If I wrote you a

love poem, it would smell like

ash. I burned many.

Silt

in this town, you don’t buy new

things before October, not until after

the back-to-school clothing has gone on sale.

you only shower twice a week, go to school

when you have to, when you can’t find a dollar

in your mother’s purse to spend at the arcade.

you go to parties where the sweating necks

of beer bottles stumble through corn fields.

a handle of cheap vodka, a lip swollen with chew.

here, you don’t go to college.

at home, your father speaks only to the wallpaper,

tells it what debt feels like soaked in bourbon.

you tack pictures of naked women

and 12-point bucks above your pillow.

you dream of floods.

Some Like it Hot

“Hollywood’s a place where

they’ll pay you a thousand dollars for kiss,

and fifty cents for your soul.”

—Marilyn Monroe

It took the embalmer three days to prepare your body.

He removed a half moon of flesh from the base

of your hairline; sutured it as tight as your corset

to reduce the postmortem swelling of your pretty little neck.

Those infamous breasts deflated as a result of the autopsy.

Under your favorite chartreuse dress, you were stuffed

like a doll with scraps of cotton.

Marilyn, you were our first wet dream, our first taste of sweat.

Your lips pursed like two virgins shivering in anticipation.

We knew you were a good kisser just by looking at you –

the kind of woman who made wives dig their nails

into the forearms of their husbands.

When did you start believing you looked better in photographs?

You were found naked in bed, clutching a telephone,

flat-line dial tone singing you to sleep.

We all pretended you were trying to call us.

O, Economy
(Part 1)

Today, I plan on stealing from the grocery store

and washing my laundry by hand in the bathtub.

During the month it took you to leave me:

I filled my gas tank to 33 dollars and 33 cents

and told you it was for you

because it was your favorite number.

I organized our belongings

(white t-shirts—books—toothbrushes—

baby, this is where we keep our sweaters)

as if using the word “our” would embed myself

into what you call home.

I bought flowers from a homeless man

because you are a botany major.

I wanted to bring them to you,

wilting and loveless, and show you how

I can nurture something worth saving.

There is a five-finger scar above my breast.

There is an orchestra on my neck shaped like your pulse

from all the nights you held me the way

you only hold something slipping.

There are 6 states

pressed like stubborn flowers

between the last time I kissed you and today,

but you still feel like a sound caught in my throat.

Paper Dolls

We are taught

from the moment we leave our pink nurseries