Young Writers Society

Okay, so I promised I'd rethink this latest one.

Firstly, do I really need to repeat that this is amazing imagery? Every line is new and interesting and fresh and pretty and an interesting combination of words. As. Per. Usual. So...that's beside the point.

What. Does. It. Mean? That is the question you would like me to answer, and I would like to explore. First off - the title - 'depetaling a metaphor' is too-direct for the first thing we read. It kind of tells us what it'll be about from the outset, so kills the mystery. From those words, I interpret: analysing a metaphor, breaking it down past the flowery petals into the two subcomponents - 'this IS that' not 'this is like that' and in doing so, understanding what the metaphor is actually all about. So...not too much of a challenge there.

Then we dive into some flower, some more flowers, and - you guessed it - more flowers.

they populate my growbox, their every want
seen to in my obsession

were the only lines that struck me as important in that first stanza - the rest was description for its prettiness. From this, I understand that you are not actually talking about putting your flowers in a box, but rather in a 'pot' or subsection of your garden. You are obsessed. And still...no hint of the metaphor here.

Again, in the next stanza:

solid as pronouns attend. my thoughts are green

This seemed the only important line, the rest being word-fun. I do not understand what 'solid as pronouns attend' means, though I feel it is significant. Green thoughts...somehow, I don't think we're talking envy here; so green with life? green with a love of nature? I cannot tell. And where is this metaphor of yours? Unless I'm missing it completely, and it is snuck in every bit of imagery in the poem, I have not seen it yet.

'Alone' in the third stanza struck something, and

my daydreams milking and twining roots, my nightdreams
purple and out-of-focus

was a fascinating couple of lines; I see your voice, your nostalgic relation to the plants more clearly here.

It is late. I have reread the rest, and cannot find what I am looking for - mentions of this metaphor you are going to depetal. So...I like that glimmer of 'voice' peeping through that poem, but I think whatever hidden message you were going for has become lost somewhere in the field of flowers, and has remained hidden. For me. But I like that you are trying to incorporate one in. And I'd love to see this poem, in all its re-edited glory, with that 'head' of yours more apparent.

Hannah saw many images she liked; funny that - almost every image is wonderful. She asked:

Make me remember it all. Make me love the whole poem, a selection of images, or make the image the whole poem.

This is what I mean about the central image tying in with the theme - a longer lasting effect to tie all those little images up together, and not to let them run away screaming wildly, structure-less. A bit more voice, head, heart, and the clarity of all this undampened by the parade of little pictures, and it will make more sense, ring closer to the intellect and emotion, and shine for longer.

Hey, thanks guys!

Hannah >> I know what you mean. Sometimes you're just not in the mood for a certain style of poetry. I can dig that.

Navita >> Perhaps I prefaced this one a little too much, and perhaps the title was somewhat misleading. I had an idea in mind -- a vague "head" that I wanted to communicate. I wanted to communicate the fact that sometimes, I overuse imagery The flowers were the "metaphors" and similes (which is a play, seeing as I use a lot of flower images to begin with). I was the botanist. They are my "darlings", sometimes they consume me. I realize in retrospect that I didn't communicate that clear enough, mostly due to conflicting images. Also, the self-gratification disclaimer I put on there -- I just really like writing flower related images. So this was sort of a tongue-in-cheek excuse to do so...Yeah?

I put that confusing preface up there mainly because I was guilty -- I knew this poem was everything that you were telling me not to write. It was just a "parade of little pictures", but, at the time, that's what I wanted to write...with a little "head" thrown in, I guess.

Thanks!

-Kylan

april 12

christmas eve

good smells from the kitchen and
deep poinsettias on the counter, petals stuck out, like doctor-inspected tongues –
an petaled ink, bleeding into the thin pages of night, as we light candles
that toss and turn, like children on christmas eve. we read out of the book of luke
as a family, gathered in the living room as our blue spruce clings
to its ornaments like a bride from a poor family –

king of the jews, flesh peeling under the braided whip, like wood
carpentered by an adze. eyes upturned, the blood-sweat beading on his forehead,
his robe auctioned, his robe red and torn from him, so that his canoe of ribs
could show and all could see the red eels of his scars, the stitchery of
lash and broken skin. he might have stumbled, spat upon,
the roman guards tossing roses to him, as is he were a dazed bullfighter,
the roman guards crowning him king, king, the thorns knotted
like a blood sisterhood.

from the pastures, where the shepherds snooze under trees,
the clouds cottony and bright, like negro spirituals, scrambling
kinesis westward, the sheep yellow-wooled and unshorn, slot-eyed,
their snuggery of baas pealing down the hillside, as night approaches
and the light from a trans-neptunian supernova finally completes its pilgrimage to
rest over Judea as a startling sign, rest over a crowded inn, rest over a
stable where the cows watch soft-eyed and knowing
like mothers seeing their newborns for the first time.

and how did he feel teaching on the steps of the temple to the wise
and learned men with their suspicious eyes and hand-stroked beards? is not
this the son of joseph, the carpenter? beside their house, there must have grown
an apple tree, the fruit watercoloured and pithy, which he must have eaten
as he watched the sandle-split travelers pass his house, the roman soldiers
clanking like one-man bands. it is strange to think of him eating an apple,
and thinking.

the words are familiar – and it came to pass in those days that there
went out a decree from caesar augustus – we read the verses like a common prayer, or poetry.
frost on the window sketch out their skeletal diagrams,
the candlelight retrenches as we nod drowsily,
snow falls outside and the yellow light of our living room is cast across it,
the drifts neatly folded, like his deathclothes on the day of his rising,

rising to find magdalene among the lilies, to read his wounds
as some human braille.

Kylan -

the botanist or depetaling a metaphor

Yes, that was everything I was telling you not to do, and you went ahead and did it, with the intention to show us how you get lost in your flowery phrases; but with that, we, as the readers got lost too, so there was no 'distancing of the audience' by 'head' and clarity and all the rest of it - so we didn't get it. But thanks for clarifying 'Depetaling a metaphor' needs to be changed to 'petaling a metaphor' - since in this poem, you are covering up the metaphor or yourself as a poet, making it more inaccessible to us. ***sighs*** Yes, it was a sweetly cunning idea to write about flowers, a favourite topic, while trying to put some intellect in there but ***sighs again*** some literal, reality is required for the rest of us to get it too.

christmas eve

Again, every phrase is a delight; but you know me - I'm hunting for the core of it. Overall impression = feeling = heart changes as I read further, from stanza to stanza, beginning with a warm, fuzzy scene, cutting to a crazed-war-like scene (that still does not detract so much from the warmth of the scene before because we know it is a story), then the third stanza is a cute, playful scene of the pastures....but no voice. Yet.

The fourth stanza is WHERE I SEE A BIT MORE VOICE , contained in those thoughtful questions -

and how did he feel teaching on the steps of the temple to the wise
and learned men with their suspicious eyes and hand-stroked beards? is not
this the son of joseph, the carpenter? beside their house, there must have grown
an apple tree, the fruit watercoloured and pithy, which he must have eaten
as he watched the sandle-split travelers pass his house, the roman soldiers
clanking like one-man bands. it is strange to think of him eating an apple,
and thinking.

This whole stanza I liked especially, and the bolded first question is phrased appropriately so it flows, and really stirs a bit of intellectual curiosity in us. The last bolded bit is sweet; almost a child's question, but not quite - innocent, I think, is the word. And the apple - genious, Kylan; Adam and Eve right there! I LOVE these double meanings, and how there is a bit more breathing room to digest them. (Note: that first question was just slightly too long - 'hand-stroked beards' seems a tad clunky, after another read).

The fifth stanza brings us back into the warm, fuzzy atmosphere, but the effect is flatter, because of the stanzas that have gone before it are either (a.) so much more action-packed (the war-like stanza, no. 2) or (b.) so much more meaningful. Actually, this seems like it's filling space - I mean, yes, the story needs to circle round a bit, but you don't really need to drag it out.

I do not understand:

rising to find magdalene among the lilies, to read his wounds
as some human braille.

Do you mean that the reason for his wounds was incomprehensible? Or that the enormity of the wounds is indescribable/wordless out loud - thus has to be touched/felt in Braille? Whatever the message, I may not be able to put it in words, but I think feel I understand. It's a 'heart' thing.

But I DEFINITELY like this intellect poking through your poems; so refreshing! And it makes a wonderful change to the other 'collections of wonderfully put-together words and images' from before, which were lacking in some central pivoting point. Now...for the art of condensation...really, for me, a small intro would have done just fine, and then you leaping straight to the heart of the matter (stanza 4), so to speak, without the prior pretty rambling.

Good work, nevertheless. And thanks for thinking about 'intellect' a bit more.


Navita

april 13

dear Ptolemy

the stars spread like breadcrumbs for solar pigeons, and you point the constellations
out one by one, bedrock fossils of extinct stories, spent and popping
nodes of gas and radium, nearly rubbed from human consciousness
as water rubs the river stones to a smooth and stanchioned euphony.

I watch the galaxies spin doilies,
like musicbox figurines, to the tune
of a thousand string-
theories strummed.

the asteroid belts loosened. there, alpha centauri, here,
spika, virgo, the moons of jupiter, eo and titan. in viewing the supernovas,
I find these names hilarious – as if something so preposterous as man
could give a name to something as permanent as a solar system.

the gas entrails of some spent star spread and pale, like a jellyfish beached
with its lifted skirts of luminescence and membrane, and the thin fimbria of light,
reaching into the farthest, plutonian depths, touching and curling at the
empty dark, like the
fiddleheaded fronds of ferns.

the planets circle, mute and somber as bubonic priests,
I watch their moons undress, stepping out of the underclothes of light
and space through the telescope. I look into the night and the valley
is so lightless that I can see, for the first time in my life
the milky way, gentle and imprinted, like the smell of a
once-forgotten perfume, the footprints of the gods wash
from the shoreline of stars, orion kneels, praying, perhaps, or taking aim.

I let you take a turn looking through the telescope, our camping tents
illuminated from within by the lake like new year's lanterns. it is here,
that I mark, like one marks the day of being saved by grace, the evening that I lost my sense
of self among the stars, the night I realized that I am helpless and trapped
and insignificant. it is a day of communion, my first confessional to the latticework
of celestial plasma, behind which the crinkling, opening voice of the Father
forgives.

Okay, I'll be a bit more different with this, this time:

Yes, yes, yes, wonderful, wonderful imagery again - some striking lines (and I LOVED the subtle mention of string theory, there ):

stars spread like breadcrumbs for solar pigeons, and you point the constellations
..........
as water rubs the river stones to a smooth
......
asteroid belts loosened. there, alpha centauri, here,
spika, virgo, the moons of jupiter, eo and titan. in viewing the supernovas
..............
gas entrails of some spent star spread and pale, like a jellyfish beached
...........
I watch their moons undress, stepping out of the underclothes of light
............
footprints of the gods wash
from the shoreline of stars, orion kneels, praying, perhaps, or taking aim.

Okay, now for the hands-down meaty analysis of everything else. Well, this is another tongue-in-cheek excuse to write beautiful description about the night sky, isn't it, Kylan? But, as ever, it's good to see some more 'voice,' some personal opinion, refreshing insight, and intellect in this as well.

So...it seems to me that the first couple of stanzas (why is the second one so cutely short, by the way? I mean, not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but with the rest of your stanzas, it looks a bit...lonely. Helpless) are descriptive in nature; nothing of consequence is happening here - you are setting the scene (I mean, I'm sure a few less words could have done that, really).

It's only in the third stanza that we have something INTERESTING:

find these names hilarious – as if something so preposterous as man
could give a name to something as permanent as a solar system.

Yeah, that cracks me up, too . So, a bit of a commentary on the long-long-ago origins of the universe and the shorter time span of humans on earth, in which they attempt to categorise something that's been here forever, and then what do we have? Two MORE stanzas of description, as if we need to be overwhelmed already. You really don't leave anything up for the audience to imagine and simmer in, do you?

that I mark, like one marks the day of being saved by grace, the evening that I lost my sense
of self among the stars,

Finally, a bit more of an insightful, useful thing to say - not, by any means, new, but definitely grabbed my attention a bit more than the rest because it was a bit of YOU (or the character) poking out.

So...where does this leave us? Just about as lost in the stars and the heavens as you are, I think. And are you REALLY doing this on purpose, now, or is it just a melting continuation of all the rest. Because if the poem were written for an INTENDED EFFECT of making the readers 'lose their sense of self amongst the words' - then I would applaud it. But I have seen too many of your other poems that are written to make us lost, so I will wait before clapping my hands - the effect you have achieved here is in no way different from in the other poems. I feel a sense of wonder, I imagine, I have the occasional intelligent thought flit through my head.

Oh, just a note about a couple of things that I didn't like as much (other than the glaringly obvious let's-get-carried-away-writing-beautifully-about-everything-that-could-possibly-be-in-sight-without-pausing-to-think-what-we-want-the-reader-to-overall-feel-and-think-at-the-end-of-it-all ):

stanchioned euphony

This annoyed me, because it disrupted the flow of everything else, which we can understand (even if our brains have to do a bit of mental gymnastics to do so). A little too many syllables / similar words / something I cannot really put my finger on.

bubonic priests

This seemed like a totally random image, thrown in because the word randomly popped into your brain.

the night I realized that I am helpless and trapped
and insignificant

In the previous line, you have already said that you have 'lost my sense of self among the stars.' With that one line, we imagine the feeling of being 'helpless and trapped and insignificant' ANYWAY, so you don't really need to point it out to us.

Kylan, I want to see a bit more heart in this. A bit more of an overall, coherent idea that ties the whole lot together well, as opposed to a series of dancing images. A bit more passion.

april 14

west of eden

and my father brings his hand across mother's pregnant belly
slow and trembling, as if she was a cello and his hand was a wavering
bow, feeling for the baby's heartbeat beneath the her saddled belly,
feeling for the tiniest aortic whispers, like blossoms falling into a pool,
yet unbearably loud and distracting. he has selected a handful of tulips from the
grower's market around the corner, screaming in their red ambulances,
wrapped and meek, like new concubines in secret dark, offering them to her.

at the grocery store, I teach him vocabulary words and a few verbs,
phonetic sounds, shaped by the tongue like cherry stems. the check-out
ladies know we are not from around here – they can smell the incense
of a foreign land in our clothes, see the whorls and rosewood of our hearts, hear
the broken glass of our syllables and consonants. he has learned to let
me do the talking – and I think he resents it,
secretly.

san francisco at night – the chinatown quilted together, the old women
knitting at their conversations, which they set down in the evenings
and pick up again in the teahouses at dawn, embroidered with
thin threads of old, chinese fables and the memories that we all have within
us, even those who have never been to their anscentral home.
the paper lanterns in front of the curio shops float,
the chopsticks creep across porcelain plates like
praying mantises. the streets are steep, and I walk underneath the
wall-climbing lilacs that purr in the nightspread, and the moon shies, like
a bride first seen by her groom in nuptial gown.

father smokes a cigarette and thinks about the baby – I can always tell
when he is thinking about the baby. the baby will seal his place in america,
his place among the coin operated washers and dryers, the wide freeways,
the telephone poles playing their wired double dutch, the fog that comes in
every evening from the bay, where the fishing ships are muted and malarial.
but I know that the baby will turn out like every other one i've seen born
in these tenements –
with old, soured eyes, and prematurely wrinkled hands.

the south winds blow, pipesmoke and wise-looking old men fill the gambling
houses. the villages of chinese characters squat like feeble huts, and I watch the
from the street the teashop man grind herbs in a mortar,
grinding them down until they release
their earthy, thimbled fragrance, release it like
caught moths.

mother smiles, and says she feels as if she holds all of chinatown
in her womb, and I think she's right.

Your poetry continues to entice me Kylan. I fall in love with every story you tell, and the images you use drown me. I love it.

<3

West of Eden:
I'm in love with it. It's like a fragile bauble in my hands that's bursting with life. Like, well, like a baby. If and when I visit my family's home country, I imagine the feeling I get will mirror what I felt reading this poem.

april 15

old saigon

and the stars sew backpockets into the denim evening, as the cicadas
clatter like finger cymbals and the barest hemline of daylight is visible
above the blue-humped horizon. we hike to the top of the table rock, through
the creosote and fireweed, the tiniest desert blossoms appearing like dimples,
and the cacti in their synods and strange priesthoods are one-armed, spindle-pricked
with spines and needles, hunched like women at their embroidery.

you tell me that it is here in the desert that a person can feel the newest,
especially at night, cleansed of distraction, sounds, lights, the faraway
cities are atlantises swallowed up by the shadows cast by the contours
and shoulders of the hills, stars in their numerous antfarms, tracing their
tunnels and wormholes of light through space as a longterm memory might beat a path
through neurons and synapses. you tell me to sit and
listen, really listen, and close my eyes. I hear

coyotes, their sad benediction, repeating as
a necessary prayer the 'dobe, wagoned stories
described by the rocks and the stars, their voices trembling and
nearly snuffed out by the enormity of the night,
like candles at a seance. I can hear the old farmtrucks passing
on the distant freeway. I can hear the warmth leaving the rocks,
the rasp of a lizard against sandstone, the trickling of leftover rainwater,
the shadows reshuffling themselves like a parsonage of hanging bats and

you, breathing beside me. I think I feel it, for a moment at least – the reverence
of a place untouched, of a final empty place. it is a vast open cathedral, ribbed with
balustrades and buttresses, wide and unopened like a saint's tomb. out here,
I am very human, suddenly. I am alone, even with you beside me, I am
autopsied by the terrible silence, the leprosy of stars, the hills on the horizon
rambling and unbroken, like stories told by old men. I take my place
among the billions, and somehow, I still hold on

to that greedy spark of individuality, as if I could make a difference, as if
I could reach out and part this landscape like some reed-born moses opening
the curtains of the red sea.

you squeeze my hand, and
the moon rises weeping and alone,
like an adulteress forgiven.

Note: Meh.

Hey Kylan - I actually felt a lot when I read the last couple of poems; possibly because they rung closer to home for me.

West of Eden - what a marvellous title, by the way - reminds me so much of our own journeys to different places, to different countries; trying to settle down and not quite managing it - and (correct me if I'm wrong), the law there used to be in England etc that if your child is born there, the whole family is automatically granted citizenship. This I gleaned from the following lines:

the baby will seal his place in america,
his place among the coin operated washers and dryers, the wide freeways,
the telephone poles playing their wired double dutch, the fog that comes in
every evening from the bay, where the fishing ships are muted and malarial.

I loved how you described the actualities of America - all the little things - from the 'coin operated washers and dryers' (technological) to the 'fog that comes in every evening' (natural/landscapey). As someone who has lived in many different places, I can relate to missing little things about each place.

I also liked how the place - San Francisco - you described in every light. In the end, it was like every other place, with its positive aspects and negative ones; but somehow the reader ends up getting attached to each aspect, and the poem would feel incomplete without it.

This poem was so...touchable. It was almost like all the bits and pieces we might have collected from reading a novel about these characters and places, but all put together. I believe I found it easier to digest because I can understand and relate to everything you have said - perhaps someone less well-traveled might find it (besides being a wonderful description) more deeply informative, too.

For some reason, I was very into the 'place-descriptions' as opposed to the characters themselves - I think this might be because I have read too many baby-oriented poems in the last week or so (I don't know, but it seems like that imagery is kind of...popular? Wrong word. Whoops.)

Old Saigon

I loved this for its theme - not yet all neatly tied up, but definitely there, and perfectly clear in your mind.

out here,
I am very human, suddenly.

This was dead on the mark - true. I love this line, the immediacy of the feeling, and the bare honesty that accompanies it.

and somehow, I still hold on

to that greedy spark of individuality, as if I could make a difference, as if
I could reach out and part this landscape like some reed-born moses opening
the curtains of the red sea.

Again, you hit the nail right on the head. As a tramper, the imagery was all-the-more appealing, and that feeling of 'taking your place among the billions' and still trying to retain the 'greedy spark of individuality' rung especially true for me - and many others who love the G.O.D. (ahem...the Great OutDoors ).

Hmmm (you've got me thinking, as you always do )...here's an interesting mix of heart and mind all in one - that feeling of 'individuality versus community' is also very intellectual - reminds me of the 'humanity vs society' idea in the Crucible; the emotions run very high, but it is in the exact middle of the wildest emotions that the play's characters have their most extraordinary insights (well, Proctor, mostly - 'The little crazy children are jangling the keys to the kingdom and common vengeance writes the law.' Yeah, I had to study it.)

Definitely a concept to keep in mind for the future.

Thanks Navita!

--

april 16

banjo man

maturing dandelions, their parachuted seedlings ascending light
and heavenward, like church-organ notes, and the day makes the transition
between the last fleeing birds to the cochlear bats that come from the shed
past the leech field, blending from one to the other. the field is blurred
and daubed with dandelions, as if it is a scene from an impressionistic
painting, the sailboats of failing light skippering across the heads of the
tallgrass, and the emporium of crickets coming in one by one
until the evening seesaws with their leggy pavanes.

as we prune the fruit trees in our backyard, I can hear him playing
next door, from the porch of the trailer home, plinking at his banjo strings
like rain on a tin roof, shelling each note like a summer pea, so that it
is good and round and rolls syllabic in your hands. I stop and listen
and dad hums, the songs played from behind the fence are recalled
from the hollers and gullies of some prairie town, where the men
might reckon about the weather based on twinges and hollowness
in their hipbones, and the children might bathe in tin washtubs, and
the hounddogs lie in their sad, sagging jalopies of skin, and panes of
afternoon light.

he plays, and the apple blossoms tremble like pouting lips, and mother
works among the petunias, which are warm and sheeted as bedpans. his rockingchair
creaks in accompaniment to his music, fingers knocking, I imagine the great round
moon of the banjo resting in his lap like a winter melon. he plays
until the fireflies emerge, uncaptured, poking airholes of light into the
mason jar shadows, moths clustering around our porch lanterns, slivery and accidental
as freudian slips.

he stops. we wait. I listen from the top of a picking ladder, and he listens, too,
and the crickets fill the silence and the stars wink conspiratorially. then,
i can hear him rise to his feet, knees unoiled and rust-hinged, his bones popping
like a shifting fire, and the sound of his old, rawhide boots clopping
off his porch and back indoors, and the night empties of all its
promises and prospects.

all the crickets stop their summer mnemonic for a moment, and the whole world
holds its breath until they begin again.

april 17

movement III: linear tableau with intersecting surprise

mother and I share a white paper bag filled with cherries
red to the point of being black, castrated of their pits, their stems
twisted to helixes inside of our mouths like strands of dna.
she is barefoot, her toes spread, and we sit on the windowsill of our apartment,
her white skirt filling the silence between us, thin and trailing around
her thighs like an innuendo. the street is filled with sounds, a pantry
of sounds, antique sale of sounds. mother tries to hit the passerbys
with the cherry pits she spits from her mouth.

the nubile black girls curl down the sidewalk in their peeled, orange
dresses, in their straw hats, the inside of their palms as pink as the
throats of lilies, hoarse with bee-filled laryngitis. I can only see them when
they grin, their smiles cutting waning lunar phases out of their nightshade
faces, so dark that they could have just stepped off the boat from
africa. I can hear a trio of black boys drumming on djembes, the youngest
beating on two thick-waisted drums with a tire iron, a negro girl singing a flat-bottomed
tune, the notes and glissandos dizzy as flies around a sore. there are stray cats
in the alley beside our house, skinny, slinky catamites, and the sight of them
licking and preening is as mesmerizing and calming as looking into a fire
at night.

and the old fisherman that lives in the apartment next to us, his lips
cracked like old doll porcelain, whittles at balsa wood, his old radio tuned
to mexican music that sashays tinnily down toward the street, and from the music
I can picture girl-aged flamenco dancers lifting their traditional skirts,
lips waxy with lipstick, red and puckered as tea roses, spun into sunsets.
a group of truants play kickball in the old pepsi lot across
the street, filled with broken glass bottles and tin soup cans, like a boneyard
for immigrant dreams. mother nudges me when she sees me looking
and tells me to go and play with them for godssakes and stop looking
like such a sadsack, will you?

the fruitstand oranges are soft and lumpy as newborn skulls – I can see the
old carib man who owns the stand peeling an orange with all five of his fingers, skinning it
until its fractal segments are revealed and pungent vulvae. I hold my breath and try
to hear the beating of my own heart, however small and solitary, but still a part
of this third movement of a late brooklyn afternoon.

Voila, another marvellous snapshot poem of this third movement of the 'late brooklyn afternoon.' Since it set out to be a near-freeze frame in time, it was interesting to read about all the little things that were going on at once - and I LOVED the title; I'm still chewing it over, actually, but anything with a musical reference and something long always makes for a good bit of dissection, mentally. I also liked how the stanzas were a lot more structured in the sense that you had a real exact picture in mind you wanted to convey in each.

Beautiful lines:

mother and I share a white paper bag filled with cherries
red to the point of being black

Makes me nostalgic just thinking about it. Actually, mother and I shared strawberries, but somehow 'cherries' sounds sweeter and less bland. And the honesty here was good - 'red to the point of being black.'

her white skirt filling the silence between us, thin and trailing around
her thighs like an innuendo.

Clever - and at this point, I have to admit that I had no idea whether the narrator was a boy or a girl, as there was no clue given in the first stanza. Nothing like a good mystery (but I think I figured it out in the third stanza ).

mother tries to hit the passerbys
with the cherry pits she spits from her mouth.

And, I have got to say, there is actually nothing figurative about this at all - it's a statement of fact, literal and real - which is why it leapt out at me all the more, because of the simplicity of its image. Naughty mother! (That was so tongue-in-cheek).

the inside of their palms as pink as the
throats of lilies

I can see the flower-imagery creeping through again...but it feels nice, so what the heck.

lips waxy with lipstick, red and puckered as tea roses, spun into sunsets.

I've been meaning to say this to you for ages: I think I know how and why you manage to pull off such fantastical imagery - because you expand on it, you cling to it, dwell on it for a little bit longer than just the simple image - in that above line, there are three ways you're describing the lipstick: like wax, like tea roses, like sunsets.

Okay, so here were some things that might have been a little 'smoother':

our mouths like strands of dna.

That line sounded strange when I read it 'aloud' in my head - possibly the ending on the shorter word? And, maybe it's because I do not have as large a vocabulary as you (I imagine few poets would, actually), but the word 'dna' sent me to the dictionary.

hoarse with bee-filled laryngitis.

I'm not sure why this didn't work for me - I thought at first that the word laryngitis looked oddly out of place, but on second thoughts: do bees actually pollinate lilies?

smiles cutting waning lunar phases out of their nightshade

The image in itself I liked - just the 'smiles cutting waning lunar phases' bit was a mouthful.

and the sight of them
licking and preening is as mesmerizing and calming as looking into a fire
at night.

I know you can do much better than 'as mesmerising and calming as looking into a fire at night' - this was not particularly innovative, so meant the stanza did not end as strongly as it began.

to mexican music that sashays tinnily down toward the street

This was really cute - sashays tinnily - but it disrupted the flow just a teensy weensy bit; I had to reread it before I could move on.

I hold my breath and try
to hear the beating of my own heart, however small and solitary, but still a part
of this third movement of a late brooklyn afternoon.

Maybe I'm comparing with the former poem too much, but the grandiose effect of this was not as great as it was in the ending of the 'Banjo man' - and seemed oddly similar, too. Think about rephrasing, perhaps?

Oh, and, I don't think I've said - I fell in love with the 'Banjo Man' poem, mainly because of that hold-your-breath-dramatic-pause-magnificent-finale you had going there. First, you set the scene, then we had two stanzas of listening to him play, and then the tight/anticipating stanzas of being 'on-the-edge,' which worked brilliantly.

Thanks Navita!

The one thing I felt about this most recent poem is that it had a lot of good potential, but that it was a little bloated. You pointed out the lines that kind of floundered in themselves, and I agree that they need to be cut back.

And as for the ending, with Banjo Man the ending was appropriate because I had led up to it properly. With Movement III the ending was more spontaneous, and was therefore more lacking. I agree that they're similar, too.

Thanks again,

-Kylan