he said, “it isn’t healthy to hold
your laughs in like that,”
and he lit another cigarette

i wondered what it would be like
to write a happy poem that
wasn’t also a love poem

the summer i learned how to hold
my smoke, you climbed a
ladder to escape my rings
and installed a gutter system
while you were at it

the backyard flooded the next summer

i never learned how to read books
properly and i still don’t get
ee cummings

but you found someone you could
talk to about that shit and
i guess it all makes sense now

i’ve broken 45 bottles
over the heads of spacious
mouthed headstones and
i’ve held the pages of some
god awful poetry in the
gaps between my eyelashes

that shaky tin gutter hated my
splintered popsicle stick jokes
but at least he had the decency
to pretend

i don’t tell bad jokes anymore
i just write them,
and sometimes i piece together
a gutter laugh because
i once heard that it
wasn’t healthy to hold them in 

i told you i thought my kneecaps were holy
and you laughed because you
thought i was saying something
deep and poetic
but really what i meant to say
was that my knees were the only things
keeping me grounded when i did some
pretty heady things

like the night i shotgunned
eleven beers, threw up on
someone’s cat, and then
put the barrel of a 12 gauge
between my lips and sucked
until all the poison bullets
rolled down my throat

that night didn’t sound like poetry
it sounded like someone’s burrito vomit
splattering the tile on the kitchen floor 

it sounded like my knees pressing themselves
into the retro 70s shag of his
best friend’s basement and shouting
muffled hallelujahs through their
carpet burned caps

it sounded like the thrust and gag
of someone slamming poetry
into the back of my throat
until those holy kneecaps of mine
spread a hymn of promise through
my river bent thighs, my mountain
arched back, and my rocking chair neck

it sounded like someone humming
gospel music, no words, no instruments
just the gentle lull of a beer whetted appetite

carpet burns and holy water
bullet holes and communion wine

my knees don’t even want to be holy
they just wanna learn how to sing
gospel hymns at three o’clock in the morning
when no one else is awake to listen
except maybe the cat who’s still disgusted 
with me (and it should be)
but you can’t blame my kneecaps for what i did
they tried their best to hide their shame
despite what my thighs chose to do
i’m not in control of myself sometimes
and i take full responsibility for that
but, jesus h. christ,
teach my knees the goddamn hymns already 

around this time every spring for
the past two years, i’ve asked
myself, “where are my fake leather
moccasins? the ones i thought could
teach me how to weave forgiveness
and knot laces of peace?”  

but the unassembled pieces of my heart
weren’t smothered in a plastic bag
and hanging on a tin shelf
all chipped paint and stale
metal in aisle thirteen
of the michael’s where patchouli
scented melodie stole beads for
her dreadlocks and sparked my
taste for makeshift freedom 

moving forward wasn’t as easy
as threading a shoe string
the color of the thin rings
around your pupils through
a dozen holes some factory
worker in china punched into
the smooth surface of fake
leather, all auburn hair and
shoulder freckle, though i was
hoping for at least a little bit
of solace in working my hands
towards something worth working for  

around this time every spring, 
i ask myself where those flat shoes,
all poor support and begging for
a knee replacement could be hiding
the ones that i thought could
give me something to focus on,
provide me with some sense of
accomplishment when
i felt like the biggest dipshit
for letting you walk all over me,
all combat boot crushing
fake leather moccasin

every single spring for the past
two years i’ve looked for those
moccasins and every single year
i’ve remembered their near-naked
footedness, all faded cut-offs, long blonde
hair, and brown, exposed shoulders
until finally, i pull that canvas covered
box from the dusty, back corner of my closet
and see a fraying shoe lace and a dirty
sole reminding me of all the places
eighteen year old me walked, all
achy feet and battered heart,
all throbbing calves, and tired sole
and i remember how it felt to create
something, make something out of
crooked lines and shaky hands, and
for the first time in a long while, feeling
pride in the mess i made, all 
woven forgiveness and laced up peace 

if someone asks you a question that
makes you uncomfortable, you’re allowed
to tell them that it’s none of their goddamn business
especially if they ask you who you fucked last night,
what’s between your legs,
or where you buried the bodies

questions like those hang in the air
like nooses around the necks of elephants
and you’re the reason they get
a whole graveyard to themselves

slaughter the questions that make you nervous
kill the words that turn your temples to stone,
your throat into a pipe of boiling copper,
the soft palms of your hands into geysers 
drag the elephant corpses out of the room
by their ivory tusks and don’t let the
sweat cause your hands to slip  

the blood on your fingers will 
stain the keys of the piano
that you haven’t touched
in years

but the battle hymn you 
learn to play will echo
through the pits
where the mammoth bones
turn to dust and are
devoured by worms  

there’s ugly written all over my face
and the only words in my throat are bad ones

like when i say i don’t want to get married
what i really mean is that
thirty years from now
i don’t want to wake up
in an unfamiliar bed
next to an unfamiliar man
and then have to make breakfast
for an unfamiliar family 
in an unfamiliar kitchen
before i jet off to an unfamiliar job

i don’t want to fall asleep
in unfamiliar skin every night
and have unfamiliar dreams
of an unfamiliar life  

i want my life to be mine
wholly, totally mine
i don’t want to share it
with anyone else
ever

as long as my skin smells
like cast iron and corn flour
and my hair stretches to my roots
so long as the color on my nails stays chipped
and my ring finger stays bare
as long as the wind flies through
the open windows every morning
and my bed stays empty, but never cold

i will live my life
as far from the unfamiliar
as this rolling stone can stand 

if i want to move back to my hometown
when i’m twenty-seven
and tired of the city
i will

if familiarity calls to me
from the corner booth
in the dairy queen downtown
i’ll buy it a sundae
and call it a date

if i stay for too long 
and the moss starts to set
i’ll roll away into
something new
but never something
unfamiliar

because
i can’t stand the unfamiliar
i can’t stand the subdivisions
the ice cream trucks
the airplane exhaust trails
all the orange in the night sky
the rush hour traffic
the five year old saplings
gray-tinged everything
community parks
the sinking elevation
the time-out kids 

the ugliest parts
taste like home
to you
but to me they stink
like suburb sewage
and billboard glue
they don’t crunch
like dying leaves
or whisper like
green trees
they don’t chatter away
like the bubbles in a creek
or pop like gravel
on a dirt road

they sit in silence
and stench
creating comfortable niches
for people craving stability
but for the rock
that hasn’t stopped rolling
since it first broke away
from the mountain
words like
comfort and stability
are as unfamiliar to me
as the taste of chaos
is to you 

so despite the ugly in my smile
and the bad caught in my throat
i’ll leave these rows of streets
and these empty cul-de-sacs
and i’ll find sincere familiarity
in the most unaccustomed places 

1. 

Sometimes being brave gets me into trouble
Like forgetting to check if the ice is thick enough
before walking into the center of the pond
and falling through
But sometimes good things come from it
Like leaping into an abandoned water tower
from the limbs of that tree
and finding a place to hide the booze
I was 14

2.

I would give anything to feel that pebbly concrete under my knees again
Even if it means a bike wreck and a bloody nose

3.  

When I pulled my only pink thong
from the drawer in the back corner of my bedroom
I knew I was too young to make that promise
but you were driving 45 minutes to see me
and I wanted to make it worth the trouble

4.

The other day, I was reading outside
and felt a warm breeze across the pages
I imagined tree bark behind my back
instead of brick

5.

Camp Catalpa has a stone house
where you kissed me for the first time
and later told me you dreamt we had
gone back there to kill ourselves
after finding out we both had cancer

6.

That dream came true in different ways

7.

The rocks used to carry things like
calcium, silica, and copper
into the river
where they would color the clay
and give it texture.
Now, the rocks absorb the chemicals
from the fields
and turn the water a nasty shade
of vengeance green
and make it smell like a deer carcass.  

8.

I can’t believe they painted the kitchen red.

9. 

Star Mountain isn’t the same
without the tree-lined climb.

10.

You haven’t been the same since she left for Alaska.

11.

“Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.” 

you are so afraid that they’re going to drop
a nuclear bomb on the nuclear family
blow the ‘sanctity of marriage’ 
to radioactive smithereens

laugh their way to the altar
and drop petals of ‘partnerships’
and ‘civil unions’ on the
glitter splattered carpet

you are so afraid that they’re going to dismantle
the pictures in the frames on top of your fireplace

that they’re going to pluck your
white shirt/khaki pant kids
right out of that nature shot you took
in some stay-at-home mom’s basement
where she wishes she had
filed for a loan to start her own business
instead of one for her wedding
because her husband
“just can’t understand why
she has to have that damn
photography business
when he makes plenty of money
for the four of them” 

(yeah, it sucks; obligation’s a two way street)

you think they’re gonna
get tap shoes for your sons
and guitars for your daughters  

that they’re going to show them
how it feels to rebel
to feel the sticky kiss of sin
on their swollen lips

that they’ll learn
how to throw punches
at their demons,
but avoid contact
with any figure in white
trying to tell them about
forgiveness

you are so afraid that your 2.5 kids
are going to be happy in a way
you will never understand 

but what you fear most is
losing control
of the
only thing
you’ve ever been
proud of
in your
whole
damn
life

no one wants to be the bearer of bad news
so we leave our tongues
gaping with the wounds
of all the things
we left unsaid

our lips taste like copper
but our stomachs are
made of lead

we race to the bottom of the trench
as if there were nothing left
for us on the shore

our bodies move with
the changing of the tides
but the bottles that shatter
against our teeth
are filled with messages
none of us are prepared to read

calypso calls from the deep
and begs us to open our mouths
and release the resevoir of blood
we licked from our hands,
our wrists
but we refuse

no one wants to be the bearer of bad news