--IF U ASK I'D TELL YO:
i come from a cherry cannery running
naked bare feet over saw dust, metal
filings and wood splinters danger like
sleeping beauty’s spindle i come from
breakfast table bread and butter soft
yellow yolk and soldiers from under a
big picture of naked laying renu with
her pet boa constrictor i crawl out of the
back-back hatch of the station wagon
knees jittering mouth watering down
roads winding like a boa constrictor put
these tiny sugar snake eggs under your
tongue rattlesnake venom remedy i come
out of a sleeping bag on the itchy twine
carpet out of a twin bed blurred molecules
of night muted skipping and revolving like
a record i am so big i am so small i come
from a dream of chickens with human
heads in a coup a town of fox people
with red beards who stand naked in an
open sewer and chase me with a glass
coffin and an underwater house like a cup
upside-down in the bathtub i come from
the top bunk big sister below and a globe
hanging from the ceiling between us with
fishing line so that i am in heaven and she
is in hell and the cat pissed on my pillow
cos i tried to make it stay one time i saw
a harpy in a cage and one time mama made
a pink cake and we threw wishes written
on chinese silver leaf paper in a fire in a pit
in the dirt in the garden under the full moon
and we offered the leftover cake to the trash
can god i can feel the soft leather cover of
the book in thumbelina and marina’s dagger
and the sea foam and the pearl hairclip i want to
marry henry raschke and live in an underwater
house i come in from the yard out from under
a rosebush out from under an arch of blackberry
bramble a nasturtium leaf canopy i am so small
i am so big i am so small i am so small i come
from under the dining room table if i can’t
see you you can’t see me one time my sister
had a blood blister that burst when we were
in front of the TV on the red vinyl sofa one
time a roly poly gave birth in her palm one time
we fought over scissors i gripped the blade end
and she gripped the handle and daddy wrapped
my palm in cotton gauze and tape and i walked
looking at it looking at it looking at it and the
black and white hexagonal tiles on the floor
of the apartment and the red and black diagram
on the plastic tag of the hairdryer-chord
wondering of electric shock and cemeteries
and don quixote donkey rudy i come from
womb home room off white walls carpeting
and radiator hum drum only boring people
get bored we tie curtains around our torsos
just below our flat chests like the ancient
egyptians and do special dances on the
buttermilk pillow with an india ink kitten
paw print on it a signature before she sleuthed
off with her secretly ringed tail swaying maybe
looking for silla and blue parakeets who
went away too i want the miniature pattern
of the millet i want to be inky bettie boop
i want to draw her just right i want to be a
wax flower on a vine in a pot sweating nectar
i only heard stories about boo the first rat
but when i found flannery starr so still in her
terrarium i was really wondering of death
i come from a home of ghosts i never saw
everyone else did and i know those stories
ALMA MI MAMA looking at mama’s altar
set up the skull rattle and the old flashbulbs
little delicate mirrored glass objects tempting
like sugar cubes i knocked over the mexican
prayer candle oily red wax bled into the rug
i come from sun warm blood skin laying in
hot sand with muddy still water sea weed
and tiny pink plastic litter blowing around
the beach-silence and old mahogany man
who spent everyday of the second half
of his life laying out at alameda one time
we bought blue bacon at the gross-me-outlet
by mistake and one time i saw a doll with
red cheeks in the river under the bridge
at echo glen and wanted her but didn’t
save her and wondered of her for ever.
