Bunnies

Dürer's engraved rabbits
have frosted glass cousins
on the shower doors
of the old house.
Their ears laid back,
and we can't ever tell
why,
and as the days change
the expression 
in their clear
eyes 
changes too.

Desert Rose

That is how it feels
to see the the last tumbleweed
roll on over
the highway
before the
storm comes.

Thick clouds
higher than the mesas
and smelling
sweet,
of promise.

The cactus flowers
blooming scarlet
with the dwarf mice
scurrying inside.
The scratching sound
fo little feet
pattering the dusted
roads.

Summer squall comes on
and paints the lone
highway red with 
dust, 

and that is how it feels 
for the heavens to kiss
the earth all afternoon.

Hey You

Bang
Bang
Bang

the sound of a 
door being kicked in.

the sound of shots
fired.

Bang
Bang 
Bang

water dripping
from the 
faucet.

My heart pounding
in its cage.

Bang
Bang 
Bang

the clock striking three.

deafening thump
of footsteps.

[not feeling this, but whatever, write til you write well.]

Fire

One night, long into January and long into the night's darkness, a young girl sat upright in her twin bed. Her pink telephone slept on the bedside table, and her stuffed bears and kitties slumbered in their places, shoved under pillows and sprawling on the floor. But this little wisp of a girl could not bring herself to sleep, having beckoned the Sandman, having had two tall glasses of warm milk, but to no avail. Her flannel nightgown bunched up around her thighs as she slumped against her pillows, her little girl hands wringing themselves in worry. But what does such a little child have to worry over? Tears welled in her eyes, and she wanted to go and  crawl into bed with her mother and father, but she knew they were sleeping. She oughtn't bother them, and she knew this, but this thin bed wasn't right. This wallpaper was all wrong, the roses wound the wrong way, and this kitty's fur was orange, not grey. The pillows were stiff and ugly and her night gown itched at her belly. All of this was wrong and so she began to cry in earnest, her little limbs shaking and hunched. 

And so this little girl had much to cry about. Her little bedroom was not really her own, only the charred pink telephone and the shredded baby blanket at her feet belong to this child. She wept with bitter tears and a living nightmare of bright flames licking up her beautiful white house. Nights ago, how many she could not count, she woke with a choking smell blanketing her lungs and stinging at her squinting eyes. In school each year they taught the children how to escape from a burning house, but how can a sleepy child know for sure that this is real life, this is a real fire burning down her wallpaper? She yelled for her mother, her father, coughing and sputtering with smoke. But her legs were frozen in place, she dare not move, what if this was a test? She thought maybe this was all fake, like on television. Soon she coughed to much to yell for help, and fell into a smoky sleep. 

But no sooner had the girl tumbled into a hellish nightmare, than a real one woke her up. A masked man, with a glaring visor scooped her up, as she screamed and struggled. What was happening to her? She kicked the strange creature in the chest and was dropped back onto the bed, where she scrambled to hide underneath her tattered old blanket. 

This fireman picked up the now hooded child and carried her out onto the lawn where she was discovered to have once again succumbed to a haze-induced sleep. She awoke with tubes in her mouth and a thin clear line running out of her arm into a baggy of liquid above her head. White, white. All the walls and all the sheets, all the nurses around her head, the golden aura of light. This was heaven, the little girl knew and smiled a drunken grin, her veins filled up with medication. She was in heaven with angels but she didn't know why. But the beauty of the bright white room and soft pretty faces comforted her confusion. Nurses watched the blipping of monitors and carefully measured more clear liquids to pump into the poor sleeping girl. She fell into sleep for many long days afterwards, and unbeknownst to her, the entirety of her parents' estate was transferred to her name. Locked away for her on her 18th birthday. In her comatose dreams, the sweet girl was unharmed, all pain filtered away by the miracle of heavenly nurses. 

The next time her eyes flickered with life was nearly a month later, shock and smoke inhalation had crippled her broken lungs and feeble body into a state of noncommittal death. The tubes were removed, the monitors became fewer, and chocolate milkshakes began to nourish her wasted body. Speech had momentarily left the girl, and her frustration and sadness came through in tears of confusion. She didn't remember how to ask for her mother and her father, she didn't remember how to ask for her stuffed animals. She pounded her white-clenched fists into the hallway on one of her walks through the ward. As she hit the wall again and again, finally collapsing into a tearful ball of anguish, the nurses could only watch with their own strife and sadness. A male orderly scooped up the bony girl and carried her back to the clean white bed. And so many days past until her mouth opened and uttered any words,

but the first was "mama". 

At this utterance one nurse fled the room with tears welling up, the others frowned so deeply, and the doctor whispered,

"Your mama is gone, baby girl... your mama is gone."

This didn't register and another word fell from her mouth, "Daddy?" She immediately repeated over and over again, "Daddy? Daddy... daddy?"

The doctor wiped away tears, and again spoke softly, "Your daddy is gone too, dear one. They've gone to heaven, sweet child. You are the only one left."

No more words came from the little girl for many months afterwards, but in this time of silence, she was given up by the hospital to become a ward of the state. Paper work was filed behind her back, as the hospital staff carefully brought her back to the world of the living, her legs became strong again, and her hair grew lustrously blonde like it had before the accident. Nobody spoke of the fire, or the lack of family, nobody wanted to admit to themselves that this small girl would become a number in a system of millions of poor children left without love. 

Before she left the pediatric ward, the child was thrown a party. Her birthday had passed months ago in her coma, and so she was given a half-birthday party, a going-away party in disguise. All the children of the ward who were able to came out to have cake and sing songs for her. A pig pink cake had been ordered with her name scrawled across in hot pink icing. She smiled as a birthday crown was placed on her head. She was then sent away that evening with a handful of gifts in a little suitcase. She had only two nightgowns and three dresses, all gifts from her doctor. Two books of fairytales and her blanket. And the pink phone the police chief had brought to the hospital after the fire, but she didn't seem to remember it. In her hands she squeezed tight a new stuffed kitty, a little orange tabby named Whiskers. A woman in a stiff suit came in a black car to pick up the mute girl outside the hospital.

The children's services woman did not speak to the girl, she only handed her a bag full of second-hand clothing, and a chocolate candy bar. This was her consolation prize for losing her family. She ate the candy bar with loud smacking bites. 

Across green hills and settling evening mist the car zoomed, and the girl would wave to the cows that they passed. She hadn't seen the verdant world in many months, only the white walls of the hospital, and the yellow walls of her therapist's office, the one who tried to get her to talk again. The car finally stopped at dusk in front of a low suburban home with bicycles and dead petunias on the lawn. The girl turned to the social worker, who said, "This is your new home."

The girl shook her head with vehemence as she sprung out of the car and ran down the block before she was apprehended by the woman in the stiff suit- how fast she could run! The child stood and cried on the sidewalk in this dismal neighborhood, and the social worker knelt to look at her face. She took her soft thumbs and wiped away the bulbous tears of the little girl. "These are good people, dear. They'll be nice to you, you'll have your own room. They've been waiting so long for a pretty little girl like you." Her words fell on deaf ears, as she walked the girl down the block back to her new foster home. 

The doorbell reverberated through the home and echoed back out onto the stoop for the two to hear, and a dog began barking furiously from the inside. The girl shied away and hid her bleary face in the woman's skirt, for she hated, hated dogs. One had bitten her hand once and she'd had to get stitches. She could not live with a dog. She could not live in this ugly grey house with peeling paint and dead flowers. 

A halo of light poured out of the door as two smiling faces peered into the girl's own face. "What a beautiful little girl!" A woman said loudly, squeezing the poor wispy girl into her spacious bosom. A balding man shook the social worker's hand as he took the suitcase and bag of clothes into the house. "You're just in time for dinner with your new family! Come inside and meet your brothers!" The new "mother" of the girl began to rush her into the home, but the social worker grabbed the woman's fleshy arm gently. 

"Ma'am, she doesn't talk. She's been through significant traumas, like I told you over the phone. Don't expect much." 

The social worker hugged the little girl. Her long arms awkwardly wrapping around the little stranger no longer in her care, and she waved good-bye. 

Inside the house too many smells tormented the girl and a big golden retriever came up to her and barked. The girl let out a frightened scream and began once again to cry, her face red and dry from so many previous tears. 
Her new "brothers' began to laugh at her. There were four of them, burly, dirty boys in overalls waiting at the dinner table for food. "Ma, she squeals like a little pig!" The youngest boy crooned, and the girl immediately went pale. 

Plates of food began to stack up on the table, full of corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, and barbecued chicken parts. All food the girl hadn't eaten in so long. She was used to drinking chocolate milkshakes and eating soft things and pizza. Her new mother heaped food onto a chipped plate and sat it in front of her new "daughter". "Eat up baby girl, you must be hungry! Look at all them bones jutting outta you! We gotta get some meat on them bones!"

Her plate remained full. She sat weeping. Until finally her new mother dismissed her to bed.

She dove beneath the scratchy sheets and cried with her arms around the neck of her new stuffed kitty. She wanted so badly to walk out of this ugly room into her parents' arms. 

And she finally cried out, her understanding clear and sullen, her parents were gone from her, and she was stranded in this new home without anybody. 

"Mama!" She cried out all night, 
"Daddy!"

Come Back

I told the subway
before I left,
I'd come home someday.
My toes thumped
a message to the earth,
a morse code
saying 
please let me stay.

I whispered to the misted
towers
and screamed in silence
to the trees,
I'll come back 
I'll come home,
please wait for me.

Because Midtown
coddled me
in the sweet night sounds
and the Freedom Tower
sang with soul,
and I knew the pigeons
in Washington Square Park
from somewhere else before.
With golden eyes
they cooed
for me to stay.

I came home
and I knew,
it was here
I'd been born
before, sometime
many moons ago
with a spirit humming
bright in my bones.

Come home darling
please,
cried the scaffolding,
cried the gargoyles.

I will someday
go home,
where my heart
rests in bodegas,
where my spirit wanders
the basketball courts
that blast with sport
and music in the daylight.

The thrumming of train cars
is what lies with my pulse,
the wind in my hair
blows down from Harlem.

Broken churches
with iron gates
across from gleaming
towers,
these are my chilling
bones,
the brittle vessels
trying to get me 
to where I belong.

Oh, baby
the neon lights
my skin,
and sends the shivers
again, my aching feet
carry on across the blocks
and blocks.

Home
is an island with
a million bridges,
a million breaths,
and one million
jewel-faced 
songs.

How the West Was Won

We learned,
with some difficulty, 
through the Greyhound Bus Lines,
how the west was won.

We gathered
threadbare blankets
and canned pasta,
the mason jar of coins
in the back of my closet
I'd started to save
after the Christmas
without any presents.

Rolling our sparse belongings
into bedrolls
like we imagined our warrior 
ancestry had been forced to do,
we walked the ten miles
to the only Greyhound station
left.

Pushing the jar of chunk change
under the security grate,
always a security grate
to keep us away
from them,
the woman frowned
but printed two tickets.

She stared at our braids 
the whole time,
this white woman with 
pert breasts
and sad eyes
working her life
in a glass cage.

We tipped imaginary hats.

The bus, lit with 
flickering fluorescents
lurched onto the dusty highway,
full of tired white men
and a hispanic woman
with a caged chicken.

Rolling away
east we knew
how the west was won,
two Indian boys
with glossy black braids
knew,
with the blood of
our people in the earth,
feeding our mother.
We knew
it was won by getting
the hell out 
while there was still time left.

For A Boy In Another Realm

In my dream we held onto each other,
and you were
something of a Norse god,
my Thor.
My dear God of Thunder,
the one I
want to be my protector
if so I may need one.

Honey,
I dream in
technicolor
but worry it's too much for you,
left and right brainers
can mix in a 
sense of synapse
but hands and lips are
different
and cosmic.

And I want to say
with red lips,
please be with me
and maybe
we could make 
things
new and beautiful.

The world sometimes allows
for people like us
to become one and
not implode.
But would we be willing
to rise as Phoenixes 
otherwise?

Could someday
we merge on some
plane?
If I tucked your hair behind
your ear to see
your face
would you shy away
from my cold fingers?
Don't hide away from me,
dear one.

Some time I will ask you,
and dance with 
spirit in my toes
so maybe you'll know,
I am here,
here for you.
I could dance for you,
and you only.

[Sappy emotion poetry, I apologize.]

Farmer's Market

I collected 
green grapes,
bright yellow bananas,
red delicious apples,
delicately jostling in 
my canvas bag,
sweet-smelling oranges,
tart bloodied cherries.

I took them home,
up the stairs
into the fruit bowl
on my cheap
formica countertop.

A plethora of waxy perfection,
an afternoon jeweled treat,
they glistened, freshly washed
and rested themselves
in the curves of each other
to sleep until their peak.

But Monday came
and Tuesday passed
in the drear of rain
and lightning.
The fruits sighed and called to
the flies, the little winged specks.

And by Thursday my dear
scavenges,
my tenderly chosen
darlings
were softened
and crying.

Canoe

One summer the 
night storms felled
the biggest oak in the forest
by the creek.
We cut off its branches
and dragged the 
trunk into the yard.

Those months
of sun
I stood outside
and dug out a 
canoe.
Sweating and splintered,
each day
I dug deeper, polished,
peeled.
With hand tools
I carved a canoe
like the Natives
once had,
felt the wind
pass through me.

I spent days
crouched in the shadow
of the great
fallen beast,
my fingers bleeding
and splitting with
my works.

My father stood
and yelled from the porch
as the sun faded
each night,
"That ain'g gon float, baby girl,
you best give up,
cut your losses"
And he would spit
a stream
of poison tobacco 
into the innocent grass.

My brothers would chase
the dog under the boat
up on its sawhorses
and knock it onto the lawn
with a thundering pound.

Day in 
and day out
it occupied my dreams
my hands,
and my heart knew
from somewhere
it would float.

Painted and sanded in
August's dog days
I climbed inside as
I pushed myself off the river's bank,
and floated away
under the verdant
shadow of
the summer trees.

Tennesee

It was slow,
the descent usually
is, hills want you to get out,
spiraling your cars down the mountain.
Down from Cade's Cove,
which was really just a 
creek and a lot trees.
People with charcoal barbecues.
The humidity playing
in your hair.

Down the mountains
of the belly of the earth,
slopes of evergreens
and bears.
This is the center of
the universe
because it's impossible to see
out from here.

It's impossible to see out
from the creeks
criss-crossing the rental properties
and tourist traps.
It's a forest
for the trees
or a creek for the rocks
or something else 
you can't get
off the tongue,
it's stuck rolling in
an Appalachian twist
winding down
where the land eats up the people.

Chinese

Seriously though,
she was whispering between
blue barrels
of fish,
what if he asked you,
would you do it?

I was plunging my hands
into the water when she asked,
letting the fish swim past 
and flick their tails
or nibble 
fingertips.
He would never ask me
I answered.
It came out quiet as
night rain.

The lights flickered
again,
the electricity
in this Chinatown
went out often.
She was nervous,
letting herself wring her hands.
She was sure
of everything but herself.

He would never ask me
to do that.

I picked up a fish
and asked him
with my eyes
where he's come from.
Why should I 
be here
in this market?

His mouth gaped
open and closed
and his rough breathing
was answer enough.

She coughed and the rain started up outside.

Twins

We were the same,
for decades
and days
we were interchangeable.
Soap-sud mohawks
in the bath.
Pink watermelon stains
on white t-shirts.

The same
in grainy photographs.
Until the sameness faded
and the polaroid paper edges
got sunburnt.
Like baby noses
under floppy hats.

The small rips
and tears
and swirling hubcaps
of an interstate
collision pushed to the
median.
The same
on one stretcher
pump bags filling our 
baby lungs.

It took a long time,
to find the photos
and remember your face again,
and to hear mama choke
when I asked
"why are there two of me?
Where did the other me go?"

Thanksgiving

I left my shoes
knotted
and sideways
on the waxy
floorboards.

Living their own lives
away from me
as I crawled into bed.
To let my head
writhe aflame 
in the small hours left.

From roaming
I come in,
each night
different.
Each night a new
city smell
on my jeans,
in my hair
to fall into bed
alone. 

Each night.
Some nights,
receipts in my pockets,
others the scraps
of fortune cookie
wisdoms,
and I sleep 
with these trinkets
to ward off
the empty holes
in my rooms
and my socks.

And if Thanksgiving was
honest,
honest as the Chinatown women,
I would say I was thankful
for the sleeping pills
that spare me
from living with my thoughts.

Migrant

It wasn't easy.

To bend
to the sun everyday,
burnt face
and chapped hands,
plucking tomatoes
from stubborn vines.

I envied the snakes,
green and lithe,
in the shade of
the plants,
in the cool of shadow.

The snakes everyday,
peacefully snuck by,
and never once stopped
to tell me 
why
I was here.

The snakes stayed
out of our beds,
but found homes in
our two pots
on the dirt floor
of a shack,
made for chickens.

I slept on the remnants
of wooden pallets
and feed sacks.
The wind rustled through
the gaps in the walls.

I heard the snakes breathing
and the stars
moving in the dark fabric
of the night.

Gardner snakes,
the only ones I dared
to hope for
in this life,
if I could not run 
free across the earth
or sleep in a safe place,
I prayed the snake
may have such luxuries.

Prick

I told you, 
there was a grey
day in December
when I spoke.

And you told me
otherwise,
with your words in 
my mouth.
And the heavy feeling
of bitter fruit
clung to them,
choking,
I left.

Your hands
never touched me,
but I felt
it,
a stinging
across my face.
It swelled in the coming days,
and I knew it
was you.

The doctors opened
my face and 
found teeth
and veins
and  a golden
splinter
placed there by the gods
to destroy you.

Deserted Summer

This is a traffic light.
A small car
without a fender
sits idle.

A flashing yellow 
pulsates off the hood.
This is a sign.

P
for 
Park.
There are no headlights
north west
east south.
There are no 
tractor beams
from the sky.

There are no sounds
but the wind.
And it whistles
across the open sunroof. 
She speaks in small tongues
with few words
but a strong song
to them.

This is stopping.
Feet resting on the driver's seat,
Indian-style
they told us in school.
They don't say that anymore. 
I don't do that anymore.

But this.
This is stopping.
The yellow
flash is slow
and labored breathing,
the kind you do when sleeping
well, on a night with 
a nice breeze.

So I don't hurry.