The bones will not remember

The picket fence means to contain     not so different from her

body wrapped around her spirit     will one day be containerless--

cube removed from tray:  melted:  evaporated into air    no more visibile

than a thought streaking across a face     on occasion when she visits those earthlings she loves

              (what was her obsession with dying those years, they'll ask,) when she carried pain

              eleven times her weight    wading

towards her lover who would hold her in the night    make her eat

her lover would take weight away     once she spoke it into the swirl of her lover's waiting

ear     how then she would fear death-- feelings turned on their head now with so much to lose

               stiff as a board, light as a feather you could lift

her with a finger she's afraid she'll blow away too soon

once they burn her body to ash she'll settle into the crevices

of tree bark     hard to conceive 

her spirit won't miss

the body won't remember

all the aches    the feeling

she always felt of having stuck her finger into a socket--

everything frazzled     nerves frayed on a sound    neon

everything neon    grass neon    sky ablaze and hot eyes

in the light that makes her squint    she jumps

at the touch of her lover's finger     the smell of the breeze

splashes her nostril with citrus power    the body won't remember

the body that haunted as well as loved her    the body

through which she experienced pain and passion made her

bend    the body on its toes    which did it's job so well

I suck lemons,

my tongue remembers the familiar, the girlhood it burned over onions eaten like apples,

brought empty tears as I binded my barbie's hands, feet with toilette paper so she couldn't move I called her Sexy, did a dance for my mother's camera but her eyes didn't blink like my own at times didn't blink. I sucked on a quarter got stuck in my throat no one saved me my throat learned early to save itself by gagging. Peeling back the bark from a birch tree to leave raw skin beneath I imagined the tree feeling as I did picking the edge of each scab till it bled-fell to the pavement and wind to the smell of juniper, always takes me back to that little white house with the picket fence and inside it the attic of my room swallowing me in its pale pink, my magic rock collection arranged according to color: the blues, then the yellows. And the giant bear I played boyfriend with though it hadn't all the parts, had soft, stuffed hips I mimicked the act and later peed in a bucket for release, to be more bear-like: more free with less bones I left the forgotten bucket beneath the bed. Like a memory it filled the house full in a week with an unattended stinch, so foul even denial couldn't keep my mother away. Girls will be bears she never said and that night I renamed the constellation Bart Simpson on a motorcyle from the star-pieces of Orion's belt. No one could see it but me, out on the roof, bird's-eye-viewing the street lights, each house I imagined, lonely as my own.

the fear which sits in my body's center

they say you can sense danger

through the follicles of your

hair I've always known

something holy about hair

as a girl my boy-cut

made me weep I wanted hair

down my back its feeling

of safety coming down

over my shoulders

like a warm yolk that stays

but as I drive I keep my distance

from the trucks with their cargos

of spikes and poles all the dead

road animals soak in leave imprint

on my mind I see another sign

that says blind drive my hair

just above my shoulders I am so tired

of fear fear fear of knocking

three times of curves taken

too slowly I am not making love

to the hip of a road here

I keep thinking this could be my last

I'll never wear the dress will hang

in the closet as a crushing

of how I once lived of how I hoped

for the aisle leading to her forever

but in my mind I am pole impaled

in a mangle of car metal

I am fighting

for my life the way

I always am

in the reoccuring dream

the snake bite that brings

me to my knees in prayer

when God already knows

she has to know how much for the first time

in my life I want 

to live

something to cry about

I am no good

at handwriting but I can spell w-e-l-l

inside a girl was hard for herself

all flooded like the rest of them

she can hot help her drowning though she tries

to heal via the trees work a little but she needs

she needs she's lost

her grace she goes to healer

has a drum    magic stones and sits

with both feet on ground    teaches

girl how to tap on her face till

all the swallowed feelings come

out of her eyes    nose she even pees

them out    all the yellows she falls

to cushions folds up limb to limb

the weight of it releasing as rain

she comes back to this room healer

for years to heal old places to become

more round in stitches that will heal

her heart's hot sorrow