What You Told Me You Needed

The skin on your wrist,
translucent as onion peel,
the blue tinge of skim milk

I recall the apricot blush that would
mottle your cheeks- natural rouge painted
on by Tuesday nights spent not watching movies

Instead counting breaths- the rise and
fall of seconds sliding away
like grains of sand.

The gritty sweet feel of your tongue on my lips that
would make me frantically recite elements in the periodic table
dead presidents- the multiplication tables

Tiny rivulets carving grooves in the velour
of your cheeks, brought on by
missed conceptions and over a
house that was becoming cluttered with purple elephants

The day we tore down the wall paper, a massacre
of steamrolled baby ducks coated the hall carpet
to a background of slamming doors and expresso makers

Spider-spun tangle of indigo veins, living in your eye-lids,
mirrored in the bruise of your fingernails
I turn off the faucet as roses bloom

Copper Cupcakes

A cigarette sneaks through bullet-hole blasts of sugar pebble sand
inching an ankle onto the fake woven blanket that speaks with my mother's voice
I'll rock you through sunburnt aloe absent late evenings
Calloused feet burning a lucky charm path of footprints through the asphalt

Garbage cans dot the butter dappled beach, freckles of refuse rust-
ruins of liver spotted hands rubbing sun screen on the children you
could never decide if you wanted

Tongues bit off mid sentence, leaving flapping mouths like trout gaping for breath,
a hook adorning your upper lip; they smile while their mouthsfillupwithblood

The disntant clink of glass clad corona dances a tango with the pier's monotonous horn

Drowning

Fish-lips chapped and pursed

covered in my mother’s lipstick-

the shade they discontinued that

differed from the color of my father’s collars

suck the marrow from my spine

as I wince and writhe,

pleasure centers making hollow homes

in my collarbones for masochistic lovers

Curled toes that hug the end of wooden

diving boards, poised and solemn

perched on the pressure of knowing you

were given more choices than your parents were

Bubbles prick the surface of a syrup coated pond

dappled shades of honey-wheat

a trench coat cover for four years of

planning on American Beauty that didn’t end in a bang

Metal Strings

Metal Strings

rosin dusts the wood beneath the bridge
bookended by F holes and crowned with
a quartet of strings

pegs burrow beneath the scroll
stretching taut the catgut core,
the winding sheath of nickel, aluminum, or silver

chin rest clamps to rib, sprouting tailpiece
tuner and beneath the shoulder rest
crossroad of musician-and-instrument

the sweet swell of sound, discharged
by horsehair bow, strung from tip to
frog, held tight by tension screw

fingers lashed by metal strings
calloused while extracting staccato
bariolage legato jete

harmonic notes coaxed out and
cajoled by tips of hands, trilling
sweetly to an undertone of slur

the buzzing whir of rattling fine
tuners, one prolonged largo played
arco than shattered into plunks of

pizzicato pianissimo. The allegro
has ended, ritard—the—decrescendo—until

the E string splits

Jungle Juice

Carpet patterned with oriental swirls and dips
dancing idly with small and clumsy feet
“Gracefully dear” I hear my mother chide

Now I struggle with the same demons
clawing at my back, whispering criticisms in my ears

The clock would strike ten and she would look over disdainfully
six-foot-tall glamazon with pencils for legs and Gucci handbags,
poison dripping from her lips as she commented
“Isn’t it disgusting how girls indulge themselves at night

and I would nod, mouth full of sticky sweet chocolate crumbs
a child caught with her mother’s lipstick smeared across her face

With new shoes that blister my feet when I walk
I slink across campus,
always striving for dainty, but feeling
like I have more in common

with a small herd of pachyderms
than the lovely grazing gazelles before me

Fever

Rough denim chafes a chill,
hopping from each vertebrate to the
next like a child skipping stones

Shakes and shivers encased in white
silk shawls, the fringe tickling out a
sneeze and finally a shudder

Throat blast apart by sandpaper spit, each
swallow a reminder of
sweat soaked sports bras and gym socks

I dance to the tinkling chime of silver spoons holding hands with sun tea
The ice cubes clanking out a rhythm of slamming doors

Where your fingerprints have left
branded sooty evidence of the criminal-kind
And my feet burn rash-red, swollen and heavy, clad in iron shoes

But this is my midnight ball
So move to the shrieks of young-women
Scorned by the eye-picking jackdraws before them

Collect obsidian feathers from a burlap
Ground before you’re bloated
Where second-hand kid gloves and pearls provide
Shelter from hungover headaches,
And the chills run steady like trains on a schedule

Chocolate Milkshake

Chocolate Milkshake

Sweating metal canister,
beading liquid drops that
meld with the water from my hands,
your eyes, that … oh you spilled a little there

Fluid food the flow sublime,
sucking lumpy first kisses
where I leaned and you
learned. Only to — well,
maybe a little less tongue?

Half- full, rock salt canister of
hand -holding—dribbles that
cranked out urgency. So
that is the sex they talk about

Brain freeze, eyes freeze, heart froze
over with your eyes on her
hair, (why are you holding her
in all those pictures?)

Chunks of you promised and
how can I trust you, swirl
the flavors of copper and chocolate—
Choke on the slide

Last drop, your turn, my taste
I always loved the way you chewed
your straw
but hated how you slurped.