Come Out Come Out here Ever You Are--a prose poem

Like the click or a clack of a train changing tracks. My bones, you’re in my bones. They pop and they creak in the morning, the crack and they gravel all day. You’re churning rocks like butter in my joins. You, who threw me to one side when my knee gave out, sipping my marrow like cider from my femur straw. And I took vitamins and drank milk. I rode bike and ate well: I knew I would forget you and your teeth and your skin, under my skin between my fleshes and I buried you down into my bones—come out come out! Eeyaki! Olli olli oxen free. So, you’re free. Now please let me go on my way.

Girl Crush-an essay

I have a girl crush, it’s big and fat and as high as the moon! She’s as high as the moon too, full moon bike rides and beautiful. Her hair is brown and her skin tans- bike riders tan, and her zig zag sandal feet delight me. She has a fire, a spark, a flame, a desire… and I have a cliché, but it’s true: She’s fierce in there. She once told me, “I think I would have made a better boy” and I think she’s lovely and I think she’d still be lovely… as a boy.
I was calm the last time we met, her and I. There was cider and cookies and I met some of her old friends. I wanted to sneak her away, all giggles, and ask her to tell me anything. She’d been gone on what I imagine to be a ride chased by autumn across the state, and her headband was pink riding back against the wind. Bemidji is her home she says, and I wonder why she’d settle for such a small thing when she’s so huge inside, at least, to me. But the town does grown on you, and she’s seen more than I have. I think her roots are much deeper than any I’ve ever had. I wonder how warm the soil gets down there, and if she would keep me warm too, if I stayed long enough to plant myself down.
But she disappeared while she was gone, unclouded my head and I realized I wouldn’t be in Bemidji long; two more years, maybe. I knew that any emotional manifestation would never leave my heart to reach her hands. It was quite the laugh of a though to bubble over my lips as I kissed my boyfriend, and vaguely I thought of her kissing hers. I wondered once if she would be my boyfriend. I wondered twice if she would let me take her out for milkshakes. Well, I lied, I thought about the milkshake one more than just twice. I wanted to sit her down across the booth, share her thoughts, have her laughing around her straw, tearing at her napkin. I bet she’d get vanilla… if they made it non diary, and non soy. No, no, I’d told myself then, I can’t ask her to go out, maybe I could ask her in? Now that I don’t have my own home that is. I was a renter, with a dining room table, and a bountiful kitchen—now loving in a cramped dormitory room—the community kitchen smells and has no windows. I could never ask her here, in with the smells and clutter. I feel cluttered! I have too many strings attached to each of my parts to try to give her my heart, my hand, much less a second glance… but I do! I do! I look, and I like and I smitten away.
I have no such right to be captivated! I am not her love, her light! I am just a girl still. Were I not, I would write about her mouth, or her eyes, or the way she breathes. I would love to write about even one of these things in accuracy. But, we are not close. I’m too panicked when I look in her eyes… I think they’re brown, but all I really know is my face is red—after all, maybe when she wears green, they pin prick hazel. Maybe they’re deep enough to blacken on grey nights when she’s sitting and sighing. I’ve never been close and quite enough to hear an individual breath—separate and resting. I’d like to sit with her, quiet and resting. Tonight however, none of the details come to me! For I know I’ve stared at her mouth but I’m certain I was not concentrating on aesthetics! Were her lips thin? I think so, but why can’t I be sure? I’m certain her boyfriend is sure… I’ll even bet her other friends know. I wish I were an other friend.
I want to pup this fizz, shake the can and release. Drop this pressure to the ground where I can laugh over it in later days. I doubt she cares my heart beast fast for her. I doubt she knows the drop in my stomach every time she winks at me—a habit I find so charming and undeniable that I wish I could pick it up. Or maybe she does know, because I get far too loud around her… or I backfire and become too shy. She’s just got this spice, like a strait cinnamon zing, and all I’ve got is a big fat girl crush.
I am a big fat girl crush, over the moon, head over heels, and she doesn’t even wear heels! But the secret I keep down in myself, out of even my heart, is that if I could quicken her pulse too, if she wanted each wink to hit me so hard, then I don’t know what I would do. I know we’re no perfect for each other, that we have different paths. I don’t know what she would ask of me, or if there’s anything I could even give her, but I would write her stories, and read her books. I’d learn to cook her favorites, and I’d listen to her music, make her listen to mine. I would jus love to exist with her from time to time, laying around just a little bit lazy… I would love to be her pillow.

Mirror--a prose poem

Mirror. Why, mirror, are you in here? To tease me out of my clothes. You’re feasting on me, aren’t you? You’re reflecting eye on my dappled thighs and you can’t resist me. Do you? Shall I? Coy little square, my… what sharp corners you have—the better to reflect you my dear. And the lights are turned low to hide what I can and I frame myself sleek silver shines lined with the parts I do not care for. You minx, you wall dwelling vixen. You are, exclusively mine, until someone walks behind me.

Fruit and Vegitable Baby--a dream

I had a dream. I was in a bath tub with my lover. “I’ve just given birth, so you have to be nice to me!” I told our visitor in the bathroom. I stood for the bathroom stall, where blood was expelled, and emerged. I walked down the Hagg-Saur hall, bright with sun light and held the melon head, green stripped and heavy. The orange of the pelvis and the orange of the torso would not stay together, “He’s dying!” I realized I’d forgotten to peel the oranges, how could I expect him to stay together with the peels in the way? I was terrified my lover, now husband would find out I was letting our child die. I began to peel, and the other parts loosened, the carrot fingers, corn cob legs… I had to peel faster. I peeled away too much though, and the abdomen couldn’t heal. I cried and realized the suffering. I was putting it in pain, for my self. I was selfish. I’d put it out of its misery; I tossed it into a trashcan, suddenly just dead fruit. I had failed, I couldn’t make it live… I didn’t know it would be so hard. My love would be too upset… so I fetched his mother. I found my own mother too, then my dead aunt, and my dear sister came with. We found some bushes in the court yard. I sat them all down and joined their warm circle. I looked at them all and said, “Okay, how do you keep your children from falling apart?”

Soldier--a poem

We had an apartment-
We only existed outside of those walls for classes
Or to be the cold breathes outside
Of the country kitchen
The gas station
Wal-Mart.
“Whaley Whale” You called yourself…
I was the Star-Fishy-Fishy.

You used to scoop me up so tall and spin our love in the kitchen.
Me so high on your chest, “Touch the light!” you’d say, and I would, and we’d kiss.
Was it really you there? Twirling and laughing?
I was so happy to
Forget
Who you could be
When the light in your eyes went
Out.

The night you found his car,
The night you found me stripped,
I had already said I wasn’t yours
But you hadn’t let go--
We didn’t see eye to eye.
I thought he would die by your hands.
I told him to run, drive-
But in his car
I’d lost your ring
And forgotten my shoes.
I walked into lake Bemidji
I though I might have drowned.

I never knew until the end
About the cigarillos—
Never even knew you smoked
We’d been together an entire year and
I never knew until last night
how much you, lie,
and it was your new ex-girlfriend’s lips, that let it slip.

You didn’t believe in whom I could be on my own
But I still have both of my feet
Underneath me
and shoed.
You told me I needed you
But I am stronger than that.
I am

It’s been almost one year
Since that night, and the lake, and the
Tears—ashamed that they were mine.
You’ve given up Da Vinci
You’ve abandoned your brushes, those precise pens
And thick pencils.
I remember when you’d bought them
They were new
You were excited.

Your inky hands are too white
Now, too clean
Your two faces will never look the same
Without your long hair or
without your hair at all.

Now,
You’ve spent so many months hating me,
Loving her.
She was, for a time,
your new Captor.
But she left you too—
When you shaved your head
Took away her CDs and told her
“You’re moving on base,
I’m joining the military.”
And you joined the military
Just like Kurt
Who hits your mother
Just like Kurt
Who pushed you around
Just like Kurt, the man
You swore you always hated.
And anything left of the good I knew is
Now very,
Very gone.

Falling From Bright to Brown--a poem

I used to be brighter than candy, even when I wasn’t sweet
I used to be the color of neon and rainbow.

I used to be colors—the ones in the upper right
Of your computer paint spectrum box.

I used to be cans of fizz. I was caffeinated
saturated with soda: I didn’t know flat.

My heart didn’t know ground: I put on his ice skates and launched
Into the cold sky with my woven scarf.

I was a super hero, I was unstoppable.
I rode the clouds. I, was unstoppable.

I was hot pink and I was confusable.
My voice rose louder than those skates, those clouds, ever took me.

I was one of the stars. I was burning bright and fast.
I was on a race to somewhere, with a someone I’d call rocket fuel.

But he burnt up my blades and I was lost back to the stratus
While he raced on Looping back for me but never slowing down.

My heart found the ground the same time as my ass.
Now I’ve found ponds and I skirt around their lost reeds.

Sometimes I even scoot in brown tennis shoes
Through the towns and the forests.

I’ve found a someone lost in the wood grain
And he is like the rain; falling with me from the sky.

Mamory Memories

..or, The Dangers of Chasing Pencils

In second grade Ashley Armento wore training bras. She showed me hers when I stayed over. She said she wouldn’t be friends with any girl who wouldn’t wear a training bra because they were gross, even though neither of us were developing. The next evening back at home I asked my mom to buy training bras for me, and she refused. The next time Ashley and I hung out I tried to pass off one of my shorter spaghetti tops as a bra but she said it didn’t count. Ashley and I didn’t stay friends long.

My breast started growing in the middle of fourth grade; painful bottle caps of tissue under my skin. I would try to catch my pencil as it went to roll off the far end of my desk and bash my chest against the edge of the desk, shuddering in pain, hating my pencil, and boobs.

My breasts gave up growing for another year after that. There’s a picture of me from the summer after sixth grade sitting on the curb next to a boy. I was at a parade and the boy was Jeff Scott—I think I scared him. That was the first and last time we hung out. In the picture there’s already a shadow of cleavage creeping up from under my tank top. I think I was already at a size B that summer when I finally decided to go off of sports bras and start into the form fitting ones.

I’ve always hated the feeling of cold breast, the nipple puckering like a clot of goose bumps, and poking out—sticking out and the way that people stare like it’s unnatural, dirty or sexual. My breasts have never felt less sexual than when they were cold. I was in tenth grade at my public high school, walking the rounded halls lined with blue and orange and red and yellow lockers. I was going to the library in the center of the buildings circles. It was chilly out that day. I’d dropped my coat in my locker, and had my hoodie on, unzipped over a shirt. There was a girl who had spit gum into my hair when I was in the seventh grade, she strut passed with her boyfriend. She looked at me, and turned to her bleach blond Abercrombie boy and said “It must be cold in here, maybe some of us should put on a jacket.” I’m sure I spat some phrase back at the girl before strutting into the library only to sit down at a table and zip the sweatshirt up. I was horribly embarrassed. After that I started buying thicker bras, so that no one would be able to tell. I never bought a soft cup again, until last year when my mom brought home three for me she’d gotten cheap. I wear them on occasion-too broke to buy new ones on my own… but I always wear a dark colored shirt with those, and if I’m going out, I dress extra warm.

The day I turned eighteen my friend and I wandered the Arts High campus taking birthday donations to go to Saint Sabrina’s. We left the dorms in her powder blue jeep and arrived at the piercing parlor and purgatory. I went up stares, filled out the forms, gave them the fifty dollars and went into the back room. A warm and friendly man with gauged nostrils, and scarification tattoos above his eyebrows carefully drew the small dots on either side of my nipple. “It’s crooked looking” I said. He redrew them, then laid me down. He gripped my nipple tightly in the clamps, lining its holes up with both of my drawn on dots. He took the ten gauge hollow needle, had me breath in, then the moment I couldn’t hold my breath any longer, palms sweating, eyes closed, I exhaled and the needle went though swiftly. He threaded the jewelry in seamlessly after the needle, clipped in the ball to the hoop, and I went back to the dorms with a little bit of kleenex tissue tucked into my bra for the blood.

My eleven and twelfth grade years were the prime time for my breasts. My theatre class flashed each other many times, frequently hanging out naked around each other’s rooms if not streaking around the campus, or skinny dipping, or nipple comparing. By the end of senior year we each had our nipple doppelgangers picked out. I think Sarah K was mine; we were both pierced pink and similarly shaped. None of us found this the least bit unusual at the time, after all: They were just boobs, and a boob was a boob was a boob.

My breasts have brought me a lot of interesting experiences in life. They’ve been made into art work, drawn on, photographed, pierced, touched, hit, and have commonly been an annoyance. They’ve nearly ruined my posture and have always been a concern of self image. They’ve been fawned upon and been made fun of. Sometimes I wish they were smaller, some days I think they’re not big enough, or round enough. They’re heavy tear drops, rounded, but not round.

When I’m naked and alone, sometimes I’ll lay on my back, bored, tired or frustrated. I’ll prop my head on my cloud pillow, place a hand to the outer side of one of my breasts and pat it quickly, watching it water bed back and fourth, sloshing inside my skin. “Heh, boobs,” I’ll mutter, eventually rolling over to keep them warm. Neither one is pierced now. I took the piercing out fifteen months or so after I’d gotten it. Don’t get me wrong, I do like breasts, particularly the fact that I have them, but, they still get in the way of lifting heavy things.