Gravity

Dear Boy I Masturbate to:

Remember I told you I had to write about gravity?
I just looked it up and it says that
Gravity is
the fundamental force of attraction
that all objects with mass have for each other.
Like electromagnetic forces,
gravity has an effectively infinite range
and obeys the inverse-square law.
At the atomic level,
where masses are very small,
the force of gravity is negligible,
but for objects that have very large masses
such as planets, stars, galaxies,
my heart raised to the power of your body
multiplied by my lips, your touch and
your deepening eyes.

You are feathers falling upwards in a forest fire.

I will unfold to your body's whim.

I'll move on you with the purr of old engines
placed carefully into new cars.
I want to ride you gently like that.
Your belt buckle will loosen at my smile
and I will find you with your pants as anklets
upon the ceiling.

Lay my body before yours
as land does before a bulldozer.
Flat-line my contours,
or just flat line the buzzing
between my lips and knees
or lift me into the ground
(or into your mouth)

because you think it is the sky;
(it's heaven and)
you want to teach me to fly so I'll learn
how to wade in the air.

I want to sweat-fuck your talisman,
empty your pants of all their jewels and
place them into my mouth
watch your knees give,
those bent boomerangs.

I want to be bitten and bound
throttle throated and
exhausted wet,

combust like supermarkets hurling fresh fruits and detergent
upside-down in the rain with sprinklers on.

You won't be able to shake my skin's taste
from the open-air.

May I be the face you make when you're cumming alone?
Subtle ecstasy like dogs dreaming of white bone.

I'll breathe into your inner-thigh, and
finish you quick,

so will you
drift your cock into my mouth?
I wanna be high from smoking it.

I wanna do you in your soccer cleats
until the hardwood floors
become matchsticks,
and set you ablaze.

You make my heart as nomadic as
petals lost at sea.

I sleep each night waiting for your voice,
so I can reach down
and

purify myself with the holy water of your voice
and my wetness.
So
will you harbor my screams in your mouth,
dreaming of mornings of quick cumming?
Say my name. Now say it again

and I'll cum like a crate of fragile flutes
wrapped in cellophane dropped upwards
from the 63 building.

I will do
whatever you ask.
Unless you are drunk
then I'll take advantage
and ride your face.
But I must say
I think your tongue is a flower
your mouth pronouncing my name into my skin.

In return,
my fingertips will unveil the braille of your body's bible;
miracles like (my) water (wetness) cumming from your
rock,
I've been thirsty
for you
all my life.

And yes. This gravity, the fundamental force of attraction that all objects
with mass have for each other. Your body raised to the power of
your heart multiplied by my lips,
your touch.

Yes,
I touch myself to you at night.

Yours truly,
Heather

My Mirrors

My mirrors
are always lying.

They tell me
my face would be missed
but
no one ever calls for me

so I call myself out loud,

trying to remember
what I was called
and
I wondered,

if the last time he kissed me
did I taste
good

or just

good enough
for now?

I wanted to tell him
I was all out of that flavor

My mother once told me
that girls like me
are like airport waiting areas,

only for the time in between
only for the nodding off after
a red-eye flight,
nodding off to
florescent flashing
and
sticky stains

of the child who was left for too long
by himself calling for his father;

my mother said
that girls like me are the
dingy chairs of
passing through,

for a stranger
who is waiting for a
connecting flight
on his way to someone
who matters

or someone he calls
permanent.

He looks at me
from the vending machine;
I imagine his hunger
as he fumbles for
change.

It's funny that he pushes
B4 for chips

and gets
cookies instead
but smiles anyway.

He sits
and c(r)um(b)s all over me.
and I can't help but taste
with him,

this passing
through.

Quietus

My body unto yours made of oak and steel
contains confinement.
Centuries of practiced prayers

forgotten over an evening of consent.
What we've become
sinks
post mortem--

shelves with your hands touching them,
late night dancers who could be your

stunt doubles. Mannequins in shop windows
undressed for a season like the

face your mirror makes just before a shave.
Lips, a mouth swallows (love)
half eaten sandwich with withering leaves,
a circle of flies feasting on the counter
just outside the door.

We paint to speak. Browned knuckles from
falling into
the cracks.

Before You Let Me Taste Her On You

In sleep,
the magnets
pulling from each of our centers
break two ribs,
tear open the flesh
outlining our hearts,
wanting out.

The arm that found the breast
to press into,
the hand that cupped
the chin,
the cold foot grazing the calf
my hip, your stomach.

(Your hands held
her face as she dreamt,

of chasing children
naming them after you;

You kissed her
open mouthed,
her eyes closed.)

You can't tell
the difference anymore.
You whisper her name
touching your lips
to my cheek.

Letting Go

His voice is gone, quickly followed by his eyes, his lips
the heartbreaking smile he gave instead of words, his hands,
the touch, his entire weight suddenly lifted from your body;
he becomes someone you
brushed up against once on the subway

to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden,

each of his limbs
thorn stems
of acacia
one by one

clipped.

The memoirs of each season
found winter, flew south to the perpetual summer cabin
lodged in the woods of your thicket mind;
there are no phones there.

Only gods hiding

in clouds of

of dust.
You kissed Apollo goodbye.
The half written poem he wrote using your hand

that lived inside

the second desk drawer
loses a line each day.
The morning cigarette blows smoke ring holes
in your doughnut head, your eyes glazed.
Even now, as you memorize the words to your favorite poem,
something else is slipping. The spelling of inertia is missing an I,
each state's flower found faded perhaps,
the names of presidents, large blanks.

But his name,
it is stationed at the tip of your tongue
waiting for your mouth to open.
Hand over mouth,
the holding in is a ritual.
Or a seance.
You've lit and blown out all the candles in your house
with all the lights still on.

You wake at 2 am each night
looking for the dictionary, slipping the cookbook beneath the pillow.
The sky in the window seems to have drifted
out of a song you once knew by heart.

The night,

the flowing dress of a

widowed woman.

Letter to Myself

You are still your mother's daughter.

You are always barking up the wrong tree.
Lodging lozenges down your throat; you don't even have a cough.
The tall boy with the hidden heart and half smiles
offers only limb by limb; he is not a tree for you to climb.

You've shelved your past in parades of white dusted
off addictions to love, lines, words, hearts, cats, homes;
don't build a home in anyone's hand; they will
throw out your toothbrush and clothes.

You will never finish that book you once picked up.
The ending was already written. You were never meant to know.
You will try and wear every dress shoe.
Nothing fits you. You are destiny's barefooted wanderer,

rummaging through garage sales for used parts of hearts,
lock and key in hand to the wrong latch-key boy
who grew but never for you.
You tie knots in your belly instead of your heart.

You say you remember your mother's freckles; no, it must be
that you remember her face
the bars behind her eyes,
jailed in with the wishes of un-wishing the past
jailed in with lust giving in,
losing love and
child who is never

just loved.

You find the pieces of her,
scaling your imagined mountains.
They are never taller than your
father,
your lovers.
And still,
you cannot climb them
cannot climb past
the marks left by the last traveler
resurfacing,
beached jellyfish stinging, string lacerations.
The current that runs through you is
a ring of engagements to self
a ring around the rosy,
the kind that plagues your black death heart.
You wait for a new start,
you always bend at the knees
heels in the starting blocks
waiting for the starter gun
to go off to find a bullet wound.

Bare and open,
skinned fruit
flesh sun-singed
too ripe for any touch.

No one will eat you; no one will have you.
In passing, they will graze their fingertips over
your fertile flesh,
lick their lips
and say, You would've been good long ago.

Dating

He asked me once,
"Why are you so crazy?"

"Baby, I'm not crazy."

My eyes are fishbowls with two fish.
They are always trying to eat each other.
When I'm sad, I begin to pack.

"Where are you going?" he asks.
I shrug.
"I'm not crazy."

I'm packing my things now.
Socks.
I wore no socks when I ran away from home.
Humid air dotted my bruised forehead.
Shirt.
My father sent me a plaid tank top before my 7th birthday.
I wore it in the snow, a frozen gibbon, hanging on the black knobs of
grandmother's gate waiting for him
till the day passed.
Shorts
It was winter when my mother packed my things
into a shopping bag and left.
It was still summer in her head. We were still a family then.
She had packed only shorts, 2 pairs of underpants and a t-shirt.
Books
I drew my mother and father's faces over every couple, child voodoo.
Ineffective.

Journal
The pages I tore out are called Dear Mom:

"Dear Mom,
I'm not mad, but
when you come back to get me
will you remember to bring my pants?
And an extra pair of underpants?
I wore this one inside out. Twice.
P.S. Grandma's chicken Ggo Ggo scares me.
She eats her own egg.

Dear Mom,
I'm not sad, but Dad can't make it and
Santa?
Well, I think he may have moved.
Or forgot I moved. I wanted scented erasers and pencils for school.
Never mind about the pants and underpants.
Grandma gave me hers.

Dear Mom,
I'm not worried, but I think I'm being sent to America. Grandma said you
are not my mother.
I told her, 'Nuh uh! She has a scar on her belly. I saw it. It's where I
came from.'
She said, 'That woman had surgery for something else and lied to you.'
She lifted her shirt, showed me her belly.
'See? If I had a scar for each child I had,
wouldn't I have four?'

She scarlessly scarred me for life.

Dear Mom,
The woman I live with now is Dad's wife. America is not bad but cheese
gives me gas.
I eat bananas all day. I was trying to save you one, maybe send one back to
you, if you'll forward me
your new address.

Dear Mom,
The woman, I call her New Mom. But I don't mean it. Because you are not
old; you hate to be called that.

Dear Mom,
I drew you in class today, because I couldn't remember your face. Teacher
Hill got mad. Sent me to the principal's office.
There was trouble at home. I was trouble. I'm watching the mirror like it
is television. New Mom said I was just like you.
My eyes are puffy. My cheeks too. Why do tears and fists puff your face?
I'm pretending I'm a boxer. Dad likes boxing.
It's too bad he missed it.

Dear Mom,
I'm getting good grades now. English is not so hard now. I'm writing your
name over and over in my English notebook.
Large letters look empty as houses.

Dear Mom,
I'm not angry, but
the years build and wind upwards.
A spire to the abandoned cathedral.

There are shells
of bullets or
of sea
I hold in my fist clenched
called memories.

I can either
hold them up to my ear and listen
seashell sounds, calming or

or
bite the bullet and forget.

I'm constantly packing and unpacking
all my belongings
waiting to leave
before being left.

I have my right arm stamped "For You"
my left leg stapled to the next boy I see
I call him NOT DAD.
HE WILL NOT LEAVE ME FOR ANOTHER WOMAN.

I'm not sure if it's the stamp or the way I look at him
whenever he walks out the door that makes him uneasy.

It's just.
He keeps calling me
crazy."