Grandpa

Grandma put me in nightgowns
and blow-dried my hair. Grandpa bought doughnuts.
We took rides later than anyone else.

He listened to the police radio for fires
and we’d find them like movies.

Grandma sang about birds at an animal fair
and big baboons by the light of the moon.

Grandpa didn’t know the words,
but he’d hum them.

When grandma was dying her brain
was dazed and she was calling my name
mixed with others as I stood in her doorway.

Grandpa sat in the basement with her pictures
around him and most of him was gone.

Each year made him more of himself.
She was him, too. Even their faces formed
into each other’s.

He kept her dresses in the closet
with ties he’d never wear again.
And he began to die faster than we are dying.

I know grandpa is somewhere singing
on the moon about baboons

and grandma is humming along.
The Little Red School House

We drew pictures in the window's breath
driving where they made us go.
Her heavy eyes of sky
saw freckles near the moon;
Now stars are stars.

New cracks in the wall of my sister
who slept in the same piece of skin
as I did for just as long.

She is still young in my eyes
though her soul is a glacier.

Every nail I punch into the wall
to hang a pretty new painting;
I wish I was nailing her back
to when she didn't know

dad would leave and mom
would go crazy.

How can I be happy
knowing of her dark blood and
scattered head.
I want to wrap her eyes
with bandaids,

erase her backwards
to the front door of the
little red schoolhouse

when we all walked her
to the front door and
kissed the quiet skin
on her forehead.

A LEAK IN THE ROOF

Perched on the kitchen counter reading,
conscious of where her children are in the yard.
At six her husband comes home, goes upstairs
to his study, turns up the music louder than his own voice.

The only light are three lamps by the mirror.
He wipes dust off the wine bottle,
grips the glass rough, drinks it lazy,
files his day in the bureau and locks it.

Folding tablecloths she
seals the air with her laugh.
Laughing at nothing
but a child’s slippery cartwheel
through the frost of the window.

Laughing at herself and at the tub
of chili on the stove,
she puts an extra fist of salt in.
Will he hear her this time?
Will they talk about it in front
of the children?

Will they talk at all today
about why she cut her hair herself?
Will he taste the salt?
Does he feel his own tongue?

One day she hid his only pair of shoes
to see if he’d leave without them.

He left barefoot with a hole in his raincoat.

Allison Eir Jenks

TOO FAR IN

In the unlit earth you never want to mix
dreams among the soil.

You never want to be too tired
that color falls out of your eyes.

You don’t want to look over
those low clouds on the side
or speak too much at the waves.

It’s okay to throw stones too far in
or miss completely and sit on
the deck in your underwear
talking about things you don’t
really believe in

Until the earth opens bright
and your dreams run your days,
the dirt sprouts gardens, your eyes lift up.
Low clouds cast off and the waves delay.

You can’t find a stone
so you just sit on the deck in a gown
as someone’s about to take you somewhere

Now you believe in things you
never thought you would.

The Guitar

The Catholic church on Cherry Street
rings for the new hour.
On the stairs, the son of a Rabbi
hums foreign chords on the guitar
his father bought him.

His father told him to sing
the hymns of faith,
and he must never bring home
a Catholic girl again; they talk
too fast and make you
doubt the doctrines.
They’ll hook you lazy, he said.

Drains flood over the church’s sidewalk.

The scents of drenched girls turn him.
Mass begins. He strides in
with his father on his shoulders, perches
the guitar outside the entrance and marries
her in front of strangers.

As he leaves, his hot
footprints smear the steps.

The guitar falls
and breaks.

Who Gave Who How Many What’s?

I know you’re at that corner bar
wearing the baseball hat that hides
the bald spots. I don’t mind it
because it makes you look like a dad.

Did you leave your gun in the desk drawer
or did you load it up again and put more
money in the attic?

What’s Johnny C. doing tonight?
And who gave who how many dueces
to take off who? Of course he’s back in.

Sometimes I just wanted to have
a hamburger with you but someone
always had to sit by us and talk
over me. I was just “the daughter.”

You’re all I have now and I barely do.

I still can’t believe we had grandpa’s
funeral in the ball park and passed out
Cracker Jacks to the guests.
Did you have to end it
with the speech about Al Capone
then singing Take Me Out
To The Ball Game?

It’s hard to rest and to be good.
People know about us.

There are people I’d like you
to have a drink with dad.
He’s never been arrested
I think you’ll like him anyway.

I don’t want you to die before
my wedding, so watch yourself.
Sometimes I wished you believed in God.
That would be kind of funny.

Christmas Pie

All she has left now are stained dresses
and she can never remember where she was
when they stained. Last time she checked
the mail, she wore one and a neighbor walked
too close so she hurried back in with a coupon.

The address of the noble, barren house
is missing two numbers. Newspapers
rained brown at the gates.

On a day like this she needed to walk
but someone might come again and ruin her.

She can’t brush through the length
of her hair and doesn’t answer
the phone to tell them that
her face is scarred.

She wants a storm to bring her
emotions and penetrate her senses
so she can smell the dust on the
photo albums and the newspaper
scraps on the charcoal. She still
hasn’t learned to light the fire herself.

Someone had read to her once
a story of a musical man
who lived poor to play and
couldn’t play above his life.
The story means less now
than the mild voice that told it.

The voices of intruders and blood mix.
Her brothers and sisters scattered
in states she’s never been. She looks in
books to find their streets. Every time
they’d tell her they were doing
what they liked she’d urge them
not to lie to themselves.

What could she do to lure
them over now?

Put a Christmas tree in the window,
order Geraniums, get grapes
and bright invitations?

Why bother when they will come
dirty up the floors and talk about
the house and look for reasons
that make them superior.

Still everyone wishes for her name.

As night freezes around her house,
a pie sits on her doorstep.

In a minute

A man with a case of letters walks; his vision declining.
He resembles a place that people go to
and leave within a minute, enduringly.
Empty, yet so full of what we all want to know.
We want to ask him to tell us
about the then that was good
and the now that is lost.

There are answers in the empty jug

in his room and there is a glass of brains
he studied once.

The wood on his hand-carved bed; the distinction now faded
Women slept there
found their lives in his voice,
taking what they took until he was tired.

And things were taken from him so quickly that
at moments he forgot what he had;
his room and the pictures of those women
who touched his hair and walked around his house
some of their scents still in the
velvet pillows on the chairs.
He could have chosen one still
he waited for the right moon
and right sound of the air walking into him.

The lights in his house can be seen from down the hill
like a son you’ve never seen.

You know there’s life in there;
dust and music, names and shoes
that trampled through sand and blood and stories
that change each year
and the high-pitched cry of the wind
at his curtains turns in him,
wishing him to be older.

Mothers

She moves in with her tears
and in her hand a little
girl is singing about rainbows.

The tiny girl knows that her mother
is lost and that the stairs are there certainly
and they will walk up and fill a bowl with apples
and start over again

if the girl complains her mother complains harder
if the child does well the mother must do better
if the child gets an invitation the mother hides it
between her bed where she always lays and
it caves in in the center and one day it falls and
she screams for help but who could fix it so she
sleeps on the floor.

The child wants to learn
love and she gets hit
because crying makes it better
for her mother’s crying.

A child’s crying makes it easier
for her mother to let the apples rot
and to break the bowl against the floor
next to her bed and her life.

Yet, the mother had a mother
that covered the furniture in plastic
and cut paper towels in squares of four
and filled the bath tub no more than an inch
in their large house with their large friends

and nothing had been good for a long time
for anyone good wasn’t good.

The child looked at her mother
and realized she had a name.

Now the child is a mother and
each day before she drives her kids
to school she washes off an apple and gives
them one.

NEXT TO MOM

There is peace at the dinner table
beneath the gothic chandelier
with three female chairs.

A child tries to sleep.
The vines out the window
are after her like snakes,

she yells father then mother--

too far down the hall to hear her
as she lays unfilled
with her father's strengths.

Mother trying to be two
down the hall
where a father was, once.

He couldn't hear my voice
calling for order in the late hours,

vines out my window
after me like snakes,
vacuuming me into age.

Dad, come mend this torn wallpaper.
Carve my opinions, kill the snakes.
Intrude my life like you care.

Sit at the dinner table
beneath the lovely chandelier
in one of the three chairs,
or in the front seat of the car
next to mom.

I hear there is a safety warmer
than a mother’s womb that radiates
from love among marriage?
Do you know anything about this?

OPENING

Loneliness in your voice
carries you back
to your first drink of sea.

Snow was ready to have you.

Preparation;
You’ve forgotten to rise
with the height of your body.

You’ve left your spine
like an unswept floor.
Always looking out
to the rage of windowless rooms.

Your fingers
coarse enough to drown
the corridors of the female.
Sweeten yourself with her,
Swing into her cells.

Children are ready to hear you.

Dig into the fullness;
The hot cradles of a garden,
a laughing kitchen
with all of you there.

A busy day, opening

Writing In Someone Else’s Clothes

My breath stings with your body.
These terrible bruises in my mind
keep me from caving in at your chest.

Beneath it are all those vessels;
eagerness to trip alone.

Women are moving your
furniture around and planting
you vegetables. Make them leave.

It doesn’t matter if you’re
uncomfortable. People understand.

All that has changed now;
You sleep without pillows
and you’re sick to the neck.
It’s good though, there’s
something whole about it.

You’ve always worn
everyone else’s clothes
and never slept naked
though it was on your mind.

Look what you have.
Tell me what you think,
not what you’ve read.

Tell me what is in you,
not what’s in them.

Write it to me.
Breath it in me
like I exhale your smell
straight from inside.
The Draft

Our yard is a mystery, everyone who walked there
must have seen something about us that we don’t.
There is never enough armor to screen our lies.

The heart of this house is beyond its time.
Things have happened here that are coming again.

We may as well leave the curtains open.
The way you rub your arm against my ribs.
It shows me intentions.

Now I’m sure you have to tell me why
the windows are smaller than my eyes
and the draft is so heavy it freezes ideas.

This place has sunk like I have
become unprotected, humorless.

Though there are still places
that my insides walk no matter
who tells me not to go.

I hear myself laughing
in fresh doorways looking off ceilings
telling people why it has to be this way.

All the direction I gave you
I forgot what it was I said.
My skin outlines your inroads
You don’t think alone.

Can’t you see nobody cares
how much time it takes you to get here.
Nobody’s sure what they think anymore.
They just hope one day their heart will
tell them so they can stop thinking.

PIANO

My life is half-ripe, a still bitterness in my eyes.
Too conscious if I fake a laugh.

Driving on lit highway lanes with a heavy bag
of love letters full of confessions to read again.

Picnicking with the burdens of before,
clinging to a polishing wind, fastened but frail.
I'm crazily hounded by love's royalties,
hiding in rumors and the flooden dunes
I let men put me through.

Now I'm so addicted to beginnings that I stretch
too far and keep looking for the next whirl.
All screwed up about which version of love I've felt
is the right feeling but still sick and ready to play again.

I play you sedately as you slip on my over-spiced laugh
like you're not vulnerable to all this freakish world's ecstasy.

Believe I'm screaming. I don't look at calendars - TV: never.
Dressed in defenses, I haven't worn a watch in years.
This huge part of me is bent; irrational.

With every stroking of your freakish talks, quarrels and kinks
stoop over me, unfastening my dinosaurish kisses.

The feelings have all been there in the beginnings,
but wasn't it all just about timing?

Night pulls down it's Sandalwood skies on me.
I sleep into night to avoid this yawning land.
I still don't want one-dimensional minds
At least I've learned that much.

I don't watch today as sage and crimson casually pour
from my Glory-full chin. My stomach Sings loud operas of that
loud, squirmy jive we live when we're in love.

The greenness of the piano warms me
with the brilliant strength of tough November leaves;
I can't play the notes, though I feel I should.

Day Dark

A callous morning. No birds yet. A hauntingly mellow wind
like whatever's to follow will be unusually chaotic. Here, I am
always most alive; after night and before morning. That part
of time with no name; day-darkness perhaps. No daylight
or moonlight: only this blue light, quiet light, wind light and me.

Aren't we alike at the sweetness of living; in this shade
that lights the walls with opulent blue. The kind of light
that reveals all the indentations and wrinkles in a persons face.

I see yours forming deep in thousands of sleeping nights next to you.

I hear the commotion of the newspaper and garbage trucks,
men and hammers. Now, I hear the birds. It is right as
I love you that I hear them. I have never listened them this hard.

They sing me into the deep, full moments of the future
Into your wrinkles where I sit on our porch drinking coffee
with the crickets, waiting for another night.
Absorbing the circular laughter of our children running
through the house with your eyes and my eyes.

As you work your way past our friendship
I can't believe the window has brought me morning.
I have been so focused on you that morning has hit
faster than it ever has or will again.

For too long, nothing has excited me
enough to want to stay up until this light.

You have found the places in me that you need,
Killed the parts that don't belong there. I am beautiful now.

Thinking of just taking off. Now. And exactly
who I can leave behind without ever talking to again.
I've promised myself that I would change some things
I do, but I really don't want to.

I am most alive with adrenaline.
We own this unnamed light; This day-darkness.

This is my one time when our minds chat wide enough
to reach every piece of land and air,

Knowing that there aren't enough words
for every feeling and we can never
quite explain ourselves fully
so that someone else understands.
But as this time, we have.
Need

No girl can undress your tale like me.
My estrogen drives into those dirty eyes,
Gyrating you in my festivals of laughter.

There is some scholarly umbrella around you
But you talk in grammar school analogies,
cornered in my life like rusty chimes or a hole in
the couch that I cover up and won't throw away.

You're worn down,
living on vitamins and excuses.
I want to do something for you
when you look at me like a dying doctor.
but what can I do except suggest better excuses
and peel off more of your skin.

Maybe I'll let you talk down to me if it
jams you up like a teething earthquake.
I know the music stops when I leave
your visions frying loose and drunk
as your lips turn bitterly into lemon shreds.

And I'm like a book mark to you;
a toasty forefront to underground wizards.

Giving you night;
flinging you into the sermons of global vigils;
luminescent night-warmers
and you feel primal.

Would it stop you if you knew
I'm using you like salt in a Martini
while the prickly joke stabs
cheer into my face.

I talk down to you really, but I listen
to the putrid smell of your organisms.
You think I'm the type of girl that listens.
I've always crept up on flashy guys like you,
making you ardor women through me
begging you not to love me.

I'm disgusted with the miserable emergencies
that induce you to me.

When the me in you wears you down
you'll be one of the few men who know respect.
but you'll still be the caboose
dragged by juicy women
into the faint, molecular destiny
of your impotency.
What Made Me

My life has thinned from it’s problems.
Somehow you weakened me
and I don’t know what to go back to.
I only stare at my hands.

I hate where I came from
but that has nothing to do with this.

The veins on your arm led me somewhere once.
I won’t come to your window anymore
or run out the door with your covers.

What made me wasn’t good.
I took a lot before I got away.
I can’t get over everything.

I don't want to stop being real
Is that too dramatic for you?

I wont let myself remember
what’s cut up the centers of my eyes.
Where I came from, you'll never
know this and I love them too.

I forget what I might not know
but still I am hearing you walking
in the grass out there
when it’s only the wind.

And in my heart there may be nothing.
If I ever knew a place well
I was a child that you will never see.

When it's so real I don't know how to bid it
Something isn't right, I almost forget it is me
And no one ever taps me half way.

DRESSED FOR YOU

Can you please spy on me.
I’m dressed like this for you
I've forgotten something;
my hands, they’re gone now; sealed.

The pretty girl played the paino
on her roof and when it snowed
too much she died into me.

I should be stronger.
The second part of my life is here.
I don't want to stop crying stories.

You'll never know this is truly me;

drama learned me before anyone else.
I hid so much under the bed.

I can't dip myself in shelter
to assure my future safe.
No one wants to protect me.

I’d have to stopover my grave
along side people to know what they think.

As far as thickness could open me up;
in my core there may be liberty.

Something isn't natural
in the middle of my stomach.
So into shape, know me now.
I won’t be like this again.

Of my eye I only know
how it looks in a worn-out room.
The whole is darker than the rest.
No matter what, time is late.

Shared and spread thin,
my vision is inches long.
My still face falls.
I hear children gathering and
silence never calls me.

NEW BODIES

In our worlds, we are
Sleeping in new bodies
as we find old
parts to ourselves in the looks
of vanishing friends.

This world of yours
that I have never been,
I’m sure there’s so much of you
on the streets in peoples’ expressions.

In our words, we are sleeping
new in our bodies.

No matter who I talk to
I’m talking to you

Sure you know what I’m saying
or at least what I mean.

I’m thinking of us when
we were talking about how we
wouldn’t remember most of this;
our lives, our quiet moments,
your laughter inside mine

And I’m wishing only that
we both were wrong.

In A Split Woodland

Sky is weakened by vultures
spinning like scraps of burnt paper;
chaos for the fish.

A Monkey Bread Tree
haunts over a wet headless duck
aching in the sun.

Hidden in the leaves, the large,
waxy flowers of Clusia Rosea.
Meant to begin life on another planet.

In the oldman’s palm,
dead roots hang off the tips
Reaching for Cuba’s soil.

dead over red rock-
A tired Morning Glory.

Yellow lobster claws grab
for the frail, dampened wings
of Zebra butterflies.

Red Pineapple rolls to thorns
of pink silk cotton;
windows to the tropics.

The woods skinless sounds.

Stalks of Australian Livistona Marie
slumber, carpeting the harsh ground.
Tangled trunk-fur evaporates the mist
of morning’s moldy jacket.

Tender slips of rock urging up gushes of river,
Humping over tiny cells, sweetening the dirt
that will reach everywhere once.

Over the edge of mapless tunes,
nature’s personality faces all countries.

Who’s There?

Take me from this self-duel.

I left behind a mess each time.
Too many places to repair
before I’ll be sure about my face.

There are days I hate my body
but you knew that.

Ripped apart in spells
With everyone I've loved
I’m alone, holding onto strangers.

Lost in how neat things are.
I don't want to feel too well on talk.
I use it up and don't look at myself, grown.

There’ve been too many places to leave
Even more to get to. I never learned right.

Enough taught me I can't die alone.
Still, I may not worry who I die with.
Who can grow at my pace
when I can't even keep a plant alive?

As far as they could open me up
and make me sure that they wont
go anywhere. I leave to let them learn me.

If I let you experience me now
You will only get half of me;
storms and earthquakes.

I'm so much a thing I've forgotten.
A child weeping in my caves,
I will die flushed in any case.

INBORN

1.

I was born into war
it built me bitter.

Someone should have held me
if they ever did

I was inflamed.
My body soaked in ointment.
They nearly pulled off my arms
and we drove far from the house.

The music didn’t calm me
the back seat of the car in winter
Leather seats didn’t soak up tears.

Away from mother, far from mother
so she wouldn’t sting us with her breath.

The house painted yellow with white lace curtains
who lives there now and runs in the yard
I might have ran and met the friends I
might have had if dad and mom had known
each other for more than two weeks.

He left us with her.

2.

It becomes stable and I lift up maddness.

I can’t relive it if I want to be well.
I can’t tell people all of it
if I want to be seen as clean.

The night fits over my face.
One wrong word caves in at my blood.
How do I undo what is inborn.

I don’t trust women or men or myself
so who do I tell this to?

Fears grow against my walls.
Even the fear of not fearing grows
and the fear of over fearing does it too.

Fighting becomes my body.

I can make you blank
like the years I closed off
to begin the next. I looked
at them and said it was okay-
what they did.

I made clear from negative
and put it all in one place
clustered it around me.

You can tell I’m good
I cry at the right things.
My skin is fresh at my age.
My mind is quick and fair.

I still clinch the cries that pushed me
And no matter how full I feel
I slip each time I’m hit
by where I came from.