poems

1. The historian of your life remembers
Then I will have to love you mysteriously.
Motherwise I will love you.
Though the storm has mummified
the garbage bags,
though the salt eats our paws
and the false spring buds are dying,
Over and over again
in matching
hospital socks I will love
your every newness, will lastly kiss
your bald spot, brush the tangles
from your eyes: the dark light
whispering
our fears,
like grandparents, moving
crabwise over
the unmappable
distance of tomorrow,
of countdown, nine a.m.
I will not forfeit
any inch of you. Sisterwise, crumpled
on your couch
until they cut apart
your spine,
I will not forfeit: though You play
the same record again, heavy metal
from your childhood
again, though we drift in
and out of sleep
Again, wondering about death
and health insurance, my name restless
on your DNR, You lean your bike
against the rail. Can't cross
the bridge, you say, until you've cast off
something you love. I follow the river
to its end. Stand knee-deep in silt.
Collect bouncy balls, your dog's first tooth,
a slap bracelet, a Statue of Liberty keychain.
Cast me off in love: I carry myself
into the waiting distance.

2. 2.
28 Liberty
underneath all skin is a room in an empty
office building with the sun coming down
shapewise, all Manhattanhenge pretty,
isosceles joy like you wouldn't believe
and a lone swivel chair in shadow,
looking out across the plaza to another
office building to another
office building
to another such
infinity —
Andrew's daughter
dreams of mopping floors here in
the hollow hall-
ways of nighttime
with her headphones on,
she's nineteen she's going to Puerto Rico
she has a tattoo of a rose on her arm
and an overbite
that makes her pretty
I print out her resume to help her
get a job mopping floors
or maybe changing
trash bags in executive cans
I correct Team Work, fix the margins,
the cacophony
of typefaces, the love
is in the editing I suppose,
all love in the editing, though god left us
with tailbones and cellulite,
though god left us
with uncertainty about god
with wisdom teeth and homeless dogs
And everyone's just flying off the planet,
Andrew says
on the phone with his little girl
who's somewhere in the rust belt now
pretending to be full-grown,
he says it again, God, everyone's flying
off the planet
I hear her voice against his ear:
Four people since January
And he's quiet now, his hand on the wheel
The city lights floating
golden in his glasses,

3. 3.
Nothing shuts him up
like grief's invitation for platitudes —
The voice against his ear pulls us
over to the fire hydrant,
says
Dad? I’ll take you to the movies.
The city golden, the gravity
holding

4. 4.
you, the average of all noses
love you abstrackly love you bottomless unemptying
on the doghair rug
water your plants for you
pour you a diet coke
in a glass with no beginning,
no end, kiss your bacne
kiss the mouths of your tattoos
we have
many mouths you have
two pairs of orthopedic
shoes in
neuropathy brown
a cracked cello case, glass bowls
stuck with jewels, a daughter
named like ghosts and everything after
is mine to hold against the entropy of everything
after is mine

5. 5.
Black Circle
My mouth is a salt lick I lose my metrocard a rivulet
of sweat flows down my belly from my right
breast which is larger than the left, like feet —
It is disgusting to perpetuate
the asymmetries of a body with every breath
but here we are, sweating, long sleeves and hijab, heat-
straightened hair down to the waist, gray suits and nylons
the longest four minutes of our lives:
To work for the MTA you have to
cover up your teardrop tattoo
with a smooth
black circle,
fooling no one,
and sweep what cannot be swept,
sweep cemented gum sweep tar of city shoes
and homes of sleeping homeless:
sweep the rats from our eyes and change
the garbage bags on the platform
so we can dream again
oh look at that young mother,
shoulders marked with acne scars,
judge her for being so awfully
teenage so awfully
laughing,
glitter nail polish,
a charm bracelet
a skin-hot newborn stuck to her chest and god
she looks so happy, so overjoyed no shame
at being young, baring scars, holding her baby’s foot
in her small hand
I’m going to New Haven
which is the country
as far as I'm concerned, clouds
of minnows in the river,
a heron pretending to be a stick:
I’m done pretending, though it comes natural
and my body when it sweats can catch me off-guard
with a lung-deep shame
and suddenly the train
is packed with suits like a Friday afternoon
at the dry cleaner’s
I haven't been to a wedding in forever, the gray one says,
as I am thinking of wedding rings
and the sound they make, like water,

6. 6.
and I pray to the beautiful girls in pearl earrings
who fall asleep in public with their mouths open
Our bodies on the train tracks make the grass grow, the graffiti jingle
make the bunting outside the car lot shine spiritual
make hesitation pretty

7. 7.
A Counting
why running made her dizzy, why Oprah
and cigarettes, why vertigo, why overwork,
why laughter
of a gasping kind,
why ringing in her ears:
I never had to ask
where babies come from,
knew I had no father,
knew my mother must’ve found me,
spirit swimming in the ether:
Knew she
showed me mercy, knew
she took me in she built
a home from milk and hair, from bits of organs, heart and lung,
the skin of her skin the toes
of her toes
I never asked why memory, why ether, why belonging, only asked to count
her fingers, toes and heartbeats, taking
Meticulous
inventory
of What I’d hollowed coming through
When what I’d hollowed
coming through
was why she slept so much,
why running made her dizzy, why Oprah
why cigarettes, why vertigo, why overwork,
why laughter
of a gasping kind,
why ringing in her ears,
I never asked just counted:
onetwothreefourfive
and back again,
one two three four five and back again
Never asked just counted

8. 8.
Mother in All Your Disguises
you are near me but cannot breathe me, mother
in all your disguises are you mercy or apparition? Who were you
before you knew me or have
you always known me, the every
mother trapped
inside one kitchen crying woman
high heel spinning woman
night shift working
bathtub sleeping
red robe woman
Reddi-whip upturned
elbow braced
against refrigerator woman, it is summer and
the streets are melting, they have swallowed up your high, high heels
the sky
is pavement orange
And your face is menacing
when you scold me
In one breath
You named me Me; I named you mother
in all your disguises
not Reddi-whip, though I could have
not high heels not melting, not menacing
not Mojave that made us
not Joshua tree as salutation
not scorpion as desire
not tumbleweed as talking,
mother in all your disguises I look for you in every grocery store
I heal you with my bones you are mysterious in the parking lot
the summer turns the pavement to molasses
you lose your shoe, your best pair
(the tar pits took the wolves and mastodons, who will cry for them)
now the heel is all messed up you dive in after it
the parking lot has got you now, you mastodon your legs
your teeth your blood your cysts your breasts your love your broken-down indifference
on Sunday mornings I throw cornflakes on your bed
to mark the shape of you
I satisfy the achy, bruised-up edges
of my knowing
You are liquid, ever-changing
flypaper, hairspray wafting down the daffodiling hall,
camouflaged in sofa bed

9. 9.
pasted into wallpaper
moving swanly with the vacuum
your voice the whoosh of highway cars, the furnituring breath of night, the splish and
splosh of bathroom sink
mother I’m outgrowing, I’ve sucked all the spaghettis I can muster
I’ve paranoid the locks and shaken
possums from the rafters I have even wrecked
myself searching
for you and still
you move in the tissue-thin
house dress of my childhood and your body
smells like crayons mapping out the infinite
imagination of my
four years old: I draw
the speckled black that burst me, I draw
you before I named you,
I search the wallpaper
I empty out the vacuum stick the crayons in my nostrils:
Are you presence or the absence, the broken or the blessed, the blackness
or the rainbow that I scratch out with my nail I love your
burst blood vessel cheeks
Veiny cavity: a neck
A cold piano sings your teeth, you are a pink arrangement in sand
You sweat you grow hair from your armpits, no wonder you’re so tired
Remember when we paved over the animals and they grew wild inside us?
Now we dance the dance
Of buzzards in the desert, more beak than footwork
more memory than desire you never really
say you love me but you press a penny to my forehead, oh cool relief
You teach me to feel the smallest
breezes in the world (the breath of flies, the second
hand of clocks)
You tell me where I come from so I don’t forget
though I am older now and not so hungry

10. 10.
Rebeginning
Skin we share
Bones we share
You asked for a mirror you got it
The skin under your eyes is the blue of always
I gave you varicose veins, turned your hair gray and spindly
Taught you heartpain that could kill you
Gave you greedy gave you
Sticky hands
The lake is milk with salt, the black sand beach
is only gnats
the terrible black
of thousands deep
So we wade. We part the sea we cup the water
In our hands and thirteen years go by
I'm not a good girl anymore
no I’m a little shit and near
the buzzing carcass of a fish
My hands r alive with hated sixleg
things their
crystal ball eggs
their blooming near-invisible
smooth black shells
Mama says to really see the larvae
tuck it under eyelid, waterline will quiver you may hear
the holy suction of life
attaching to life and yes!
I see with pure transparency the nerves
So cellular unstopping, the branching spine,
It is irritating to unravel world as it is
My mother lassoes mysteries with every word
They say this lake is all runoff
All human error, a flood that killed,
And some more blessed than others
More blissfully on purpose
I slam my bedroom door so many times a draft
forms in the house
Flips books to unread pages, wakes dust
From blinds,
Carries away the water bill
And any hope of paying it I'm angry
To the point of disastering I bang my head against the door
Dream violent mercies of rebeginning,
Dream clean birth of eyes

11. 11.
White linen,
A family of spines,
A flood that kills all things,
Sweet milk from salt.
We wade. We part the sea
Of black. We cup our hands
The larvae is invisible except
For desire
The salt has reddened up
our fresh-shaved legs
The skin we share
Bones we share
Blue we share
The milk we share: the water stings our eyes but heals
Your varicose veins,
my acne
we are washing out
our ugliness with salt
We are mirror
The gnats they eat our ugliness
We weigh nothing.

12. 12.
The Babies We Had as Children are All Growed Up
Mama your dirty lipstick cigarettes
are kissing our ancestors
on the mouth of some salt sand graveyard
While the parking lot weeps up the bramble hills.
You say the iodined old folk will exterminate
the grief
from our mouths, I say
Ash in lungs can’t choke me
Sun pain breath can’t hit me and though
Your knees may crumble there will still be tomorrow
picnicking the disco ball till dawnlight stumbles, rises, pours
a cup of coffee on my raw pink teeth.
I’ve already seen your death mask and it’s pretty.
It can stop a nosebleed with its eyes
It waxes off your eyebrows like the moon
It laps up all the blackness from the bathroom sink your hunger
looks nice on you, it’s something alive at least
Though you are filthy and smell like bruises,
Though you scratch mosquito bites with broken nails
to brief explosions of time,
your appetites scream wind chimes
through the vast unknowing childhood
of my bedroom, through the brief and happy
Goldfinch yellow sponge paint walls remember
when I was your one and only
hamburger helper?