Dissonance

Do you know what it's like to drive on grass
or have a stomach full of steamy air
or stand with your legs apart and
your back all weirdly straight in front

of everyone you know and read some
words that you wrote, but don't really
know what they mean anymore?
That's the way I want to look in the mirror,

all close up, trying to see through
my skin and look for some words written
underneath. Like a check that's not
for you or a note that's not for you.

Like a phone call you missed and
you can't call back. It could catch like
paper, fly up and burn your
lashes like some fast fateful ghost.







Mattress

It is late enough to be quiet, tired, away from the day and
the work of talking, the work of looking like something,

of looking like awake or interested or uninterested
and there is dreaming and pillows with names on them

and sides of the bed with definite ways to lie,
definite ways to look at the person that shares

the blankets. Sometimes it feels right and sound like
feeling sad on Christmas, cold pizza or forgetting how to smile

when someone takes a picture, but sometimes it feels like a pile
of stories that you tell each other in the dark like you're

watching $100,000 Pyramid or playing Taboo in your
grandmother's basement all day long.







Dictionary

Husbandry should mean something else:
a day school that teaches you how to touch
somebody's hair and ears. Or how to lick
someone's teeth and mean I love you.
Say all the wrong things, all the wrong words.
Put them together in some terrible sentence
and see how people look at you. Or wear too-big boots
out in the pasture and try to run in them.
The triangle dinner bell rings. Smell the food
on the table and drink big glasses of milk
one after the other like they'll never fill you up.







I. M. Pei

I don't remember the month or even the year when the city caught this porch-light sunset.
It must have been warm and I must have been wearing cutoffs and we must have been walking
to see a movie or from a movie or looking at books we'd never buy. I can never remember architect's

or author's last names, but if I had the guts to call you up I'd tell you about the museum I went to
when I wanted to be drunker than I was and that reminded me of eating sprouts downtown and all the past lives
that I can't understand anymore. I can never remember page numbers or how to play blackjack, but if you call me up
I'm sure I can drive a car across any state and pretend not to be scared. I'll let you sleep as long as you want.







November

Everyone was reading palms, but there was nothing but twisted
streamers, nail polish, and waiting for the train at midnight.
Sweat from hand holding or the sweat on an upper lip. We were lonely.
We were hula hoop dancing until we got tired. We were trying
to think of jokes in the seconds before the song came into focus.
These trees won't turn brown and they won't tell you what time is it.
The air is weaker and better on the walk home, but we never talk like that.








Caravan

Might lose a tooth or get sick and die
alone here, or there. Move to
a town where there is no one;
move to a town where no one
talks or goes outside;
move to a town where they
love birds or billboards
or sexy shops or swampy
backyard swing sets in
the beginning of May.
Move to a town where
there are teenagers who walk
to nowhere and talk to
no one. Might drink a lot or
get dandruff or start a job
and lose a job. Might be a bad
worker or reader or bus driver.
Move to a town where the
rain only comes in the early
morning when no one
is around. Move to
a town that has flowers or
no flowers, where the sidewalks
make all shoes sound
like high heels. A mother in an empty
school parking lot. A mother that sounds
like car keys.







One Bedroom

Make food fast because it's dying in the fridge.
A sweet potato when it's dark, a rotten
tomato when you don't feel like it.
I am having that nightmare again and I wish
I could go to a basement or a sound stage
where people are jumping to their favorite song.
There is a ghost in my room.
There is a ghost on my chest.

I never sleep without dreaming of one person
or another and they either hate me or want me for no reason
or another. Do laundry fast because it's filling up
the closet. Wool in the sunshine and looking
for shoes to buy. I will put everything in the oven;
I will roast everything in the oven;
I will write my name and the date on the wall behind the oven.
New clothes and no one knows anything I don't tell them.
The cold to put on your thighs. It's just the way it is.
Hands and feet, bathrooms, floors in the morning. I will write you
puzzle sentences that will make you change your mind.







Campus

That kind of conversation
where the person is watching
a sitcom or talking to their dog.
New recipes that don't make
me think about anyone
and I wish there was a drug
I liked that didn't smell because
all my neighbors are stiffs.

There are velvet couches here
and furniture so heavy and old,
I don't know how they pushed
it up the hill. Are you there?
Are you listening?
Walls carved Jack loves Judy,
statues, old men, no lines for
the bathroom. It takes me hours
to walk out the door, into the air
that is 10 degrees colder than home.







House Sitting

Drinking from cups that aren't ours
in a too-nice place with the windows open
to the wet and hot and your friend's mother
and her boyfriend talking about something:
you have to take a boat to get there,
only certain times of year and no electricity.
Water levels switch, you know the Pacific.
My ocean is cold and made of quartz. Spit on
the street, on the corner, replacement crackers.
Panes big as highways, curtain sails.
We will fight about nothing later,
but your hand is on my knee.







Long Distance

You make me think about soda flavors
and walking around nearsighted in my underwear,
but we haven’t done anything yet.
I won’t take my shirt off because my back
freezes and I’m embarrassed of my scar,
even though it would look like a smiley face to you.
There are lots of things I should’ve never said.
I ask my mother what this feeling is.
I never have plans. Someone said I lived in squalor,
but I don’t live like that anymore.

Where are my friends? I don’t care
for commas or saying it right.
This feeling feels like fall.
Muddy furniture colors, leaves in my mouth,
smeared sunlights on the walls
and what does your cheek feel like.






Intermission

Try curling shampoo or afternoon television.
I am sleeping on a couch in an unused living room,
but I haven't gotten used to the house settling

or the dog barking in the middle of the night.
Lawn mower leftovers, daytime mosquito bites.
I answer the phone with a different voice.

My brother's cologne clouds up every room for hours.
My sister's eyes and clothes don't look like mine.
Sidewalk hellos, bologna, tan strangers, a dirty lake,

and beer I've never tried. It is cold for July
and I am digging through the church
sale boxes for something that I cannot find.






Virgo

My framed pictures are all crooked
and I'm lazy. I'm trying to talk, in the dark,
on the steepest streets and I'm
trying to convince. I'm trying to be
casual when I say, don't you?
But he doesn't want to say anything,
when he's walking downstairs
and upstairs, into the light of the city.
There is cake and someone
is lighting the candle,
but the truth is that it's been
getting better and now
it's the ache I miss,
of all things.






Goodbye Coney

I used to cut my hair like a boy's. Met every dusty bodega cat.
My feet stank. I saw Julia Roberts and Bruce Springsteen.
I fell asleep on you, paid 600 dollars for a room with no windows
and creatures in the closet; I would have been better to you.
My mother was always on the phone when I wasn't paying attention
to the curb or an icy patch. I hated you on your parade days—
your boozy breath. I was Mia or I was
Diane, walking in Central Park. I was watching
everyone getting married and I was zipping naked ladies in too-small dresses.

When I had to go to the hospital to get that thing cut out of my chest,
I took a cab back, washed my face hard with someone else's soap,
and slept for days. When I woke up, I was fingering the tape and
whispering in the mattress to those strangers that I loved,
or gave a hairy eye, or accidentally touched with a fingertip.






Crumbs

Driving around looking
for people. Nice friends
with easy questions and
long-pause answers.
I can cartwheel across

the state of Florida, but I can't
cook. I get cold in the
supermarket aisles
while strangers stare at my chest.
I call them slobs.

I sleep in the
shape of a star
but I can't wake up early.
I put extra butter
on toast and with figs
and honey. I like
eyelashes and freckles
and wearing jeans to bed.






Christmas

Ponytails, marijuana, dust that covers
everything and sheets that make furniture
out of cardboard boxes.
Dance with the doors closed,
chopsticks, duck sauce,
Venetian blinds.

I am floating in black water
next to plastic chaise loungers that smell
like chewed fruit candy and sunscreen.
While everyone else, in all these apartments,
watch a movie they’ve watched before
or flip their pillows to the
cool side again.






Homemade

When I threw spaghetti on your wall,
I wanted it to leave a stain
and you'd have to stare at it
while convincing someone you’re soft.

I moved south, to line dance
with a cowboy who fed me
gravy-soaked biscuits
and always asked, May I?

Heel-toeing, pretending it's
1959 or 1973 or 1994
singing along with songs
days after I heard them.

I walked down to the beauty parlor
or hardware store
or greasy spoon
and I couldn't remember

your middle name or my old
phone number or the way
your pajamas were warm
right after you took them off.






Happy Birthday To You

My Father can smoke a cigarette
in one breath, so all that's left
is the bones. His face pulled hard,
like a cowboy or an actor.
He can cook eggs and build things
with wood and nails and take
things apart with electronic tools.

There are pennies on the dresser
and socks on the floor
when I try and say it softly,
from here to there.






Biography

You are the one Ben Franklin
wanted to be with all your
fun-running, flossing,
fresh juice, no deserting.
The way you walk around in
bad weather or sunny weather
without squinting.
Nighttime craning, silent and
still to grind out the aches.

He would have hated me.
All my sleeping
and crying, all my four
dollar coffees,
buttonless clothes
in mashed potato piles.
Uneven fingernails.
No mind for business or
any of that.






Livonia

I am hiding the dolls and cat hair.
I am pushing the Duncan Hines,
Ritz crackers, Coca-Cola, and the
Styrofoam tray of hamburger meat
all the way to the back.

We will sleep in my brother's room
and drive two towns over
for strong enough coffee.
We can use the drive-thru
and watch the commuters
while the steam clouds
the windshield.






New Yorker

My friend Fred speaks in tongues.
He runs west on 14th street, pulling me,
laughing at a psychic who just told me
I had had three abortions.
I sat there, but my mouth got cut up
from biting the inside of my cheeks,
trying to keep my face straight.
The blood tasted like pennies
and I spit some when I finally let it out.
Fred tells me his father kicked a piece of cauliflower
in his ear and shows me the scar, then smiles and says he
can’t believe I bought that. I make him sick.
Fred tells me what he ate for dinner and breakfast, he never
changes his clothes and his mother, who drinks
calimochos, is visiting but I never see her.

Fred makes eight dollars when I make seven.
He steals money from my purse.
He tells me I’m a crybaby, tells me I was
skinnier when he met me. He says he’s sick of this fucking
city and all these fucking people, yells at the waiter
a stranger on the street and
nicknames everyone. He says,
tell me the story again.
He’s wearing sunglasses inside, again.
He says he hasn’t slept in 4 days,
says he’s tired of listening to me.
We drink soda for lunch.
I catch him in a lie again.
I sit there and I say, shut the fuck up,
and laugh until it’s not funny anymore.






Envelope

June, July then May.
May July August.
Tonguing stamps and paper.
Tonguing glue.
March,
March,
March.

I am too hot.
I am too cold,
stiff shoulder walks.

When I have a little girl
I will name her
Elinor, Ellie, Elsie.

When I have a little
boy, I will name
him Henry, Hank and Harry.

I will hum low and pretty.
Purple flowers. Pretty purples.
Handmade blankets,
pieces of pictures
and June, July and August.






Lilt

I know girls from Honeoye,
Hemlock and Henrietta
who drive to Canada
with cocaine in the pockets
of their too thin jackets.

They will laugh at you
with wet, crazy teeth
and get you kicked
out of whatever
scratchy motel you're in.

They'll give you cigarettes,
thick whiskey and cry about
their fathers, mothers,
friends and boyfriends.
You can cry too,

until they fall asleep and
in the morning they will
will take a shower, but
still have make up on
their faces.

They will get married and
work every day to pay the
cell phone bills
and grocery bills
and rent on the coldest apartment

you've ever been in
and get fired from every
waitressing job
and say every time
that it doesn't matter anyway.