samantha, building land plots

trains hold ribbons to their backs,

drag them through your scoured-out

city, trailing their wax and filament

into arcs, because trains don’t move

obtuse. arcs that collect, like families,

families that are just shapes you can

use to make chairs face every person

in a room. your family told me they

always wanted a creek—as if it could

be cut by the topographer into some

portioned slices, hopefully as fair as a

tangerine, with tags hung to note that

it was "Their Name’s Creek." but I

know it’s normal to make home into

that which will only ever be yours,

like the yellow-throated warbler who

somehow eats small blue moths at

the edge of your pool, or the train that

never really comes back, just endlessly

east. it moves smoothly behind the

grey walls, past the cherry laurels, away

from your bed and into a small arc of

sound that could fill a bowl but not a

plate, a river bed but not a river, a house

but not a house that is only ever yours.

thick water

wake to the water turning slowly west for at least

a while on it's tips--edges do lean away,

then turn around. i was born from water people

who had given me coral to be salmon in

my head; they made pictures of waterways to be

heavy. after awhile, the waterway brings

you in, feeds you a small, particular dinner, and

tells you the stories of breathing wood chips

and baritones from the porches that watch the

waterways--the porches watch them to

see they're watching you--see you feel the sick

that even nostalgia has for the patience

of a bay in waiting to turn around, waiting to

take it's hand out from it's pockets.

swift crystals

i've taken your arms from loose water,

moved your hips from oblique

angles into mine, handed you syllables

for eight years that were full of

all the glitter i could find. i waited for

you to see how one hundred

rocks thrown at once will make water

pull itself apart, or that most

peculiar shores are born in silver and

wax. i waited because glitter

is only cut once. we pour it into our

palms and unravel it into thin

air; nothing that sits still can explain

light, so i ran to give you the

white birthday candles, drew a quick

coral sky to cut out and place

over your eyes in winter, tore vellum

fog from your eyes in strips.

fremont in umber

you're taught by way of small homes, ones that

dig into the ground; make room for new weather

systems, or children looking for gold, but finding

turquoise. you know japanese plums, threads,

poppies--you were taught by way of small parts:

oval skies, bedroom doors, geometric kites you

wanted to set to the wind of your cousin's songs;

or umber waxwings to the top of Mission Peak

to learn how summer sews edges to storm clouds.

cream

there are days of ivory light when I read books

just for the head pictures; i pull the spines from

creamed hyacinths—we too age in thickness.

like when my morning eye is vellum, my home

becoming transfers—broad grains, chunks, Ivory

soap dissipating through bathwater. I used to

wrap ribbon around your hands—the same ones

that carved animals from small bars of soap; blue

jays, hippos, smooth on my shins. now, the old

day still sweats, spins pearl from thin light; on

our porch, you can see pears hung from the trees

like drawings, contour lines for shadows. now,

your bones are wrapped and bowed, in some

place, sitting still. bones like small bays that we

used to grow out and then in—like thick braids,

or pearls, or rinds thicker than the pear itself.

come around again

it's cold any way you feel winter; thick bones

grow creamy after awhile, and small bays that

lean in and out for the room of small animals

are quiet. my thimble cactus grows small, satin

flowers, and I start believing in heat, in multiple

heavens like Susie Salmon—one that smells like

my mother’s sunflower shampoo, one that is full

of woven things to see, one full of woven things

to weave. winter means: sleeping in the car with

yoni, thickness, trying to figure out glitter, or any

thing small, or how to make words into crystals,

cut into ovals, then into slices of ovals, lemon and

light pink in the half light of my room. winter

always rhymed with you; but you were made for

small airplanes, outlines of skinny hips of rivers,

chartreuse land plots—outlines but never full.

you did not know the degree of sweaters: the

warmth, or the coat of succulents, or the wrap

of sound only a train can make for a whole

town in coming by and retreat.