Cyclically

This is natural

as good as the gap between keys

my gut feels full of bricks again

like brimming with things not to say

Instead, I dream

of stuffing dead fish with lychee nuts

the entrails snaked along a subway platform

we are two women sloshing fingers--

not to forget our nails--

"The f-train is coming!"

all this in honor of friendship, I will suppose.

Isn't stomach material so different

than the lizard skin

of these fruit; We pinch through

Con sus cascaras rosas y brillante

(too beautiful for mine)

these are more real to me than

you are real, now.

I wish I had squeezed

the fish carcasses to my chest

watching their rubbery eyes bulge.

And in fistfulls

pealed,

grape-ish and translucent

all of it in disguise, and then

I become digusting

over you

anyway.

Unsolved Mysteries was on Television

I remember eating grapes in the living room.  Hot skin stuck to iced marble, knees

scraping against rough granite unders.  The lights were dim and fogged and we did not sit

close together      just like you to watch only

because the most efficient parts of the story are the only parts.  And I counted myself: there were

twelve for "Cada uva significa un segundo" I often remember without remembering why

as one connects freckles on the insides of her

dimply skin pursed under examination:

memories come to me like bruises

purple, sore and warm.

Making things more mysterious, I think: is that what you wanted?

Also Known as Strawberry Fields

They are selling Strawberry Globe Amaranth

at the farmer's market on Saturdays.

I hunger to tell someone this;

think about shouting it over

the television voice

bubbling out about

God Knows

in the living room.

If someone would just

Lower the volume!

Bright flowers;

Spike/fuzzy ruby cubes--

Please,

I am looking for something

like the pigeons in our window box

when it's raining.

And if I kissed the screen

I would feel caterpillars whispering;

I want lips like the fuzz-flower strawberries.

Wouldn't one kiss me then.

Sweet crackers,

I put everything into my mouth!

Like Wildflowers

or returning home

or finding socks in the bed:

you come to me in all the wrong moments.

Tonight I find you in a parking lot

walking home from the train station

a forest;

weeds peeking past pavement

[This burough so full of

accidental gardens]

and stop to investigate.

Through bent chicken wire,

black shapes twining and

looping in the dark; swaying

billows of grass.

I squint my eyes

to make out a

sooty feline crouched

as if blooming

between the Dandelions

and Queen Ann's Lace;

eyes like red beams and

slip under I

dig my knees into the dirt,

finding a sudden urge to hold

I wade through towards a clearing and

you

I find you there instead

limbs splayed.

Together

we stuff lightning bugs into our mouths

by the handful;

we eat them like peanuts.

Busy Signal

buttons, jammed

your telephone is

that where you've gone?

Mending and un-mending,

finally, I clip the seams.

I find myself somewere else

the machine reads:

Game Over, and then

puts another coin in

one hand on my--

We've stopped discovering eachother!

I want to scream,

but the reciever melts like cream cheese.

Come home to find

the cat is sleeping on your jeans;

the headline reads:

Saddest Movie Ever.

My mother made her

scrub the tiles white, teeth white,

hands and knees.

Not everything is worth sharing

In any cafe

You are touching me,
the word is saying.
The eyeball bats its lashes.
Stop holding me, the hand is saying,
leaving only sweat smudges.

When you look at me, and I feel
I feel—

that particles of air are incinerating
the hair of my forearms,
and that tiles are made of electric sand.

If I could help it,
I would be the giant fern in it's fern pot beside
that mouse in the corner
(yellow walls and uneven, circular tables)

As I see it,
we are both only good for hands on a table,
so I watch the mouse instead.

The mouse thinks:
there are too many computers;
not enough crumbs
and I agree.

An Excuse

"Your tomatoes are dying,"

my mother calls me on the telephone.
"Aphids," my mother says.

I come home to see her
the plant, I mean,

stems heaving and drooping.
"Didn't you watch her while I was gone?" I ask.
My mother keeps quiet

I finger her fuzzy leaves--

soft as the skin on a baby's ear.

I spend the day swathing soapy liquids

over her undersides.
My mother watches from across the porch.

the brown specks cling and twitch

about her vein-y reaches.

"I knew it was something

when green ones stopped coming,"

my mother says.

I eye the dying tomatoes:

(deflated. Crimson

and puckered).

and then my mother,

standing in the door way,

hip pressed into the sliding door.

We both flick our fingernails

when we are thinking