Five fragments:

My first visual memory is of a sparkler in the green grass beagle in my nose—the smell ofsulfur and the sensation of fire on baby skin.
I stole a pink quartz from Johnny's diner and left by a front door that I thought was mymommy's

My little brother came home with his Achilles tendon severed after having been away for 2-weeks, while my little sister was being spanked by a drunken nanny.
I am being held underwater by a girl named Jill in her backyard pool,
I begin to see the world go all Kalaidascopey. When she decides to release me, I cough allthe way home.

Sneaking out of my teenage bedroom window to meet Mary, who guided me in the ways ofhorseback riding, lying to mothers, and being naked.

Once upon a time...

part one

A gathering of wrath that crawls
through ancient olives or leaps
Igniting our untended vines of late summer.

Did she get what she came for?

Fire is not the only storm to run from...Thunderbolts split I35 southbound to Texas.Her left arm extends from an open
car window, moving 75 miles per hour.
Girl rider slicing air currents,
surfing wind with a mighty arm.
Chasing thunder, causing storms.
Singing out loud to a million dead buffalos,their ghosts graze barren prairies.

Mother calls her home from a death not yet happeningand this green Duster car turns 'round Northboundher longing for a daughter not yet met.

I dreamt my mother chewed a giant hole through my backdesperate to become one with me.

She did not get what she came for.

Her rage became a gathering,
a slow crawl to the sea.
I didn't expect to have empathy for her.

part two

A first page,
a last time.
A memory faded, an untold story.Abraham is my grandfather.
Pause now, breathe belly, breathe...

Sitting on the edge.
A gold and avocado upholstered sofa bed that must've been uncomfortable but youthfulbodies
being more water than salt, bend where age would crack.
More motel hideout than bedroom.

Sitting on the open bed, likely not dressed as it was a weekend.
She can't remember dates, but it's spring, and she will soon be 16.
Her mom would sing Sweet Little 16 or play the original Chuck Berry version.But she is not innocent, nor does she feel young.
A baby is growing inside of her.

Fertile girl.
Abortion.
Circa 1976, less than 2 years after
Jane Roe won the argument with Henry Wade.Her real name?
Norma McCorvey.
Henry had no need to hide.
Her tender insides are new, unknown to her as yet.

She'd seen the cartoon animations of sperm and egg in science classBut these warnings did not penetrate her pussy mind.

All Pink Floyd and purring like Siamese cats on her adolescent tummy.All Led Zeppelin promising that way down inside she needed...

Blowing smoke rings into the late summer west-facing lightshafting through blinds.
A window, she sneaks out and into the night,
meeting her best friend, Mary.

They wander suburban streets, imagining they are free to choose.

A dangerous thawing was taking place inside her.
Like climates collapsing, like anthrax being released from an ice-aged-reindeer-carcass.Sadness carves a path to her unseen, unspoken grief.

It fills her entire body with dark water.
Holding weather patterns whose constant search for tenderness would sendher unannounced
into arms unprepared.

She had written a note to her dad.
Had secretly placed it on the white leather bucket seat of his 1976 Cutlass Supreme.

He loved that car.
Let her drive sometimes when his head hurt from Saturday night meanderings.

She thought this would be easier than telling Mom.
He'd say I love you no matter
He always told her this, but his eyes never quite landed on her.

Brother Moon, her nickname for Jeff, was a sick boy,
a genetic misadventure.
Sometimes, father and daughter would drive past a baseball fieldand see little boys tossing balls into giant leather gloves.

Her dad's firefly blue eyes would struggle to keep water in and eyes on the road.

Mom would react like a firecracker in a hot shed.
Her frizzy red hair was a battleground between Abraham and Christ.

There'd be no discussion about what to do.
Between hairdressers and emergency wigs that she kept hidden under her bed, lifeafforded no hesitation...

Why did you want to tell him first?Girl-woman needed not to mother mother, too.

So this never-too-be-a-mom-teen put a note in her daddy's
car where it remained under his hard-working ass
for almost a week, and all that cigarette smoke and held-back fartswould get him home, where he'd collapse into bed to the sound
of Johnny Carson monologues.

Gold and white leather Cutlass SupremeThis note will never be found.

Is there something you want to tell me?
A 16-year-old Catholic boy has called and shared the note's contents with her mother.Hoping to be released from being called daddy too soon.

Not even a first page
Nor a last time.
Tis unfaded Perhaps told.

What is the opposite of shimmer, the other side of blossoming,of reaching skyward, of becoming sweet sixteen?

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