what then?

if not this, then what?

do you think it's worth it.  just look me in the eyes and tell me you think it's worth it: to kick someone out on the street so they can get kidnapped.

i try not to sigh.  her need is so great and the question is impossible to answer because it is. . .a pretzel question.  the kind that loop you around and around until you can't remember where you started.

i want, suddenly, to hold her hand.  to just sit there with that small touch.  is her hand impossibly warm?  is it clammy and cold?  or tepid?  limp?  fierce?  bony?

still the words and the tears spill on.  still the people move around us.  still my throat closes around all the other questions spinning in my head:

if not this, what then?

a place for all the stars

he said his english name was Bench because benches are useful.

we giggled and said it was a good name.  and it was a good name because it fit somehow.  

i want to be useful.  i want to name things the way Bench could name things.  i want to have room for all the drops in my bucket, to not have to overflow in your car or in my kitchen or in the shower with the lights turned low low low.  

hips and bones.  

the back and the forth.  

the way my hands open like a book while you talk.  i'm collecting your stories

i'm sending them back up up up to the place 

where they belong

i think i can

how do they do it? the bees

with their perfectly patched honeycombs. a shape
in nature [repeating]  itself

i am the bee

surrounded by fabric and words, fabric and words.  fabric.
and words.

watching the tunnel of my life


take shape

i punched a wall and she bought me ice cream

the world is full of mixed messages.

in Nebraska, stop lights are horizontal and dough is baked around the meat of a Runza.  

i drove my friend's car there once while he elevated a leg full of staples.  Spicoli's dad called him my Samoan.  hey mel, where's your Samoan?  he's knocked out on pain killers.  or he's picking at his staples. but where'd you find him?  in a phone book in 7th grade.  i like him, that big 'ol Samoan.  

that's what we did back then.  we worked in gas stations and warehouses and got in our car after work to drive 7 hours for a boy we couldn't get enough of.  we learned that manual transmission could still have cruise control and that a friend wouldn't bail on you just because they tore the shit out of their leg in a work accident (even though you told them they should bail on you).  we played frisbee and sang in the sisters room and fell asleep watching Army of Darkness.

but back to the wall and the fist.  back to the ice cream and my scrunched up nose.  back to his story about putting his drugged out brother in a choke hold.  

i think

if i didn't have the Samoan and the boyfriend's dad and the trash cans that lift their lid like magic, 

i might not know who i could become

from the island

we wade in the salt and the blue up to our hips.  i am leaping, you are diving and shuffling, diving and shuffling.

we are at the mouth of a crocodile river and a sting ray ocean.  

i take another ballerina float and scream before i know exactly why i am screaming.  a long tentacle has whipped around my leg, fast as a shooting star and just as hot.  one hundred tiny nails attached to a thin leather strap wrap around my ankle on up to my thigh.  you are suddenly beside me, carrying me back to shore where i take stock.  i touch my leg to make sure it is still there and when i have verified that all my parts are still my parts a laugh wells up and out of me.  you shove me over onto the sand and say you were sure that an alligator had chomped off my leg.  it was, i say, an alligator. . .or a jellyfish.  

two days later i could still feel the tentacle around my calf.  

on a tuesday in another country, i remember the sun in my eyes.  i remember the desire to be weightless and the fear of paddling beyond the break.  

my place is in the whitewater, though i long to be where you are being: up on the board that is up on the wave that is full of long black fish and sea reeds.  

still i carry the fear.  still you carry me.  

still i can laugh at the sting and the salt (while i keep my eyes open for crocodiles)

still i wonder what it feels like 

to fly  

can't catch

it's one of those days

when you can't catch
a break.  when the words
that she hears are not
the words that you say.

i sent her out on the street,
left her to fend for herself
in the dark and the cold and the wet.
another whole night.


and here i am in your warm
house. foxy jumping on my shoulders
makes you apologize.  makes me
smile.  this is a weight
i can bear.  cloth and thread.
the coming together of colors: white
and blue and blue and yellow and red
and blue.     and white.

the thread and the cat and the street

are impossible to unravel

what the sky holds

they were not friends
they were not lovers
yet they were a kind
of brotherhood: the clouds.

it wasn't the fact that they
parted.  it was the way
in which they parted.

this one a hurricane
that one a thunderstorm
these two, these two

they parted for the sun