SIMPLE MACHINE a Thesis Presented to the Graduate Faculty

Home , Hurricane party, Strip Me

SIMPLE MACHINE

A Thesis

Presented to

The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Fine Arts

Katelyn Mertz

May, 2015 SIMPLE MACHINE

Katelyn Mertz

Thesis

Approved: Accepted:

______Advisor Department Chair Ms. Caryl Pagel Dr. William Thelin

______Committee Member Dean of College Mr. Imad Rahman Dr. Chand Midha

______Committee Member Interim Dean of Graduate School Dr. Mary Biddinger Dr. Rex D. Ramsier

______Date

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

CHAPTER

I. PRELUDE………………………………………………………………………...... 1

Man/She………………………………………………………………………...... 3

Inside……………………………………………………………………………....5

The Way the Body……………………………………………………………...... 6

Love Poem………………………………………………………………………...8

Beauty Covers Rock……………………………………………………………..10

A Storm You Can’t Feel…………………………………………………………12

Fat Girl…………………………………………………………………………...13

In-Flight Safety…………………………………………………………………..15

A Study in the Domestic…………………………………………………………17

Wild When the Sky………………………………………………………………19

Olde Canal Days Festival, 2004………………………………………………….21

Meteor Shower Party…………………………………………………………….23

It Was a Good Year………………………………………………………………25

Hello Baby…………………………………………………………………….....27

There Is a War……………………………………………………………………28

I Worry for Everything…………………………………………………………..29

II. WEDDING DAY…………………………………………………………………….31

iii

Peony……………………………………………………………………………..33

When I Say Look………………………………………………………………...35

New Soda (n):…………………………………………………………………....37

Cinnamon Toast………………………………………………………………….39

In Our Language…………………………………………………………………40

Accidental Echo………………………………………………………………….42

Fingers…………………………………………………………………………....43

Nothing Fear……………………………………………………………………..45

Dinner Party……………………………………………………………………...47

As For Today…………………………………………………………………….48

The Inflicted Self………………………………………………………………...49

Corrosion Theory………………………………………………………………...51

Spring Suffer……………………………………………………………………..53

Seventeen: Prom Edition…………………………………………………………54

Wrecked……………………………………………………………………….....60

A Begging Pushing………………………………………………………………61

Masturbation Poem……………………………………………………………....63

III. FAILURE LANGUAGE……………………………………………………………65

Hurricane Party…………………………………………………………………..68

Commutable……………………………………………………………………...70

Poem Beginning and Ending with a Break-Up………………………...... 71

The Flood……………………………………………………………………...... 73

Tea Party…………………………………………………………………………74

Day Job Wherein We See Ourselves in the Rock………………………………..76

Bone Poem…………………………………………………………………….....78

Red Asylum……………………………………………………………………...79

I Will Do Every Appropriate Thing……………………………………………...80

How To Be Good………………………………………………………………...81

Simple Machine………………………………………………………………….83

IV. PROCESSION………………………………………………………………………86

CHAPTER I

PRELUDE

I use the tongue for bathing and inside find the greatest sorrow the gold rim of a baby’s cup broken off and stretched around her wrist like a glittered fishing lure

yes she’s in the ocean now dangled high and begging like a silly ribbon in the clouds a milk that crusts and blows as dirt

I’m writing a book

1 on how to destroy things

I’ll start as the sea monster with my mouth open as wide as it will go

Man/She

I. a man arrives in a box and then fully assembled a man jumps out the message at his feet: ADDRESS and he does and the winter buckets itself countrymen and thugs paper mache themselves with armor waiting for a war for the bold death and the man is pleased and also the man is very sad you see the man has not been built with hands and so the bucket aloft is not only a measure of his face reflected in the black ice cold deep O— how it weighs! when the night comes the man breathes a song only he can hear will ever hear

II. she opened her mouth and her breath was the word her mouth into machine

3 was the word and O—gunshot to the gut nestled tight to the bone her blushed skin a guilt in living her voice silent fabric stretched over a face and she is not guilty she takes stones and carries them somewhere from elsewhere she clears her throat to place them inside and then she is inside and there is a river and asphalt and glass a building is on fire and out flies a canary yellow from the sooty wreck the window she breaks is not for air freedom is a kind of bruise even when she flies she hurts of earth memory our bodies are more apt to plummet and so she does and so do we

Inside

I pull out “Arabesque” in gold threads but look inside and the art is all machine muscle pushing down

I pull open your mouth and it is much the same operatic each vessel migraine tunnel flex pump systems reaching

a bear could yield a farm if not for hunger

I think this when the cool drink oozes down when I am pushing strong teeth out seize your blood bring it forward when we lick it’s not just skin or heat

my arms outstretch too much feeling and the world will rust the knife I pull from the drawer against the board it sings animal vegetable fruit a woman’s tongue will bring it down forget the pith the peel a truth the sky is just a wind with holes

The Way the Body

arch away for the lean-in cheek kiss for a long walk longer if I believe longer

was a distance worth for conceiving the disaster tasted like strawberries metal of blood and their silly giggle when they died stories

won’t tell you of the struggle not in the news or the streets we pass walking so fast we forget to breathe until here we are baptized

for a wedding plucking herbs from a neighbor’s yard we smell like licorice when the words “til death”

bring us back but are we still living by the kiss or does the muscle

6 kick our snow up get the leash tie it tighter this time so when I catch it

in my mouth I know the cold is only for so long sun sets best in the water dish you lie there now I bend I bend to lap

Love Poem

antique pancake batter antique melon baller don’t you see I chew these limes with hope of becoming a world-renowned cymbal player a single-handed harbinger of happiness and dust meeting all these men please SIR woo me to Paris paint my toenails gold to teach me to love something completely when I push you away be the right kind of surprised I admit we are a language of toothpaste orations squishy in enunciating fumbling with our hand gestures makeshift around allowances that make me less wise than the ape in outer space and more fragile

I meant to say how safe we were in this pastry bag nestled in a bed of sugar using my cymbals as sleds I wish I had been better at not hurting people then I could replace all sad news with the story of how I fell unexpectedly through the ice at the bottom how my cymbals crashed me somewhere new with no return address or socks and how regardless of my feet

I was okay this way

Beauty Covers Rock

hair is a thing that wrecks a face which is why

I have been buried in mine for years and haven’t found

a way out my lovers taught me everyday about withholding

even so the sun is a gem unearthed from the hard land

and my honey stomach is sick from the flowers

I trained to follow me here a car makes a wish when

it passes my nails are too long to grant it and I end up looking

10 the sorry stumbling fool kick a rock onto someone else’s

footprints I dripped jam behind me to look like blood

the only one to notice was the bear

A Storm You Can’t Feel

dress as a statue for Halloween and don't be afraid you’ll stick that way

I'll feed you hummus and tangerines plant the seeds at your feet and dance watch me stumble my hair in the sun down my back and pretty I'll paint you yellow for Sunday make you breakfast for dinner you can feel silly with syrup on your chin I hear you humming let's take a drive one window down the heat on high to the trees we look like a ribbon carried through the wind a storm you can’t feel I’ll feel it for you

Fat Girl

the tragedy here is her fear of the body every inch every inch an inch too many the measuring is constant the disappointment is only and other its own body manifest a fat child in woman skin trapped the fat girl never ages is always pointing at things to want and the wanting is always never starved but never ever filled only refilled it’s not about food sometimes about love but really girls are told PULL IN and careful ones will stay forever ever expanding

13 and that’s tragedy too the fat girl will never know that freckle on her too big the hand on a not there please the hush gift of bounty and what else unnoticed the girl has silver in her skin and how beautiful it looks shining in the sun

In-Flight Safety

an airplane is a mighty place for all you trout and all your frowns my space is safe my hands are busy

I bet you are wondering why I use my body this way I am a plane of breakfast matter a plastic saucer of ice and water really a flight attendant licking tray tables to feel a sense of having been somewhere and be the woman to say

I know the air mask on my face worries you at least a little really you are waiting for your cookies I want to think that’s funny I want to laugh you watch me pull the mask tighter tuck my stricken teeth

15 to bed you’re not listening it’s the child she says hey look everyone it’s the sun

A Study in the Domestic

I purchased the curlers the dress long legs

I wanted to be 70s and carefree but now

I am 90s and anxious the grapefruit rotten

in the vegetable crisper the joint abandoned

at the bathroom sink

I made a pot of coffee

but it turned out weak as water all through

the drip I held my breasts in prayer a prayer I took

17 from my parents the guests are on their way expecting

floating islands mine only coddled meringue out

to sea the girl at my feet is wearing diamonds

for teeth all millennial glib and glimmer she

extends her hand for what is owed her and I want

to give her everything but once again I’m stripped

and vague and all that’s left is rotten fruit

Wild When the Sky

I am writing this poem in a circle using the other hand to pat my belly my brain to coordinate it all

I put a woman on a beach angeling herself in the sand because she is enduring has endured and I am proud of her next we move to the boy ten paces away with a magnifying glass no good with vision less afraid of the line than me also the woman is beautiful he wants to have her close he thinks she is his child or he is hers so kind and pure those freckles popping up like planets and their closest star her hair a great red flame behind her she’s heading for the driftwood now pulled in by the threat of storm

19 and I am still here a girl-child drawing circles with the tongue the ocean awake in the body heaven is just the height from which we fall and isn’t that the joy to be wild when the sky is

Olde Canal Days Festival, 2004

I mount the carousel horse and the horse bucks

me into a carnival barker:

“Pop my balloon

get a bat, little girl” his wrists cradle my hips

like the child’s plastic bag their half-dead fish suspended

and somewhere I know there is chocolate

on a tongue a girl under her first bridge ankles weak

on the one that spins too fast but here I am

21 stuck very stiff with a knife in each hand and here I am

with the biggest blow-up bat in the end lips Lemon Shake-Up

puckered lungs half-full in the house of my body

ready to breathe the pink thing back to life and he bright

on the crown of lights at each stand bright on

the sweat drop of muddy night he calls me LITTLE GIRL

until I’ve got both legs around it and then I fly away

Meteor Shower Party

I came prepared with an army of umbrellas. I guess I’m saying

I’m scared and in love with this feeling.

These blue balloons pooling

my ankles, my fingers done up in crudité. Isn’t it funny what you see

when you stop asking for telescopes?

Iron board skies primped

like carnival prizes, strung along a wall like there’s this big secret. I touch myself

with the windows open to feel less alone.

But what is alone when the sky is falling

like gold teeth from a mouth, and we are falling, too? What is the bruise

the next day? In which constellation can we see ourselves? Maybe it’s in 23 the cotton candy moon, melting our fingers together.

It Was a Good Year

to be a bad man stockings for a face wowwow ouch now here is the story etched in the busted coil of my radiator

California says where are my flowers and I say they dwell the water in my mouth my fingers peel away to bone and choke to death my girlhood imagined a delusion of birth control and thigh matter shhhhhhh we’re not talking about sex my friends the lesbian the black guy and Bad Feminist walk into a bar

25 fuck yes I drink to them and who is not already drinking out a private anguish recalling the hunt the body of scars the guns in our movies pointed at our people the children are riding extinct our porpoises faster than the asteroid

745,000 miles away can rally its moons bring out the deep bruise its bloody little fingers wrapped around my pulse say bring me down baby wring out all the flowers

Hello Baby

a jaguar will lick her one claw before she rips a stripe in you

remind you yeah we are made of actual warm stuff and yet

of course we are so accidentally alive and yes this cherry ice pop

tasted better when we were dying young but what of it a bassinet

locked to a bike rack hello baby set her down see if she is happier

in this poem not looking at the sky

There Is a War

We wake early and everyone is in love. Everyone is shooting love everywhere. The coffee is still dripping and it smells like love. Between our legs we are love and ready for it. Our middles armed with it. Our feet arched to run. The grass is hot like sparklers. I buy these bullets, and I love them. I give them to a soldier. He takes my palm in his black hands, he says all these lines mean KILLER and I love you, dear, so much. So much I love you.

All around are bodies, sensitive matter piled high. I kiss everyone on the mouth, soak my hair in their blood so when it runs down I am a beating red heart. At night, drunk with love, everyone goes home. I escape nothing ever. I was always afraid of riding horses, so I walk. I sing Whitman in the dark.

If poetry doesn’t strip me naked, then nothing will.

I Worry for Everything

I had always thought myself a renegade.

A feather lift giving light, teeth stretched open to the air swallowing the amber song sitting up there at the tallest branch.

Then this tired line of ills:

A tradition silent as a house suffocated by its own bricklayers.

The same green eyes bent toward the sweetest— the most fickle:

A rose, though not to speak of thorns a potato or its bones.

It’s the wooden pen that marks the wall at the bolt that holds its hinges—much like famine does to a skin stretched tight to hold in

29 all the things that vanish.

Maybe this is too deep a thought before a snowstorm.

Or maybe the storm is what is vanishing, what they starved themselves to cling to. It’s the paper skin first to hit the air. Pulled from a worried earth too soft to keep it.

CHAPTER II

WEDDING DAY

if I don’t wear white to my wedding everyone will know how nervous I was

going Dutch on the first date how hard

I worked to touch as strangers

on a train bumping on accident the beach ball I tucked under my blouse

to make my big eyes even bigger eventually a moon on fire

chuffed and arching that’s how we knew

we didn’t like words bigger than us like sunshine like surrender future: read to me the Magna Carta at bedtime

31 make a roux of our seasonal depression

let it thicken on the journey my mother spent eighteen years watching me drop

food down my front the joke is on her when the front disappears and there is no more

food in the house what house what life burning leaves in a sleepy town burning

towns and being sleepy you in a tux you with a baby in a tux

how am I supposed to know which outfit when everything is already so soiled

“Look at my bouquet” I say it’s really a nest a tiny egg inside

“Watch it hatch,” I say it’s looking for you

Peony

they find her lay bags of mulch inside her sundress and bury her back in

the lovesick children pluck her lashes pedal away and after long

she is only roots a lost evolution to lick like a handprint left

around a small neck rub lips against like a grater to soft cheese

next year

33 she will surface with a prick the sun

will be quiet the stars dead upon reaching her

When I Say Look

I mean the star on my nose watch the oil of my skin send it down to my neck perch to the collar where a boy tells me about constellations he sees in my freckles quizzes me on my own self all the while whispering to the spider in his mouth about the structure of a body on two legs the bodies that wait and love longer because there is less there to hold things with he lays a hand on my shoulder asks me how I feel about bones in the earth are there monsters

35 in the sea

I say I am wearing a nametag with the wrong color bow he tells me put it in my mouth see if it fits better in a different house

New Soda (n):

a perfect world in new soda, thirty-year mortgage of new soda, new soda institution, bubbling down fountains in Rome, new soda condensation springlike from my upper lip, new soda by starlight, new soda illuminated, new soda lemonade stand, office space,

1000 acres of new soda in Tennessee, government-issued, rap-stars make new soda look chic, take new soda on a run, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere, new soda airplanes, new soda time shares, meet our new mascot

NEEWWW SODAAAAA!, new soda watering my heirloom, in my eye, oops I stepped in a pile of new soda, new soda park bench on cold nights,

37 new soda first kiss on a porch that wraps around, my tongue on your tongue, lick the bubbles off new soda, drench myself in syrupy tears, new soda say what, new soda for my coffee, every other corner new soda, hands together on a Sunday morning, Hallelujah! new soda, new soda amnesty for all, new soda say I will take care of you, new soda mother, father, wife— name your baby New Soda, new soda is your baby, there it is, a promise, new soda the fizz of a generation, take my money new soda, new soda take all of me

Cinnamon Toast

it was the way still inside my mother my hair knew just how to curl itself predestined cinnamon

to morning toast toast to the heartache I just wear these breasts for fun to raise a little hell spend a morning cataloguing bruises not recalling where they came from to whom they wrench their bloody little fingertips blooming from the inside my mother tells me it’s not okay to be inconsolable tomorrow I will burn the bread such is the way of things

In Our Language

we switch the kettle heat to high to hide the itch tuck the children into bed at nine and suck our husbands’ cocks until our scalps are sore but O— the rapture boiling water over dried leaves and O—how it is so warm going down we sleep with fingers crossed dream standing up waiting for heaven our dead friends mouthing lines beyond the gate in the morning baby cries into her scarf blueberry beads her little teeth a stain she wears

40 inside for years daddy pats her head fingers through her hair our voice almond- sized buried so deep it takes a body to keep breathing

Accidental Echo

I pretend the ground doesn’t moan when I fall to my knees my ribbon candy birthright etched underneath anymore

I am kissing in Morse Code S-O-S again and again bleeding from the face shocked to a private tongue when will I understand I am only full cotton wielding this chainsaw shaped like mountain lions actually just roaring cats abandoned in a rainstorm the accidental echoing accidental actual this version of the story a dandelion impersonating a daisy but I am here in this field toothless having followed wood grain and coffee grounds pretending all along I knew where I was going all these bowls of cereal later what I wanted most was oatmeal gooey and warm and smiling just a little

Fingers

watch them reach up pull my hair watch

the red curls swell to fill them

oxidize the heartbeat the solid arch

my neck crossing over

I pretend it’s you

your talent and I am the one swelling

I remember you calling me by my middle

by the stuff inside now

I am needle point stretched

43 gout rush ghost cry

oxygen a nest to spill from still

I am a woman hungry as a held

breath you tell me how you remember me

and of course

I listened

Nothing Fear

she watched a city of women bite

the red acrylic off their fingers before

morning coffee throats perched

for a voice shaped by generations

of holding breath she plants more flowers

marigolds to keep the does out

waits to goosebump the gold hair back

45 bear a shudder from the man

who finds them delicate it is true girls are taught

by their mothers to match and it is this

that starts it all the boiled water dribbled

through the house the big-eye doe caught

in the bed pink petals between her teeth

Dinner Party

Remember what it felt like | the icecap we pulled from the oven and served for dessert | Our guests confused with after-dinner mints still in their mouths | So much of what we know is thawing | The wrath prodigy for all ages | The refrigerator hum as you watch me sleep | And me | Tender kneading into your belly hair | Looking to each other like everyone we’d ever lost | A documentary on a wonderful life made wonderful only by how many times it had been broken and then restored | Flames tempered by bamboo kitchen utensils still soaking in the sink | This is the heart that love survives through | Built with a ceiling | The sky left waiting on our Welcome mat | Made by only what our bodies can do | So we name everything then say goodbye |

Goodbye arsonheart | Goodbye stationary set | You tell me

There is no us when neither of us are falling | So I fall |

Goodnight dear dinner guest | I hope you are leaving plenty full enough

As For Today

The sportscasters spend all night mispronouncing Louisville and the world

still happens this is what I mean when I say I’m not sorry

I drank all the orange juice resist the pigeon urge to pick

at crumbs and wallow tomorrow is a day for being dizzy in the dark

singing with closed mouths ferrying ice across-town too fast to see it melt

my overcoat is still hanging dumb in the closet covered in sticky berry truths

of morning toast its arms are loose no body to keep it warm

The Inflicted Self

A gabled house teaches me about skeletons, how they find a way to moan, mold an easy foundation to a point, then depart.

It is my friend’s house, and he is there, inverted, blood rushed to know it better, his face so red it is beating.

In the kitchen, we take turns cutting into a green apple, biting into it core and all and spitting out the seeds.

I wonder if we both feel the tendency toward violence, or if it’s the lily dead in the corner, the thyme sprigs drying in the light, this sour taste living in our stomachs. At dusk, the crows perch atop each gable, land with their fractured caw.

The birds are halfway settled, we know, waiting for blood on everything. The house cracks with it, and, so alive in our bodies, as do we.

Corrosion Theory

the body is a regret we all recognize passion like the mini-van parked crooked in the trees deciding whether to call it fucking or making love

but doing it fast in a tea factory to smell like bergamot after this is a list I compiled tied like a bow around a basket called ANXIETY

maybe I mean handle me the same way choked throat crocusface purple on the inside tempting a secret voice to which we all donated breath

through a straw drinking all the wine we spilled the night before we knew what hands could do willing toward intimacy a silly kiss on the corner

of a screaming mouth a single daffodil in a field of daffodils read the dye stains on my hairline the rustpool in the showerhead sweet crusted milk

on the outside of my cereal bowl also called fear

51 also called Cheerios the little cinnamon cohort on your shoulder burning is what we called it

singing is what we asked it to do in the morning the moan is my foot asleep under your foot cringing as we look for more and more of each other

Spring Suffer

there is a dandelion growing in my belly bright yellow sunshine flecked with dirt little root system splintered through my diaphragm tender crop she’s begging big breath big breath thick air brick and mortared with blood I bring her to life she grows so tall so high it’s space so clear even the birds are finished whispering and still in the dark dandelion looks down very sad says feed me every shred of sunlight every strip of land and tar and fence to wrap around rocky shore and I do years later a monster will appear pluck the pretty weed back down it is me who finds the flecks and she is fire gold rain I open my mouth take the babe back down and only in the dark will she emerge find a small black vase stuff herself inside

Seventeen: Prom Edition

I remember my sixteen-year-old girlfriends spending their Dairy Queen paychecks on

SEVENTEEN prom magazines.

I remember the books were thicker than the monthly issues my mother wouldn’t let me buy.

I remember them licking their fingers to turn each page, folding down on a good hair, makeup. They saved dresses for last, when they were almost out of spit.

I remember, sixteen years old myself, feeling too fat for all of it, looking over their shoulders. “You would look great in that,” I said, over and over. They said nice things about my hair, the jewelry I should buy. What color I should paint my nails.

I remember, beginning in April, the boys our age paid to wear tuxes to lunch, not eating anything. They sat, instead, very tall, fixed their ties. The jackets made their skinny country-boy shoulders look wide. Their features, somehow, older. The tux-wearer rotated from popular boy to popular boy, then began again.

I remember my favorite Dairy Queen novelty, the Buster Bar. I kept the sticks, licked clean, with the pencils in a cup on my desk. I was a writer.

I remember the girls in the hallways, at their lockers, books pressed to their chest as they walked, together, to class. The boys following behind. The girls never looked back. Of course they knew.

I remember a quiet boy. The smartest boy in our grade. Not very cute. Sort of odd. He was my friend.

I remember the quiet boy had a crush on me. I liked being crushed.

I remember, a few years after high school, finding the Buster Bar sticks. I broke them each in half, half again, half again. The spitty sticks had dried, the darker spots of chocolate still visible. They cracked easily.

I remember poking my fingers where the wood splintered. The tiny dots of blood on the pencils I wrote with afterwards.

I remember my mother telling me she used to dye her hair to match mine. “I got tired of all the women in the grocery store asking where you got your beautiful red hair. After I dyed it, they stopped asking.”

I remember washing my hair everyday, letting it air dry, the wet curls low, heavy, on my back. Even the wind had trouble moving them.

I remember when my best friend’s older sister started taking birth control. For acne. She gained sixty pounds.

I remember being relieved.

I remember trips to the mall with my mother, looking for the dress, struggling with a zipper under fitting room lights. I found one in black and white.

I remember the quiet boy walking next to me in the hallway, my books pressed to my chest, his tucked in his backpack.

I remember he never stood quite straight, but bent forward, under the weight of his books.

He was different than other boys, the way he spoke, what he said. He thought I was smart, funny. He never touched me. I never touched him. Not even as a joke.

I remember the pairing-up the week before prom as couples were decided. The popular girls and popular boys had to choose between one another. Everyone else was fair game.

I remember stealing one of my girlfriend’s prom magazines after she’d purchased her dress, flipping through it in my bedroom. All the models looked my age, but none looked like me.

I remember tracing their bones with my finger—the collarbone, the joint at the wrist, elbows, legs. I traced the same spots on my body.

I remember wondering if I had the same bones.

I remember thinking I couldn’t possibly.

I remember Prom Night was the first night I didn’t have to wear a jacket. I took a walk. A limo sat in front of one of the houses. The driver, in a suit, smoked next to it. He dropped the cigarette and put it out with his foot.

I remember the theme was James Bond. 007 for 2007.

I remember the too-sweet fruit perfume at the mall, in the store next to Claire’s, where my friends bought their prom jewelry. I chose a few things, too.

I remember they were surprised but didn’t say so. “That will look good on you,” they said.

I remember watching James Bond movies with my dad, Dr. No to Die Another Day. Back and forth, over and over. The Ian Fleming books sitting on the shelves, yellow.

I remember the day I knew the quiet boy would ask me to prom. I avoided him. Even as the fat girl, even with no other dates in mind, I avoided him.

I remember thinking he wasn’t good enough. That the other kids would laugh, pity me, make fun, etc. I didn’t want to give them another reason.

I remember the limo being gone on my way back. I found the cigarette and stepped on it to make sure it was out.

I remember putting on the black and white dress, slipping on the fake diamond earrings and necklace, bracelet. They flickered in the lamplight, of course they did. I fell asleep in them. I woke to dots of blood on my pillow, where the posts pierced the soft spot behind my ears.

I remember my hair tangled in the necklace in the morning. I ripped it out, so hard my eyes stung.

I remember afterwards the girls seemed changed somehow.

I remember they were taller, dreamier, thick-lipped, heavy-lidded.

I remember not all of them.

I remember there were strawberries in my lunch, and the sun was out.

Wrecked

she wears dresses to wreck them spring a meadow against her legs a warm need in wild snow she is naked save for milk on the chin crusted blood fingers tipped from ripping

A Begging Pushing

rain days like gift wrapped like hard candy melted in a hot car my skin with a serious pull pushing ouch pushing out the edge of a book set against the tender inside of an Indian-style sit somewhere there is a breath caught like moths inside a porch lamp fighting hard it takes days to talk how we want to about people about the planets and what is housed in them incense and emergency zipper at the crinkled angle of my elbow unzip and inside is a Technicolor scene in which we me and man are both drinking Coke pulling taffy

61 with our dead tongues his fingers trace a sweat down my cheek follow it underneath my shirt collar underneath my shirt collar

I swallow the candy whole

Masturbation Poem

just her out to lunch alone how smug she is with her fingers under the cloth like no one sees

but when she comes the knives knock the soup and the waiter says be careful you’ll become

a mother like this later she bakes it into the bread and the bread-eaters

eat it with dinner frantic afterwards making love the women on top and she is outside under a red moon

feeling it most in the mouth the swell of her hands as she reaches up pulls out both front teeth then the rest

she wakes wet too much sugar in the blood on her knees gravity

63 pulling from the wrong place

CHAPTER III

FAILURE LANGUAGE

the poem she’s not writing met her of course at a poetry reading in which boys in hip glasses and girls in leggings hair long red lipsticked stood and waited for the poem she’s not writing to arrive and when it did they rowed themselves aligned impassive tragedy stock photo they listened having felt its presence immediately for the weight and assembled the poem she’s not writing feels insecure can’t afford the glasses hair fairly off in the distance no style or lack of style only lack

she takes the poem she’s not writing

65 to the stage say something she says and of course it can’t and of course the boys and girls are leaned in into their hips bored with waiting poetry in general really you see the poem she’s not writing is nervous without an agency not worth anything drafty insides it’s springtime the tree outside a lilac is in bloom and the poem she’s not writing is out there too in theory or in the cold sky the fat birds the paper need a manic drying up

and when the poem she’s not writing opens its mouth to speak something about trespass erasure hurt love reaching her breath is not for living and the boys are laughing the girls are still very straight and the poem she’s not writing is folded into a pocket shoved into a drawer a thousand years from now the girl is long since dead they find the poem

66 never written and through a window offer the poem what’s left of the light

Hurricane Party

to fill a cup at an angle is our plight in living and also consider it living and also consider ourselves human my neighbor’s heavy cough teaches me about breathing how to treat oneself in a body in a life even with a word so uninspired as education everyone is a studier of something it’s true the common cold will always be contagious

I hold a candle in my mouth and think this light is my light and you say yes you whose candle looks like me and you who have filled my mouth with the tea I am drinking now aboard this tiny ship

68 tilted starboard here we are tilting with it

Commutable

sometimes art is like the little girl scary with the strong tongue too young burnt fingers the trick to slipping through and her body buried under the milk provided in a lifetime a licked stamen and her supposed to be thankful she commutes because the air is good and this line of tired folks is sweet with its geography finger swell from the holding on a belt around a sinking in the middle and the thyme plant will grow in the window yeast will proof in a hot room a breath of a woman tight as a new almond in kinked throat feed them both sugar cherished like the doe in the road neck bent to the receptive beak proof of a female evolution she weaves a calm in driving A to B children don’t know yet of dying only death and the dark only uncertain and the smoke smell of powdered sugar somewhere

Poem Beginning and Ending with a Break-Up

“If you’re not nervous you’re not doing it right,” you told me with your body language your eyes a cool drink pulled from a glass coaster toasting the vines scaling our necklines don’t say “We’re in trouble,” when you hook your finger in my hair don’t say “Stop” when I open my mouth and it’s a vowel—a vow—every time look a giant water vessel also called an island when we are caught looking we make fools of those who never looked before time my breaths how about now my heart is singing to my veins a lullaby now a Bossa Nova maybe you can’t love someone without first loving yourself what’s left is called obsession give me a reason to not smile for this self-portrait I’m not painting tell me softly you knew something secret about capybaras how they were my favorite and you loved me really loved me anyway singing to me now would do no good but what is good what is the song tremendous describes a size as in that man on the train his girth was tremendous love cannot be described this way when it is measured most by what our face can do seaside we wait at a collision of train tracks we wait I hear a mouse in a warm bed a denoument read

71 aloud and we are suffering at what appears to be an end what now is not the question where to isn’t either we may say seafoam would be a good color for a kitchen but we know how wrong we are how stuffy we would be in boxes we make our lives taste like last year’s candycanes exhausted with spirit untimely as ever forever not as muscular as our desires for it a rocky shore of trampoline parts a cloud moment with a waving sun this is the memory I imagine for you more intimate than watching an icicle slowly waste away drip drip dripping until all that is left is a burn and two people who were us shifting awkward offshore somewhere aboard a nervous boat rocking with tideshocks a defunct ten-year plan and now only left to not hurt so much telling their story licking their teeth trimming the vines and letting go as one humbles hard candy in a single bite

The Flood

a hurricane hits and how strong my legs are waiting to see the storm pool the ankles of my city rain a floral dress coming down and you the stranger light hand raised to the cool air like a baby’s first lost pet my hand is covered in flour and makes touching impossible my neck craned so high to you

I see the planes drop down a little blinking the flood from my lashes it’s hard to believe they are up there watching the same storm

Tea Party

our word is MISERY a ruined city messy with crumbling tea cakes dropped ceilings over impossible pixie cuts touching each other we lean for balance my heart like goggles the flower in my hair thrown to my feet

(running away) my face in my palms

I say “Take me there.” wearing the sun like a drunk smock promises like tree bark an unexpected rainstorm giddy in a suitcase an airplane blessing a cattlegrove saying

“Tomorrow is a new day.” this is what you tell me

74 marveling at my hair down orange peel pressed to my teeth a smile tilted just so

Day Job Wherein We See Ourselves in the Rock

I sing so loud in my sleep

I am waking everyone up and awake we go to work we quit we find more work and it quits us

the mine is a heavy place we see our ourselves in the rock and every day remove a piece throw it yellow as the caution canary two steps ahead of us because it has to be

the trees go past blossoming straight into green the walk home is cold smoke in our eyes the stars these muscles sobbing throbbing and our legs the blunt trauma there and back there and back there and back

76 the danger is the dawn in the clouds cold butter on hot toast and desire the song bubbled up in the throat the mine is a heavy place and every piece of it we cull we keep looking for more of ourselves ourselves to mean more

Bone Poem

You’ve got your demons and darling they all look like me | like collarbones over a casket | a new desire under the guise of a biblical text | watch this candle marry the other candle | his and her wicks making change for monogramed towel sets | toll roads | leading the way for feral cats and the cream we give them a woman told me once I’d never leave my feet | all I can do now is purse my lips and wait for a slow lifelong ambivalence | buy a tea kettle to teach me to whistle | a silly how-to reflected in decades of boiling tap water | an anniversary moment | a gold charm between my breasts to make me love for the same reason I dry my legs last after a shower | with this towel I introduce the idea of a broken home | lock the doors from the inside | hide the cast-iron heirloom and generations of animal grease | keep your skeletons where I can see them | I’ll use my breath to make them dance | press it into our sides like our bones had been there all along

Red Asylum

I remember standing in the kitchen cleaning a pomegranate the way we clean our wounds you brought the fruit to my teeth invited me a bite and then a vibrant asylum red swirling ribbon you traced around my neck to send me under touch my breasts and I will feel a significant dread winter the world and you your love meant only for the barking heaving sick and me writing letters arriving first and thus alone the light is absent and I am so shameless in the dark go ahead and rest your head on my palm love I promise not to squeeze too hard

I Will Do Every Appropriate Thing

including not pat the head of every gap-toothed child nor climb a tree for the sake of finally conquering something tall ambition like the

Electric Twist at a May/ December wedding a well-stocked cubicle in the event of an attack my doctor suggested I drink more water I did and became the Dead Sea and had to disassemble the former Dead Sea by hand I am sure I am not feeling enough remorse about getting us lost or that we are floundering to name the baby we found in the desert what do you call the dust inside a

Category 5 tornado I need to know before I make a mistake and name her something like that

How To Be Good

go back to being an anchor not an architect you know how

I almost fall trying to find the tops of things like trees like time

like me and time in the tallest tree drinking coffee from our hands and trying

not to be insufferable this early talk to me about sinuses how

to be naked as a window and proud lousy with citrus candles and hating

every moment I met a blind cat sniffing a fedora a silver timepiece

so refined I felt like pulling apart a chainsaw to know the full extent

81 of my own inadequacies in a meadow we don’t mention running cowboys

in the West how like our eyes are without realizing instead we are

wearing sweaters breathing like animals waiting with stars

behind our knees and dreaming of more sandwiches for tomorrow

promise me we will be always singing for no reason memorizing

the sway of things like trees like us for we are trying so hard

to be something silly and good whatever that means probably hopefully

something important

Simple Machine

creation being only a myth of the hands I beat my chest destructive heart inside my fulcrum body wasn’t built for a hard mechanized love though it makes love hard and such is the way when the tongue is so dry and so I see and so I am light as the implication of light but beating down desolate on this journey that began in the winter as despair

I feel it most in the blurred power of four wheels turned cactus planter turned child’s plaything turned discard then dust there are beautiful people built and rebuilt everyday no manual for any of it no telling how these things

83 should work but we tidy them maintain busy the hands so the heart stops wincing the skin all red in its forever memory and our heads so feeble antiqued and weary I can’t remember feel it most in the legs tomorrow will be a better day and yes a better day is the blue paint beneath my nails scratched from a passing car and kept there for the walk home up and up and up and up and up

I don’t want to believe a desert is so water intensive that sand is glass and only needs a fire if that is true my hands are cupped and ready they tell my bones awash inside the sky is better equipped to explain us a scissor is the simplest of machines I choose to cut

84 my hair at the root think about the limits of our reaching before I toss it to the clouds this is the first part of me I say and now I say it is yours

CHAPTER IV

PROCESSION

there is a street we are building building a fence building a house building a baby for a house a baby building blocks for a pet in a town here you are a fireplace for a life stoked with a glass hammer your happy woman rosy in the bath a fire hazard with an affinity for chipping paint one day she will catch you sniffing housewives behind the house your hand a finesse of banister and baseboard lazy at their elbows extended to pay the contractor excuse her while she finds a train to chase her tawny moonscape too heavy for a carry-on remember her

86 and maybe she will bring her baby back a balloon and maybe she will build it all all over again