Amy's boyfriend died yesterday in an avalanche while he was skiing. Everyone is hysterical right now. He grew up in Shelburne so a ton of my friends knew him and were close with him. He was her first everything.

RIP Tyler.

What the hell.

Christmas Eve with the Evangelical Family

I awoke late at night

with my four-year-old cousins' teeth in my forearm,

because, he claimed, his crying wouldn't rouse me.

When I asked what caused those whale tears he said:

The Apocalypse!

What?

The moon is falling.

He pulled back the curtains to show me his fear;

the culprit was nothing more than wind-swept clouds.

I explained this to him and he asked me what makes the wind.

I thought of all the stories older people told me as a child

and hoped I could muster something better than Uncle Dave

who convinced me that snow was angel dandruff--

Actually, I don't know.

Oh.

But do you want to know something I do know?

The stars we can see are photographs.

Really?

It takes their light thousands of years to travel here.

Baffled, he drew back the curtains even further,

and stared into a night that stared back

and offered no simple answers--

his gaze widened with this newfound knowledge,

the way a baby's eyes open

like a parachute outside the belly

moments after birth.

He held me and I held him,

and for a moment we posed at the uncertainty

as if someone thousands of miles away

was taking our picture,

to be scooped from ancient ruins

by future archaeologists.

Listening

It's weird to see my fifty-year-old neighbor

powerwalk in the mornings

listening to her new ipod.

Ipods are for my generation--

the generation that has never been through

a World War or a sexual revolution,

so we make our thing a focus on our needs

like, pink or silver? Mini or Nano?

When I was six

my parents took me

to the AIDS quilt in D.C.

Jack was Mom's best friend.

They met in college.

He died when I was five.

It was the first time I saw her cry,

slumped cheek-down

on his patch.

That evening

I sat on the floor, sifting through Mom's music box

like she always let me do before bed.

I pressed a jade necklace into my collarbone

and asked her if she had AIDS.

But before she could answer

no honey, just because I layed on that blanket doesn't mean I have it, too

I made a request--

if she died

could I have her jewelry?

It was the only time my Mother ever slapped me,

and the reason she never bought me and ipod.

My Father’s Beard

Black like mashed blueberries, full as Father

Christmas (when it’s icicle season) and

all seasons, til it was a bother—

firefighting gave his face new commands:

“Don’t want to lose that manly mane to all

stray flames—shave it off!” were the orders. Gone,

the gentle burn on my cheeks when I’d fall

into his arms like a drunkard at dawn.

Champion spider squisher,

his holy mask now memories on the bathroom floor,

he laughs at my tears but I see only

the wind pushing its ashes past the door.

My hands trace cold blue tile, the remains are grim—

much softer, not comfortingly coarse, like him.

"Friendly Fire"

A little boy bumped into a bullet once;
his body turned into dirt
as all bodies do.

He got to see the world
on the bottom of people's boots.
He fell through the cracks
of a train station floorboard in Paris
and learned French from the termites.

Once he even traveled to a factory miles away
and backstroked through red-blue dye
until his body pruned.

An old veteran hung a flag at half mast
in his front yard once, just because.

When the wind crashed into its sails
there was a sonic boom
and he had to cover his ears
to silence what he thought were rounds
and empty shells full of blood
and men falling into the mud
all over again--

but it was just the echo of a cotton seed
bursting through the ground
above an un-marked grave
across the sea. 

When my four impacted wisdom teeth were liberated from my jawbone two years ago, I wanted numbness-- I wanted Al Gore's global warming to send a glacier into my backyard so that I could rub my face against its perfect freezingness and hold ice flakes in my mouth like cereal. After three days I realized I had begun to miss not the flavor, but the crunch of one solid against another. Is that not part of the pleasure of eating? The barbaric rattle of something crushing like pre-historic bones between our teeth?

My friends brought smoothies and milkshakes, their faces blurred like the soft focus in a high school class picture. After three days I had grown to hate softness. Everything I saw became a fantasy. Tree branches outside the window were unborn firewood that would taste so good with ketchup-- like hickory and chestnuts. Crunch.

When people spoke, my thrice-a-day Vicodin melted their hair into their faces. Hairballs chatted me up about swollen cheeks and snowstorms-- but I used the bobbing up and down of their mouths to live vicariously and imagine myself with a jaw capable of tearing through steel. When they spoke, I was their teeth, and I could bite through a spoonful of Cheerios that had not yet become soggy from the milk. In my mind, I played their molars like white piano keys in an unfinished song that ended when I fell through the holes where the black ones should have been. When my visitors spoke to me I did not hear what they said-- I heard chips turn into sauce between the tooth and the tongue.

I grew tired of food that didn't protest. There is a tension in the first bite of an apple; you never know how difficult it will be to sink your teeth through all the layers. Sometimes harder food relents, and sometimes it fights back. Milkshakes on the other hand, glide over gumsand canker sores indiscriminately and fall down the esophagus like a white flag. There is no fun in eating food that surrenders so easily.

I would totally fuck Wyclef Jean. He has je nais se quoi out the wazoo. Who here agrees with me about his foxiness? He's almost as irresistable as the young Tom Brokaw, except I don't think Mr. Brokaw ever rapped copiously about women who choose prostitution and stripping as a means of making ends meet.

Haven't you noticed that? Perfect Gentleman (amazing song) is all about a go-go dancer, and his newest single is all about whoring or dealing or doing whatever you can to pay the bills.

I wish the Fugees would get back together.

-------------------------------------------------

In more exciting news, Comcast overcharged us for last month's internet so instead of having a bill this month, they gave us three dollars. It feels like a miniature version of getting tax money back in April. This makes the next two weeks of finals all the more bearable. 

Ghosts bumped into my sandcastle at the beach once.

They weren't gossamer like a bridal veil--

they were four hollow crabs

fine as origami

gargled up in a wave's full lip.

When Aaron died

they burned his body

and our fingers released him

like the final sigh in a supernova blast

into the murky world of

shipwrecks, coral,

and letter-filled wine bottles

pierced by an oil rig

before they could reach the intended.

Whenever the Atlantic

exhales a wave onto me

I like to think it comes from

the place where

his first molar

the one with the cavity

oozed down like a snowflake

to crown some lucky Mermaid.

I stand at the shoreline,

crab family in my pruned hands

understanding the earth only

in terms of gravity--

and how the ocean will

always bark in seashell prattle.

For many years I didn't know much about God;

my only exposure to Jeremiah was the bullfrog,

not the prophet.

But on a Saturday morning walk back to my apartment,

my heel slipped

and I found myself eye-level

with a fallen robin's nest.

I held three compact oceans with little brown speckles

in hands that gripped so tightly

to a railing, a new boy's hand,

an herbal cigarette

the night before.

It suddenly occured to me

that my palms were the eggs' new cradle;

my fermented breath, their incubators,

hairsprayed curls, their shade.

My feet combed through the tangled lawn

and back to the oak

from which the nursery had fallen,

painfully aware that my hands had to be

unfailing branches that could weather

sudden fog and freak lightening bolts--

solid beams of faith

to which the embryos unknowingly prayed.

And I know God was watching that morning,

and tested me

when He shook the rafters

He built in my hands.

Have You Ever Tried Making Them on a Foreman Grill at 2 a.m.?

Because it doesn't work.

But as he squeezed the bottle

of Aunt Jemima, patron saint of pancakes

over the bubbling Bisquick,

he laughed the same way he did

sprawled on a noontime floor

that Sunday morning so many years ago.

            We lay on our sides

            digesting years of friendship

            and a stack of the blueberry variety.

            I laughed at him,

            because at twelve he still wore ninja turtle pajamas;

            but something about the way the holy day's sun

            painted shadows across his cheekbones--

Seven years later it happened again

in that college kitchen,

and I felt a sharp pinch

nestled somewhere between

a whiny stomach

and my nervous heart.

I knew that,

as the goo dribbled down his fingers

and he wiped them on my shirt,

I would lose all my tastebuds--

            They would explode and rain like

            unsolved hieroglyphics down my neck

            should I never discover

            that his lips tasted the way I'd always imagined;

            like syrup wiggling down ancient maple bark, like silver dollars, like home.

Unexpected

Everytime we went to North Carolina

to visit Dad's parents

my cousin Jessie and I would raid

grandma's closet

and in under ten minutes

we'd transform into

caviar-sniping aristocrats,

pearls dangling down our

unfilled chests like

bones from another life.

Until the winter I turned fourteen

and my legs too long for

black beaded mini-dresses-

I went in alone and

eyed a tiny brown box

wedged between a stack of linens

like a secret.

My hands trembled

as I held this

Southern pandora

with all the certainty

of a child;

but what I found was far more exciting

that fifty-year-old love letters

from a forbidden Edgar Hoover sweetheart

or the umbilical chord of an alien baby.

Instead, small enough to fit in my palm,

World Fair 1939 emblem barely recognizable

on the cover, lay

Carol's 8th Grade Autograph Book.

Meet me under the apple tree,

many hormonal Johnny and Jimmy's had inscribed,

and there you'll find your love to be!

In the kitchen I could hear Grandpa

demand a second helping,

and for God's sake, turn down the radio

so he could

read the damn paper in silence.

With reluctance, I put the box back in its place

(should the ruffling of pages

spawn another undeserving verbal slap),

but I left the book in her bedstand drawer

as a reminder that

once upon a time,

Grandma Carol

danced beneath the biggest ferris wheel

in the world.

Death Isn't Just a Body

When you died

so did your first kiss,

your first snowangel

your first beer

your first good beer;

that time

in the supermarket when

some old woman's

canned peas fell everywhere

and she lifted a horrified

arthritic hand to her chapped lips,

damn peas

while wordless,

unnoticed

you picked them up

and never told anyone.

Children Always Ask the Most Innappropriate Questions

"What do you think it's like to die?" I asked you once

as news of Princess Diana's fate flashed across

the bottom of our tv screen.

And you said,

"I think it's like that moment

right before you fall asleep--

your eyelids dance up and down

and you can't see anything but

an old photograph album

of every good and terrible moment in your life;

and you laugh

and maybe even cry a little

looking at pictures you never thought would be

the best moments--

kind hellos on bad days,

a hug from a father who never hugged, that day at the hospital,

the first card game you played with your first love

before you were together

when you barely knew each other

and your fingers brushed for the first time--

and then you close your eyes,

put your finger on your favorite photo,

and you get to go back to that moment

and live in it forever."

And I said, "really, Nana?"

And I didn't turn to see your face,

but I felt your hand tremble

as you wrapped your arm aroun my shoulder.

Promises are like Eclipses

Like the moon in the summertime

one moment you look up and it's orange

but you walk twenty feet in the other direction and it's

just like any other moon at any time of the year

You chose your words carefully

dictionary bedside

releasing them slowly one by one

blowing them from the palm of your hand

into the western wind

through my open window miles away

But you can't touch words

intangible

like the moon, so far away

you know it's there

you can see it

but you can't feel it

so how are you sure it's really there

and not just the sky

or what you want the sky to be

playing tricks on you?

The First Thing I Thought Of When I Heard The News, My Best Childhood Friend

Feeding your family's chickens at 10 o'clock at night

and I was scared to walk down there

because there'd been rumors of foxes lurking,

waiting for the opportune moment to attack--

visions of emergency runs to the hospital for rabies shots

flashed through my mind;

beady eyes glowing in the dark,

otherworldly foxes with the intent to ravage anything in their path.

So you made it a game, and we pretended to be

pioneers, exploring the frontier

following the north star

quiet as we can

giggling into our sweatshirt sleeves

dim flashlight guiding our way

I mean, torch

right?

The last time I saw you,

it was the best day in a long time--

the best day since the day before you started shooting up

sophomore year,

but part of me knew it would be the last.

And the best part of the whole day

was that

as I pulled out of the driveway

(and I didn't know it would be the last wave

you would ever aim at me)

I didn't see the every-rib-visible addict;

rather the smiling girl with the flash-light in an oversized Florida t-shirt

crouched by the chicken coop when we were twelve--

owning the advanced math class, making out with boys in the janitor's closet,

and all the world before her.

And that's what I always see.