Young Writers Society

Number 14

I only wish you would title your work, too! This latest one, I feel that had I known the title, some otherpiece of the puzzle might have slotted in place in my head. I am, at present, conjuring up fantastical images from these lines:

one for each ripening silhouet,

Um, is silhouette meant to be spelt that way? (It's NaPo, so I understand entirely). I love this weird image of a 'ripening silhouette,' of all things. It makes me want to eat it.

And the earth has scalped the sun
and eaten its head and hung
the shining scalp on its black belt.

This is good, good. 'scalped the sun' - how do you come UP with something that amazing, anyway? I can almost feel it - the aftertaste of whatever image it is - lying on my tongue. 'Eaten its head' is likewise begging me to move my teeth over it.

(From juice we come to blood.)

I did not understand this - at first read. I might hazard a guess, actually. Kind of like this really intelligent metaphor that the earth is sucking the 'juice' (or energy, in science terms) out of the sun, and in doing so has 'murdered' it for the night ('hung the shining scalp on its black belt'), resulting in 'blood' (or, more appropriately, the sunset)?

Wow, that is brilliant.

I love the way you force me to stop and really think about what your poems mean. But I reckon that last line, the one in brackets, might be better off as the title, since it helps unlock the meaning so much, while still remaining...subtle, I guess. Or, whatever you do, take the brackets off - I love that line.

Number 13

I love the tongue-in-cheek sarcasm throughout this -

I have seen flawless marriages.
My own parents had such,

before they finished up
the paperwork of the divorce

That was FUNNY. At first, when I read it, I thought: 'Hmmm...I didn't know there was such a thing as a 'flawless marriage'' - that line had all the more impact because it was first, and all by itself. 'Surely, there must be a catch.' And, yeah, catch there was - 'before they finished up/ the paperwork of the divorce' - ha! Clever cookie.

Because
they were at odds. Always.

Somehow, I felt this wasn't needed - it was a little too...serious, I guess, from the laughter you've started us on in the former part, and I thought the next bit functions fine without it.

at a degree
of Kelvin with more zeroes
hanging off the end than I
could have counted in a lifetime.

Okay, so i may not have liked 'He was absolute zero' - but this above one I ADORED - 'more zeroes hanging off the end than I could have counted in a lifetime.' The hot-cold thing was too bland for my liking, so this bit of humour (wit, I think, is a better word) helped make it more fun.

I was not fond of the next bit - 'Touch either...' - but I love the simple image and idea behind it - how if it's too hot or too cold, we actually can't feel it. I reckon you just need to wave that magic wand of yours and switch the words around a tad .

The ending there was quirky - and a tad, well, expected, I suppose. I liked how you said:

Me, I like
lukewarm

but then I am dilute.

But again, I think some shuffling is in order for this to finish off with a bit more of a bang - or a laugh, as the case may be. 'Dilute' - this is about the only thing that can describe my reaction :

I hope you don't mind me going through your poems like this - I mean, it's NaPo, after all, and we're not going to produce a masterpiece everyday; but I really love the thinking that goes on behind your poems, and this is fun for me, too. And your poems - well, what can I say - they're near-perfect, anyway.

15

the dying woman, with her fingers laced over her breastbone
like roots only half-buried in loose soil,
tilted her head back on its embroidered cushion
and begged a kiss from the priest,
who was young, and beautiful,
who may or may not have had
small tender breasts
bound up under his cassock.

(she'd never know. didn't want to.)

he leaned over her, the light
stuttering over the dips in his soft face,
and put his mouth on hers.
her old lips curled in
like the rim of the cavity
in a hollowed out pumpkin,
but it was a fine kiss.

he said something.
probably a lie,
but it had wings, regardless,
beating soft and feathery
against her cheek.

15:
A very peaceful death; I like it. Only, there's one part that may or may not fit in nicely in my mind. It was the ". didn't want to.)" Depending on how you read it, it could be a "it was irrelevant/would ruin the magic" or a "she would've been disturbed if it was a female" (or a third option that I have not thought of). If it's the second one, then it kind of disrupts the mood. Otherwise, never mind, I usually don't know what I'm talking about with poetry, anyway.

16

the moon on the water,
broken into wafers
of light, like the bodies
of white-bellied fish:
this is the mermaid hour
when the tide laps
at the foot of the cliff,
and the beach with its footprints
and its old firepits
is gone. Sunken under
water like obsidian,
some volcano's bloody vomit,
shining blackly, rough-faced
and each wave with an edge
a few molecules thick,
slicing into itself.

again. again.

the foam rising pale
and salty, the tang of iron
an echo in its bunched lace.
somewhere the ghosts
of sailors seduced
are getting drunk
on this wine-dark sea.

I am so very behind. And. Well. You know what that means, right guys?

Yes.

Out roll the haiku. The couplets. The cinquains.

But first! SOME STUPID RHYMING POETRY!

17

The trees rolling their bony hips
are strangers and the shapes I knew
in this bent branch like a dry lip,
this fringe of leaves, when all askew,

and moving mercilessly with
the borrowed vigor of the breeze,
take on the fading feel of myth
such as only a blind man sees

drawn clearer on his dark eyelids
than life appears through cataracts.
Walking through this new wood would rid
me of my fancies, and distract

me from my mistrust with sharp cold;
but I would rather hide myself
behind high walls and so keep hold
of the picture on my mind's shelf,

of old oaks sleeping in the sun
untouched by this half-lit half-life
this air of something alien
clinging gladly to their brief strife.

Come on, Helpful!!! I'm missing your poetry - keep writing!

I adored number fifteen - it's so different! And something I'd never really thought about before, which made it all the more interesting. The poem is so gentle and precise; it's a really breathtaking effect, a fine sense of balance and control you've got here.

I loved the way it began:

the dying woman, with her fingers laced over her breastbone
like roots only half-buried in loose soil,
tilted her head back on its embroidered cushion
and begged a kiss from the priest,

So...bizarre, and insanely fascinating at the same time. That's why it's driving me crazy. All...gentle and terribly unorthodox at the same time. And innocent and naughty all at once, in a 'who-care's?' kind of way.

he leaned over her, the light
stuttering over the dips in his soft face,
and put his mouth on hers.
her old lips curled in
like the rim of the cavity

This was delicately handled as well - not too literal; not too fantastical, but a healthy dose of both .

small tender breasts
bound up under his cassock.

hollowed out pumpkin

he said something.
probably a lie,

These above quotes I was not too keen on - the first is just too weird for me; the second just seems plonked without too much forethought in the middle; and the third - well, I think the 'something' encompasses the fact it might be a lie, and I highly doubt the dying woman (or us) is really going to want to think about whether or not it is true.

But...that's a personal preference only. I think what makes your poems interesting is that thee are lines I love, and those I don't like; but each evokes a very specific response from me - so that's good, I guess. Just a matter of figuring out the 'not-so-smooth-and-maybe-awkward-lines' from the 'this-evoked-a-strong-negative-response' lines - the former need to be fixed and the latter are great for stylistic purposes.

Can't wait to see the rest. Truly.

18 (OH GOD SO BEHIND SO BEHIND)

I am a good test-taker
my hand quick like the needle
of a sewing machine, seaming
the page with doublestitched
words in staccato movements

wrist ashiver, ashudder,
rise upon rise.
Even if (yes) lately I have lost focus
the thoughts have a habit of breaking up
into small soft unexpected pieces
like copper in acid
I do well

on tests full of problems that were generally
designed for someone else;
someone older and less sharply fragmented:
the questions being kind enough after all
to open up for my unfit mind
and take me into their spiky arms,
like the widows of soldiers welcoming
the enemy army after a war,
kissing hands and mending
the trousers of live men
for the thrill of thinking that here is work
that will be worn.

19

MERMAID RHETORIC

In the water it is not possible to live
as you would on dry earth. You must resign yourself
to shutting down parts of you that you may have
once believed essential. But be comforted: you were mistaken:
you will still be you, when your lungs have ceased to open,
and the air no longer holds up your dense body in secret ways,
and the cell membranes break down
to let the water in.

You will not forget your life and your personhood
merely because your brain's tissues are swollen with salt
you will be there, yet, inside your changing flesh
a little shrunken, perhaps, because I do not think you will want
to let your soul touch the inner walls after a while, for fear
of clotting blood, but otherwise unaltered. The fish might eat
your opaque eyes, cracking the hard shell of the corneas,
digging into the milky sclera with toothless mouths,
and gnawing at the pebbled irides last, because muscle
is difficult to digest; and nevertheless you will see
everything.

Every celtic knot of light on the ocean floor.
All the fine strings of light that map the cat's cradle
of wavepeaks overhead. You will know them, more clearly
even than you knew the dull diffuse glow in dusty port cities.
What does it matter that your nerves will fray,
the messy physicality of your senses dissolve, when you
will hear my singing purer than you do now,
will feel my kisses on the transparent flame of your soul,
with no more need for meat's awkward translation?

You will find this new kind of living far finer
than the one you use now. Your gain, my love, will far outweigh
your loss. So do not tremble when I tell you that no,
no, if you come away with me, if you leap as you wish to leap
into my white arms and if you let my strong tail carry us both
away from your poor ship, you will not be able to go on
as you are.

I'M SORRY I'M SO LAME.

20

a sky like water
opaquely blue, until you
stick your hand in it.

21

We are pleased to think that bubbles
model worlds, with what is beautiful
on the surface, a thin marvelous skin
(the rainbows forming, reforming
light broken up in molecules of soap),
when in fact bubbles
model universes,

and only at the edge, riding the swell
of the globe is it possible
to matter to the observer.

22

The men are coming apart at the seams:
they have such heavy bodies,
and all the things they are
can barely be contained
inside their fragile flesh;
sitting astride beautiful beasts,
they shake like worlds
on the verge of breaking,
while their horses snort,
uneasy under them,
and pick up the pace,
spines curved too sharply
with the weight of their poorly-tied loads.
They blur. A limited rainbow,
with the pale green of a drowned thing
giving way to the reddish chestnut of dried blood
which blends into the soft ivory of bone,
which blackens at the last,
as the fourth horse's delicate hooves burn
the long grass into a trail of ash
and dying children.

23

kissing you, I saw
that your eyes were the blue of
a strangled baby.

--

*hides head*

24

not quite the morning; but after

in the car's headlights your shadow is doubled
and each long-headed half is a faint translucent gray
excepting in the places where they overlap,
dark as the wet hem of your skirt where the perspiration
penetrated; and this deeper dark divides up
the flat shapes, so that you look as if parts of you
are only tinted glass.

you wobble across the driveway to your front door
while your ride pulls out with a throaty roar.
the house is sleeping with one eye open,
the kitchen halflit.

its soft glow slips
corners of pale yellow silk into the hall
and the dining room, making the stale water
in the vaseful of irises on the table
gleam in raised rings round the flowers' slim stems.

peeling your pumps off your heels, and

from the next story down you can hear the soft sounds of slumber, and

when you take the stairs you are still walking on the balls of your feet,
the fragile memory of pain
bearing you up.

25

Is it progress, this business
of making cannibals use forks?

and blue-patterned china plates,
one per scorched thighbone?

and fingerbowls with flowers
floating in the clear water

which will only turn pink
after the appetizers?

(For the brain contains more blood than you might think.)

Somehow, I have full confidence in the fact that you'll catch up to the thiry. And you'll do a damn fine job of it as well - the last few poems, written hastily I presume (from your comments, here and there), are a testament to this. Even when you write fast, you write brilliantly. Which explains why I've still been reading these with the same edge-of-my-seat sense of wonder and amazement at your writing.

I loved not quite the morning; but after.

in the car's headlights your shadow is doubled
and each long-headed half is a faint translucent gray
excepting in the places where they overlap

This was a striking beginning. Although I've noticed the double shadows often, it's an image which I've never thought of putting in a poem, and I'm so annoyed that you got there first. That's when you know you've done your job .

dark as the wet hem of your skirt where the perspiration
penetrated; and this deeper dark divides up
the flat shapes, so that you look as if parts of you
are only tinted glass.

I loved the rawness of 'wet hem of your skirt where the perspiration' - it is so REAL. But the next bit, where you talk a little more about 'deeper dark' (which kind of leads on from the 'shadow' idea), the 'flat shapes' and the 'tinted glass' made the character become a little too one-dimensional (ha! 'flat shaped'!) for my liking, probably because of the repeating imagery that was so planar.

But I liked it nevertheless.

you wobble across the driveway to your front door

And that one was vivid, too. So clever .

the kitchen halflit.

its soft glow slips
corners of pale yellow silk into the hall
and the dining room, making the stale water
in the vaseful of irises on the table
gleam in raised rings round the flowers' slim stems.

peeling your pumps off your heels, and

That was my favourite part. The interesting alliteration and randomly spaced-out assonance (halflit...it's...slips...silk...in...irises...rings...slim... - genius, you are (or just exceptionally musical )). And that 'peeling your pumps off your heels' was another one of those raw lines that was slimy and totally real all at once.

The next one, number 25 I also liked, but mainly for its humour. I enjoyed it all, and I like how you're always writing in a different style - so it was a refreshing change . I wasn't too sure about the last line in brackets, but where it appeared to end thre before that (on the word 'appetizers') seemed fine enough to me.


Lovely poems, and don't you dare stop writing! Else I'll come and haunt you...

26

In the crowded study hall, the ghosting smell
of brittle potato chips (long since ground
into the colorless carpet, like cigarette ash,
and with approximately the same nutritional value)
solidified warm and woolly around our faces,
our bare necks, and I breathed its sourness in,
and rested my cheek on my best friend's shoulder,
my left hand doodling unsupervised, my right hand
numb but edging towards pain like a city, early
in the morning, just about to explode.

And my friend slipped her arm in and out
of the slanting slot of my shoulder,
propped against hers, and sometimes cocked her head,
listening; and then the cold coiled ridges
that sank into her ear's canal would brush up
against my eyebrow, and I would make the skin
of my forehead move under them, and it is possible
that she thought my reasons for touching her
were transparent-- the thick glass of the high windows,
clean and uncurving--
but I suspect
not.