Yellow

ghost stories

dark staircase leading downwards – an esophagus –
and us on the edge, like a nightly prayer, with the moonlight
hemming our nightgowns blue and a draft cupping them up
like mostly-deaf ears. the night hitchhikes in with
the old moon, an unwanted houseguest, making itself comfortable and
the house is full of snores. they flutter around us, through the walls –
blind, slumbering moths, which pupate in the corners
and hang there like nocturnal,
mummied earrings.

we share a candleflame between us, bobbing eagerly like a girl with an untold secret.
our faces pale, stiff masks in the light, cobbled, our eyes dim nuclei
and the darkness crowds in around the light, timid and worrisome
like a spectator of a séance. we hold our breath
and eye each other as wax tears up,
and drips down the sullen, fleshless candle
like runaway pearls.

it begins with a blood pact, a pricking, gimp-eyed needle
from mother's sewingbox, our fingers offering up warm beads
of truth and promise, black in the yellow light.
trees scratch at our windows, like prisoners tallying the days, the days,
the days.

we

whisper.

and the dark staircase creaks and fidgets, divesting
periodic statements as we hide under the covers and suck our fingers
and tell each other ghost stories, grey-faced and godless in the dark as heathens.
the night is fluent in stars and goosebumps
and the candle betrays us with its scooping, tribal shadows
collecting around us like black, clerical buzzards(they
will not eat us,
if we do not sleep)

our eyes waver
and we watch the moon pantomime an odyssey
across the throat of a wintering sky.

the burning season

wildfire in bush canyon today
and the sky is doubtful with ash, fluttering
like flirting eyelashes. the heat gasps in and lays low over
the heavy-lapped valley, like a drowned body, and
trees stand bare-armed as preachers
while the sun lapses over the horizon,
pressured into an attitude of reverence – a bland face regarding
frizz-tipped heads of grass bearing judiciary wigs
of ash.

insects wheedle and haggle and we sit outside on the porch
because the airconditioning is broken. we sit stickyshirted
with our mouths hinged open like trapdoors and the smell of
wildfire smoke burning stifled trails through our nostrils.
purple-crowned thistles stage a coup on the leftover august blossoms,
which kneel before them like prisoners of war.
the absent wind dazes, the valley cups up.
we squint,

we
hold our breath.

and somewhere the firemen move through the carcasses of burnt trees.
above them, birdsounds incomprehensible and drawn out, like the syllables of some
foreign tongue. black tree-fingers frozen in positions of damnation and regret,
wheezing stomachwounds, the red jewelry of cooling embers
and the wildfire ever-retreating, ever-eating –
bonecrack under firemen boots, they
wipe their brows
and pray for rain.

in answer, a passive sun,
bestows urinary rays of half-light
through the belching haze
and remains unmoved.

Hey Kylan!

I cooked up a decent review, and Mozilla thought it would be a good idea to discard it, so, I took a break and reviewed your other piece... And then I went to bed and came back the next morning...

Anyway!

Ghost stories is a beautiful poem. I especially like it because it has a "family" touch to it (and I am a total sucker for family related poetry. Don't ask.) Anyway, here!

dark staircase leading downwards – an esophagus –

I'm not sure if it'd be better to have an esophagus come before leading downstairs-- it kind of sounds like a rushed afterthought when you place it after the sentence.

But, aside from that, it's perfect-- it's pretty well-polished and [aside from the note about the esophagus] flows pretty well. It kind of brings to mind all of the secret, made up, ritual-sort of things my sisters and I used to do; kind of makes me wonder where the inspiration for this came from.


- -


The burning season--

I honestly love ghost stories for the familiar, easy-to-relate-to side of it, but burning season, in my opinion, is better. Not to say that ghost stories isn't exceedingly well done; burning season is just an unfamiliar scene [to me] that you've effectively placed in clear enough words and thorough description-- it's easy to imagine now, so much so, that I can almost smell the smoke.

I love the second stanza. I'm not sure that the close repetition of we sit is especially favorable, but this stanza makes the poem feel real-- everything else around it is good, thoroughly descriptive and what not, but this part makes it human. Without this part, we have a scene and it'd be a bit hard to imagine experiencing this first hand.

... and I'm rambling. But! Needless to say, I love these two-- very complete feeling these two have.


Beautiful work, Kylan. You rarely ever disappoint. Keep it up.

June

the night is full of snails

tread carefully –
the night is full of snails
hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,
on the shoulders of the grassblades
small and emerging, like baby noses.
they survey the starless night
they are the only sound.

depositing their trails behind them, like nuptial veils,
kissing trudge, stomach-born, the moon slips down,
like a child sneaking out, barefoot among the trembling
foragers with their eyes extended batons, probing and
dark-spotted.

tongueless language, grouping together
captives on the porchsteps, dutiful, crawling like toes
they retract their gilled muscle under my touch,
gentle mouthing, gentle breathing
silent and cornered, they conduct their blind courtship
and in the morning, the leaves on the marigolds
will be leprous and ungrateful with holes

they sit on their fat stomachs like sultans,
stretching their necks, nocturnal siblings,
humble barges fording the dark expanse

I listen to them sigh,
dropping out of sight,
one by one.

Hi Kylan,

Kylan wrote:the night is full of snails
tread carefully –
the night is full of snails
hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,
on the shoulders of the grassblades
small and emerging, like baby noses.
they survey the starless night
they are the only sound.

I don't like this paragraph because of a few small reasons that look really unimportant at first glance, but together they cause a swirl of confusion.

Why is it a pilgrimage? I read that with not the satisfaction of a poetic device - after all, throwing in a word means nothing on its own - but in anticipation for some other reference later down the line. None came. It was just floating there and the reader never understood where these snails, as pilgrims, were going or whom they were paying homage to. This piece could be much better if you would include some sort of analogy embedded in the later stanzas that connects that word with another idea.

"Small and emerging" is bland and offers no image, not even a feeling. Re-work it.

If they are the only sound, at least hint to some description. A sucking, the noise of spit being rolled on a palmy air. Something.

depositing their trails behind them, like nuptial veils,
kissing trudge, stomach-born, the moon slips down,
like a child sneaking out, barefoot among the trembling
foragers with their eyes extended batons, probing and
dark-spotted, like gas planets.

Did you count the number of similes in that stanza? There were three, and all of them shallow. You're overdoing your liberty with poetic devices; rein them in, and if you do have them, make sure that they mean something. "Like a child sneaking out" - what does that even mean? Are there more similarities other than the very surface ones like being barefoot? The reader can hazard a guess, but it will be a hazard to his understanding of the poem if you don't even include a hint as to what that is or what it represents. It's got to represent something, or it wouldn't be important.

tongueless language, grouping together
captives on the porchsteps, dutiful, crawling like toes
they retract their gilled muscle under my touch,
gentle mouthing, gentle breathing
silent and cornered, they conduct their blind courtship
and in the morning, the leaves on the marigolds
will be leprous and ungrateful with holes

they sit on their fat stomachs like sultans,
stretching their necks, nocturnal siblings,
humble barges fording the dark expanse

I listen to them sigh,
dropping out of sight,
one by one.

Most of the problems I have with these stanzas I have already mentioned in the above review, so I'll just leave you by saying that this poem is good. The ending especially leaves the reader hanging off of a cliff, but a relieved and desired one.

Hope that helped,
Galerius

minesweeping

what crops are these?
unwilling, slumbering goosebumps, appearing
along the red wrist of the road, exposed
precious rumps, packed dirt
what blossoms will come from these?
baby-headed lillies, tongues lapping up the milked light
centered with little, yellow-lipped stamens nodding like
feeble historians?

plowed in the night, the soil overturned like tipped boats,
and the morning wringing its hands
over the field of buried redheads. the mothers
look outside and purse their lips and shake their heads
and forbid their children to set foot in the
red field. circumventing the mounds and humps,
the springblossoms are cheerful booby-traps
and the bees nuzzle them
like nosy neighbors.

but
the children move among the deadheads, the redheads
of the sullen field, walking around the goosebumps
daring, daring, darkeyed and white-mouthed,
glaring

little bald boys, with two legs
they walk in the red field in the morning
the dirt stacked
like kinged checkers.
tread carefully –
their mothers' warnings are hidden under
the crops of this field, taking root, until a jury
of seedlings will crane their necks from the
red dirt

and cry to the little boys with two legs and all ten toes

for the love of god,
watch your
steps.

Kylaaaaan!

Okay, I officially suck at reviewing. Wasn't it last week when I promised you a review on this? At any rate, it's my 850th (which means I ruin the perfect row of blue stars >.> for a red one. But, anyway!)


the night is full of snails

While I really did enjoy this poem, it felt like it droned on. It's really slow compared to some of your others-- which, in a way, is good, seeing as snails are terribly slow. But, I'm saying this to point out that it was a little icky; I mean, we kind of pondered on these gross objects an itty bit too long.

And I have a nitpick:

hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,

Aborrances? Abhorrences? -- I'm not too sure what that word's supposed to be, but it doesn't look right to me? Meaning, my brain-dictionary cannot find it in its pages, nor can Google find me a good definition? I think you mean abhorrences? Maybe?


And!

they are the only sound.

This is oddly abstract, and it's kind of going beyond the imaginary limits that this poem set, because I wouldn't imagine a sound to be there-- silence seems more inline with all the images-- concrete and metaphorical-- that this poem is drawing.

Okay, so! Aside from this, I really liked this (I feel like I say this a lot, for some reason. I could resort to using big words to make my liking it sound different each time, but, I'm lazy.) On improvement fronts, a small part of me is saying that something in this one needs to be fixed, but I can't tell what it is.

And, okay, two-fold meanings in this are evident, but, I think on the obvious side [for shallow readers. ] we need more. It feels like you're building up all of this good stuff, and leaving us with the question: all of these good images are leading us to what?


-

minesweeper


This is brilliant.

The questioning in the opening stanza speaks of win; it gives room for the following stanzas to fit, and fit well, because you're answering the questions.

However, there were some things at a certain point that kind of weighted this down. See here:

but
the children move among the deadheads, the redheads
of the sullen field, walking around the goosebumps
daring, daring, darkeyed and white-mouthed,
glaring

little bald boys, with two legs
they walk in the red field in the morning
the dirt stacked

(I could have just said the "the's". XD)

Anyway! What I am saying, is all of these little words add fluff to the poem and don't give us any substance, so in essence, it's dragging the poem down.

In a different light, like I said [or meant to say?] in the review on The Elephant Keeper, your reaching for description is blocking the story-- the story is there, but it's underlying, and I think that you should focus on the story before the description here.

Again! You have a great tone building up to what seems to be an exciting climax, and then it kind of like... tapers off slightly. Here, it didn't do that so much as in the night is full of snails but [while I love the closing a lot, maybe too much for this review's good ] I think it could disappoint an audience in a sense that it's not an especially exciting end?

Did that make any sense at all?

Also, great job with the hint of rhyme in there, Kylan. Was that intentional?

June

hospice

cold, unpitying sun, dropping in through the windowpanes
sullen as a truant, cast-off and browsing.
the light is unwelcome company, revealing your face like
a well-kept secret, white and masked by a cup of
oxygen – you are suckling again, overlarge infant,
crooked in the lap of the bed, eyes pacing slowly
under your dream-rimmed eyelids, like sleepless tyrants.
with every breath, you expel another moment,
another muttered minute, and the
O2 tank plucks it up
sharply.

those daisies
aren't lasting long. their heads drooping
like idiots: squint-eyed, gandering from the lips of the vase.
their brown-touched petals fall in such abundance
when you breath, and so I keep replacing them, and you keep breathing.
they are nodding, weary heralds. dipping, the sunlight pushing among them
like a boatman.

your face, collared blue,
your eyes retreating like a snails, shellward
until they leave only catacombs, ghastly chambers.
you don't cry anymore – I do it for you,
and you turn your head away and your hand
grows stiff, scaffolded with an index of loose bones,
hollow windchimes that make the quietest, most delicate
promises.

you
are a facsimile
skin sticky and color-changing, depending on my mood –
amphibian. cold, light-winded priestess, I bring you
news of the outside world: the blossoms are bowing their heads,
a wake for autumn, and the trees carelessly
toss out their leaves like handmedowns
south-bent birds unzip the sky, but somehow
the new daisies are holding out,
but
only just
barely –

they
emancipate their petals,
weeping for the loss of your pretty hair
mourning for the white choir
of your bones under
the bedsheets.

a night at britt gardens

and as the evening spins, a party dress of nebula and solar wind,
the violin bows sigh on their bed of strings, heaving up
like cricket legs, see-sawing. white gloved hands whittling
the composition down, shaping the music into delicate black
vowels which sink into the night like scuttled ships.

and the rust-bellied cellos curl their heads like fetuses,
ribbing out their mournful speculations and the bald platoon of horns –
bonneted, valves and plumbing of their hearts,
trickery of key and lip – flaunt like bell-headed dandies,
their heads tipping forward like doffed caps.

and the conductor, his hands shaping out the curves
of a beautiful woman. trouncing, jumping, white and skinny
as a captured pawn. tittering with the piccolos and clutching
the breasts of the timpani notes, his hands pantomime the music,
fluttering like wounded birds,
stringing it along, crocheting each note
dragging the eveningsounds by the tip of his baton.

and if I look long enough at the sky,
it appears to be rotating, the moon hidden away
like an unfaithful wife, hidden in the black sleeves of the night
the sky turns, turns, turns again, the lazy-eyed stars
regarding us sideways, white as lies. I can feel your head shake against me
whenever you yawn, rattling, heavy,

and I vaguely audit
the debacle of bow and reed, of horn and pedal
as the crickets slowly harmonize
and the night slowly ambles,
pocketing the sounds of the orchestra
for later,
for when nobody is awake

to keep it company.

Kylankylankylan!!!

Breathtakingly well done! I can't say that this is awesome in the same way that apostasy and hospice are, but, this is definitely beyond fantastic. Not to say that this isn't excellent, but it's different; like, you could place apostasy and hospice against each other, because they seemed similar to me, but this is different. It's awesome, Kylan, and I honestly mean that-- I just can't decide if it ranks above apostasy or not. It's still within your range or style, but it feels different, in an entirely splendid way.

vowels which sink into the night like scuttled ships.

This might be a useless thing to point out, but the use of scuttled kind of slighted the tone of the first stanza. Your word choice here is soft, pronunciation-wise, meaning that you don't have too many syllables and your consonant sounds aren't hard, but here, scuttled gives us two consecutive hard consonant sounds and it stood out to me. I like the word scuttled, seeing as it's prettier than just saying sunken, but it felt placed, like it was an effort required to make it fit.


Also, in the third stanza: Is it necessary to use periods after woman/pawn? I felt like those were slightly unnecessary full-stops, and they could be replaced with commas, or semicolons?


Here:

the moon hidden away
like an unfaithful wife, hidden in the black sleeves of the night

I know I'm a repetition Nazi, but here, I think this repetition is kind of useless, seeing as hidden applies to the moon in both places.


- - -

So!

Although apostasy is spectacular and beautiful and everything, I might kind of like this one a little more? The beginning of the stanzas with "and" pulled for a continuing sort of feel, and carried the poem with a subtle excitement that I can't really describe.

The ending was spectacular. Some of your other poems have an ending that makes it seem like the poem should continue (like the snail poem), but this ending closed it perfectly. I can't really say much on this, Kylan, except that it is definitely a masterpiece, and joins your other poems on the list of superior Kylan-poetry. How on earth do you do it?




June

Hart

green, unripe peaches bobbing like Adam's apples
above him as he leads us to his front porch, smiling
a crooked, sloping smile that cups over his false teeth,
his skin hanging off of his bones like windless sails and
his eyes still haunted by a blue tease. the underbelly
of the veranda sags like a sigh.

we sit on his couch and he talks about irrigation and longforgotten
agricultural techniques. he is a teepee of bones – I can almost
see right through him – paperman – as his arms lie by his side, fingers tamed
and deviating to the side, drowsy with arthitis. in the late sunday
light, his eyeglasses catch and grieve and wink

the clock down the hall ticks patiently, arms in rigid salute
to father time, and the hanging flowers
outside the window bow their purple heads,
like children reciting prayers. his wife sits by his side, tiny
whippersnapper, fresh-mouthed despite the frost
gnawing her bones down, scissorgrinding them down
and the tiredness that she wears around her shoulders, black shawl.
they work their jaws together, heads nodding like
docked ships.

the sunlight fails over the unborn peaches, stealthy and cat-creeping
as the pumps and pipes in the house knock behind the walls,
like babies kicking in the womb. their hair, white and perfect,
swept clean, his pants pulled up to his bellybutton as they
sinks into the couch before us, becoming nothing more than
figments, watched by their children,

who squat in their framed portraits
on the piano.

button-nosed

I see her everywhere now – under the slate-sloped piano
among the baby-footed pedals, laughing at me, her hands flying up
like startled birds. she is wrapping herself up in the dreary, velvet curtains,
that cough dust, deflated like starved stomachs, and she explores every room
in the house, as if each holds some undisclosed secret under
their floorboards, in their sunless closets, where dens of moths
escape like stolen kisses. the beds are neatly made, but
stink of old sweat and sex.

she is in the phonograph, the lazy twiddle of arm and record,
I can hear her voice in the scratchy chords and tones of the greased
crooners – she hums along, even though the songs are too old for her to
know. she stomps through the kitchen with her button-hooked shoes and
hand-made dress. her laugh follows her around the house
like a bride's train bearer. she is delicate, easily displaced –
she smells of grass and stolen spritzes of perfume.

her glass-faced dolls hang their heads, the cut flowers lag
like lazy eyes. cellar-breath rising through the floorboards –
she is so cold, wandering around the house, her laugh congealing
as she puts her nose to the windowglass and longs to be outside.
I want to let her out, but I can't follow her there, out where
the trees drop their leaves like ransom notes and the pale etiquette
of the songbirds and the low-hanging smoke from the burnbarrels
slinks like jazz.

wallpaper ghost, freed from the clipped borders of a photograph,
black and white, where the people squint, face brassed like bedposts.
she roams where I roam, a darling reflection. hazy left-over,
she is temporary as a button-nosed
mushroom.

A/N: Haven't posted in this for a while, though I've been writing a ton of poetry. Here are a couple new poems.

dad's toolshed

the rats scramble under the pressboard floor, light-shy,
avoiding the green marbles of poison – fat, graceless bandits,
their young squirming and pink, like bait. and in the night, the elbowed
lamp in the corner bows its head and kneels, like a widow at a gravestone.
on the workbench are sections of plastic pipe, prehistoric, jointless bones, ossified
by dirt, along with a trailmix
of screws and nails and bolts, rusted, swiveling, they bead
along their orbits when the bench is nudged.

the cobwebs hang in their longfaced disguises, abandoned,
they are fly-less, listless as daydreams in the rafters. the toolchest
sits, belching its tools, old inheritances – the hammer that's been in the family
for three generations, the monkey wrench tightening its mouth
into a sneer, and the old handsaw that hasn't been used since
we got the chainsaw.

and the harvester spiders scope on their spindles, tiny droplets of body,
they are lofty stiltwalkers, as we rummage around the shelves for
a paintbrush, old cans of paint sitting with their lids cracked open,
rabid with dried paint. dad's bicycles hang on hooks
like condemned men, snared. there is an old radio
on the windowsill, antennae snapped like a stem.

dustmotes swarm in the imposed light and the chickens stir in the coop
next to the shed, dreamless. the stars are huddled, the constellations vague
as riddles, and we watch the bats flutter flustered,
black oragami into the stomach
of the night.

firewatching

yellow djinnis of smog rising from the spot, isolating the sun
like a variable – red, lensed light, we squint our eyes and watch
the hills burn, sails of smoke pushed by southwesterlies,
mothervein of fire sketching the troughs and laps of land
and the banshee trees
crowned like heirs apparent.

we sit in the car, all three of us, for the afternoon watching the fire
and the dry, whittling stalks of tallgrass bow like debtors,
their heavy, dreary heads, holding onto the the indian summer, shuffling.
we speculate that it might
have been arson.

the dogeared summer wilts like a dying hand and little
twisters appear, the first leaves of autumn stirred and the crickets
sawing their odes, their grassborn verses. the fire moves, up and over,
bellied like a serpent, belching, and the ash starts falling, early snow
in our eyelashes, in dad's hair,
nestled, whispery
like secret kisses.

the firebombers drop their red guts over the houses and the fire, like
wounded birds, mulling over the hills. the helicopters and airplanes, carrion
over a dying landscape, the gray back, exposed and prickled with trees
bent as old nails, rough stubble. the red, tormented glow from within
the stomach of the smoke, kicking, pulsing, unborn and dad whistles
low

and lights a cigarette, blue lip of flame, twirling curls of smoke.

my nostrils burn.

behind the waterfall

slippery roots, wood spongy and pelted with moss, teaparty
of wildflowers on the ridge, wrinkled like noses and the little
choir of mistdroplets. waterfall draped down, like hair tucked behind an ear,
and the forest deepens. you walk the backs of the logs, arms spread, teetering,
hands ruddering.

behind the waterfall, the world is a blue cowl, dark bell of spray
and we can read the names of past lovers, initials etched into the sandstone
the crude, empty hearts, fashioned like unearthed artifacts
from primitive times. your hair plastered to your forehead
and your earlobes honored with the tiniest globes of water –
this place smells of damp words, which cling to the walls
like nurslings.

lampshade, we are kept, we are promised
indelible and blue, we hold hands in this blue, pentacled womb,
our clothes sticking to our skin like postage stamps, your fingers
long and creeping, like wasps stricken with cold. the sound
is defeaning, yet beneath it all, I can hear
you breathe.

and night falls – it always falls, the cooling sun dislodged, like a pulled tooth,
and the branch-tips lose their filaments. we emerge from behind
the waterfall and stalk along the ridge, where the flower are puckered
like sour mouths. gossip and smalltalk in the trees and the downy owls,
cast their eyes about, unknowing, yellow

systole of the night, filling up
blue chords, you wink in and out –
an indecisive, perishing
flame.

Kylan,

(I'm so rusty at reviewing; please bear with me.)

Hart

I can't review this one. I've tried a few times, but the words for this just don't come. It's not necessarily my favorite of your poems, but I do have an immense appreciation for it.

I think it has something to do with what I mentioned in your earliest Yellow poems. Something in the familiarity of it, the easiness to relate to, and how vividly you paint a picture. It's in these poems that your talent for underlying messages shines most, Kylan.


button-nosed

I like this one a lot; it's rather cute, how you emphasized the boring-ness of the house and contrasted that with the energetic personality of the girl. I'd say that it'd be worth it to watch the 'drifiting-description' in these sort of poems, because in a way, it detracts from the focus when you wander, if you know what I mean? Some of the topics you choose are more than excellent for this, but others kind of need to be a little more close-knit.

By this, I mean that it's a little hard to grasp. The obvious part of this in the words is easy, but the under story is a little hard to find. I know it's there, but some of the extra description kind of takes away from it, when the words could be spent on a little highlighting, y'know?


-

dad's toolshed

I think you've got an incredible abundance of images and feeling here, but I think you're lacking a story. The stanzas are all there, and I know that there's room for just descriprion, but I feel that you can add to this. It feels a little empty, but it's the perfect atmosphere for an interesting happening.

It's good-- I like all of the description about the smaller things. It's a great illustration of how there's more to the shed than what it's made to serve for, but it's lacking the main focus. To me, the tools seem a bit idle, and maybe a bit of highlighting on a typical day, or what an incident might occur like here would be good? It's excellent ground for building on, Kylan, and you should elaborate on this.


-


firewatching

I absolutely adore this poem. In excellence, it falls into the category with apostasy and cantelope and the others (which, by the way, Behind the Waterfall joins them, too). It's strangely beautiful in it's description-- the delicateness of the ash description, the dying summer. I love the way you've managed to make this sound peaceful and laid back, whereas I would've imagined it a lot more... angry. Really enjoyed this one, Kylan.


- -

(I'll be back to do Behind the Waterfall)

June