Heater Feet

When I was a little girl
waiting at the bus stop
I started a club.
I was the only member
until a couple years later
when I allowed my brother to join.

It was called "Heater Feet"
and the sole purpose
was to devise ways to stay warm
when all odds were against you.
Tricks like
breathing down into the collar of your shirt
so that you utilize all warm air
and holding your thumb
on the inside of your tight, mittened fist.

Terminal

I can tell when I've been someplace I cannot remember
by the chemical reactions in my body.
Stepping out of airplanes and into terminals, past wire magazine racks and a particular photograph of horses on a track or
tigers
in a cage or
stadium
these images then the smells of
coffee at three AM in the cities at terminal B16
I've been in this airport before to confirm
rushrushing down moving sidewalks filled with footprints suspended in a time warp
under and over the same bit of ground in a circle
layers upon layers
of my own footprints
past the familiar branch-off for the international terminal
around the corner there will be a plaza...


but just another row of shops and then I can see.
This is not the same
Cinnabon
newsstand
Ben and Jerries
racetrack
city
plane
person
footprint
circle
stop
B16
seat belt
take off

I Don't Doubt

It rises each morning and
For the first time there is
No Thomas just
Cradle the infant ideas in our
Swaddling clothes and

Hold breath penance is the
Purgatory between
Hello and
I do.

The Spree

infinitum infinitum infinitum there are
sparks go
machines bleep bleep out off and onto
life support we
infinitum
eat french fries spin wheels fortuious trees grow to
emblem height and still see mansions made of minute moments
scuffed under park swings one
infinitum
two three jump and we
were married but
jumped
since the dog was tied and barking down below we
had to find some
solid ground but
it is always quaking somewhere machines
bleep bleeping on and off there are
endings of livings of tails of the heads of
newspaper clippings re-phrased and
we said
if we could just
if we could just

when i first met you
you were part my attempt at decency.
i woke up this morning with
too little cognition.
what had run from us last night
that we had found?
how are these privileges
the glue that holds us down?
i somehow cannot catch my breath today.
it is sticky outside.
you might make me stagger.
i need some validation.
to coerce my actions
and i don't know
what call to place.

I Do

i light
burn down
and reconstruct (sometimes rip apart and glue-stick everything back my way)
how it is i should react (push ashtray away i can't stand the smell afterwards)
to all these pieces (not really broken but contrived into false structures)
that are not my own.

i have shorn
everything but wool in the
days from second grade on (since i really learned to appreciate the escape of a novel and found it better than peanut butter sandwiches and trips to the circus) i have
built this pole by pole. she
has sat here in
photos in
watercolors i have seen her face
in full it was
between anthology pages of poems and spiders spinning
webs of construct perfect
overlays of
throw around ( i will)
throw around (i do)
the forms and fll it out you willl
say:
i will.
(i will.)

Seamstress

she needs something to
smooth out the wrinkes
increase the chance he will find no lapse in face
when he runs his fingers past a point she will
play games with sandy creams and lectures on the
nature of elasticity watch
documentaries on how
a ball bouces back
in her court
yard she
divides duties with ashes and
vines and
borers
which:
of you will do
the bleeding the
seeding the
spreading of dieing she
waters posies wilting
it is
catch-up or
let-go but
no chance of gauzy growth on her
fingers pruned no
apptitude for
height worth trellis training a
bird to
sit still she had
no span of
wing and sought
cultivation in
journals the
medical profession re:
sense of touch
it is
one of five basic
like writes with her toes and prints
the same sketches over
over so there is more and
puts blood on her hands he will think
there is more.
if it seems

Believe Make Believe

Sometimes on sundays, I would find her in the church lot on Florence and Hamilton just people watching. She told me she was a member, but I've never seen her go in.
One say I came up to her just before the mass was to begin and told her I thought I might join her that day. She started to talk me out of it but came up dry.
...it was the old sort of Catholic church with a priest so stately but ancient and he just wouldn't die.
there were strange bird baths on the wall she said were baptismal fonts. SHe said: wash yourself with this water and your sins will be cleansed.
I doused my cock when no one was looking and prayed the the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost amen that I might be able to come back after each time I fucked her.
For the next hour, I listened closely to latin songs and stories and understood nothing. Sometimes she would exclaim or join singing, but mostly she just played snake on her cell-phone. She would get nervous at the idea of the place and scratch at her back a little. I knew it didn't itch, she just fucking liked doing it.
Last tuesday; I went to visit her at her mom's cottage in Jersey. Her mom said it would be better for Clara is we saw less of eachother, due to my condition.
I understand because I went to a baseball game with them the week before and the guy in front of me was so tall that I couldn't see over him so I just pushed him to the bottom of the bleachers real gentle like.
The security guy who'd been letting us smoke down joints and bring in our own beer and everything for the whole season made me leave and then Clara's momma said she was sort of uncomfortable with my being around so much.
I told her I'd never do anything wrong to her daughter and I told her about all the sins I'd had forgiven by the water and the holy trinity and the priest and all that, but she said that's not the point.
This afternoon, Clara came by my studio to pick up some photographs we'd taken together some time ago. We had gone down to this park in my dad's neighborhood and played with the long shutterspeed on my manual camera. She looks like a really tall ghost perched on three swings at the same time. You can almost read the faded-out writing on her Save the Eastern Bluebirds t-shirt she got from that seminar last summer.
She told me she just wanted to borrow the photos for a project she was working on; a project she would submit to a bunch of important people in New York who would make us rich and famous; but I can tell by the way she is scratching at the back of her neck that she isn't coming back. I can tell by the way she cracks her thumbs then turns and leaves that her ghost on three swings image will get longer and longer; lighter and lighter, until you cant even see that there are birds on her shirt anymore.
I am going to find an alter somewhere, I think. An alter where I can scuff out footprints, any evidence of having been there, but get down on my knees and start beliveing in some sort of ressurection, some sort of death, some sort of birth.

By the Dog

there are many ways I notify you.
I notify you with bird feathers on my nose.
and by yawning loudly near your ear.
your ear.
i lick.

Diamond are My Ex's Best Friend

“That’s the kind of man I imagine you’d like if you liked men.”

I didn’t protest, for which I was admonished. I could have, but I
am a horrible liar.
I was still letting him take me to
another time in my head.
I was an old house on a hidden coast,
he a damn good realtor.

She was making the bed and picking bits of
Kleenexes from between
the sheets (She flung
her bile in the most sacred of places) and had
shifted the topic of our conversation to diamonds.
I missed a sentence or so
but am pretty sure my lips were pursed in
contemplation, my head bobbing at the rise and fall of her familiar
consonants. Pretty sure
my feigned attentiveness was authentic enough to her.

“Brilliant cut,” she says, “it’s modern and everything reflects within.”

She didn’t know she was beaten. By herself with this banter;
Useless and nonsensical.
I picked up the magic 8 ball to make some logic of it all.
Ask again later burbles to the inky forefront and so that’s settled.

I tucked “Brilliant Cut” behind my left ear—the one
with the little piercing at the top so everything in my head could reflect through that pinhole. So proud of my handiwork.

I am certain that if I could be a shining rock
and that only, I would be a raging success as well—
but I didn’t tell her that. Instead I put too much sugar
in my too much coffee
so I wouldn’t be so bitter,
then practiced throwing light with my head.

“Grade E.”—Her tone above my refractive energies which were
humming keys with
no tempo. In school, grade ‘E’ was failing.
What would one do to be a diamond? Brilliant
through another’s carving—modern,



reflective, flawless through sheer lack of
content, valuable to the highest heights of the
system. So skewed,
our scales of importance.

I am more smug, more
self-righteous than is entirely necessary, but the bills are not paid
and my house is in shambles
so there is little else I can toy into chaos.

My left ear illuminated the wall above the kitchen sink where
she rubbed away an invisible
smear, and I could see the enamel had already begun
to crack.

In Recalling the Onset of Symptoms

I write your name in dust lines
Because that I can blow away
If nothing else
And I hide book pages in dresser drawers
So that you won’t know what I’m reading;
What I’ve been up to.
If only you knew where to look.
The bird bats wings and clings his perch he knows he can do that
And not have to choose a destination.
Burn just as many birdie-seed calories
And spend long preening hours thinking:
I should really lower my cholesterol.

I’ve tied your hands in too many ways to
Flaunt it at you
But I feel pangs of guilt or
Humiliation or
Smugness
Every morning when I run off to do what I do best
For no reason other than that:
I do it best.

I was sweeping one day
In the hayloft
These pellets of dust and I realized
They were bat shit.
Which disperses
And kills you.
So I stopped
Amidst clouds of their dust
And took photos
Of the warfare.
I thought later that night
As I coughed and bitched
About the onset of symptoms:
How appropriate.
You rubbed my back
And empathized with allergies.

On the Thursday before I stayed asleep,
I watched you through the window
On my way in from work
Finding my pieces of hidden newsprint
And pasting the words
Back together.
Your mouth moved silently like
Working through the idea
That I didn’t know
How to keep
Things on display.

And a year later
When it started to rain in the spring,
You picked up petals
From my grave top
And arranged them on a canvas to look like
Lilies for me.
I sent you pollen into the air
And new you’d find it on your pillowcase
In the morning
After coffee but before your shower.

I Remembered an Entire Story

My Darling Editor,

I remembered an entire story (year)
in one fraction of a hollowed second this morning when I couldn’t
(would not for fear of…)
get any closer to closer to pushing on your temple,
Your cheek, hot, salt, condensation slipping down a windshield my
fingers were wiper blades plowing along on your forehead sometimes
I hand-pump the air around your face so it always comes
inout inout with your chest.
It was a rapid series of still frames. Black and white plus color.
Bound onto a reel and held up to a light (we buy 40 watt so we don’t burn our lampshades)

These days, when I do things with you, I do them too quickly. To fit them in. I make lists of the hours in my days; write people’s names next to numerals and clocks with capital letters, proper punctuation and blocky highlighter pens. I consider the blank spaces yours. The wedge shaped air between punctual, planned, you are
What I fit in, what I remember.

I can recall playing questions, games
“Which golden girl are you”
“What are your favorite books?”
“You DO know who ___ is, right?”
“…no, please let me buy you another beer. It’s important to me that you stay.”
We sent time and location confirmation back and forth
I scraped the bottom of change jars and overdrew bank accounts in hopes for a longer evening of lifting heavy blankets, layers of rust and thick skins over coffee. Corona. Waitresses had to spend hours. Lifting beer glasses and eyebrows.

I once thought we were pregnant.
We sat at Big Boys and I couldn’t bring myself to eat the eggs.
Cigarettes and beer made me blanche.
I heard small voices and my breasts ached.
We went home and talked about the aesthetics of a poetry book.
Yellow lined papers. Spiral-binding. Content was more but font was everything. We couldn’t think of one. We should design typeface.
Our mattress was on the floor and you leaned over the air between us. Set your heart on a radio wave and blew it down to me:
“Would it help if we talk about what we’d do?”
(yes, baby. Baby. That would help. I am scared. I want to be a parent with you but I don’t even want you to know that yet. This is not how it plays out in my head. First. First we are not both kids).
And we talked about play structures and family photos.
(public v. private. Hands are cold. Particularly the right. Is it okay to talk about this? Will it turn to stone when the sun rises tomorrow?)
Crust on bread, safe brands, taxes and footprints on white stairs.
(Catholic v. agnostic. Names v. color coding).
And we grew a little older in that room and for three nights from then when I finally discovered.
No.
I was not pregnant. There was no baby.
But you had shown me, too, that I was not empty.

Comfort Comes From Years of Wear

In my right mind,
I never call you.
It's only after a week
of tripping over your scuff marks
that I look for my
soft, old sole