I LOVE THE GINGERS (Collaboration with Wendy)

I want your biscuits
and snow on the ground
there is synesthesia in the weather
and you are raining down
in huckleberry drops

I am diner coffee in your veins
while the foyer boys headbang
to the beat of your heart

the music floats
with the grace of a bumble-bee
stops- and collects
in an atonal mist
around the neck

tonguing the shape of "S"'s and "L"'s
up the nape into your ears

There is a small thud
as music crashes into taste buds
crissed-crossed feelings radiate out
and the absurd
takes our laughter
for a bangin' ride

052310

There is hot chocolate
in the morning
do I have to be a lady?

and Judy may always be
a bitch.

Summer is cocaine
and family
Sunshine
and famine

but we laugh until we starve
because swimming
ends at eleven
Sleep in in the morning.

We got it
We really, really got it.

The Value of a Face

save whatever you feel
for I am a baking woman
warming the painted lace
with the full breadth of my being

You are homeland foreigner
and sex on the side stage

I am natural breasts
and no tattoos

whatever happened to the suicide girls?
That night we drove to stripper songs
over so many bridges
and naked men in my dress

and thirteen miles
walked in the morning

We were so good at getting lost.

And I wanted to keep you
like strawberries on my salad
mimes that loose themselves inside you
and Patrick-

Dear God,
how I miss Patrick.

-with his eyes of the ocean
his heart of Allen Ginsberg

-I fell in love with you the very first day
when I startled you
inside the bunker

you thought you were alone.
I thought you were a deer.

and 20 years later,
I will remember you still.

Stagette Bubble Bath

This is terrible
because I miss you
and you are not

wild women
on wine and wedding vows
or dark skinned immigrants
who dance with bone and afro

and you certainly are not
the delta from home
in a foreign country
or
a girl too drunk
to hold her dignity
yet I miss you

while tonight was

hangover
rest stop
wine tasting
restaurant
hotel
short dress
new friends
burlesque

Little Red Rides-It-Well
and naked glitter

strip tease
cock please
and screaming 'til I lose my voice

followed by:

no parking
freak chances
nervous queuing
naughty stickers
silly money
dirty bitches
and platform dancing
(or penis whistles)

However

now I'm just jeans
not-asleep and bathtub dreams
far too early to be alone
drink free
with passed out ladies

and all I want is you
curled up
sweet man
in the porcelain beside me.

Water Birth

There is a road leading off
of Baker's Dozen
and Sassafras
that takes you to my home

I am Waking Cave
daughter of the Swallow
sister of the stone
my voice is the silence of stars
my breath is cool breeze

I am late summer
on black lake
gray ice
under the pines

cones to fill your basket
and offerings for your moon

I am eight million years in the making
limestone and fossil fuel
closed doors
for one hundred winters

I bore my ventricles
deep into the bones
of Mother Earth
Father Sand

I am heroine
in the veins of my planet
liquid diamond to light the depth
of black the shade of nothing

Stolen Bait: A lack of decency.

Drifting on the glacier's current
under the first taste of months to come
(come Summer and next year)

come the memories
first the real ones
follow the fabrications:

My mother painting her fingernails
My teeth marks in your back
My family's broken merry-go-round

The tears on your face
the night I wouldn't let you leave and
I found out that he'd hit you

again and again
the memories come like water, no-
they are water-
water being life
life becoming recollection.

They slide downstream
broken rocks
a broken path

with a splash! Crash!
A boulder cracked and
water so cold it's pure

blessed by Inuits
kissed by Winter's lash
That's the turn and pike of
too many season's laughter

and hitchhiking down
the state's most dangerous highway.
But how else will one learn secrets like:

past the cafe, up the left
where the road washed out like film
a ghost town thrives
and you can meet me there
we'll travel the river together.

Too long's passed- and I'm in love.

You are moonlight in my apple tree
Summer's hair bleached bright by laughter
long days with heavy dreaming
and strawberries

We climbed every sapling
just to kiss
when we reached the top

Where sailboats land
without wake or wind
and we build train tracks
to drive away on

I'm sitting under them now
sand in your hair by the glacier river
ice in your smile and I first realized
this is forever.

And I am too many beers just to ride on your back
because, you always carry me.
That's where I love you
every part that I can touch

Each one I will swallow
tip your toes into my lips and sip you in
there I can keep you
drop by drop

I will never get enough and you are a fountain
artesian wells that will always call me home
where I belong, right between
your shoulder and your chest

I can't help myself.
Fireflies on your fingertips
as they trail along my spine
leaving warm lines tracing

the places you have been

I can't help myself.
I am crashing like the river
all through the Spring
and lazy into July and early August

Iced tea and raspberry lemonade
and you've got sugar on your mouth
let me pull you down
and keep you like the Summers left

I'll keep you like the Summer.