? How many purses were there to choose from? Who was the easiest to wrangle out of bed? Who finished their toast?

On the beach I am surrounded. A pregnant girl with a face like a pony dips her Roman feet into the lake; her stripes contain her belly – perfect orb –  leader of everything. They are speaking Portuguese, they are distributing snacks, they are waiting for a baby to come.

After you left them in the carpet room, where did you go, how did you occupy your granted hours? Rubber wheels on linoleum. A slew of other women passing by. The micro click of the second hand as the plants kept growing.

I could bawl and bawl. This is one of my favorite songs. But I like rock music. My bare feet are planted on the rainbow fringe and I am forgetting to make a movie out of it in my head.  Turquoise, red and cream. Children and their women. Women and their children. 

MAN ACROSS THE COBBLESTONE

Write the title out, the words as pure as steam. This will be an okay abstract ode. In and out flickers, like in Lake Saranac, some solo feeling of wading through other people’s objects, and now the boy you flash flood loved is in love with a bigger girl, a girl with her own littler girl, named for the Lion King and screaming down a backyard waterslide.

A letter or a poem? An explanation, or a trailing tangent? I left the burner on. Cliché is an ingredient in the psychology I poke and prod. Herbal gloss that makes the pain diluted. Alanna making a U turn and we were talking, talking, until we realized we were driving, driving two hours in the wrong direction. Rise to turn the burner off. Strain the grain out from the coffee, black like a lake isn’t but seems.

I inherited her angle device. I inherited a lot. Man juts his leg cross the cobblestone, man wears tank top, man has a whole life that is a whole mystery to her then to me now and I’ll loop-de-loop more get-off dream equations to any barfly who’ll listen -  no, not any, I’m lying again. The two Rainier Beach girls testing out the rich white bar that has no money in the bank. They are peacocks I am pigeon. They have baroque gothic script up and down their fore arms, I have jam on my knee. They have me take their picture again, again, again. None are right but they thank me anyways.

Cole made a meal at an establishment’s table with foods from another establishment because that is one of his trademarks. Cole is a bag lady and a tramp. Cole is a vixen hermaphrodite. He is a small boy saving chocolates so his mother won’t die. He is a believer in other people. He is a believer, crying into the steering wheel outside of the Laundromat while the city cries rain. We are reckless and hateful on the boring roads looking for a store with a blender. Back home I am just normal.

Did you let yourself get like that, Nonnie? Yes but different I’m guessing. Documenting plant life in the spiral bound. I won’t try and make it romantic. If I had been older, wiser while you were living I would have worn perfume, I would have shown you how funny I can be sometimes. Shaking talons in and out of the pocketbook. Strong nail beds. Broken nails are my motif. 

OLD FRIEND

you know that flower is named love-in-a-mist

you know that’s my one and only party trick,

no, I’m lying, I’ve got  tons

and we were both around

when they were worse,

and I employed them more –

the problem with recovery is

it’s harder than ever

to tell when you’re being

a jerk

I worry about that

SAVE ME A PLACE

Is it fair or unfair

cruel, or not

sometimes instinct 

gets traded

for circumstance

If I was wild, in love

the sheets and dust and dishes

would not matter

I'd be shaking

I'd be myself

I'd be the tangerine neon

against the powder hue,

of a blue sky

winking

ALL MY FRIENDS

all my friends are poets

all my friends are geniuses 

of love

her sweatshirt smells like 

comfort, milk, and chlorine

he's made of hair and breath,

regret and coolant

all my friends are poets

all my friends are geniuses 

of love

IN MEMORY OF BUTCH/ THE THIRD SOUND

No song is ever really good enough for love - I didn't really know the man,  but I know the marks he's made. Small pencil onto paper, small dash into the air, thumb print deep into the hearts of men and women who make sound. 

My father's friends are insects of business crossing New York City crosswalks, meeting on New York City corners, waiting in cafes. My father is a boy, bashful at the keys - no one will ever know that secret as I do - he is crying alone in some garage for everything that is beautiful.

You bring in the drums, you bring in the bells, you shake the metal, you set out foods across the table, the horns talk like birds, every metaphor is culled, again, this is the language - 

We un-ceremonial people who choose to make movements, who choose to pause, for peace, and honor, and misery, all larger than we think, all larger than we are built to bear. Every angel-person a composite of their tastes, mistakes, the moments they were captured.

You bring in the thumping, and then the wailing saw, and then the shakes, and then the voice, the looping bass, like a reminder. The little carrots, the dip, the pickles, and samosas.

Like my father I sometimes cry when alone and making things, not always believing in the things I make - but it is my way of shaking out the nectar, spreading out the pollen - this world needs beauty, beauty and sound - for there is knowledge in a sound that builds over time, ushering in whimpers, a veil that teases the room, skimming the linoleum, and all the dustball planks. 

All you birds darting through the crawl space - teach me how to make that racket. This is my love letter to an itching need to call back, and back, to bark, wade through myself, the little girl in braids, rolling in the travel quilt, swallowing in time, dark beneath piano-shade.

It is a painful ignorance, to hold in all the sound. One day I will burst, am bursting - could they ever know the volume of my bursting - it will waver like loons on the lake night, it will find your hospital room, it will join the buzz of the machines, shake against that other wave, and make a sound, a third. 

SENTENCES FOR MOVING ON

Eventually you will have it 

The palm-sized kernel 

of closure and proof

for we can overcome, and do

as violent-impossible 

as it may seem

that nose, those eyes 

that hypnotized

from blink to blank, 

they let go 

their victims, drop them 

from suspension, 

lift out from 

tidal turbulence 

and back into 

a life

far outside the context 

of skin and scent and secret

there is hurt - 

and disappointment, too

for the rush just dwindles

to a  stain 

of what was once

a spill

POWER BONES

In the bakery 

there are lots 

of tiny girls 

and today

at the park 

it was boys 

on pedal-less bikes 

scuffing the ground 

to go and go 

last night was the party 

we had all been 

talking about

I stood in my blazer 

for seven hours

but can't remember 

a thing I said

some people walk fast 
when they leave their jobs

I take hours, melting 

into the barstools

but I don't believe in 
broken people

I know there is 

a lot of power 

in every type 

of bone

ON YOUR OWN

I am following you at a distance through the fields, I am giving you a distance, my gift to you, as you traverse and I find time to fill. Time is the largest thing that looms between, but you nod as I twirl the grass and let it fall back into the dirt, you say you’d never swim here, it’s just a big frog pond, and I tell you about swimming this afternoon where the muck swallowed my knees, and one funny guy said he felt a skull with his foot, and so we all tried to skim the surface and evade the silt.

You are much more reasonable with distance than I predicted, you are none of my suspicions. You are your mother’s jeep, you are half empty iced tea bottles bobbing along in the back seat, those bottles could be linked by a cord and hung like lights, we could decorate a world in all the debris, look I would say, as if I’d shown you the trick of beauty, the girl-touch of making it all into something lovely, but no I would know, you had all the materials on your own, proud I would feel, though that is a cheap thing too.

TUMBLR

Please excuse the associations, my brother showed some teenage blogs to me, culled photos of shoulder blades and twilight fashions, all the right things retro – emo collages, frozen features, waifs twisted in the sheets – 

See I’ve arranged the desk, messy and just so, daffodils and some pictures of my family, silver scissors, select papers

I'm so good at this type of curation, I've been doing it
forever

THE NEAR DEATH OF CAPTAIN COOK/REALITY VERBATIM/JULY 6, 2012

You go to dead people’s houses every Friday looking for Eames chairs.

Oh, my ex-girlfriend was a chair specialist, the top scholar in her field. 

We start off trying to make mojitos - but then I’m just drinking - jack and lemonade, under a yellow moon. 
Then all my skin is warm. 
My neighbor is a perfect swimmer, missing her much younger boyfriend, 
more and more each day. 

Then I think I’ve passed some critical point. 

How many bug bites can a body of my dimensions reasonably hold? 

How many conversation like this - 

I’d like to rewrite the arrangement. From now on my job is mostly about sunbathing. 

From now on,  we only agree to see each other so long as we’re really cracking up.

Okay?

My dad sits in the back alone. The magic girl puts her hand on his chest to thank a compliment.

Next door there are grunts and growls. 
Tomorrow is the auction. 
My life is writhing like water, chained and contained by the old beach rope.  

ON THE ROOF

The man yawned on the 2 train 

and I tried to thread back 

whatever it was 

you were - 

crammed together friends theory

it kept us in heated shelves, 

and we paid good money 

to be there, to show our teeth 

to the night

on the roof, you confessed

no I did not learn anything, but - 

that's when and where we are similar

big bright joyous naiveté 

in the face of changes

quivering grins prompted by a candy secret

the sky got pink, a heavy trick

pink like it only does/can 

in this city

of so much

the floodlights of tasteless love 

techno is made by aliens

and computers are our alien hearts

we flirt through data, learning to love 

or remember, at least

another, another world

and then we talked of something actual

you put your head against your eyes

people have died 

and are dying

but everyone has this

I walked away 

towards the train

each stride asking the next 

never to forget

I'VE TASTED COLORS THOUGH

I'm telling you, those sun stripes are called the glories,
that small car is painted perfect mint,
and all these doors are playing off the hues
of others that come before.

Radical hedges,
ornamental screen doors,
you know, some driveways
could be swimming pools.

Who knew about this place:
petroleum pipeline that mirrors
the exit course of airplanes as they ascend,
blanketed in green, a place for us to walk.

Sometimes patterns exist
to cushion conversation,
others are so poignant
that they bite.

Then we come to a house
that turns out to be a temple,
bright orange and violet
rising from the woods.

THE LOVE SLOTH HAS TAKEN OVER

Lying here in the house full of cloth
my brain is not
the primary graph
on affection

the man who sold us the chairs
had earrings and sons
he thought we were charming
struggling with the car all over his driveway

the fridge makes a sound like
a band i'd like,
i'd like to like
more bands

darting through the hot broth
are flashes of red
I stir in the honey
with a fork

PARADE

We are walking down Lark street in Albany, state capital city, with its stained glass brownstones lining the green tulip park, concentric circles that bleed out, morph to skinnier row houses outward, away from that architecture of esteem,  brick to wood, more people slumped, strewn to hot days, hot nights.

We are walking down Lark Street with sandwiches and coffees. Every man who passes  looks. One has no teeth and a black t-shirt with yellow print: SHOW ME THE HONEY.


Where Lark meets Central the Memorial Day Parade is coming. We hear it, approaching like low thunder. Where the two streets cross, we meet head on.


Just the white boys marching. Vietnam. Korea. Civil War. Boy Scouts. Uniforms of different colors, different horns, guns, hats. Different fights. Different songs. Different orders. Left, right, left.


And then, in back, with a gap between the last of the war boys and the first of the new noise, the neighborhoods spill out in their humanity and their harmony, all fists and shouts, yelling loud intention.


It’s so hot out. One woman holds her toddler by the waist to her hip. He is released, his back flops, bouncing to her march.


On the sidelines people slump and smile and wave their little flags. Part solidarity part cooling effect.

On the sidelines it’s all children and women and brown skin. We are watching, close and distracted.


The sun beats onto our surfaces. The city is sitting there like a waistline, can’t help it, blatant floater between that deep pine wildness above its belt, the tangled concrete metropolis below.


One leader tosses skittles to the crowd. The packages hit the ground. We reach for them, push them around with our shoes. 

NOW CONFESS EVERYTHING

Now confess
everything,
the cats in my dreams
are the colors of
dyed roses
and kitchen rugs,
they are the colors
of all repulsive places,
those steep-step
mornings
where poems
might happen

LIVING ALONE

I put tape over 

what might show

in the mirror  my back 

a snake

imagine the universe, 

a ghost - 

no living name for 

the quake of all 

who've seen me 

be