Red Rocket

Hey pretty baby,
chrome-rimmed fast cars
in your dreams,
rocket-red
blazing fast
down the newborn highways.

Pretty baby in blue heels,
pink cardigan sweater
and a schoolgirl smile.
Sitting pretty on the plastic sofa,
waiting for her leather jacket,
greased hair.

Stiff blue denim and 
drive-in movies.
Fooling around in the
backseat of paradise.
Good little girl
on the Honor Roll.

Taillights streaking down the
freeway after curfew
on a Friday Free night.
Red lipstick smudging onto
teeth, from the smiling,
smudging on his t-shirt collar.
Dreaming of California days
like all the pretty faces always do.

Driving over the sands of Nevada
on fumes towards the motherland.
Westward pushing, pulling
passenger seat dreaming.
Radio sugar-pop
for the candied lips to sing
to, sunglasses and magazines
in the daytime.
Here, pretty baby,
with your man right-hand,
onto the coast.

Maps folded on her lap, feet on the dash,
slick-haired greaser behind the wheel.
Surfer life and beachy nights
for miss teen America.
Pearly whites to get the guy,
get the waves to smile back.
Waiting for the palm trees.

Blindsided by the sand storms
and heat waves,
nights on park benches,
help ads,
want ads
and the baby feet coming on.

Pretty baby with starry eyes,
hoping for paradise in 
the back seat of rocket-red
chrome fender with leather jackets
and sock hops. 

Blinded by the new neon and
shiny life,
skipping school
for cheap tricks,
pretty baby 
never got far.

Dust Bowl Days

The children left,
the chalk circle blowing away
with the dusty wind-
the dry streets evaporating into
dust devils. 

I was blown, a little ways off,
stopped by an embankment
of dirt. The last of the spring weeds
dried and entangled.
A mash of red earth and mud
made from a splash of well-water.
The soft pink palms 
rounded me out,
left to dry on the fencepost. 

Now I was lost,
and the sand of 1934
blew over me,
buried a few inches down,
nestled into sleep until
the woman discovered
in her childrens' sandbox,
as she hung out the wash.

The little red marble,
so old and crackled,
still stuck in the sand,
decades later. 

Baby Brother

I took his hands,
little and sweating.
Baby hands
with pink,
pliable nails.

Kneeling next to
a plastic desk,
five different colors
and a little red chair
too small for him,
the worldliness
caving his shoulders.

Hunched with
salt-tears,
and a sad, shaking mouth.
Baby brother,
my only one.

There are silver tethers
between us,
moorings of a ship
between our souls.

I let the electricity of
the past flow into him,
from my burning fingertips,
to his own small palms.

Genetics were of no 
help to us, but our 
heads lean together
over the desk
and we are the same,
still. And I remember
when he was wrapped
tight
and kept behind sterile glass
walls, away from me.
Crying in the maternity ward,
for the missing part of me.

I tell him,
it will be ok.
You are smart.
I squeeze his palms,
and let go.

Hipster-Hipped Sweetheart

Let me knit you a sweater,
let me push your
over across your desk
and let my whispering
trail across your thin chest.

Can you hear the
longing in my breath?
It is a rogue wave.
Somedays
I wake and am toppled
from starboard by
the crushing sound
of your laugh.

Don't be happy,
don't show me the whites
of your teeth, perfectly crooked,
the better to kiss you.
I will take your 
stubbly face into my 
shaking palms
and suck out your soul
through my closed teeth.
Steal the wind out of your
pink lungs.

Look at me a little longer,
with your lost-sea eyes,
the blue I will bury myself
in. Like the ancient Icarus,
I'm flying too high.
I'll fall into you,
my heart dead
from altitude.

I'm free falling from space,
stuck in a tailspin,
into the vastness
of you.
The impact will kill us both,
earthquake shockwaves,
I want to break your fingers.
Don't you play anymore music,
don't you play anymore chords.

I'm choking on my own breaths
stuck in limbo,
my body separate and drifting into you.

Slender-wristed angel,
my hipster-hipped baby,
the small of your back is
the lake I swim in,
the curve of your body
is my garden.

Let me tuck myself into you,
let's sleep real late,
and let me breathe in the
musk of your body.

But no no
no 
   no
      no.
Shattered
glass thrown from a
speeding car.
An old puzzle with
4 missing pieces.

You won't take my hand,
won't rub my back
or hold me for photos.
No,
we will stand feet apart
for the rest of our lives,
as I wake up breathless
and dying.
You will be that fluid in my lungs. 

With your name on my lips I
will always, always surrender.
Trying to sleep away
you.

There is no cure
for you, digging deep
into my skin,
you are the sin
I crave.

Farmhouse

The gravel driveway,
a mile long.
A white clapboard farmhouse
set back farther even 
than the end of the lane.
The fall-down ramshackle
read barn,
faded into "rustic".

The curtains blew out the windows,
screenless, to rest on the mildewing 
roof. It was grey when they built
the beauty, decades past.
Now it looks like a rooftop garden,
maples growing from the gutters.

It rains underneath the grand pines
everyday, dew dripping onto the beds
of fallen needles. Once upon
a long time ago
children made a fortress under the saplings,
a fitted bedsheet thrown across
the green bending necks.
Dirty overalls and the sounds of 
chickens in the yard.

The wishing for a lemonade stand,
but the isolation too much to overcome.
Little calloused hands and red-ribboned
pigtails. Barefeet hoeing in the garden. 

Running through green stalks of corn,
yet to tassel out. Running until sometimes
they got lost, turning and turning in the
afternoon sun. 

Somedays running away into the fields
to catch a cat nap,
to let their little limbs rest from hauling straw
into the lofts. From watering down the sweating cows.

The long porch, shaded from the evening glare
where they sat with red popsicles painting their
downy mouths. A brother and sister pair
who had only each other,
a mother with chicken feed 
sack dresses, wanting another baby
in this drought. 
And the father who had no reserves in
the use of his belt across the backs
of sunburnt thighs. 

The curtains waver like lungs now,
the edges wet and moldering.
The screen door 
swings ajar in the sad winds
of a foggy spring.
The children grew up
and left,
or tried to grow up.

They were crooked stalks,
and the little girl ran away in a 
blue rusted out pick-up,
16 and distended with baby.

The boy caught a late greyhound
out of Iowa towards
the ocean to test his luck
on a boat at sea.
The merchant marine
called to him.

The house is greying
and the chickens have died
or pecked their way through the
fencing.

Lying in the parlor,
the threadbare rugs
and the smell of mothballs.
The beds neatly made,
the floorboards scattered with dust.

One day the ambulance ran itself right down the 
winding lane
into the soybeans
to find two,
burnt and staring
into the sun
for something that would never come home.

Dust

Welcome to the world,
we'll carry you through until
the next stop.

Ruddy-cheeked and wailing,
from one place to another,
a bright light
on both ends of a wormhole.

Spitting you out into the
cosmos in 80,
maybe 90 earth years.

It will be a great journey,
there will be fireworks,
and roses in the summer.
The birthdays will come,
and you will learn 
what the moon is made of.

Hint: It is not cheese.

And suddenly, you won't 
even remember, your hands
will be brittle,
your eyesight failing,
you will watch birds at the windowsill
for hours.
People will cease to visit.

And so comes the celestial tide,
open-armed to take you
and place you in the next place
you are needed.

Dust to dust,
we are all made of the same
things, pieces of each other
over and over.

The stars part for you.
The nebulas nod their heads
towards you as you are 
carried,
and maybe this time
you will be a tree,
or a little baby
or maybe you
will become a constellation.

A planetary body,
a bright and roving 
comet.

8 pm Friday Night

I'm out with my lesbian friend,
it's cold and there
should be cigarettes
to hold between our teeth.

There are strip malls,
the horizon of suburbia,
the orange halo glowing in the
November chill.
We drove away from there,
hoping to get farther away than
was possible. 

Strip malls and a sex store.
She is fifteen
but it doesn't matter
because lying through your teeth
is training from the second grade upward.
So we don't need ID
are left to be anonymous 
in a white walled store
with red neon in the window.

Below the counter
are condoms lined up like 
candy, bright latex colors
glittering under dirty fluorescents.
This is empowerment.

The thick smell of rubber,
walls lined with candy colored
phalluses- two steps from
suburbia and I am exercising
my womanhood,
weighing vibrations in my hand.

Christmas music on the dim speakers
raining down on our innocent heads,
plunk plunk plunk
knocking our halos askew,
bending the cheap metal coat hanger
headbands.

We are objectifying ourselves,
shopping the racks of lacy clothes
sewn to please the eyes of men.
As men on their way home stop
in and stand in the room full of
sin, and sad women. 
Their hands grazing
with predatory skill
the slick DVD covers
on sale.
3 for $20.

We meander the aisles twice
and three times.
Confusion under the white lights,
brighter than they should be.

This should be a dark corner of the
universe, shying away
from the highway,
no big sign
"ADULT".
No, it is simpler, clean and tidy.
The cashier asks us where
we go to high school.

I can't bring myself over
to lie, fingering plastic square
packaging, sliding around
latex in between my fingers
as I tell her the truth.

We stand looking at the wall of
dildos. She is not even legal.
She says she couldn't sleep with blondes,
so I'm safe.
Which is funny, I'd never even thought
of it that way.
Instead I am wondering
why these cyberskin penises
are so big.

We are not objectifying ourselves,
comparing the width of these
fake dicks to our thin forearms.
Is this what porn is supposed to be?

Or is this poetry 
in the lowest form,
are the flavored condoms supposed
to be allusions,
and am I missing the theme hiding
behind negliges? 

My palms don't sweat,
because I don't have a name here.
Under the humming lights we are nameless
women, not girls with shaking hands.
We discuss with poise the
idea of buying.

She tells me I'm her new hero,
exercising my rights of womanhood
outside the cinderblock building 
where I can let my hands wander free
without shame.

No regrets
because I am empowered,
I am a woman with clarity,
epiphany.

Gas Range

I have 
so many
regrets.

I didn't walk into the
Hudson,
drift down
and hear the cars beneath me. 
I didn't swallow enough to drown
and stay there.

I never bought flowers,
never took them back into
the apartment,
for the pretty vase on the table.

Never cooked like I promised.

I haven't yet lived long enough.

My fingers bled under the twisting
of chicken wire,
dusty overalls and barefeet.
Mending fences.

Burnt bridges
were my calling card,
left ashes on the coffee table
for you to find.

Left cracker crumbs in bed for you
to sleep on.
Hoping they might burrow under
your skin.

Leaving the gas on,
the apartment stinking up,
I wanted you to light a match.
Lend flame to your Camel.
Test me, I quiz well.

I regret so many attempts.

Used your toothbrush after
coming in from the bar.
The tab on your card.
I told you to 
take it easy,
lie back down.

I opened the windows,
slept naked in December
to spite you,
to catch the flu and
show you.

I know how, too.

I have 
so many
regrets.

Why couldn't I be 
the one with blonde hair
and belted waistlines.

Instead, the one holding matches under your nose.
Can you smell that?

Sleeper

She took his hand, all limp with sleep, and wrapped it across her waist. His eyes fluttered beneath their lids, REM sleep under way. She felt his dreams within the pulse of his slight wrist. Delicately laced with the fading scars of boyhood, the blue-hued veins carried on. What was he dreaming? Was she there, somewhere in his subconscious, stroking his forehead or singing radio songs? He was bigger then her, but the urge to sing lullabies was overwhelming, and rose in her throat until they softly spilled over in frothy Russian. Lullabies worked all on ages, somehow the calm was never antiquated, the charm never outgrown. The cars on the street below made a somber harmony, never ceasing in their rumble over the potholed avenues. Buses crawling like centipedes, glowing and empty on the lost weeknight. Sirens started many blocks away, echoing off the buildings and fire escapes for the entire length of Manhattan. Dissolving into the song of old, she drifted temporarily between sleep and wakefulness, a blissful loss of body. The weight of his hand not enough to keep her down, and she watched their little breathing bodies from the ceiling. A balloon for a few suspended moments, before a tremor in his fingers shook her into this world, and back into this bed. The sheets were cool to the touch, the wind still settling into them for the night- a black cat's small feet weaving their way between their bodies. Despite the calm, she shook like sails in a storm. The song had drifted away, with a yawn, and was now out roaming the corner stores. There was not enough here yet to sleep, but too much yet, so that her eyelids hung heavy. Was this the end? Always, there was a close point when the green traffic light reflected onto the bedroom walls, and was this the omen she needed? Green- good, steady, go. She held his tepid hand, tracing the way he lived with her pale bone fingers. Some things have no end. Like the mirrors lining the walls behind the bakery counter, they never ended, desserts lined up forever, upon each other. You could go there and drink coffee and lose yourself in the endless mirrors. This was sweet enough, the spring night with new, verdant leaves coming to being on the trees in all the parks. This, his thin wrist in her trembling fingers, scars, tattoo up the arm. Her own ratted friendship bracelets, clinging into the new days- mementos from the old life. He would twist them as they sat on the subway, coming home each night. This was different, the way he slept with abandon, the way she could sing to him, he didn't wake and stare at her in dreamy confusion. He let the fine lines of his past show, wasn't shy in letting her find the path he'd wandered to her upon. She would let her spider veins grow in, and he would let his scars fade, and they would still stand at the sink to wash dishes every evening. This much she felt confident in. In the same way the cars never stopped rattling over the manholes and trash of the streets, so they would never have to sleep apart. The green traffic lights soothed her, and the ancient Russian song came again into her lungs, whispering out and entangling in his hair. This was the end- of searching. And now, there was enough- there was the beautiful breeze of the early morning, the promise of longer days. There was the promise of his knee knocking hers as the subway clambered through the dark. The promise of soap suds in the sink and enough dishes for two people. Two pairs of shoes resting by the door. She stopped fighting, and the in-between space feathered out. Somewhere, Sirens wailed a melody like waves. 

Alligators

The news reporter said
Venice had never flooded
so badly,
I laughed,
as tourists waded
through the canal-filled city.

They said
things were never that bad.
The kettle won't boil
if you watch,
the world won't burn if
you're vigilant.

I kept the vigil for the
casket, required two days
in the southern heat,
never leaving,
the blessed man with
the failed heart.

Still with bruised constellations
bearing down into my back.
Lemonade sweating,
leaving rings upon the mahogany.

Leftover, crusting cakes
ravaged by flies
and the biddies with 
funeral hats layered
all to kingdom come.

Slapping my wrists
for speaking ill of the dead.
Lying by the piano,
waiting to be played.
As though this one was
ascended above our heads,
hovering as he was wont to do,
in this realm.
In this house.

Wax trailing down the
good silver,
polished for nobody to see,
in honor of closed eyes.
Keeping the hours,
burning at both ends,
my hands twisted with fury.

Owls out in the swamps,
river reeds singing him down the
stream, where he belonged,
within the primeval depths of
his beloved.

Out along the rows of tobacco,
blistering with malcontent,
drought sprang up in his illness,
bedridden with crops his signifier.

Here, on knees, melding to the
whorls in the victorian floorboards,
the plantation home,
of paintings and scorn.

Head hung low in sung prayer,
pearls collecting sweat under
the neckline of kept secrets.

Soft, sweet hymns
to the maker of creation,
daddy, go 
on to hell.

Clinic

There were babies in her dreams,
dressed in pink frilly things,
babies with rounded,
glossy cheecks
like greasy magazine pages.

On waiting room tables
with cut-off addresses
to shield whoever's behind
the counter, taking
my names and my
insurance,
assurance for all yet to 
come.

She is in pink plastic,
latex gloves under 
telescopic lights,
arena lighting and subway
tiles scrubbed raw
each morning with
bleach.

Mildewed ammonia 
hangs stale in the air,
babies, like she'd wanted
since girlhood,
with pretty curls
and cherry lips.

Wood=paneled walls
and dusty fake palms,
waiting for the door
and shuffle,
maybe even a white coat.
Maybe this won't be so bad.

Not enough to show her,
baby in her dreams
leaving,
Out the door
without even a marker.

No "Baby"
fromt he old days,
aged 21 days.

No pink frills,
and the dreams came in rogue waves.

Honey Honey, Sparrow

Darling
darling rip
open your chest
and let her free,
dear little sparrow
in your rib cage.

Sweet and small
and hiccuping from
your throat.

Let her out,
honey dearest.
I can hear her slowly dying,
you know why?

Dear child she can't breathe
in the space between
drinking and singing.

Stop, stop
with the amber cold
down onto her 
limpid feathers,
poor thing can't even
stretch her weary wings.

She's been cooped up 
all along inside,
since you sang under the willows
as a little one,
down by the ponds
she sang clear.

Oh honey,
let her go unchained,
without the shredded pieces of sky
you swallow up in little rounds,
her heart can't take this
much longer.

Feel her stir,
in the sleeping hours,
fluttering at your adam's apple.
You remember faintly her 
tune and the sunshine
of the years gone by.

Let her leap about
the nightstand,
whisk her away
from the bottles overturned
on the writing desk.
She will hop off the windowsill
and out into the night
to just breathe,
away from your 
cracked and scarring ribs.

Ghosts

The ghosts come in
in the winter,
and keep the place cold.
I've learned,
they sleep under the creaking
floorboards.
In the empty kitchen
cabinets.

I offer tea,
when they throw the
porcelain teapot
down onto 
the table.

You learn,
one winter at a time.
They'll come and open the
windows to the snowy
nights.

Small Quivers

Lie on my chest,
curled like a heavy
cat. 
A rock in my throat,
trying too hard to 
swallow.
Cronus knows what I mean-
you were never here.

The phantom pains,
with pangs of guilt
over all the dreams 
wasted on your image.
The nights I could've spent
sleeping better.
Amputated limbs,
part of existence.
We will lose them,
hoping to grow them back.

That hour of sleep
we gain in the winter-
you are hiding in it,
never truly there.
As we sleep through 
the time changing.
Some construct
to make us feel secure
and in charge.

I'm trying to put
my foot down.

The time you shouted,
threw a plate on the floor.
It never happened,
but the shards stuck in the 
bottoms of my feet
once you'd left.
Gliding away
with soapy dishpan hands.

Birthday party aftermaths,
in which we cry over time passing,
dab at our puffy eyes
with papery tissues,
clawing at the invisible.
I wrapped my arms around
your shadow
and slept with your breathe
on my neck.