Secrets

Tell me all your silly secrets
whisper them into my hair when it gets red and curly
when we're dancing fast and it starts bouncing all about my face
when the music's playing way too loud, tell me then
when I have to struggle if I really want to hear.
I'll listen hard if you ask me to.

Tell me something that made you laugh
when it would have made more sense for you to cry.
Tell me what you were just about to say!
before you stopped and second-thoughted
in my face.
I want to know.

Tell me a real secret
one that only a handful of people have ever heard before
a secret that would never make its way into a public poem
but fills up pages in the chapbook of your private life.
secrets that bring you shame
or fear
or a loss of pride,
a secret something you find barely dignified.
Suck it up and speak it all into my open palms
as I press them up against your parting lips.
Spread your secrets, spray them through the space between my fingertips,
fly them to my arms, across my neck.
Fan them, thin them til they lose their strength.
Tell me.
I can keep your secrets safe.

I have a whole box of white noise inside my chest that's waiting to be filled with something special,
something quiet,
something loud.
It's asking for your secrets.
The wanting is humming through my veins
murmuring and sighing
"feed me secrets please", it says.
Pour them over me.
Try to drown me with near misses
disharmony
mistakes
all your liquid wishes, dreams.
I'll soak them in
spin them up
and spit them out
with secrets of my own attached
by a line of silver, sharp
like the baby's breath bouquet you may have pinned onto my dress before a junior high school dance
if we'd only known each other then.

Save a secret for me from when you were that young.
I have plenty stuffed like tissues in my bra, tucked away between the braces on my baby teeth,
strolling down like pimples on my chin, across my arms
they settle in the creases of my pinkie knuckles,
the life and love lines of my palms
all cozy and polite
just waiting for a quiet hand to hold.
My secrets only need one whisper with a warm embrace
before they're ready to be told.
But all I want to do right now is hush
and listen to whatever shhhs and don't-tells
your silence has in store.

Sushi Syllable

I'm shipping seventeen uncooked syllables across the ocean
packed in fish crates and cargo holds
to a foreign country
ATTN: the mouth of a hungry American boy
who tickles my heart with his tongue when he tastes my sushi stanza
raw and rare
no pretense
no pretend
just Japan and me
haikuing our way between tomorrow and today
14 hours at a time

Thank You

This is an open thank you poem
to the past girlfriends
of the boy who kisses me goodnight

Thank you, girls, for whatever you have done
to make this man so beautiful
and wonderful
and other things that feel -ful.
Thank you to whoever taught him how to listen well
whoever showed him how to touch a woman when she's happy.
Thank you to whichever one first led his trembling fingertips where they really wanted to go.
Whichever of you first placed his tender lips beneath your own
and pressed down.
Thank you to whoever taught him the power of a smile
and laughter
and that women can be wooed by music.
Whoever talked through problems
and worked things out
and loved him first,
thanks for helping shape him.
I like the way he fits.

One, The

If you were here today I wouldn’t want to show you this.
I would mold the mask, burned into skin as freckles, over the face you knew so well
But hidden beneath that crisp smile, the smooth edges, the creamy white lockbox with “us” etched under the lid.
It seems I’ve gone and swallowed the solution, the key with our fingerprints embedded in rust alongside the lungs you still hold, amazingly, patiently, just tight enough so I might keep breathing
Easy. I like to think, if you were here, the drops of dust would drift and I would just exhale.
But I wouldn’t.
I need to assess by increasing increments, sets of weights stacked on a barbell, one at a time over time with time
I need to know your strength is high and won’t break someday suddenly, before I catch my breath
To prove I can still blindly walk, your eyes open, guiding fingertips on my elbow, and never need to peek.
I could wash my face and tell you
If I wasn’t so fucking petrified
If being wedged in a corner with four sides wasn’t the most nightmarish suggestion since the boogeyman and God.
I have a seven-step facial cleansing process I perform each night
And I can’t even show you this.

Phantom Poet

I am going to use you for poetry
make a muse of your music, revel in a reason to write want into words, scratch self into stanzas, pen person into phrase.

The phantom poet with fantasies to set free, flying like a thousand red balloons over a windy sunrise city, above Navy Pier and the ferris wheel, a Lake Michigan of faces facing upward as they rise, hands together in an applause of tiny balloon bursts, clapping for the words.

I love this city.

Yes, I am going to use you for poetry.
I will cleanse my legs with your lips and wring my skin out to dry with the wash, reach down deep, past the Haiku, pull out socks and sheets from late last week, fresh with dryer heat, warm with wanting.

This is what I like to do, stroll my girlish self into boys' apartments and use up all their toilet paper. Start a fresh roll, white and plush.
Please, I want to touch. I want to use you for poetry.

Pouring your Poetry, for the boy who calls me Belle

I have waited all day for this
a series of steps spent just to make it here
double click on the internet to your stage
I mouse over, scrolling hungrily through stanzas and phrase

you write like a dimly lit lounge filled with life size wine glasses and goblets, perfectly pouring your poetry into them with milky molasses, brown and purple
I drink it down in one breath
please, may I have some more?
Oh, I am thirsty for your words

poems like butter set too close to the stove, soft, spewing sweetness onto thick pieces of french toasted raisin bread
I devour your words, my midnight snack, savoring the sugary cinnamon, and the spices
I am never full

mirroring the moon, heavy eyelids beckon to bed, I close up the laptop and pile into pillows
your poems stay with me
I wrap myself in your words, spin my skin into their warmth like a heated blanket spread out flat, rolling over and over, cocooning my body up
this is how safe must feel when it's dangerous out
this is how love must feel when it's falling
this is how God must feel when it's prayer, poetry

Grandma

Grandma has an amazing body
Round and soft and full of strength
and stories
I want to look at my body the way I look at hers

Round belly carried six babies
and birthed four
Breasts large and low...

More?

Deep veins
purple and beautiful blue across her lap
making maps
of thirty hour plane rides, week long whitewater rafting trips, and 80 years of standing,
sitting, swimming, stretching, walking, waiting

Big veins

Beautiful

A sea
of blue and red travel down her knee
ahead of spots brown as brick
and thick
from summers in the sun
and pushing one by one
grandchildren in strollers
from Denver to Columbus
to Cincinnati to Philadelphia,
Cleveland, Chicago, Washington D.C.

I wish I could look at me and see the way she seems to be

Grandma

Wrinkles in her face, the way she smiles
all the while cooking, cleaning, volunteering
laughing, light and cheery, with teary eyes
about the past
Pulling fast the bedsheets and shoe strings
and the wedding ring she wears
25 years after being widowed

Dimpled flesh
soft and pimpled
fresh
and clean
old and rough worn
hard, torn
spotted brown
wrinkled down
but never out

On me it just looks like cellulite.

I wish I could see more
of Grandma