Original Post 2 Week 12

Once, I lived in a town where it never rained
and boys liked pink more than blue.
It was June, and behind the house, someone
ran over a coyote in the middle of the night.
It was scrawny, lost. I should have cried.
No. Instead, I opened the door to my car
and stood for a minute, gazing at the blood,
the nails on the front right paw. It would have
bit me when I crouched, half-tempted to poke.
After two vultures paced in the brush for a while--
hidden from headlights--and I drove off, they
pulled out intestines, picked off fur, tearing
it to the shreds I wished I was. And
when I got home, turned the house light on,
folded up the night, I fell asleep, feeling nothing.

Original Post 1 Week 12

Last night, after I watched 14 people speak their work,
I stepped on the cat's paw outside my bedroom,
ate a protein bar with too much chalk, and threw away
my dead hamster's bedding. It's been a month and
sat in the corner behind my stack of poetry books.
My house, full of stacks, smells of cat piss
and passive aggression. Last night, I dreamed
of magazines and not enough Neosporin
to fix the wound you left. You did the fadeaway--
Like sidewalk chalk in the sun, pencil on paper,
or memories--I wondered for a moment, when I could
still hear the cat licking his paw, if you knew anything.

Junkyard 4 Week 12

I don't mingle because as much as I like people, I don't like people.
Instead, I hold a half a bottle of water in one hand and fear in the other.
Tomorrow, I'll wake up and know that I've done the most I can do
for the day, and when the four year old with the duck backpack huddles
under the table, I grin, knowing that someday, she'll be here too. Just as nervous.

Junkyard 3 Week 12

Don't become a museum to grief, or go to a place where the lights are all green.
There's something exhilarating about having no control and wearing capri pants
when it's a freeze warning. I don't own capri pants anymore. Or sit at a bar
and order cocktails. I'm the woman who drinks beer, and not out of a stemmed
water glass. When the man next to me starts quoting Pat Benatar, I stare down
at the foam, half wanting to swirl my oily finger in the off white level. Instead,
I recite the German alphabet in my head, repeat Ich heiße Taylor, over and over--
wondering for only a split second, if anyone can hear me.

Memory 2 Week 12

This morning, while walking into the gym, a man in a bright orange vest and khakis revs a jackhammer, spraying concrete and nostalgia as I breathe in, not the Carrollton Campus Center, but the via outside Zeppelin's pizza in Spoleto, Italy. Where the same orange, wide mesh plastic fence overtook my brain and wrapped it in the same thing that makes my throat hurt. And though I hear the Wolf Radio over the speakers, when I close my eyes am I here anymore?

Junkyard 2 Week 12

Below me, a stoplight changes too many times. Two women carry bags of Kroger groceries and a can of off brand green beans slips through a tiny rip in the plastic. She stops, turns, and mouths "forget it" and runs to catch her friend. The white paint of the crosswalk starts to peal. It starts to rain. Somewhere, someone screams.

Memory 1 Week 12

One day in May, during my junior year of high school, a dog with brown spots followed my mother home from a run. Or was it January? She always turned her headphones so loud the world was welcomed to sing along to Coldplay or Maroon Five with her. Somewhere behind the box of jump ropes and wiffle balls, the dog nestled itself, until my mother walked near and screamed. Its eyes, some pre-linguistic brown, yelled at her and she wrapped him in a blanket of the same color and brought him to the utility closet, or that hallway with a sink and the washing machine. When we came home, my sister and I, a yelp echoed through the door. The rug was curled up on the edges. Paw nails shadowed underneath. When we opened, he flew to the other side of the hallway, cowering behind a basket ficus. I took him for a walk the next morning before school and he shit watery green behind my neighbor's rose bushes. I didn't clean it up.
Four days later, my father kicked it out of the house after it peed on the leather couches downstairs. The dog never barked, except at my father's voice. It heard the anger, the hostility, the imminence we wouldn't.

Junkyard 1 Week 12

This morning I forgot deodorant,
so I washed my armpits in the locker room sink
and thought of Haiti, when we showered
only when it rained-- and of Ms. Betty in the kitchen,
who yelled when we turned on the sink, because
we were one of three places with a water reservoir.
I crave to go back, to relive what wastes away.

Original post 2 week 11

Open Apology

I'm sorry I know too much.

That one day, I'll open my eyes and realize everyone was faking it. 

That tomorrow, I'll walk from a parking lot to grab a box of books 

no one reads, and shuffle through them. That someone has a plan

I don't know, or that I'm mad when someone achieves at adulthood

when I don't. I'm sorry for him. That he doesn't know what we can't say, 

and that half the time, words mean nothing. And the other half, 

the wrong thing. Sparta fought with 300 and I can't fight with one. 

I'm sorry for Dave and Busters, and the tilted shuffleboard table 

that left you alone with her. And the fact I stayed the night. 

I'm sorry I keep trying. To do what? Pretend or explain?

Because is dangerous and I always wanted to be an actress. 

Life teaches you how to act okay, even when you're not. 

And when you're not, you ought to be. Otherwise, you're ungrateful. 

And sorry. But really, even when I wake up yawning, I'm not tired. 

Memory 2 week 11

I don't remember the last time I woke up at 5:30.

If anything, it was Christmas and I jumped out to see the reindeer prints 

in the snow, which were actually regular white tail deer, 

but to the kid who left reindeer food in bushes, it's all the same. 

This morning though, it isn't Christmas. And I'm not excited. 

Instead, it's the day your parents tell you to grab that last box from your room, 

the one with all your favorite books and that little stuffed dog 

with the too heavy head that you bought for ten bucks at some restaurant 

in Door County--the same restaurant with the goats on the roof reminding you 

of reindeer--and load into the car. When you beat the sun, nothing smiles. 

Memory 1 week 11

I remember the day my father told my mother it was over. 

We were called to the table. We were low on napkins. 

The pool needed to be filled. Somewhere, I left the tv on 

And the oxy clean guy hollered about if you called now,

You could get so many other things for free. I didn't want

Oxy clean. And now, two, three years later, when she sits

Across from me and I explain my sister, me, she nods

And the glass of milk dissolves the Oreo.

The washing machine buzzes. I clench my fists and apologize 

To my father. It's as though my stomach decides to pace,

The heat in the house turned to 90 degrees, and I'm back 

To being the sister I was in high school. This time though, 

I didn't clench her against the wall, or scream her awake. 

No, I attempted to build some bridges. And I'm not an architect. 

Junkyard 4 week 11

Out near the right turn, past the site of a tractor flip, lies a fallen tree. Behind the tree, a trickling waterfall, too weak and dried up for rappelling. There's no water here. A river canoe tour shop closed up a year ago because of drought. Now, you can see a little white chair stuck in the middle of where the river would be. Someone also drowned a canoe there too. Somewhere, does a mother mourn her son? Or did he swim away?

Junkyard 3 week 11

In Highlands, North Carolina, four kids step off a school bus and run for the Presbyterian church next door to the deli I'm sitting at, eating a French Dip. A boy about eight doesn't go with his friends, or meet his mother like a girl in gunmetal boots, but he lugs his backpack down the road to the grocery store to pick up a sandwich before walking home. Another sits on the church fence, swinging his feet.

Junkyard 2 week 11

When I rolled down the windows of my sister's car, on our way up one of the blue ridge mountains, or Appalachians, I could almost smell dog breath, truffles, and upturned asphalt after the bus's front bumper chunked part off the road. In my mother's laughter from the backseat, I heard someone else laughing on the side of the Umbrian hills, in the middle of a rousing round of that song from Mulan, pointing walking sticks at each other as one of the professors explained our behavior to the Italian owner with the dog. Pigs didn't truffle hunt anymore because they ate too many. It was out of season for us.

Junkyard 1 week 11

Through the town with one stop light and right before the state line, there's a road called happy hill. Two horses grazed nearby, ones rump spotted, the other full brown. A dog trotted alongside the car. A tree downed somewhere nearby a waterfall. At night, nothing honked or squealed.

Original Post 1 Week 11

The Troubles

To make an Irish Car Bomb, you pour a glass
of Guinness. But not too much--you have to chug
it all. Just enough to cover a shot glass.
Then, pour an ounce of Jameson and a half an ounce
of Baileys. Drop the shot glass. It bubbles.
Next to me, someone argues about napkins
or not enough peanuts and I'm listening to my mom
complain about the Catholic church and my grandmother,
while my father sits drinking and shaking his head.

Junkyard 4 Week 10

Lust sends you to hell, a billboard off 75 screams
at the cars, warning of a Bible verse and I'm sure
people laugh for a minute as they scream
Taylor Swift lyrics with their roommates
who drink too much pink champagne
at gas stations. We're all just shells,
someone says before commercial, and who
doesn't hate being a shell?

Junkyard 3 Week 10

At the stoplight across from Target, the arrow turns green.
An Escalade doesn't move, and when I pull up beside him,
his mouth is gaping open, eyes shut, not moving.
The arrow turns yellow, then red. Someone honks
and he wipes the drool from his lip.

Original Post 2 Week 10

September 10, 2001

A Central Park tree root wails,
no, it's a wadded blue blanket
with a 7 pound girl, newborn
and not as red as she should be--
eyes crusted shut, putrid. From
a bench, a man sits up, pulls
a splinter from underneath a glove,
and squints as though she's the sun
and there aren't any clouds in the sky.
The weatherman is wrong but people
call for storms tomorrow. Down
the street, someone examines the still
attached placenta, deems it okay, cuts
it off. No one will save it in a baby book,
show her in 12 years when she's old
enough to be embarrassed. No one will
cut up that blue blanket, make it into
a quilt or a dress for the bear from
the hospital gift shop. A nurse flips
through four books trying to find a number,
a mother missing her baby and a man
wheels in with a gunshot wound, or
was it a missing limb?

Junkyard 2 Week 10

Somewhere, someone's embalmed in spermaceti and fresh laundry.
My machine whirs again and again, shaking the house like an earthquake,
or when you've had one too many and God punishes you for a minute.
When I pull out my sweatpants, they don't burn me, but instead,
pretend like I need to melt a little. As though nothing can start without
two matching socks with little monkeys or Santa snowboarding. And when
your t-shirt shrinks two sizes because you dried it, you laugh and over
extend yourself while breaking seams to answer some divine question
about purity, pleading with yourself and a iron-on camel--from a campus
event on a wednesday-- for an offering to those who can't wait,
those who breathe mint julep and baby oil, exhale cotton. The blue
water engulfs you, and in the back of your throat, a whale calls out.

Memory 2 Week 10

Cleaning out my closet, I opened a red and white striped bankers box,
pulled out a clump of letters written on note cards, lined paper, backs
of stamps, re-read 7th grade. I remember writing the note, three pages
of misspellings and comma splices, in the blue plastic too hard for a butt.
Somewhere behind me, a girl giggles, and I watch her scribble with a smile.

Junkyard 1 Week 10

Somewhere, someone smells like vomit, and my toilet
won't flush. On NPR, they talked about how
we let our thoughts hold us in and control the way
we feel about ourselves, people. Mimicking neurons affect
the way we touch, or rather, who touches us.
I can't feel the hug your mother gives you,
or when you kiss your boyfriend.
I can't feel when you're mugged in Central Park,
or by the Ferris Wheel in Atlanta. Do I want to?
I want to taste the gnocchi with everyone else, sardined
between the back of a brown-black couch and
three wooden tables with place-mats. Mine, green like
pesto on someone's plate. The wind caught the wine
in my glass, the strand of hair on your face. Cold.
I want to feel the potato squish into the crevices
of my molars as pesto slides across my tongue.
Can you imagine gagging on the fork? The prongs
holding bile, as best they can. It's like watching death.

Memory Post 1 Week 10

I remember Christmas, when mom gave out gifts
like socks that looked like foxes, a pedometer,
and coupons for hugs. You opened a small box--
after my father's next Alex Cross novel
and mom's new watch, but before the Wii
and games we wouldn't play--and pulled out
a pink hair trimmer. I think it was meant for your
nether regions, but mom played it like
your eyebrows, which were just as out of control.
We called them ape hairs, like Phil Collins'
daughter's, only less groomed by a woman
with a smock. You were in eighth grade, sure,
but that's not an excuse for hygiene. Or so
someone said. Excited, you skipped two steps
up the stairs and we heard the high pitched whir,
your smile and then a scream. You shaved
your left eyebrow off, yelling at mom to fix it,
and I imagined, somehow, she would glue
each follicle back, fingers trembling, breathing
like a trainer in the ring with Rocky. Will Phil sing
the background song? Will Adrian or Maria Cross
come back from the dead to see this through?
No, it's just a brown pencil from Target
and three months of ten minute shading.

Original Post 1 Week 10

In my backyard, we didn't use fences.
Instead, a row of just shy of blooming
lilacs separated myself from my neighbors.
And the cracking yellow slide, housing
a family of rabbits in the summer.
I don't know why snow globes sell so well
at Christmas when our screen door--
with the gape from that day I poked
my pencil through it-- lets flakes, or bees,
fly through. But maybe we're all post-rain
worms, slinking trails on concrete, watching
dogs bark at mail men or a butterfly's wings
freeze. I don't know why the boy stole
a hot pink bow from that girl in overalls,
or shoved her arm in a chain link fence
out behind the 4 square court. But maybe,
when he bashed the other kid's head in
with a metal bat, he was snow on the top
of a snow globe house, landing precisely
where I, or you, wanted. Silent and freshly cut.

Original Post 2 Week 9

Tomorrow, I'll drink coffee and pretend to read
two books I don't want to. I'll pack my past
in a coffin and ship it to the end of the earth,
where someone thought we'd fall off the edge,
drown. I'm learning to drown once every day.
Last week, I fell asleep in a puddle, laughed
too hard and didn't realize I wasn't dead.
I cracked my skull on a pillow and showed you
the dreamscape of Sir Francis Drake. You popped
champagne and tucked the cork in your pocket,
whispered it was special. Somehow, I wanted you
to apologize for everyone else, because
in the depths of my cabinets, back behind the coffee
spoons and extra plastic bags, you hid them
from the world. Suffocating and harmless.

Original Post 1 Week 9

Half-sister of Saturday

We lived two hours from the Bean,
but baked them for lunch every day
in July. I grew to hate turkey jerky
and the milkman, as well.

That day though, I waited for you
to show up on my front porch—
can I come out and play?—but today

a BMW scooped you up first. While
I played Tic-Tac-Toe with my spit,
watching it dry and worms crisped

in the post-rain scorch. You pranced
down the street carrying a scooter
in cut offs and a bikini top. We were 10

and too blonde for our own good,
you just didn’t know it yet. The window
rolled down, the person in the front seat

murmured something I was too far away
to hear. I turned, hair whipping slightly
against the wind. I heard you laugh,

high-pitched and bird-like. No, that
was the car starting. You waved at Demeter,
or was it Hades? Were you smiling at least?

Junkyard 4 Week 9

In the kitchen, marshmallows cover semi-sweet chocolate,
melting and then crisping in the microwave. They taste
like seventh grade, and too many shoes taking up Halloween
candy space in the back of your closet. Or your mother,
finding you huddled, reading, popping M&Ms like
your grandmother's depression medication. It's that moment,
when you smell a book and it's the 90s and you're eight
and someone gives you a folded card with some conversation
heart message. But someone thinks it's a video game
and stabs you in the arm. Don't die yet. Four lives down. 

Memory 2 Week 9

Just call me Fandango, my sister says as she spouts movie times.
It's almost the opening line of Moby Dick, but not quite.
This would be something I would say, if I had read Moby Dick.
We were just outside Glacier Park, in Columbia Falls, Montana,
at the Motel 6 substitute that served breakfast.
My cousin finagled the bed from me, so I slept on the floor.
But it was still early, and we went to that movie
with the yellow pill-like beings in overalls,
who wore goggles and turned purple when mad.
One sang an interlude for a banana, another carried around
a unicorn doll and I laughed, hoping for somewhere I might
not be 20. It's a limbo worse than limbo. Where you can't
legally drink, but can be convicted of statutory rape if you wanted.
I didn't want. For that.
No, I wanted something more primal, basic.
The place where my parents and my future coincided, happy.
I couldn't have them in one place without a buffer, my sister.
Instead, I had a place where a woman sat us down on a porch bench
after a card game, telling us we were wrong about our father,
who wanted to play golf-- and not with us. Being 20 is a white whale.
A fleeting age where water only vanishes if you see it,
and Ahab's your father always running after you with a criticism.
You can't lop off his leg, because you can be tried for assault
and I can't be a prison bitch. 

Junkyard 3 Week 9

There's a bulletin board on a wall
on the far right side of the second floor
of a building in the center of campus.
On the bulletin board--about
16 fliers for graduate programs
all across the United States. Some
have tear off sheets that fall off
on their own. Onto the desk with four
literary magazines. Two from campus.
Two from some other place.
In the bottom corner of the board sticks
a yellow push pin, alone.
On the other side, seven point in a rectangle.
I pull out yellow, watch it roll back
and forth, tip spiked into something
that's not quite life-threatening. But this,
the papers of the future, is. I push yellow
into a different place, make a different
hole. Dig, Seamus Heaney says in the back
of my brain. But I've already got dirt
under my fingernails. Or I don't have them at all.

Junkyard 2 Week 9

There's a brown bottle, chicken on the label,
green cap not as dark as a christmas tree,
but darker than summer, lying in the snow
just north of civilization.

I smelled you before I heard you--a mix of
barbeque smoke and too many dreams.
You told me the best beer tasted like poetry
and looked like an album cover.

Memory 1 Week 9

Somewhere in Wyoming, when I was twelve, I met a second cousin who didn't shave,
and a third who was younger than me at a family reunion for my grandmother's side.
My dad's uncle Denny owned a 14 bedroom ranch with a series of tools named
after farm animals. That was the summer I drove a mule.
The KAWASAKI--green, with a cage on the back for the rifles and other guns
I don't know the names of--felt like a golf cart, but with a better turn radius
and a shitty gas pedal. He told me I had to punch the brake with my foot,
ease the other, keep both hands on the wheel and not go past 15. My cousin,
two weeks older and brutish, stood belly out, arms crossed, as my sister and I
doughnutted the gravel driveway. Uncle Denny said not to be afraid to drive them,
they wouldn't bite. We couldn't hurt them.
When everyone else is over 18 and trying to sell bracelets for their side job back home,
there's not a whole lot to do. After someone pulled out a corn hole set and a tambourine,
my sister and I found the keys to a mule and buckled up for safety, heading out past
the turn around, to a road narrower than my underweight second aunt's neck.
I don't remember how far we went, but I do remember attempting to back up the side
of a mountain, so we could turn around and not fall off the side. It was my first 3 point turn.
I told my sister to sing a song, because she was freaking me out with her "we're gonna die,
we're gonna die," and all I wanted to do was get out of the cart and leave it there,
but someone really would have killed me, and my uncle Denny was too nice to cross.
It's always the nice ones, I swear. It must have been five by the time we safely back and forthed
our way around, racing back the way we came, to the turn around where another mule waited.
There was Denny, pacing back and forth in front, and my cousin, perched and smiling
in the passenger seat. I was demoted from driving after that, and if I wanted to ride,
my cousin had to drive. He dangled the key in my face and I asked if he was overcompensating,
but not to his face. Afterward, I ate too many apricots and said the word Fuck for the first time.

Junkyard 1 Week 9

This morning, I didn't hear you scale the cage, gnawing knee deep in metal and plastic.
I didn't hear the water bottle insert move up and down with the pace of your tongue,
lapping in eighth notes. Still in the bowl, four blocks of something I trust was nutritious.
You'd have eaten by now. Not quite the sit-on-your-face alarm clock, but you somehow
knew when I put food in the bowl, eager and nipping at my skin. But when I grab
your little ball of brown and white, its cream, and you're blackening, cooling
with the air outside. I have a running Instagram of dead things, but they're all run over
or stepped on. You, curled around a block under the chewed up wooden bridge, in a pine
pile, can't be on it just yet. I'm just grateful the trash hasn't come yet.