i sneak in the back to avoid the front porch talk.

April 13: Broken

if i left tonight and emptied our savings account and bought a ticket
to a country i never said i wanted to visit: somewhere like togo or ukraine
or cambodia, i would take your favorite books with me so they filled my bag.
i would take dune and the iliad and stranger in a strange land
and pack them all in flat so i had room for one pair of jeans and one of your shirts
so i would never forget what you wore and read.
it would be sunny as i walked down foreign streets and heard nothing i could recognize
and when i curled up in the corners by dumpsters i would pull out a book
and turn to a random page and let my eyes glide over the words,
trying to pull away from them until they looked as blank and alien as the graffiti by my head.
so when i woke up buried under dust and candy wrappers and stray cats the next afternoon,
everything will look as bland as the next thing and then

50 POEMS. YAY. <3

April 13: what it's like

i'm so lonely.
like, i just am.
let me tell you what it's like:
it's like i have a key to my apartment
but the chain on the inside doesn't fit inside its slot
and there will never be someone
on the other side trying to push the door open anyway.
it's like i sit at home all day
and all i can bear to do is take a book to bed
and fall asleep with it on my chest, unopened.

April 13: Otto

I know that the woman next door lives with a clock.
She's named him Otto and kisses him on the top of his face each time she
backs herself out of the door. She presses her fingers to her lipstick and
waves her fingers through the crack of the door before finally she can bring herself to lock it
between herself and Otto. She leans back against the wood and looks at me
as I turn the lock of my own door and says, "I will never get used to leaving him.,
which makes me nod silently and take the stairs because I know she'll take the elevator
and if I stand in that square with her, she'll smell the loneliness on me.
As I clack down the stairs I remember the Wednesday (I remember it's Wednesdays,
because Wednesdays are the days I keep my television off to make myself productive)
I heard her moans and laughs from behind the wall and the sound of metal hitting the floor
and a gasp and a scuttle and a sigh and I stop with my hand on the wall of the stairway
to steady myself against the image of that wrinkled black woman with a golden, lion-footed clock
between her sagging thighs. The image mixes with rum and I take it in one shot
and regret that as the sky dims to grey cloud evening, I'll go back to an empty room.

April 14: markers

i was at school when i found something in the back of my locker.
it was the card i made for my grandmother after my mom told me
that she was dying of cancer. i opened it and i had drawn angels over her bed
and told her that she would get well soon. i meant to give it to her before.
i placed it on her casket at the cemetery.

And then? And then?

Loved Broken, but was screaming at the ending.

Otto made me smile, especially the beginning. Why must these things end so sadly, Hannah?

Spoiler

AHHH MY STRENGTH IS WANING. Must. Keep. Poetizing.

April 15: Chivito

The sound of guiro
scrapes along my ribs and hips;
I spill te-
qui-
la.

April 15: Koza

Where can I buy a whole goat?
I need an exact address. It's too dangerous to wander
in these foreign streets. But I need a whole goat,
a kid, a whole kid about 15 - 20 kilos
to feed what opens up around my tin travelling table.
I think you misunderstand me --
I need you to take me by the hand and lead me over the cobbled
streets to where they end and turn to wooden fences
where ivy overgrown and soft beige milk jugs sit on stools outside.
And when we face the man who lives in this grass budded
manure slathered sun dried space, you will
flick your tongue and pull in air until
we walk home with a carcass in our hands.

I brought a dark brown trunk with me
and ever since my chair was pulled into the corner by this window
it has been covered with the shawl I found on the holly bushes
twisted maroon and orange between the
dull green leaves.
The legs go there, raw and dripping until the planks of the trunk
swell up and burst and we will finally,
finally see what's inside.

April 15: lessons in grinding

even though i roll my eyes at the girls
who walk around in summer with their shorts' flies open
to show off their bikini bottoms
through the metal-lined v,
i like standing in my bathroom
wearing only a bra and cotton shorts
and a long necklace that hangs down past my bra
and my hair up and my hair headbanded back
and a gaudy coin ring on my left hand
and i put my hands on my hips and push forward
so my collarbones come out and
i can use just enough of my imagination
that my stomach shrinks
while my curves stay and i am strong, badass.
and even though i say they are sluts
i practice dirty dancing in my bathroom.

April 15: Leila

She is leaning in the top of the tree
like she belongs there,
like she was born from the buds piece by piece
and tangled twisted together by
the squirrels when they had breaks between uncovering
acorns. Fall is in her cheeks and winter is in her eyes
and in the air around her, it is spring,
so I watch as she pulls her dress up over her head
and lets the breeze kiss her nipples and
creep closer to the tangled brown hair
that doesn't match the bright birdberry red
that swims around her face.
There is nothing I can do to stop myself,
because this is what birth looks like and
this, in my hand, is where birth comes from
and while she has the chance to stand at the top of a tree
all I can do is pump and pump and deflate
and burst into tears because I've always
always always taken care of myself.

April 16: can't anybody spare

She was afraid to go to a place that she'd never been to before
and she told herself that keeping away would keep her whole.
She said that only bums travelled, only unhappy people ran away,
only people who were already dead inside let someone probe with their flesh
just in case there was some kernel left shining. She already knew
that she could shine and she kept telling herself "i'm happy, i'm happy,
those are things that i don't need to know about to be this way."
But in the subway where the woman asked if she could spare a quarter
every Tuesday, she changed her mind. She sat down and said,
"why you askin for other people's money?" and the woman said,
"because it makes me happy when ah get some" and when the next train came
she took it to the end of the line, caught a taxi, took a bus, walked a ways
until she faded into the gray of a sunrise and when the big clock in the strange town
struck noon, she sat down in the middle of the square, took off her shoe and said,
"can anybody spare a quarter? can anybody spare some change?"
and the woman who walked by with a stroller shook her head and knew
that the girl who sat in the middle of the square with braids down to her waist
had missed the point and was getting lost in what she didn't want.

April 17: One Morning

my grandmother sneaks out the front door of the house
when my grandfather is putting mustard on his sausages
and syrup on his pancakes and my mother is still at the stove.
she slips up from her chair, lily white away from the floral pattern
cushion tied between the spokes of the carved chair, carved there
she rises up a ghost and slips sweetly slips out out the front door.
i have a blueberry in my mouth, pursed between my lips and ready
to burst purple over my teeth (i love to be stained and bruised), but still
i follow her.

she is walking barefoot on her tiptoes and through the open,
swing-out window my mother calls to me "where are you going" and i
see her in my mind leaning against the counter with her back arched
over the stove, hoping her long, curly, thick black hair (i love it. i wish
i were little enough to still run my fingers through it after she showers)
will catch on fire and burn up to her mind so she has an excuse to melt.
my grandmother is walking barefoot on her tiptoes past the empty
pig barn and the clucking coop with chickens that don't just appear there,
they are bought from neighbors and lose their wild personality when i
remember that they were bought from neighbors. my grandmother
peeks into the door of the pig barn and smells the rotted hay and the
abandoned plastic toys and i peek in behind her to see the red and yellow
foot-roll car that was always too difficult to ride in the grass and gravel
and by the time the driveway was paved, i didn't fit in the smooth seat.

my grandmother is heading out to the pasture in her bare feet and her house robe,
the one with the pink flowers and the one with the scalloped collar
that makes her neck look fat. she pinned her hair up this morning,
but from behind her i see one gray strand that gets spun around and around
by the wind and i run faster, trying to catch up to her and push it in behind a pin.
she is running now, through the tall, yellow, drying grass, through the places
where the grass is still green near the stream and she doesn't seem to look down,
cautious of where the cows have been, but i watch my feet and miss when
she leaps across the stream. my legs are not as small as they were,
but they are small, and the stream is, from spring, swollen like a bee sting
and smelling like chamomile and i stand on the bank, watching my grandmother
as she runs off into the grasses until they get so tall that she is swallowed
by the field.

April 18: Dear Thomas,

When you touched my hand
as you moved the mouse,
you covered my hand to help me
find the right link,
you gave me the only real moment
of junior high drama and thrill
I'd ever taste.
Did you think I was pretty
even though I was crazy
and everyone talked about me
behind my back, even the nice girls?
Did you think I would
lick my hand in the bathroom afterward?

You're like a poetry generating machine.

April 20: Before Bed

Spoiler

SLEEPLESS IN CHICAGO

the pinch of his skin turns hard like a fingernail
beneath the nubs of my digits and
slinks back down like a cat beneath a blanket,
egg yolk slipping between halves while the whites run through.
"drink more water," i say.
he swats my hand away and rubs his chest and yawns.
i roll over and look out the window and the way it never gets dark
here in the city.