voiles and tulles

Carnivorous vulgaris

The physics are all wrong, of course—the anvil trajectories, dead stops,
tonnage and miracle of careening newton meters.
The rocket-powered shoes skating like the pinched heads of cottonmouths
that sent him into the mountainside would have snapped his spine,
broken the canine skull into heat-shorn fragments
curling up like the residue of reptile emergence.
The nasal diesel of the shelved bird,
certainly not as blue, named out of a desert spooky with road.
There have been no tribes here,
nor salt mines, nor cacti with lupine hearts and a special pollinating moth,
gray and wholly dependent
as the spousal evening of a golden anniversary.
There is only dull wit and a starving scavenger,
with a cry tussled up into the loom of the moon,
and a legend of an ancestor’s trickster gods,
or gods of love and stone, but there is no moon either.
The length of the day is impossible to divine, like a song of Hebrew bondage.
I want to see the roadrunner seized,
split open, robbed of insouciant bones—until I know the velocity of blood,
toy-horn shape of the larynx,
the heart dry-docked, and then slid into like a +g maneuver, or a record across salt flats—
the ennui for the stupidity of fowl, and Darwin's vicious beagle.
I want to see a coyote in the shade,
with sagging belly and teat,
the evening matter-of-fact as a re-dressing nude, and then a night of singing,
lunar genuflection,
and a desert that is never quite as dark
or as strong as we think.

roadkill

the ceased sine of two gray squirrels,
ducklings soft as kisses on a Kodachrome, flung in a line by the creek lip
the tabby cat at four in the morning which hesitated when i did not
as i peeled an orange in front of a house unstreaked
with blood, the moon like the stare of a nude
and the pressure on the back of my head where i must have hit
the roaring spine freshet from this first warm night—
i look back to see it hooping on pavement
like a knocked fish, god, it cannot feel it
as an insect mustn’t in its simple panic of reception,
or lack thereof.
it is enough to cause me to search
in the wall's nightwatch of ivy, or among shot archdukes
of precipitous poppies for my own copper-whiskered mouser,
bored belly among the humoresque of day-moths,
nodal eyes spotted with the steps of age like decrepit stars,
every summer on the milk of her chin
and the twinge of a floorboard, or the flour of a ratless pantry—
so did the man who overturned his white truck when it wasn't enough
also go home and search for his own children?
frantic for their eight types of blue
and the long, unhushed rabble of tibia, femur
he feels them through their skin, touches the blasting cap of their chest cavities
the futile girlishness of their hair, because he knows
how all driveways run into the road like cats,
how all summers take to the streets, and how queer it is
that there is blood in every grout but the tread of his tires.
i do not swerve, or put on the breaks,
there is a ripple of home, eerie with eyes.
i lose all taste for oranges, borrowed skateboards on a grade to a truck,
or the warped volts of an insect twitching
when we all know
it is already dead.

naming the storm

she clips nautical miles like the wings of domestic birds
and their oval tithe.
curling into the red noose of a false gypsy under the meteorologist's
godly superimposition, who lists the names of her mild-eyed ancestors
like a necrology of dead kings. her news a doused lioness in the streets,
her preference for the dark, pink-soled signals of Mesopotamia
relocated into her warm core routes
by colonial tobacco, stands of sugar like the jostling of pikemen,
shook cotton from burlap and an annexed song
for a sorry crouch. how they throw their hands up on rooftops
and die of thirst until the helicopters come
like a horizon of locusts and honey.
always in logarithms, the curve of a barley harvest,
an uppercut from a female boxer, dancing
from the sesame apex of her open hips, head tucked into her shoulder and eyes
for the coast, like the rough half a heart left on a beach
after a captainless storm.
carve out the islands first, burn into them
like the process of shaping a canoe from the fell of a tree
they were your mother's pearls, her evening ransom that turned green in the humidity
and were not the licked, printless fingertips of her children.
i realized that there was something wrong when we named her
a beautiful name like the sound of silver intercepting silver,
or colored rages of glass on beachfronts
and then she blew through our cabinets and stripped the trees of our fruit
and the fish washed up were studied by children
for the old wealth
of their blue edges.
she began in Nassau, and tossed her beads over her shoulder, rolled her chest forward
and knew what category of wind she came from, her elliptic caste
and the blood on the doorway
which she would ignore.

Wile E Coyote somehow did it. Congratulations.

Hello, I really liked the first poem. I found it very interesting and I liked the use of language. I don't really have anything negative to say, it just captured me. Nice work

Kylan,

this is going to take a while to read (for me, not you) -- but since you know exactly what you're doing I'll keep each one to a brief opinion and pointers on each piece.

pain

Ah, Doctor Death. If you wrote this on the 3rd, I'd giggle. I like this, because you've taken this story on in a clever manner. But at the same time, you have this difficulty in separating yourself from this southern imagery. I feel that perhaps the buffalo is a bit of stretch from each side at the beginning. It feels too separate. You close it off something and nicely, but at the beginning it suffers from the lack of connection between the two. It feels like two different threads of thought that braid into each other at the end. I mean, Kevorkian is an interesting guy don't tear me off to think about buffalo.

a view from the porch

Same old same old. Your theme is hard to follow because of your long love affair with words (I'm sure I'd get it as soon as you told me, but as your dumb and not quite as well read reader - give me something to work with). It was difficult to force myself to thoroughly read it because it's come to sound the same. It's strong, of course as usual, but I'm bored Kylan. Oh so very bored. It's like taking someone to the same spot over and over and over but having different experiences there. The spot is forever engraved in my mind even if I went fishing yesterday and today I'm observing x and y and I need a change in scenery.

degenerative disc disease

Nice construction of imagery and theme, it's nice to know what you're talking about and follow along. But this is really the same thing - I swear to god, if I didn't know better I'd think you were a cowboy/cattle rancher - this western kind of look that makes me think of the south and farms and bad farmer's tan and wheat fields and cattle. And this aging farmer in worn out jeans and a button down shirt cracking his neck and groaning quietly at back pain.
It's wonderful in the way you can paint that picture and give it meaning and give it purpose, but again, I'm bored. Feeding me the same meal on end is going to get irritating.

pussy-willow

I found all the dashed words entertaining. I reiterate the above. This one is a little more quirky then the rest, with things like:

the 50 states song (O-Hi-O!, and Oregon, the cream of them all)
don't worry, be happy, when half of us could not whistle, or worse, roll our tongues

It's summery and lighter then most but still bathes us in the same tone of voice, and approach to the descriptive imagery. I won't go on really.


An Innocent Misinterpretation of Young Virgin Being Sodomized By Her Own Chastity, 1954

Hmmm, for my own reference:

Spoiler

Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity, Dalí, 1954

I love Dalí and I did much enjoy this take, naive and ironic in the interpretation of the poem. I find it funny really, how well it matches up with the mood of the painting itself and yet, it was sold to the Playboy Mansion a while back. And when you take Figure at the Window and match it up with this one it's all very fun, analyzing poetry alongside a painting.

phased out

when Elmer Fudd
raises a finger to the vision of the consummate rabbit trap

You and Looney Tunes eh?

I think this falls between interesting and lack lustre. It's got this interesting spin on your voice and your approach but it feels too hesitant to really go anywhere with so it wakes me up but doesn't carry be far enough for me to notice a change in the scenery. It's more modern, which I can appreciate, getting pulled back into the present. But for now it sits kind of uncertain and doesn't hold enough punch to drive in that fresh breath you put into the poem.

boy scouts

I love the first three lines. I don't know too much about Boy Scouts/Girl Guides, it's a very North American thing I'm not too familiar with as I never did it nor did my brother. The first lines are rather powerful but then the rest slows down as I progress and loses that original flare. It returns to dabbling into your same, but without anything to retain my interest.

Carnivorous vulgaris

Some light nearing the end of this long review. This is awesome. It blows all the other poems in this thread out of the water and gently pats them on the head before sending them to dry off. Thank you Wile E. Coyote. It's passionate, and I can feel a real dislike for Road Runner that's extremely humourous, but at the same time so well described and said in a manner powerful enough to have my imagination kick into those crazy plots Wile E. would pull. This one is a keeper and one to set as an example, it's new, it has punch and it's entertaining to read.

(And dude, I agree. The beeping of Road Runner was always annoying.)

roadkill

There's this gray squirrel that loves to come to our door and scratch at it until he gets bread. I named him Scruff. This is an awful poem to read shortly after. :c Again, more punch then most of the poems here because it's got more spice, more awake kind of voice. Not the typical sleepy, sunbathing-observing Kylan. It's got movement to it.

naming the storm

Takes me elsewhere, but falls short of reaching the finish line. It's over-dependant on imagery that's feeding us pictures but not carrying us far enough.

I'm tired, and that was long xD

That's all folks.

Thank you, Kamas!

mouth to mouth

for jared

the day attempts to pronounce a killdeer
with a pebble for every degree
under its tongue—i tend the lawn
with ringlets of gasoline, engine two-stroke as a safe murder.
flowers of differing color and urgency
like the sounds of French, American, or Russian ambulances,
perhaps tonally altered antebellum, but all originating from the same moan
which is mother in the backyard
with dad's head in her lap as he suffers over a rototiller
and each breath slangs, drops a modifier or dangles a mortal participle
hooking in the throat like fox-tail, red-tailed
as the lofty circumference over sifted rabbit
lungs unflapping in clipped daylight.
i have forgotten the last time i kissed my father.
i embrace him now with zest
out of duty and fear, mustache soft as the weather-tell
of a caterpillar, his body melting under mine
each bone worrisome, low-pressure, his organs gadget
like a father's Christmas
the operator on the phone urging me on silkily
telling me where to put my hands or mouth.
it wouldn't be like this if maybe
i had kept kissing him,
the albuterol of a son.
or was it always on the forehead, like the blessing of a birthright?
in a left-footed filial tango,
the breath between his teeth is a Spanish rose
in a country where fathers love
through the heat from a cord of wood
or the bust of a turkey on a mother's platter.
a gurney unfolds like the birth of a horse
the day snaps of latex, i wipe my mouth as i pull away,
perhaps a faux-pas; my apologies—
but there must be a term for this,
a word for the bile that is not mine.
that must be his.

hard

passing through
the shoulder a bullet
into barn wood
where it lodges a complaint
about wrists, finely
tamping bones—barometric skewer
here where there might be dances
and stored hay crackling
loveyellow a cholera panic.

wagon blood
a kicked horse
four different kind of day moth
fluttering over hoop and
jimson weed like bank notes
poorly stuffed in
the powder-snuffed
red-haired getaway.

up past gold hill
two dead boys
could you hear their
skulls on rocks?
the river is cool, clement,
cow-licked further south
names called bankside
worn past any ligament of meaning
as knees on robe-blushed church stone.

a cop almost killed
at the valley of the rogue,
someone i know
pried open his clavicle
like a christmas bell.
the fences are broken wives
who can't keep out knotweed
or wailing canines.
the men are different
we lose so many at borders
or lines drawn in the dust
that you must overstep
and be declared.

there are ten summers
and as many fires in the first.
weren't we all missing
and smiling
then? i never got
my mug on a milk carton
or on a heart as good as a girl.

I think with this latest poem, you are now beginning to liberate yourself from the creative struggles you were having earlier with trying to cover new ground, illuminate unseen facets in your usual subjects in poetry. The uneven enjambment suits the tone and imagery quite nicely; the almost severely brief lines are a refreshing shift from your usually long, languid lines that can sometimes lead a reader's attention to drift away. But here, attention is sustained thoroughly, and I myself was quite rapt throughout. There's a new energy in this poem, a dark and jagged energy, yet entirely you, for while it is at times almost jaded in its perspective, which is a departure, the imagery and setting is your signature vintage and rural, but sharpened and rarefied in the evocation of this particular subject matter; death is not gentle. Looking forward to seeing more. Glad to see you've broken free of the rut you may have been in earlier.

Many thanks Blackbird -- you might find these in the same vein.

--

sacred

steel thuds in your brain
like a competition to lay rail
i feel the brace
of your jaw, the upturn and downturn
of your pulse there
attached like a child's red mittens
against the loss of snow.

pool throat
a wrench of blood
winched rinse—
a sanguine cliff
i have seen before coastally
spilling like a trout's angle
or hair tossed in a pause.

upended, gable guts
i draw a knife from breast bone
to anus, a twain latitude,
each of your stomachs
boat out. you are hoisted
to a clattering Calvary.

and for hours i'll watch you eat
the rotary chaw,
the neck bell like an aunt's sternness
lower than thistles,
your milk bludgeoned
with wild onion.

to dream of you at night
as ignorant softness, as a throat
before the drain, as a calf
before a molten heresy, before
i cut this covenant
and take you with a bolt.

gamecock

eight hind-feathers
black spill like a manila thrill
turning to the palace flu
of a green crest
nearer the breast, then the kicked war copper
of the head and neck.
in speckled legshow,
the head cleared of loose blood-plugs—
you could split corn
or a family fortune on the ankle talon
curving like a sultan yawn.

rooster, you night stooge
a name that is hutched rest, a clutched dowel
so female a form that yolkless eggs
were once believed to be male laid
and once hatched, a den of basilisks
then the warmth on the stoop of a statue
could be from the sun or a stare.
cocked like a rain-brimmed hat
your scream is an off-cue morning,
there are no hens,
you are surly
as burned rope.

wings snap, blood gullied and well-run
as the course of a stampede.
the arena could be used for boxing
or the bony plunge of gymnastics.
the cocks flap like capes in exit,
ground blooms, dull coin
the coup de grâce does not come
from a spur but a beak

with a turn of the thumb
or a bone hook—
a laying male that would have moved from my path
in the yard
and shuffled for grain
and the emblems of offered bread.

thee, thine (an ode to Uzzah's faith)

i reach out a hand to steady the ark
thus touching the doted ochre of unprotected sex
the possum slouch of a joint
the cheek of a father, the silvery county of a church.
the ark falls despite my efforts, i step out of its weight
and instead of a jar of manna and mulberry burnt tablets
meters of loose scripture spill out
fluttering like the balneotherapeutic gayness
between two bathing cousins.

i have seen God five times, not including
running the oblong ebony of a comb through
the chore-dark hair of an older sister, or hitting a deer
at fifty-five miles an hour, a four-point rack
spraying into my eyes like the debut unpeeling of an orange.
i, of course, did not know it was God at the time
and i think five is a good number for a lifetime
the number of houses
love affairs
famous poems, or children planned
or perfectly timed entrances, so that an entire room cheers to see you.

it is not wise to know to not know
regardless of what is said; there are one too many infinitives, infinities—
a pasture's aureole, naturally occurring fractals,
the indignant dour plum in blossom,
petals like a coldwater baptism, my father's wedding band
and the corresponding theory as to why the fourth finger
from the end is the ring finger, that maybe
the most prominent vein to the heart is there
and blood is washed with gold and love
like a face in snow.

the bread in the communion tray
is torn like a bill i cannot pay.
the prayer of a basketball into a netless hoop
is earnest as is the prayer to knot
a cherry stem with the stridency of a tongue.
i chase pages of scripture across ditches, plattes and sweetwaters
a storm like a fragrance,
an incensed god, clouds on the horizon shaping
like the art of iron for horses and phalanxes
or a kiss from a mother
on sorrowing lips.

Kylan, I was doing a review in a document and then wondered, "what would he like more?"

Would you like a review of selected pieces now? OR would you like a complete review at some point later in the future?

abdicated

full moon big, full moon young
lunations, fluctuating like the new color planned
for the family room—york harbor yellow,
raisin torte, old pickup blue.
the apogee of a school day
laughter tidal as refugee dynamic
the first winter lacerates, garrotte hoarfrost,
stunned cord of wood, kneeling mitten horse
nothing could be warmer than her cheek against mine
or the chummy velum of the second christmas
when she was more interested in the boxes
or the morning appendix of chortling wrapping paper
the vascular arcs and tucks
of metallic bows.

bones in the grass
like an abandoned incantation
i fold my arms on the porch,
its wind-chimes dangling are legs on a bridge
the water the same, an old rival against wood
the cold is comfortable,
like the prospect of a blanket or an indoor loved one
i couldn't bear her gravity,
the moon's insistent tug on the sleeve
bright as a grocery of sounds, noses.
when the hospital inked the culled instep of her footprint
it was massive, suspect,
weighed on me like a dangling son.

there was no viciousness in the kitchen
to speak of, potatoes boiled meekly.
i thought:
maybe someday, I'll try again, or maybe
i'll have my ovaries rooted out
like swine-hunted truffles, my uterus sealed,
so that only pleasure may enter
when i care for it.

for not even lesbos could love me
the islands are wrapped
like new faces. the fissures in the sunset
recombine and close, fontanelles
where the clouds break—
i search for medea's constellation,
or some born resemblance
but see nothing other than overturned chairs,
barbaric hunters, and dogs.

I don't know that I've ever had the pleasure of reading a poem that flowed with such clarity and precision before. T'was very concise, and I really appreciated that. Your writing is simply magnificent!

posture

i slouch
like the night
you can't quite quit cold turkey.
my spine humbugs
i am fetal
as a summer-floored ditch
a frond's self-pity
an inch's lynch, the gravitas
of a riversack of kittens.

the world's seven princes
reclined like unset traps
stapled with fur, nibble grapes
from nubile fingers,
grace weighs heavy on you and i
it is hard to stand straight
when you are plumbed with honey
like an ursine nap
and the world's bitrate
whirrs in your lap.

my mother presses me
against the wall, calls on me
to roll my shoulders back
oarlock my shoulders
into the skirmish of my clavicles
“you stand like your father
you'll be three inches shorter by forty”—
i mimic jugs, gallons, desert marble pitchers
curves are plundered
by couches, menisci
cling like hope's calories.

god presses down like a howl
i let my heart closer to the ground
like a carried pup.
i am angled
like a day of fishing, every ounce
on dusk's os sacrum
i articulate the atlanto-occipital joint carefully
but it snaps all the same
and i end up holding my head in my hands
like rivers of legend and trade
until all screams to be
stretched or uplifted or ruled.

all day day light

at Christmas we lathe oranges
the creche's angel breaks like a spell of sleep
simmering bells are flagons of sound
decantered wantonness—
i have not been saved,
i have not even wandered.

it turns out you didn't know me
this jesus is not mine either
i will die and take everything you do not know
along with me, like the other half
of that drawered novel.

i have seen myself in the future
in a similar lane church
robe's mesmerism, metal's flourish in hostile cygnet
quarter-tide of candles, the kissed medallions of relatives
turkey split and rubbled with garnish, chickpeas
you, tugging on ropes of brandy
as if they might lead to bells.

your legs thrown over my lap
are too easy. i pray anyway. i have seen
every end like the hallways to a small hour's
drink of water. i would be terrified
if i wasn't so sure.

you spill cinnamon oil
burns like a turkish curse
you bristle to bear skin at night
i could trim and clean each heart beat that snowshoes
beneath young, wren pine and hang it
in houses of smoke.

yes, i have hidden everything.
i am the haze of a saint's smile.
we bounce as zany and silver-sucked as a horse's bells
our tintinnabulation is the jealousy
of the congregation. your breaths on my neck
are a prophet's whiskers
i must flee to egypt
i must i must
you cannot watch.