The Little Match Girl.

Gardens identical--
same as my neighbor and theirs, too
all turned silver with downpour.
Walls hold us inside
with nails and shakes and newspaper.

Once, a dark wind
brought opaque clouds,
blew down blackened vines;
it killed windows and doors till none were left.

You held us tightly
against your chest
a body with no muscles or ribs,
your wrenching fingers sponges without bone.

Here I watched you cry for the first time.

Yuma, Arizona.

After Preston died, they sat round on the floor on the carpet with grainy Country Time lemonade. It was late at night and the warm desert breezes would gently rap on the door and let themselves in. The stories were too good for them to eavesdrop.

They would laugh about Grandpa, the one I only knew in a wheelchair; apparently he was love. He never was too bright, but he was solid love. They all loved him, and sat in a cross-legged dilapidated circle passing the piece pipe of tall tales.
“Remember all those times he fell off the roof?” Aunt Willy would say. Guffaws erupted into crying. And I, sitting on the sofa, my soft little eyes tracing the faces of my predecessors, announced the coming of my bedtime with a large yawn. What were they talking about, I wondered? White curls and footie pajamas punctuate the event in my memory. Punctuated with photographs passed over my tiny legs to my mother on the right, my father on the left.
Once late at night, Grandpa got up from his bed after hearing scuffles from underneath their house in Baker, Oregon.
Grabbing a flashlight and shovel, he made his way to the crawlspace and discovered a possum. No sense of squeamishness in his bones, and every ounce dedicated to the task in front of him. Grandpa Preston killed it with a solid hit by the shovel.
And—because it was crucial to my Aunt’s story—Grandpa didn’t leave the possum outside, but brought it in to show my Grandma, holding it inches from her peacefully sleeping face.
“Flo! Look what I found!”
But now he was gone.
Grandma would spray the air ferns held in kitsch glass bowls, telling me how life needed less water to grow in the desert. Spritzing away, she let the water melt onto the pumice stones that cupped the tiny droplets. I gazed in wonder. Life in the desert was arid like Grampa Preston’s cracked lips that smacked with a pink tongue after a dinner of dry meatloaf and crumbling potato.
When the sun danced onto the wood paneling of the trailer bedroom, I would wake up and look out at the front veranda. Mermaid the dog slept on the orange couch, all fuzzing and pilling up from the love and conversation over the years. The neighbors across the way had a lemon tree and grandma took my hand as we picked lemons from a ladder. Incredible how lemons could grow in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a trailer park in Yuma, Arizona. Did these old people water the tree with a spray bottle like my grandma watered her air ferns?
This is why old people move to Arizona, I thought, so they dry up instead of turn into puddles when the rain falls down. We waved goodbye to the nice couple, he with oversized sunglasses and she with pink trouser pants, holding our bag of lemons.
This is when my grandma began to forget to pay the bills.

Finding the Best Poem In the World.

There once was a rumor
of the best poem in the world.
No one had ever seen it,
save the sage who sat at home
and did nothing
but read books and pet his cat,
Stroking away to the timed
metronome of the clock
in the hallway.

The poet presented the piece
lain on the gilt table,
sheets fluttering in the wind
from the nearby open window.

The sage pulled a rock
out of a drawer
to hold the words in place.
Gray and smooth,
the rock rested
at peace on the lines
without crushing them;
no coffee stains or ink smears
or broken arms.
Just a rock
lightly holding
the milky white sheets
in constancy.
The sage cradled the baby
with the utmost care.

How can you write something
so intimate
as a woman peeing?
The way her dark curls of hair
descend into the toilet bowl
like moss on a tree;
the earthy sound of miniature waterfalls
from bodies that will eventually die.
Human beings do not resurrect again
with spring snow melt.

I cannot know anyone that well.

Tellulah.

Blood sweat and tears
make medicine
that tastes like maraschino
and dyes my lips deep red.

I haven't been fed good food
in a long time
and neither has my goldfish
who I named Tellulah.

It's the name I would give
to my daughter should I live
in the South.
If I named her that here
the many children
would crawl over her
like ants
and keep her off
the monkey bars.

They would scoff at her
because this is their job
for now.
To chip the paint
from metal poles
pull up weeds
from in between wood chips
eat glue
nose pick
and with a million tiny pricks
draw a drop of blood.

Snippets of Conversation Today:

"...part of me is really excited about the Bible study, but..."

Me: "Hi, how are you today?"
My barista: "Magical!"

"...people with mortgages, not me with my apartment. Anyway, the point is...this is a budget hope sheet by the year 2014."

Imaginative Writing. Essay 1.

The space was cleaned up every night, each night. Clean floors, clean sink, clean dishes. But your brain wasn’t clean. There was no space here on the savanna for you. You were only a meerkat or a zebra. You weren't a lion. You were too nice for that.
The clutter of living there grew a green slimy fungus that hung off of the ceiling, making stalactites and stalagmites that hung above your head. They shook when you flushed the toilet, growling under their breath. They threatened to pierce you and your cat Oscar sitting on the sofa, toes and paws curled underneath piles of blanket. Tinkle tinkle, they cried. Tinkle.
The smooth white fur of the cat on the sofa felt like baby sealskin. As you brought your nose closer, the scent of fresh soap smell curled its way out. He had a lazy eye that occasionally winked on its own. You always wondered if he had control of the wink. Sometimes it looked as though he knew what you were thinking: What if I push my roommates, push them off a cliff? Wink. Did you know I was thinking evil thoughts? Wink. Damn, you’re good. “Mew?”
The other eye was outlined in charcoal gray, like an Egyptian princess. Perhaps he was related to a sphinx in a past life. Royalty. This is why he never liked dry food and whined for milk and tuna juice. You would occasionally indulge.
“Kitty! Vagina warrior!” Your roommates, sitting on the opposite couch, would hold Oscar up, scratch his belly and discuss how forward thinking your cat was. He also looked best in purple collars. What a gender-bender of a mammal.
As you watched my roommates hold their gender discussion group getting ready for V-day (Vagina Day), you wondered if vagina-shaped scones filled with strawberry and raspberry jam were normal. Probably not.
“We want to deter the idea that feminism is bra burning and rabid angry white women,” she said. It was difficult for you to put a finger on the unease. Perhaps it was the fact that your compost bin made you queasy, or the guilty feeling you got when you threw away plastic. Perhaps it was the pseudo-lesbian relationship she shared with your other roommate. They cuddled on the couch. You cuddle on couches. They kiss on the cheek, sometimes quick lip pecks. You’ve done the same with your girlfriends.
Yet something was in the air, a smell of blood and carnage and burning brush; the town Fourth of July fireworks display was ignited ten minutes too early and you were standing right in front of the cannons, aimed directly at you. Perhaps it was Ren’s 8 hour devotion to making Jachel’s favorite dishes on her birthday, calling her up before she preheated the oven. You didn’t know.
If you were a wounded zebra and she a lioness, perhaps the fear would be quantifiable. Her hair was loud and curly enough to be a mane. Her piercing tiny blue eyes and scoured face showed stoicism, her long nose and brown hair tamed by a solitary tribal dyed hair band. Perhaps she was born of African tribes people of a fundamentalist bent, who after getting kicked off their savannah by less anarchic tribes, moved to Colorado.
She had tamed her life partner, and together they would live, growling on the lone savanna in peace, away from the pride, eating Ben and Jerry’s for the rest of their days.

For Mary, For Billy

Billy Collins was a little boy.

His breath heaving
up and down
on his mother's chest.
He must have colored outside the thick dark lines
of the coloring book
making lines and contours
of his own.
His alphabet blocks
strewn about the floor
never laid dormant.

The snow lying round the lettered blocks
in all their phonetic glory
small flakes falling
from the kaleidoscope sky,
smelled sweet and clean
and new.

Like the same time he planted tulip bulbs
in the April dirt
trowel and father in hand
overalls and mud
drips drop dripping from heaven.
The postman pulling up to the mailbox
offering cards and brown paper packages
from people across the seas.

Billy Collins was a child.
Now he is not.

In fact, it is more probable
that he is quite old.
Is he married,
or was there a divorce
where his wife threw a teapot
on the wall, cutting his arm,
making her cry?

She meant to do it,
but didn't want pain.
She wanted small fetus safety.
She wanted warm baby breaths
on her chest
like the cat she found under the porch
and nursed back to health.

This is who she was.
Billy wanted it too.
If only if only he could
put down the pen and paper and
read a poem to her.
One with love in his throat
coated with chamomile and honey.

Honey, he would say,
you know I don't mean nothin' by it.
But because he was Billy Collins
he would use proper grammar.

They would kiss and make up--
should this world be an ideal one--
stay together
and procure a blanket made of new snow
that no dogs had chance to soil yet.
The snow would muffle the cries from outside
their solid oak door.
The pounding could not be heard
by the two birds in the bower
hovering above
the chaotic world below.

Lest we bow down, readers of sonnets
and ballads,
worshipers of enjambment
and prosody.
It is a known fact
that while greatness is great
even Billy Collins was a boy
once in his life.

-My friend Mary was once a little girl. My dream is, should we have known each other way back then, we would have climbed trees and made mud pies together.