The Ultraviolet Catastrophe -- Summer Poetry 2010

One word. Wow. You have skills. Amazing and beautiful I loved the imagery.

mammogram

lioness lilies, posed as if for self-portraiture,
brushstroke of stamen
which hints the kitchen air with the pheromone of spring –
you keep them around, replenished when their
petals brown, like the page-corners of the family bible,
because they remind you of solidarity, and sisterhood,
with their red throats and thumb-pricked promises.

now, the teakettle throws a temper tantrum,
urgent, as if the boiling water in its drum
was for a birth, or to clean a wound. you pour
a cup and wonder as the finches outside – with yellow,
judaic breast-patches – hop like skipping rhymes,
braiding nests with strands of your hair, and straw,
and ribbon – as you wonder at identity, wonder

at thirteen, scrub-chested, 30AA, your hormones
locked away like a hope chest full of nuptial
napkins and teaspoons, and the liberty of the word boob.
rabbit-trap of your blossoming –
sapling bent to a noose. you would rub the
hard pebble under your nipple, and hide
behind the shower-room steam, like odysseus
under rams-wool.

or at eighteen, heavy as market fruit, hanging like
the peal of church bells, and just as sexy. at thirty,
a baby cries and you ache. your first child, slippery
as an amphibian heart, holding her to your chest – you
are mammal, and the glands swell in gratitude like
summer peas.

in your hand, you hold the results – and you think
about the elgin marbles, statues looted from
the partheon, you think
of the bordello of marble women with damaged torsos,
missing heads, shattered like a cubist landscape

and you have never found these
fragmentary reflections of god
more human.



red october

you press your hand to your chest to feel
the stirruped thumps, warpath of palm-slapped beats,
the recitation of a cardiac psalm, reassuring yourself
that under that bonnet of ribs, a heart stills swells,
like a boy's midsummer pocket occupied
by a pond frog.

you feel like so much plumbing,
valves loose, arteries twisting s-bends –
the iron intelligence of blood-piping that freezes every winter
at the thought of your daughter ice-skating on
the irrigation canal in the backyard.
you know what it feels like – the sudden weight,
the feeling of ancientness, of stepping from the catwalk
of taking things for granted, and
into unsupported space.

you work in the garden, afraid of being still,
afraid of each heartbeat,
which drop with the finality and heaviness of
galileo's lead balls proving gravity from the tower
of pisa. the sunflowers rise around you, rattle-faced,
palestine of onions, domed on their horizon of the growbox,
tulips cocking their heads, like doctors
pressing stethoscope against
your chest, listening for the submarine ping, the
red october of diastole and systole.

you listen to the tired humoresque
of your heartstrings from the unslept-in
bedchambers of your ventricles, curtains
of dark flesh pulled in like four-poster curtains.

and as you weed the tomatoes,
you can feel each teaspoon
of blood at your fingertips.

--

A/N: Something doesn't feel quite right about these two. They feel overdone. Or maybe it's the fact that I haven't gotten more than 6 hours of sleep in the last three weeks. Or maybe it's the fact that I don't have breasts, and I've never had a heart attack.

Ooooh, poetry. Yum. You always make me feel inferior and awe inspired, my friend.

Demeter to Persephone

I can't resist this one, Persephone is such an interesting character to write poetry on, yes? You've got beautiful imagery and well placed words, I'm particularly loving the 'cross sitches' and 'middle daughters'. I found your first stanza to be soft, slow but pretty and then your second stanza was clever and insightful. The third was a little downhill for me. I'm not sure that I like the reference to clothes though the second half was better and the sense of how human she is- that was great. The other stanzas I can only praise. There's very little to refine here, Kylan. It's excellent.

Semyonova

Sometimes you get a little wordy and lose me. I was trying to follow the story you have here but the overload of images kept getting in the way. I think perhaps you thought to imagine the ageing of Semyonova, the decline of her career or maybe even just the remembrance of it? But there were just so many images moving, turning. It creates a beautiful sensation while reading it but there's nothing there at the end. There just wasn't enough emotion here for me. I'd have liked to see more hints of a jealousy, sorrow or pride.

mammogram

I liked the circular feel of the first stanza, how it returned to describing the lilies right at the very end. I wasn't sure about 'hints the kitchen air'. Perhaps fills/ paints/ shades? The second stanza was stronger and I really loved the kettle imagery. The hope chest reference again. I think it works much better here but there's a lot of dis-jointed images in this stanza. Let's take a look.

at thirteen, scrub-chested, [I'm not sure what you meant by this?] 30AA, your hormones
locked away like a hope chest full of nuptial
napkins and teaspoons, and the liberty of the word boob.
rabbit-trap of your blossoming – [Rabbit trap. I can't get much from that. I think part of the issue is your dating. You love all these historical elements and they're great but in a poem referencing modern technology and teenage female hormones, it feels so very out of place. Even when it's looking back at a childhood. It's just... hard to connect with. Maybe you need some older women to review ^^]
sapling bent to a noose. you would rub the
hard pebble under your nipple, and hide
behind the shower-room steam, like odysseus
under rams-wool.

The next stanza catches the reader up perfectly. A few nice little touches of humour in this one, I like that. The last two stanzas seemed to slip away from me. I didn't recognise the reference and as great as the words were, I felt lost. I'm not even sure if you gave us the conclusion of the results or not? Perhaps the general bitterness and melancholic humour through the poem is to hint of that? I did like it though. I almost wish I could be of the older generation so I could connect with it better.


I have to go bake now else I'd have done that last one too but I'm going to add this to my reading list and I'll visit back for certain. Thanks for the read,

Heather xx

Thanks Heather!

I'd really appreciate some input on this one, guys!

clockwise

blue gaslight of an ignited mind, a match
struck, the light high and sharp like a cheekbone
in the dark. the wallpaper fading, swelling to ulcers
where the water has leaked from the ceiling – tonight a
power outage, and so a troupe of candles perform,
warm wax slipping, silvery in the wren light as tones
from gypsy bells. I contemplate the turn
of a galaxy, clockwise, as the flight pattern
of darwin's thin-beaked finches that flew from the galapagos to the americas,
as watson and crick's double helix, spinning tall tales
about primates and protozoa,

as the weather pattern that blew
over the powerlines tonight, as everything –
or what you told me that night when I said that it
was hard for me to believe, when you told me that
faith required shadows, relief from the light, and that it was
less of a seed, as matthew wrote, a seed
sprouting roots – dendrites from a nightcap –
like connections being made in a brain

between ivan pavlov's carol of the bells and saliva, and more like
the silkworm cocoons on our anscestor's mulberry trees, spinning,
stopping, resonating, wrapping, strand by strand
the strings of the universe, theoryless.

A lot of intellectual stimulation here. And a clear mention of string theory at the end, which delights me. Peppered with example upon example taken from the scientific world, I think this poem is talking about something much deeper, something beyond the hows and whats of science. Perhaps it gets into the realm of religion, faith, truth. Perhaps it asks to deviate from a longstanding faith, a centre point and suggests that movement, change, spinning clockwise, evolution of ideas is the key.

I am intrigued, and I want to read this poem until I understand. I'm going to break down my step-by-step impressions, formulation of my reasonings and what I took the poem as meaning. But first and foremost, what I love is that there is such a clear intention and that it is still so wonderfully open to interpretation.

blue gaslight of an ignited mind, a match
struck, the light high and sharp like a cheekbone
in the dark. the wallpaper fading, swelling to ulcers
where the water has leaked from the ceiling – tonight a
power outage, and so a troupe of candles perform,
warm wax slipping, silvery in the wren light as tones
from gypsy bells.

Light/dark, truth/ignorance -- a common association, admittedly, but still reasonably cleverly disguised. The juxtaposition of 'gaslight' and 'mind' sort of gave that away (and I will admit that I may fully interpret this differently to your intention, but I will endeavour to be consistent ). So, setting the stage, so to speak. We are in darkness, ignorance and making do with candles/partly illuminated truths. There is imagery, there is a story, and perhaps characters, but this is abstract enough to not give too much importance to them - what matters, at the end, is the focus. Of course, reading 'troupe of candles...warm wax slipping' make the intellectual experience all the more delicious. (Just the 'tones of gypsy bells' sort of took away from the drama here - the ring-a-ting-ting-ness detracted from that slow, careful buildup I can see you're doing.)

I contemplate the turn
of a galaxy, clockwise, as the flight pattern
of darwin's thin-beaked finches that flew from the galapagos to the americas,
as watson and crick's double helix, spinning tall tales
about primates and protozoa,

as the weather pattern that blew
over the powerlines tonight, as everything

And here, a separate idea. Turning, spinning, clockwise movement - galaxies, birds, double helices (yay! more science!), wind, everything. The narrator is contemplating everything. And everything is movement, essentially. Everything is change, a turn, a clockwise spin - but I'm not sure the significance of the clockwise. Surely, it could be a turn in any direction and the essence of the idea would stay the same? And why the 'tall tales about primates and protozoa'? Does this hint at some skepticism at Darwin's theory of evolution? I thought the narrator was pretty pro-change?

Now, I'm going to try and link the ideas before with this together. Truth/light vs ignorance/darkness and change/motion/turning combined. However, as yet, you have not integrated the two - fine by me and the casual reader, really, since it gives us time to think about each one; it makes us ponder the relevance to each in conjunction with the rest. Taking a 'the medium is the message' approach to this, the fact that science acts as your medium/imagery links well with the theme of truth vs ignorance. In fact, it also links well with religion/faith as you mention later. And these two come at crossroads at the Christians' outcry at Darwin and evolution, essentially a form of change or movement.

This is an amazing level of integration.

was hard for me to believe, when you told me that
faith required shadows, relief from the light, and that it was
less of a seed, as matthew wrote, a seed
sprouting roots – dendrites from a nightcap –
like connections being made in a brain

between ivan pavlov's carol of the bells and saliva, and more like
the silkworm cocoons on our anscestor's mulberry trees, spinning,
stopping, resonating, wrapping, strand by strand
the strings of the universe, theoryless.

I'm taking this in idea-sized chunks. This one is where we delve into faith, ideas. But...faith in what, exactly? Religion? Science? Faith needs shadows...i.e. it needs doubt? It needs respite from the concrete, unchanging, solidified nature of truth? That flexibility/movement/change/evolution requires some deviation from the norm, the supposed 'light,' the unchanging truth? Guess that makes sense. Faith is less a seed of our thoughts ('dendrites' - genius ) and more an ever-changing, spinning, evolving thing? And that there is no overarching 'theory' (=faith) to the universe; it just is.

This poem is multilayered. It is not just clever - it is intelligent, and it makes some fascinating - though perhaps not new - points about the nature of science, truth, faith, religion and change. The layering of ideas is extraordinary - they each link in with each other and stand well on their own. It's tight, sometimes so much so that the crossover between ideas is blurred, just as in life; we do not know whether you mean religion or science or both when you say 'faith,' for example.

Kylan, I enjoyed this. It would be great to know if I came close to your intented theme, but even so, the ambiguity is what lifts it up all the more. I would be happy to take another look at it, if I have been incorrect (but consistently so!). Thanks for the read.

Thanks Navita!

tourism

the cherry blossoms glissando, each
tongued, like a separate woodwind note – a sweep
of a gown across cobblestones, the lifting of a veil,
and two candles lit on a marriage night.

it is before this pond, with its chromatography of fish,
scales lit and smothered, like a flame cupped
against boreal winds by a hand, that their knees
must have touched

calligraphy of his fingers, lacing up her spine,
buttonhooking each vertebrae – the lidded blossoms
floating on the pond, tiny and luckless as
the fishing ships of galilee.

radium of the moon on the hunch of a pond ripple –
I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940 and the solemn way he would brush
her hair out of her eyes, like tiepolo painting a shadow
on the inner thigh of a dog.

after delivering their message for millennia, the stars
deposit their light on my skin; non-euclidean dew – it is
the light he saw in her hair, the skim of apricot
on her collarbone.

tonight, they are in
this haiku, caught like finches
until the morning.

Oh...God.

I've got relatively little constructive to say to this poem. In fact, I'm having some trouble with coherency right now, thanks to just having read it. This one, I feel like I could read again and again and not ever get tired of the words; what's more is that I feel like I'd actually remember it on successive readings. Here is something really unique. It's not just a fantastical description, but something with an emotion so sharp, so delicious that it's difficult not to feel attracted to it. So, this is another example of the fact that you can do both - write intellectually meaningful poetry ('clockwise') as well as emotionally captivating poetry.

it is before this pond, with its chromatography of fish,
scales lit and smothered, like a flame cupped
against boreal winds by a hand, that their knees
must have touched

calligraphy of his fingers, lacing up her spine,
buttonhooking each vertebrae – the lidded blossoms
floating on the pond, tiny and luckless as
the fishing ships of galilee.

Spinal disintegration, much?

I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940

And something for us to think about in here, too! The idea of looking back at past newly-weds - I've never seen this done before. I wonder what the relationship of the narrator is to the lovers. What the year is when the poem is set in the present. I wonder who the lovers are. I wonder if the narrator is really a tourist on their memories, or whether this is just a metaphor for them.

I wonder, hence, I think.

like tiepolo painting a shadow
on the inner thigh of a dog.

The only part that vaguely detracted from the sensuality of the piece. The inner thigh of a dog? That hideous word is taking away from the smoothness of the imagery. Everything was great until we got up to that word...sure, inner thigh of something - just not a dog, please.

tonight, they are in
this haiku, caught like finches
until the morning.

Perhaps too contented, too soft an ending, too relaxed a picture for my liking, but the fact that there was something intellectual for me to laugh about - haiku - was enough. A near flawless poem. Full of feeling. And the stanzas were arranged beautifully - quite dainty, don't you think?



Yes.


These are getting better and better.

Semyonova

BAM. I love this. I gushed to you in PM in chat about how much I love this. Against the other poems in your thread now it runs equal second, but it is still wondrous. I have nothing ill to say, but I wanted to blubber about this again so you realise how much I adore it. Winmuch? Totally.

Mammogram

There is more cluttering up this poem than I am used to seeing from you. This is a comparison to the sleek and effectual poems you usually turn out. Much like the other poem in this post – Red October – this is a forgettable poem for me. Several factors contribute but none so much than I feel bombarded by imagery – unnecessary imagery – the moment the poem begins. I want to feel the point of the poem earlier than we do. The first two stanzas are somewhat indulgent, the first particularly. It sets the scene but takes a meandering method of doing so and I lose interest quickly. I think I am so surprised because I am not used to being bored by your poetry, but that is the most prevalent feeling I get from this. I hate that this is the way I feel, but I cannot avoid it. Stripping this back and reshaping it would help. Your imagery is always salvageable, it is how much you use and how you use it which will save this poem, I think.

However, as always, you have a line in here that I would die for. In this poem it is : your first child, slippery
as an amphibian heart, holding her to your chest – you
are mammal”
This is a evocative, emotional set of lines and I almost turned my whole opinion of the poem on it, but sense won over awe.

Red October

No. No, I don’t want to comment on this poem. But I will all the same because this is why I’m here, is it not? You are right that there is something wrong with this poem (as with the above). It is too... contrived? The situation is constructed, filled up and bound against itself so tightly that we know it almost immediately and it is entirely forgettable.

Am I allowed to say that you have too much in this poem? I believe that is the problem. This could be a beautiful poem, except that I don’t feel any of the words, or the imagery and I believe that is because the poem is saturated in it. Because this poem talks in a concrete way – your subject matter sticks out without being clear – the imagery surrounding it flails against this wavering purpose. It is made further maddening in that I can’t touch the centre of the imagery, it leaps away with each new picture and I am left with bits and pieces and no whole.

If I sound grumpy it is only because I am a little tired, feel free to ignore it entirely. I would like to see you strip this poem bare and start again, twining that imagery around a central thought and moving outward or upward or howeverward you need.

As an aside: You need not have breasts, or a heart attack, to write these things with emotion and feeling. You do this well all the time, don’t be scared or intimidated by the fact that you haven’t experienced something, instead experience through the poem itself as you write it. The right emotions should show, then.

clockwise

*Melts into clockwise like a slack-jawed fish on a grill* I love this. It’s succulent, is what it is. I have words about the other poems, but they’ll go before and after this. Because this is just delicious. Perhaps it’s because I’ve just re-read all your poems in order and I was disappointed by your last two? Or because this is just truly the perfect poem for my kind of style that I identify with the skill it takes (and that I often lack) to meld real and unreal so very well. I am rambling. Facts!

Your first stanza is better than the ones following. They become more specific somehow – they pronounce your concept much more clearly and I dislike that, but this is a very personal deal. Your last stanza is anticlimactic in the face of the first but the more times it is read, the less issue one can take with it, and we both know poetry should always be read more than once. I am aware that Navita has given you an excellent review, I am forever shamed that all I am able to do is gush around your work.

tourism

Blah-de-dah! I’ve already mentioned that the previous poem is my favourite, but this is running a close second. The description in this isn’t as sumptuous as the last but you have some lines that I would murder a small child for. Such as “buttonhooking each vertebrae” and you knew I would love such a line, I think. You were very aware when you posted this that I would fall in love with the line and the concept and the following haiku to end the piece. How dare you not prepare me, really.

However, it does not give me as much brainless delight as the piece before. There is something colder here, less personable as I found the previous. Why? The details are too much for me. I lost the poem entirely when you introduced the year.
"I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940 and the solemn way he would brush
her hair out of her eyes,"
Right here is when the magic ended, so to speak, for me. Suddenly this wasn’t a most beautiful ode to a woman, or lithe description of a clandestine meeting, or even the wedding night. It was a fable pieced together from lies and half told truths, if you understand me. I wasn’t able to trust my narrator anymore, I was listening to him but at the same time frowning in frustration, because the story had lost all interest for me. This was epically sad for me, and I wish it hadn’t happened because I could have easily fallen in love with this couple and their gentle remonstrations.

Mostly it’s frustrating because I want to love everything you write without condition and here I almost make it, but it slips away from me like a wave. I would take out all personal pronoun and the year, don’t let us think this isn’t happening as it is, we want the whole picture, not just the memory of it.


This isn't very comprehensive, I apologise. Feel free to delete your crit as this hardly makes up for it. XD

Alright, since I'm a really lazy person I won't tackle the previous ones. :3 But as usual, you make this painfully difficult for me.
(Sorry this took so long to get up)

clockwise

This poem is intelligent to an impressive level. Your ability to layer these ideas and themes continues to impress me (and make me slightly envious. )

blue gaslight of an ignited mind, a match
struck, the light high and sharp like a cheekbone
in the dark. the wallpaper fading, swelling to ulcers
where the water has leaked from the ceiling – tonight a
power outage, and so a troupe of candles perform,
warm wax slipping, silvery in the wren light as tones
from gypsy bells. I contemplate the turn
of a galaxy, clockwise, as the flight pattern
of darwin's thin-beaked finches that flew from the galapagos to the americas,
as watson and crick's double helix, spinning tall tales
about primates and protozoa,

The main problem in this poem is that while you've paid close attention to the layers and meanings, you haven't weaved your words as well as you usually do. So it comes across as wordy. So certain thoughts aren't as integrated, and they seem as if they were dumped on. And it's doing absolutely nothing for your poem.

For example, "swelling to ulcers" seems like an extra description for the wallpaper that isn't needed at all. Plus, it's not all too tangible. I can imagine wallpaper bubbling, and cracking but not in the form of ulcers.

Gypsy bells is also an added weight. You create a peaceful, kind of quiet image in the readers mind which is suddenly interrupted but ringing, or metal clinking together. It doesn't work well with the tone or overall feel of this stanza.

I really like the way you incorporated Darwin's finches into this to work with your poem. It's really well done.

as the weather pattern that blew
over the powerlines tonight, as everything –
or what you told me that night when I said that it
was hard for me to believe, when you told me that
faith required shadows, relief from the light, and that it was
less of a seed, as matthew wrote, a seed
sprouting roots – dendrites from a nightcap –
like connections being made in a brain

You've mentioned pattern twice already in short succession. Maybe be careful with that.
The way you cut up this stanza isn't all too enjoyable. It's really choppy specifically through the middle portion. And it's making it a little more difficult to grasp what you're saying, as I had to stop re-read it to make sure I understood it and then move on. It's already a little bit of an odd sentence, you don't want to make it more confusing. It could work if the flow was there.

Your theme of light and dark is clever, you're making it surface in waves that roll up on top of your poem before they roll away, it's quite nicely done. What would of been really interesting if you'd timed it to create a pattern (which then links back to your mention of flight and weather patterns) Just an idea for future use.

Last 4 lines are great. Just lovely.

between ivan pavlov's carol of the bells and saliva, and more like
the silkworm cocoons on our anscestor's mulberry trees, spinning,
stopping, resonating, wrapping, strand by strand
the strings of the universe, theoryless.

Mm, as Pengu said. Anti-climatic. But it's still a nice closure, though "theoryless" is a bit of a tongue twister and it's like tripping over the finish line. I'm not sure if there's a good word to replace it, but if there is look for it.

Overall, please share some talent? Thank you. Next one:

tourism

Yum yum yum.

the cherry blossoms glissando, each
tongued, like a separate woodwind note – a sweep
of a gown across cobblestones, the lifting of a veil,
and two candles lit on a marriage night.

This is great. How you can pair up each image with the glissando, it's all very sweet and easy to picture. I can see myself in that place.

it is before this pond, with its chromatography of fish,
scales lit and smothered, like a flame cupped
against boreal winds by a hand, that their knees
must have touched

Chromatography is too specific, and blunt for this poem. You've captured a little flicker of emotion in your reader, but you lose that grip a little bit in coherency. For example, flame and knee touching, at first it's not to clear of the link until you think about it for a bit, I think you want it to hit your reader as they are reading, but I only understood it as I read it again. So be careful, you shouldn't sacrifice emotion for simple imagery. The first is much more powerful.

calligraphy of his fingers, lacing up her spine,
buttonhooking each vertebrae – the lidded blossoms
floating on the pond, tiny and luckless as
the fishing ships of galilee.

I'm unsure of your meaning of galilee, though if it is both the place and the chapel porch, good job double weaving your words. I'm not to fond of "buttonhooking" because it's an odd word that makes the reader pause, but it definitely works in the poem.

radium of the moon on the hunch of a pond ripple –
I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940 and the solemn way he would brush
her hair out of her eyes, like tiepolo painting a shadow
on the inner thigh of a dog.

Hm, I'm having a bit of a love/hate thing going on here.
The good thing is that it makes you think of the context of the story, and it allows the reader to give a time to the story and picture the people. It's really great that you can do that. It give me the feeling that the narrator is talking about great grandparents when they fell in love, it's kind of sweet.

But, it's so forward and unbarred. It's like the narrator decides to make a note in the middle about when this took place. It's not as cleverly worded, or disguised as before so it makes the reader kind of double take. Thinking "where is the narrator going with this?"

Also, I'll second what Navita said. A dog is cute, but your comparing a man brushing the hair out of his love's face to an artist painting the inner thigh of a dog...
As a woman, I disapprove.

tonight, they are in
this haiku, caught like finches
until the morning.

Soft way to end, but I think it works. Everything in this poem (except that one stanza) was subtle and sweet, so I find this a perfectly suitable, yet clever end.

I'm sorry for taking so long and being so useless

Kamas

thank you guys so much! you're all wonderful!

deprecatio

i hold your hand – amazed at its lightness,
the bones brought out like tea-things, the feeble
saddle of your blood in your wrist, muffled
like lovesounds behind a motel wall.
your head wrapped in gauze, fragile –
do not bend – a turban for pilgrims
who have reached the onyx holy land of near-death, badged
with a rust of blood over the left temple. why is it
that at moments like this, watching the caught
moth of your breath, all I can think of
is high school anatomy? Which of these structures
is NOT found in the mediastinum?
The cavity surrounded by the rib cage
and bounded inferiorly by the diaphragm is the

outside the hospital window, the lights on the ice
are as faraway as trainwhistles, and the heart monitor
announces each heartbeat like attendants
of a duchess ball.

the doctor who looks down at you
is fascinated by the fractured booth
of your sternum.

the last film made in kansas

empty silos, and dust rising from the highways –
boys skinny-dipping in the kansas river, warwhooping
as the sunlight is scalped like a hand-peeled orange,
and a bible belt of dusty violets along the riverside cup their
bonnets and press on, airy as church organ notes.
aunty em sews a hole in her apron pocket, and
garland has her palm read by a fortuneteller with a wheeze,
and a belly that swells at his shirt buttons. as he holds her hand,
he imagines a tear in her dress, the revelation of her shoulder,
the closeness of her bones to her flesh, he sweats in
ceromancy, smelling of bdellium incense and old
card tricks and he tells her that her aunt is sick,
watching the cowlick of her eyelashes,
the apricot skin of her earlobe.

outside the gypsy cart,
the plum blossoms fall in calculation, in silk route,
like gagged tongues. she runs home – on the radio,
there is a tornado warning, and the fortuneteller
sits in the shade of the plum tree, the locusts
in the field sharp and plentiful as the dashes in an
emily dickinson poem, the dull tin
of the windless prairie, grassblade of wind.

he loosens his collar and looks at his hands,
at the droughtland of illegible wrinkles and lines,
calligraphing his placement, his coordinates.

types of kiss, according to the encyclopaedia

i. kiss of love (see Longus's Daphnis and chloe)

under the yellow-lit nave of the parasol,
she turns her head so that the muscles
in her neck banjo, plucked by the worn finger-ends
of the sunlight. she knows what that dress
does to me – the looseness of its buttons,
the way it rustles, how in the summery afterlight
sluicing through the tambourine of willow leaves,
it teases with transparency. clay breasts of the ant-hills,
the sunstroke of california poppies, tallgrass
wavering like prayer flags – you read to me
longus's daphnis and chloe – they do not understand
what is happening to them; why when they are close,
their chests contract, why their hands touch like moths at light.
the only cure is kissing –

so says the cowherd, who passes on the irrigation path, his
cowbells cloying like reproductive organs, cattle horns tipped with sunlight,
as indigenous arrows with saccharine poison.

ii. kiss of respect

judas's tacky kiss, his breath at christ's ear
in gethsemene. cat's cradle of the soldier's torches,
disciples crepe-eyed with sleep. the olive trees
are in season, the moon is a jawbone and

the night is rubbed of its plush,
like a felt peach.

you would use a kiss to betray me?

iii. kiss of affection

quiet tulips, snuck off behind the stalls
to give each other kissing lessons – resuscitation
after mouthing so many urgent bees, who
rut like quarks. it is night, we are giggling
and exhausted from dancing, and watching the
evening's slow allergic reaction to the shivery
pollen of the moon with a rash of fireflies –
bright and fervent and nightly as mea culpas.

I kiss each one of your fingernails –
pink, abandoned shells. your eyes stare up, hubbled,
reflecting indefinitely the stars dropped,
like coins meant for the boatman, into
wishing wells, instead.

Why can't I double 'Like' this?

'Types of kiss, according to the encyclopaedia' - delicious, just as I would have expected from the title. Granted, after repeat mentions of cows and some dry images in the 'kiss of respect,' I almost started to lose interest, but you picked up again nicely in the third section. I looked up Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (why is the latter name not capitalised in your title like the former, by the by?) and was intrigued to find the reasons for certain pieces of imagery you used that I had previously thought were just thrown in for the fun of it.

i. kiss of love (see Longus's Daphnis and chloe)

Did you consider saving this for last? And why is this section so much longer than the others? - the poem is sort of falling over right now with the heaviest bit at the top. (Not that I'm complaining a lot; just thought to throw that out there.) Of course, that might be a way of ascribing greater importance to the 'kiss of love' - which is fine - but surely you could do it by less obvious means?

under the yellow-lit nave of the parasol,
she turns her head so that the muscles
in her neck banjo, plucked by the worn finger-ends
of the sunlight.

Striptease, right? I'll allow it .

she knows what that dress
does to me – the looseness of its buttons,
the way it rustles, how in the summery afterlight
sluicing through the tambourine of willow leaves,
it teases with transparency.

Finally moving in the vague direction towards the kiss. This is so tongue-in-cheek - 'she knows what that dress does to me' - this is a brilliant way of initiating emotion without too much effort. That's the essence of poetry, I suppose - making it seem effortless. The 'teases with transparency' is redundant; you've already set up this striptease, so actually saying it does nothing. Makes it seem like you're putting in unecessary effort. And I'm going to make a mental note here: currently, we are operating in the 'I' and 'she' sort of narration. This changes - somewhat bizarrely - later on.

clay breasts of the ant-hills,

Ant hills? Are you sure? Ugh. Clay + ants + breast is creepy.

the sunstroke of california poppies, tallgrass
wavering like prayer flags

You must really love the way the word 'poppies' sounds - I have seen it in so much of your writing. I almost expect it in every love-poem. And about these prayer flags - do you want to add a religious dryness to it so soon? It's so free flowing right now - the 'prayers' is almost like a slap in the face, as if they've been caught too soon.

you read to me
longus's daphnis and chloe – they do not understand
what is happening to them; why when they are close,
their chests contract, why their hands touch like moths at light.
the only cure is kissing –

Hehee, lines from this remind me of the wiki article on Daphnis and Chloe - 'they do not understand what is happening to them' and 'the only cure is kissing'.' Admittedly, only those readers with some idea of the myth would know what these parts meant - to the casual reader, they do not make a lot of sense. And this is where I wanted to point out the strange narration - before, I take the 'I' to be the man and the 'she' to be the woman at the start. Now, there's still an 'I' (I'm not sure if this is the same character) and a 'you' - who is the 'you'? And the focus shifts from the former lovers at the start to the mythological ones - 'they'.

Not that it matters how the poem is read on the first-read, actually, but I just thought I'd point this out to you since I daresay most who read this will read it at least twice, hence picking up on that.

so says the cowherd, who passes on the irrigation path, his
cowbells cloying like reproductive organs, cattle horns tipped with sunlight,
as indigenous arrows with saccharine poison.

Okay, so the style of Daphnis and Chloe is pastoral. Still, I do not like these cows jumping in here. It takes away from that soft but intense focus built up in the previous stanza. Cows, irrigation, cowbells, cattle, reproductive organs, horns, indigenous arrows with saccharine poison (what does that refer to, anyway?) - this is getting awfully mechanical and farmy. What has it got to do with the kissing? What does it add to our perception of the storyline? This is the point where I begin to skim-read.

ii. kiss of respect

I almost expect this. And right from the beginning, I have this feeling that I'm not necessarily going to enjoy this one - perhaps that's the intention. It has me wondering though - only three types of kiss? Really?

judas's tacky kiss, his breath at christ's ear
in gethsemene. cat's cradle of the soldier's torches,
disciples crepe-eyed with sleep. the olive trees
are in season, the moon is a jawbone and

the night is rubbed of its plush,
like a felt peach.

Why is this so creepy? Words like tacky, breath in...ear, cat's cradle (esp all the bolded ones) make me shudder. Again, I'd recommend reversing the order of the kisses here, since it seems like a downhill slide from the first one.

iii. kiss of affection

quiet tulips, snuck off behind the stalls
to give each other kissing lessons – resuscitation
after mouthing so many urgent bees, who
rut like quarks.

Something cute and snuggly to get us back on the road. 'Mouthing so many urgent bees' - great. And quarks!

(not sure this is the best place for quarks, but I like the way they sound...)

it is night, we are giggling
and exhausted from dancing, and watching the
evening's

Begins with 'night' and ends with 'evening' - intended repetition of the image? This part is clear, but not terrifically interesting like the part before it.

slow allergic reaction to the shivery
pollen of the moon with a rash of fireflies –
bright and fervent and nightly as mea culpas.

Sheesh - here you speed it up again with all the jampacked imagery. Though I gotta say - the second and third parts lack the emotion present in the first; the second because it describes sth religious and holy and the third because it's, well, about flowers, so it's difficult to feel for inanimate things (yeah, I know they're alive).

I kiss each one of your fingernails –
pink, abandoned shells. your eyes stare up, hubbled,
reflecting indefinitely the stars dropped,
like coins meant for the boatman, into
wishing wells, instead.

Individually, parts like 'stars dropped like coins meant for the boatman' are a delight. Overall, not the most extraordinarily enlightening ending in the world. Like the stars, I feel like I was just dropped off at the end, not carried and swung up onto a parapet at the final words. It was not vindicating in the least; more like I had to read till the end to find out what happened and then walked away, somewhat disappointed.

But yes, lovely poem regardless. Keep 'em comin'!

Thanks Navita!

For Blinker's Contest:

io

in chapped rococo, the bell curve of her hips,
myrrh-smelling fold of linens,
and the grope of a bedchamber's candlelight;
and now, puzzlingly, the cloying clobber of an udder –
the watering-holes of her eyes, with
rubbed flies clustered around their rims
like washerwomen scrubbing
laundry on the riverbank, and gossiping.

in the right light of pasture you can almost
see the lunar nymph beneath the bovine cusp,
standing by a creek which mumbles through a quarry of stones
as an illiterate farmhand struggling through
the knothole of a vowel – the french
impressionism, the daubed strokes of
wheatgrass in pliant motion – she grazes,
unused to the summery twang of a grass shoot.

but the gadflies are sharp, like immigrant names;
full of consonants and diacritics. tails flick,
she thinks of home, and the sea, and searches
for him in the clouds, gilted by the sun
like illuminated letters
in monkish text,

searches for release from the heavens,
in thoreau's quiet, unmoaned desperation.

fishing

stray cattails bushy with down,
sprung on the ridgepole of the pondwater –
we sit in the old tin rowboat, fishing lines
cast, untugged. you smell like the chinese
zodiac, a barn-full of animals, so much that
I can tell that you have recently sheared one
of your suffolks [year of the water sheep], with slotted eyes,
ears tagged like secondhand dresses,
or antiques. the morning rises
as lazararus with his mist of loose bandages –
you teach me how to tie a fly – feathered
squaws, squinted trinkets – for catching
the larger, more elusive fish.

by the end of the day, my hands are
glittery with the arts and crafts of
gutted and descaled rainbow trout. I wrap myself
in your denim jacket, smelling the baled hay,
the red chief, never having felt warmer.
little screw-threads of water winding down my
legs, the sabbath bread of an unbroken
sunset silence.

we listen to john denver on the way home,
the trees lit by the sheepskin of a full moon.

fraternal

what I share with him is nebraska
like a motel bed shared by brothers
the comforter thrown off because the
hispanic bead-kneading housekeeping
ladies never wash the comforters, and the bedsprings
wince and wheeze in rutted detail the things
that have come to pass upon the comforters of this bed. I share
with him a mobile home park
the house up on cinderblocks
the windows open and the gills of morning drapery
inhaling and exhaling through the upstream creek
of sunlight, the windchimes dimpling their small bones
and mother in the yard with a garden trowel, and a pack
of ladies cigarettes that we gave up hiding behind
the bathroom radiator
a long time ago.

I share with him the stories told by grandpa
how he got in a fist-fight with billy hovel now a convicted
serial killer when they were both ten about
the drought of '54 and the miracleworker that
would drive through town every autumn in a jalopy
and a straw hat and a unctuous cornpone

I don't share winter – there is not enough of it,
it does not break in half it does not live in autumn fractals
or the regal numerators of spring blossoms. it is whole
and quiet like a small hour. hacksaw of icicles on the lip of
the shed roof that we would break off one by one
and suck down to snippets. for the morning chores, I would stand
among the cows for warmth, the tallgrass weighed
down with the tenor of last night's ice, pretending
that my fogged breath was tobacco smoke
with a cool limp and a backwall slouch.

I see him sometimes
in mother's face or in my own, a face
that might have been, like a quantum theory
of pedigreeing worlds, geneology
of what-ifs, and cosmic.

and I decide to share with him my first kiss in an old car
that ticks as we are parked in this empty lot,
ticks like june bugs against window glass, the nebraskan moon
a pear posed for oil-on-canvas still-life, her lips
on mine, and yours, too –

I think he likes her.

I owe these a more proper review, but at the time, I'd like to say that your writing only grows more beautiful with the passing of time. You've always got great imagery, soft-spoken yet powerful in delivery.

Going back to the poem 'lower table rock', a particular word struck out at me. I was just wondering if you were aware that the word 'squaw' is highly offensive to many Native Americans, equivalent to the n-word for African-Americans. I was just curious. If you are aware of that, then I'm assuming you're using it to develop the voice of the poet. If not...well, to a larger audience, I feel as if you might stir up some issues with that word.

But really, otherwise, lovely work. I promise I'll come back with something more productive when I get back into the swing of things.