Young Writers Society

april 18

tennessee antique

the old bell that rings as each person enters the shop
is like a servant kept around past usefulness,
but for sentimental reasons, announcing customers
tiredly, and then rocking back and forth, slow parkinson's
in simple harmonic motion, like an unsteady flower
nursing a just-landed honeybee, or a memory.

it croaks my name, tonsil-less.

floorboards creaking, scatterplot of dust illuminated in its
slow directionless migration by the refrains of light coming through
the warped and whorled shopfront glass – the antique mall
is completely silent, except for the slow, musty breathing sounds
from the governess teapots and the chipped maids of china.

three grandfather clocks with upset stomachs, infected with a smallpox
of seconds, reciting their slow pre-history and all chiming the quarter-hour
at different times, babel voices, having forgotten the meaning of
their sounds, but repeating them anyway. there is a small infantry
of salt and pepper shakers, and a shelf full of cold depression glass,
some red as blood platelets, some blue and silent as mothers in the early
morning, the green saucers a cheap midwestern jade
made from sad, prohibition beer bottles.

I push the heavy dresses and sweaters on their clearance racks –
they sigh aside, each item of clothing smelling of its previous owner:
tobacco, peppermint, lilac, SenSen. I search through the pockets
and find old clippings, coupons, bingo cards. by the back window
there is a table assorted with old wrist watches, all out of sync
and ticking a handful of different sounds, like split personalities.

busted radios, children's toys – cement mixers made from aluminum
and steam shovels craned like sleeping ibises. i step quietly
among these artifacts, careful not to wake them.
the afternoon light is yellowed around the edges like a scrapbook photo,
and the old baby grand piano standing in the corner lobotomized,
strings and hammers

twitching like hand-bones, and whispering quiet, residual notes
as I pass, trying to reminisce with me, wanting me to run my fingers
over her teeth, as farmers do with sheep or horses
to affirm health and utility, saying,
yes, we can still keep her,

yes,
she is still here.

Hi, Kylan!

I savoured this one. The title did its job and caught me at the very beginning. This kind of places are indeed perfect poetry material. I like "infected with a smallpox/of seconds" and "a small infantry/of salt and pepper shakers" and "yellowed around the edges like a scrapbook photo", to mention a few.

by the back window
there is a table assorted with old wrist watches, all out of sync
and ticking a handful of different sounds, like split personalities.

I'm not too fond of the "split personalities", but then again, it does its job perfectly. I love this image, the actual thought of it, everything.

I could almost smell the dust while I was reading this. You created the overall image in my mind very well, it feels incredibly real.

Oh, now I have to leave for school, haha. Thanks for the read! See you!


Demeter
x

Each of these are written for a Van Gogh painting of the same name.

april 19

van gogh's ear

I. starry night over the rhone

the stars tonight are gentle and breathless, each like
the kiss planted on christ's cheek by the prayerless lips
of judas, each trembling and whispering master is it i?
the water swells at the dock legs, the vague waves against
the canal walls of the rhone ruffling like the upturned skirts
of a slattern, the lanterns wharfside with creaking jaws
are lit one by one by a lamplighter, their little thumbs of light
reflected on the water, delicate and handled gently
by the shuck and snarl of the boatless current
like broken-winged finches in the hands of a child.
the docked fishing boats slouch, stars painted in startled
pointillisme – I light a cigarette, and the smoke curls around
my fingers like the groping hand of a newborn.

II. vase with twelve sunflowers

sunspots, their petals emerging as timidly
as touched snail eyes. twelve lunatics, twelve
self-portraitures. yellow and well-worn like the badges
of concentration jews. they snooze,
eclipsed faces, their seeded cheekbones rising
noble, savage. one by one they bow, like chins
sinking to the chests of old sunday-napping men.
the light from the bottleglass window purrs
through them – twelve christless disciples,
passing the time, petals curling on the tabletop
in sunlit nautili.

III. portraite de l'artiste, sans barbe

all the impressionists sit by the pond, painting the lilies
white and robed in their waterside insane asylums, songbirds
folding and refolding themselves like cootie catchers. and here
i am, entitled in using french pretentiously at times, turning inward
on myself, hands retreating like clockbirds, and staring into
the canvas, as if it is a mirror in which my reflection
has lost itself, lost in the strawfield of strokes, the blue eyelids
of oil based paint. I watch a man dangle his feet on the bridge
above the pond, playing the guitar, cradling it like a sick child,
like a lover whose untuned head offers back no affection,
and he plays sobbingly, fingers on their steel, sure tightropes –
the impressionists look up for a moment, solemn
and the pond water ripples as bullfrogs retreat.

Van Gogh is probably one of my favourite artist ever. I remember for Hannah's contest, doing two impressions on Van Gogh's work. One of which was starry night, so it's interesting to look at your take over mine. I must say the sunflowers one really stood ahead all the other ones. All were lovely reads though.

For the portrait one, the image is lovely specifically the ever intelligent mention of birds. It works really well together. I'm not too fond of the guitar playing man, it's just not an image I feel fits in with the rest.

Maybe I'm in a bizarre mood right now, but I found tennessee antique really funny just then when I reread it. The images are all still really breathtaking, and at first I felt the poem might be in danger of becoming as old and 'antique-ish' as the shop itself - and it certainly seemed so from the quiet and subdued tone of the first stanza - but then the humour kicked in, and it all brought it to life . Oh, and I just thought I would mention something else about the wild-and-in-depth imagery - I actually have to flick back at the poem several times when writing this to make sure what I write is actually correctly based on the poem (yeah, I had to hunt for the word 'shop' slipped in there sneakily to make sure I got it right - maybe I'm just tired...)

the old bell that rings as each person enters the shop
is like a servant kept around past usefulness

Okay, so the opening wasn't the most 'wow' and 'bang' but it certainly had an intimate kind of feel, and the 'servant kept past usefulness' actually cracked me up the second time - yeah, we've kept servants in India, and yeah, they're such a joke when they can't do anything anymore, but you've got to keep them, anyway.

but for sentimental reasons, announcing customers
tiredly, and then rocking back and forth, slow parkinson's
in simple harmonic motion

This is funny. I don't know why; it just is - 'sentimental reasons,' 'tiredly,' 'slow parkinson's in simple harmonic motion' - something about you going way overboard when describing a bell makes me laugh. The lines highlight the ludicrosity of having a bell there in the first place, and although they aren't the most flashy personifications you've ever used, they still make for a bit of light entertainment.

it croaks my name, tonsil-less.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I thought that I really didn't like this at first - it sounded so wrong, so out-of-place (I mean, what's a tonsil doing there in imagery about old people, anyway?), but then I GOT it - you mean tonsil, like the little whatchamacallit thing that clangs against the inner curve of the bell - tonsil-less; what an inventive description.

The next stanza I did not care for as much - it seemed rather obvious to me what I'd find in an antique shop (of course, there were some pleasant lines: 'scatterplot of dust illuminated,' 'refrains of light'), and it didn't grab me as much...more like a slow, very slow-moving outline of things like the dust, the light, the 'musty breathing sounds.' So...think about it. On the one hand, it emphasises the atmosphere perfectly; on the other, it is unbearably slow, and perhaps unneeded, in terms of creating the picture in our minds. I also felt it was...more silent as compared to the first stanza (no ringing bells, ha), which is why the tone kind of dampened, and dampened further. But: this was the intended effect, right?

The next stanza is where it gets humorous again:

three grandfather clocks with upset stomachs, infected with a smallpox
of seconds............

infantry
of salt and pepper shakers

a cheap midwestern jade
made from sad, prohibition beer bottles.

The clocks one, I liked especially. And the way everything is rather pointedly personified helps add a dash more colour to the place.'Having forgotten the meaning of
their sounds, but repeating them anyway.' - didn't think this was needed, since we already get the idea of 'uselessness' from the bells in the first stanza.

The fourth big stanza seemed more like a categorised list of everything in the shop - perhaps this was the effect intended, anyway, but it didn't grab me as much -

they sigh aside

That above bit was the only point of interest in there for me - the rest, I could clearly picture in my mind anyway.

i step quietly
among these artifacts, careful not to wake them.
the afternoon light is yellowed around the edges like a scrapbook photo,
and the old baby grand piano standing in the corner lobotomized,
strings and hammers

I love that image of the character trying not to wake up the artifacts - not particularly new, but it does the trick, and again adds some humour to an otherwise dry description of the shop. I'm grinning just thinking about someone, almost like a cartoon character, with over-exaggerated steps, tip-toeing around the artifacts - rhino in the living room, kind of. And that lobotomized baby grand piano - I can't imagine how you brought yourself to resist giving it a good bang in the poem! I would have .

wanting me to run my fingers
over her teeth, as farmers do with sheep or horses
to affirm health and utility, saying,
yes, we can still keep her,

yes,
she is still here.

And THAT was the perfect ending, once again. It was funny, and thoughtful, and in some strange way, very nostalgic all at once. I don't know if humour is really what you were going for in this poem, but it certainly poked through; I'd love to read a poem of yours that was intentionally humorous, if that's the case.

I am enjoying this; but of course, when you get the chance, think a bit more about tightening the edges of this in terms of having a grand overall-metaphor kind of thing to emphasise some major point - but it was fun to read as it was.

And here's what I would've done with that snoring baby grand:

Hey, thanks Navita, Demsy, and Kamas --


Navita > I wasn't necessarily trying to make it funny, per se, or laugh out loud hilarious, but I was trying to make it cute, with a dash of nostalgia. Something that you'd smile about and then kind of tilt your head sideways The feelings you experienced at the end were the feelings I was going for throughout the entire piece.

-Kylan

Well, yes, yesterday I was in a rather bizarre mood, so the cute phrases set me off quite a bit, but it definitely has that effect of part humour, part nostalgia, looking at it...for the third time today .

And I had a lot of fun just now reading the van gogh's ear poem again - I opened up extra tabs, Googled images of the actual paintings out of curiosity, and flicked back and forth between the painting and your description of it, which I felt was startlingly clear, considering the fuzziness of the paintings on the screen (or maybe I just clicked on some rather blotchy ones...).

Starry Night Over the Rhone

I must say, this was my favourite - both as a painting, and from the poem point of view. Everything in this was cute, and heart-fluttering (as opposed to heartbreaking...) - delicate and amusing all at once. What I thought was different here compared to the 'Tennessee Antique' poem was that the antique one was a lot more dense, crowded and musty (in terms of 'feeling' not 'imagery' - fitting for the poem, of course ), while the cuteness in this was a lot more...breathable, open - also fitting, since you describe the open space and air and night he has painted.

the stars tonight are gentle and breathless,

And that above is one of the best-ever opening lines I have read of your poems. I love it, and I want to eat it - it's just so damn perfect.

Then, there are few lines of religious description (kind of fits, but...I don't know - maybe I've seen it too often - the mood from the first line was so sneaky and sweet and look-around-your-shoulder-at-these-naughty-stars-and-what-they've-been-up-to, and the more relgious description sort of tries to make it solemn and serious and straight-faced; which I didn't like, since I wanted to smile the whole way...).

rhone ruffling like the upturned skirts

I liked this again, because it brought back the slightly mischievous and snuggly image from the first line - 'upturned skirts' is a winner - and whoever thought of that first was a genius.

You use a lot of morphological imagery throughout - parts of humans and animals reflected in the landscape - 'dock legs, creaking jaws, little thumbs of light, broken-winged finches...' Although I'm really fond of this, I do think I prefer the 'emotional-personification' to the 'structural-personification,' actually. Somehow saying the 'stars are breathless' has a bigger impact than 'little thumbs of light' - though both are equally as clever and cute; maybe this is because the former has an imagery-and-feeling effect, and the latter works mostly for imagery?

shuck and snarl of the boatless current

This bit I was not too keen on - I was loving the naughty-innocent feeling going on throughout, and the words 'shuck and snarl' kind of ruined that for me. And 'boatless current' was unneeded.

stars painted in startled
pointillisme

This is another one of my all-time favourite lines; 'startled pointillisme' was stunning.

I light a cigarette, and the smoke curls around
my fingers like the groping hand of a newborn.

The bolded bit, I also liked - another simple and literal (but powerful) image. However, the ending was a disappointment - 'groping hands of a newborn' simply did not belong, and ruined the entire atmosphere of the poem by blatant-and-rather-horrid-vivid-infant-imagery, which I felt had no place nor meaning in this marvellous poem/stanza.

Vase with Twelve Sunflowers

Firstly, I've got to say that I didn't think much of the painting - and how you managed to wring a poem out of it is totally baffling to me - but then, you can write about just about anything, so no surprises there.

Of course, when I've just read one masterpiece, I am always comparing the next one to the one above, so maybe that's why I did not enjoy this one as much - but I can be a little more specific than that. Overall, the reason was that I felt there was no all-round effect intended in this; no overarching theme or feeling running throughout. I was confused every few words as to what the effect was meant to be:

'Emerging timidly as touched snail eyes' is cute but only imagery-wise, not feeling-wise. 'Twelve lunatics' swings totally in the opposite direction and makes the otherwise cute flowers seem insane. 'Well-worn like the badges of concentration camp Jews' seemed rigid, determined, military, harsh. 'Snooze' was again sweet. 'Cheekbones rising noble' is, well, noble. 'Savage' is savage; 'sunday napping men' gives them an aura of tiredness. 'Light...purrs through them' is cute again. 'Christless disciples' is religious, solemn. 'Sunlit nautili' is scientific.

It is no wonder I am confused. The effect is stronger if there is a consistency in the image. If there are conflicting images thrown together - well, you know as well as I do what happens. I liked each of the descriptions on its own; but when together, they had lesser impact by themselves, and even lesser when all effects were combined together in the poem. I can see from the sunflowers themselves that there is a large variation in their 'personality' as each seem to be depicted differently; and this was most likely what you were trying to portray - and you did this remarkably accurately. I just also want to point out that as a poem (as opposed to a description) it didn't click as smoothly.

However...I still think there is hope for this. Once this crazy NaPo is over and you've got a little more polishing time, think about writing maybe five or six poems on the sunflowers, each of which focusses on one aspect of the flowers' 'personalities.' Combine them together, and then see what the overall effect is once you've gone into a bit more depth about each metaphor you use - an experiment.

Portrait de L'artiste, Sans Barbe (oui, c’est l’orthographe correct de ‘portrait’ – je l’ai juste trouvé dans ma dictionnaire...)

I enjoyed this one as well, but definitely more for the poem than for the painting - where on earth did the rest of the beautiful description come from, considering what the portrait itself looks like? I do not care for the painting - the poem interests me more; so you've beaten Van Gogh at his own game there.

all the impressionists sit by the pond, painting the lilies
white and robed in their waterside insane asylums, songbirds
folding and refolding themselves like cootie catchers. and here

The first line is good as it conveys a lot of information in one go, while not losing its poeticism. 'Waterside insane asylums' - do you really need 'insane' when you've already got 'asylums'? But I like the feeling here - the real feeling; that they, as artists, are in a kind of asylum as they paint. The next bit was a bit...skim-ready.

i am, entitled in using french pretentiously at times, turning inward
on myself, hands retreating like clockbirds, and staring into
the canvas, as if it is a mirror in which my reflection
has lost itself,

I loved the starkness of 'entitled in using french pretentiously at times,' despite the fact that it was a mouthful. 'Clockbirds' - I feel like I've heard this before; doesn't really do much for me - you've already introduced us to the songbirds just before; and clockbirds seems rather mechanical and physics-ish. I'd only keep it if the birds were going to be some kind of motif. The 'canvas as a mirror' idea wasn't particularly inventive, considering the massive giveaway in the title about the fact that it was about a portrait.

lost in the strawfield of strokes, the blue eyelids
of oil based paint. I watch a man dangle his feet on the bridge
above the pond,

No issues here. I liked this through and through. It's peaceful, and I liked the back-and-forth flicking between the internal painting (portrait) and the external painting (landscape) - seems like there's three lines on each, until we get to the next bit.

playing the guitar, cradling it like a sick child,
like a lover whose untuned head offers back no affection,
and he plays sobbingly, fingers on their steel, sure tightropes –

Main reason why these lines and I did not agree was because of their inappropriateness. I didn't instinctually feel the guitar was the most traditional instrument to use, and it looked oddly out-of-place. Actually, since it's the modern-vs-classical thing I have a bit of edginess with, I think that's 'out-of-time'. And they added little to the atmosphere and the story.

the impressionists look up for a moment, solemn
and the pond water ripples as bullfrogs retreat.

The first line of that above bit is, well, solemn and gives it a bit more of a serious tone; the last line is...jumpy, more childish (bullfrogs, I thought); I felt that in the context of the rest of the poem, the first line fitted better, and the second kind of spolied the effect of the first. I'd liken this to parents reading in bed, having a serious conversation about work (first line), and their kids charging in and bouncing on the bed as hard as possible (second).


Overall, it was très amusant reading the poems alongside the pictures. I was just thinking today why I bothered with poetry, when an artist can accomplish the same thing so deftly and easily - for the human mind, I think, it's faster to glean a lot from a single image, than from a string of words ('one picture is worth a thousand words' and all), but I liked doing both, because while the paintings were nice, they didn't move as much, and they didn't necessarily have emotion unless you gave it to them. So...another innocent excuse to write imagery, I guess...

P.S. (**added a few hours later, while trying to remember what I actually wrote...**) Ouch. I just realised how long this was. And it doesn't count as a review, either. Well, I could say you asked...but actually, on second thoughts, I reckon thorough should be my middle name, not Will as previously decided. Or maybe...Overwhelming...but I'll let you decide that one.

Tough day...not much of a poem.

april 20

peach jam

and the skins on the old peaches sag already
with double chins of plush – we split them open
where they lie in two halves, red organelles, plotting
together with sticky sweetness, like lot's daughters
stripped of their garments, and nuzzling their blind
patriarch. the brained intelligence of the pit
is tossed away, as we mash the peaches down
to a pulp.

the fruitflies gather – drosophila
dizzy and budding, rising slowly enough
from the peach hides
for us to slap them between our palms.
we make the jam outdoors, where the
late summer kettled poppies huddle together,
drooping and vital as polygamist wives.

the peach mash is on the boil, pectin and sugar,
and we sit on the porch eating raw peaches
so that the juice winds down our forearms
and drips off our elbows and the fruitflies faint,
short-lived and spastic, like attention spans.

april 21

lyrids, or, an ode to april showers

it is a day that you wear barefoot, a day that hangs from
your shoulders as a sundress. it is late afternoon, the baptists
are returning from church service and light is scuttled on the
picket fences as tweedy locusts are spat sideways, like
tobacco plugs from the mouths of old men. we lie in
the tallgrass, despite your hay fever, and let the day unknot
the alfalfa wheatheads, let the evening shadows droop over us, as if we were old
pieces of furniture covered by bedsheets in an abandoned house.

as the sweat dries to dustjackets on our skin, you tell me that
tonight, there will be a meteor shower, and that we should lie
here far into the night to watch this lunar krystallnacht, to watch
small comets skipped off our atmosphere like flat rocks across
ponds until they spill into fractal thimbles of light that slip down
the neck of the sky like a warm pearl necklace. you tell me that
this particular meteor shower happens only once every fifty-three years,
so that the next time I could see it would be cocooned in old
age and longjohns of loose, sluffing skin.

the day is still hot – I am an insect trapped in treesap, in the amber
of the moment with you beside me, talking about the celestials, our
hands close together, the pulseless poppies firey and alarmed,
like biblical prophets – isaiahs among the tallgrass. you keep talking, still about old age,
about your grandmother sitting on the porch of the house knitting,
each loop drawn by her needles as a noose around the neck of a second,
knitting her own death shawl – but I can't hear you. I can only hear
the sound of the grass moving beneath your head,

your nostrils flaring, the systole and diastole of your heartbeat.
I can only hear the sound of the meteors rattling off the troposphere
of the earth, and the stars being knitted together, embroidered
into constellations, with the applique of finger-tracing between them.

you quiet --
our hands brush like fires.

I only wish you could see my expression when I read these. I am drunk on lyrids, or, an ode to april showers. I'll be quicker, this time -

Here were the lines I just about dissolved on, or those I smiled broadly over (I'll leave you to figure out which were which):

it is a day that you wear barefoot, a day that hangs from
your shoulders as a sundress.

and let the day unknot
the alfalfa wheatheads, let the evening shadows droop over us

small comets skipped off our atmosphere like flat rocks across
ponds until they spill into fractal thimbles of light that slip down
the neck of the sky like a warm pearl necklace.

in the amber
of the moment with you beside me, talking about the celestials, our
hands close together, the pulseless poppies firey and alarmed,

I can only hear the sound of the meteors rattling off the troposphere
of the earth, and the stars being knitted together, embroidered
into constellations, with the applique of finger-tracing between them.

Voila, les images qui ne voulaient pas s'integrer bien avec les autres images:

tobacco plugs from the mouths of old men

old
pieces of furniture covered by bedsheets in an abandoned house.

your nostrils flaring, the systole and diastole of your heartbeat.

The first two give an otherwise beautiful poem a slightly macabre overtone, and the last is just plain bizarre - although I love the words 'systole and diastole'.

And I felt the church-oriented imagery seems to have been a recurring theme in the majority of your poems - not necessarily a bad thing, but it would have been nice to have had a break from it ever so often; and I didn't feel it added anything wondrous to the poem in any case.

I liked how you 'knitted' the theme of knitting in nicely, especially in the last few lines, and I can also see that 'old age' was quite a recurrent theme as well - but I felt it was not a freeflowing image, running homogeneously in the middle of the painted picture (sorry, just had chem...) - some tightening required, here and there, maybe?

The beginning was stunning, but the ending remarkably subdued...just something to think about in the future, I guess. Overall, it was delicious to read and had some poignant and powerful imagery that I am finding hard to put out of my head...

Based on paintings by John Waterhouse.

--

april 22

waterhouse

I - boreas

hot august clouds darken like bruised market fruit,
and the low plains slump, shantytowns of lidded blossoms
surfacing in the tallgrass – the wind tosses its head and
releases the voices it has captured, like a mason jar of fireflies once they
have lost their light, and runs close to the ground, stirring
the pondwater, pushing the houseboat clouds along, parting
the grass like a mother searching for nits in her child's hair.

she huddles, caught in the windstorm, her shawl a sail around
her shoulders, each whiskered dandelion letting its seedlings go,
until an eighth egyptian plague of spinning parachutes infests
the air. she smiles for a moment, and closes her eyes, and lets
a part of herself go as the dandelions do, a kiss blown from a palm,
the tulips ferrying through the day-dark river of wheatgrass like gondoliers,
as the day sinks inch by inch – venice on a summer afternoon.

she watches her old self tumble across the low plains and
the sunlight chases after it like a lost hat and she sorrows that more
of her couldn't be carried away
in the wind.

II – archipelagos

glaciers of oleander,
and we move among mother's garden of blossoms, each flower holding a particular
meaning, a specific intention. she often told us that a flower
was more expressive than a kiss or a touch, that beneath its
slender riot of pistils and stamen, beneath its sunpassed
fan of petals, arranged as intimately as stanzas of love poetry,
there was a promise, that what she was growing was a gardenful
of covenants.

we pick the flowers that will rest atop her coffin carefully, lilies
of the field folded like the gloved hands of ladies at tea, an emergency room
of the reddest roses, and her favorite – night-blooming cereus,
who only reveals herself in the dark, when no one is watching
the petals undressed in solemn ceremony, and in the light:
quiet and clenched and waiting for a chance to unfold.

we decide on wildflowers,
from the adjacent field, that giggle
girlishly, that touch at each other as
incessantly as lovers.

april 23

i hid in the grapevines, or, kerouacking

boles of cotton in their milkchinned litters
twitch by as we drive down the interstate in your rattly
chevy truck, beneath whose hood is a hope chest of oily
pistons kicking like knees to a tendon hammer.
I have just woken up, and I have that mid-day nap taste
in my mouth – the taste of dreams that never had a chance
to escape, but went stale on the tongue. you are listening to
dylan on the radio, and you have the window rolled down, and your sleeves
rolled up, and the freeway hums beneath us, like sea-noise from
babel shells.

you tell me that we might drive forever, or until the road ends, but
I'm fairly certain that the road will never end, that it is all one webbed
unpumped circulatory system – I keep quiet and let you have your romance
and turn up the radio, so that the guitar comes through on strings of plucked stories.
we pass mile after mile of orchards and fields, great ribbed irrigation
machines, a bazaar roadside california poppies, saved for the latest
part of summer, like the precious china set reserved for the choisest
dinner company. the sun deepens, spilling its little, untouched wildfires over
the distant mountain range, and it smells of manure and exhaust outside.
I wonder if these agricultural doldrums will ever end – a thought
I will regret in retrospect once we reach los angeles.

after an oil spill of purple field blossoms, we reach the mountains
on the other side, rising all at once, like a church choir. we stop at the next
town – the evening summerbirds are out, the ones that remind me of home,
the ones that must remind everyone of home, and the smell of fresh cut grass
and sweating lilacs, that pant in the house-shade. an old man sits on the front porch
of the five and dime that looks about to be as old as him, and I figure
that he's been sitting their since he was a child, in that weeping wickerchair –
you buy a bag of snap peas; they split open like bodices. we keep
driving, and it feels good.

california bends in the fields behind us, the road
back-broken
and migrant.

I really enjoyed this. I was a bit daunted by the long lines and stanzas but that's just because I generally sometimes feel daunted by long poetry.

I really loved;

"I have just woken up, and I have that mid-day nap taste
in my mouth – the taste of dreams that never had a chance
to escape, but went stale on the tongue. you are listening to
dylan on the radio, and you have the window rolled down, and your sleeves
rolled up, and the freeway hums beneath us, like sea-noise from
babel shells."
and might make that the beginning instead.

I also loved;
"you tell me that we might drive forever, or until the road ends, but
I'm fairly certain that the road will never end, that it is all one webbed
unpumped circulatory system – I keep quiet and let you have your romance
and turn up the radio, so that the guitar comes through on strings of plucked stories"

"an oil spill of purple field blossoms",

and
"sweating lilacs, that pant in the house-shade". and

"in that weeping wickerchair –
you buy a bag of snap peas".

" they split open like bodices." is either madness or brilliance, but I can't decide.

I think "we keep
driving, and it feels good."
is a bit dull.

The ending works nicely.

Lucky (post) number 250, this . YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS, RIGHT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem, now for the pretty poetry:

Is it just me, or are we writing on a similar wavelength? I'm sure I remember something about a drive...I don't know, I'm dog-tired. So, I enjoyed it, but it was a tad overwhelming again. I felt like the words were spilling out of my mind, dancing around my subconscious. And the prettiest lines were, as Jas said, the ones that were the simplest, the ones that didn't look as though they were trying too hard.

I have just woken up, and I have that mid-day nap taste
in my mouth – the taste of dreams that never had a chance
to escape, but went stale on the tongue. you are listening to
dylan on the radio, and you have the window rolled down, and your sleeves
rolled up, and the freeway hums beneath us

So...this was charming, and you know why? Because it's not overly complicated and blown up with fantastical words and really-thought-out word combinations - a sweet and simple metaphor for the taste of dreams, a note on the music, and the general atmosphere is relaxed, lazy, and yells of freedom. I liked that.

like sea-noise from
babel shells.

This bit ruined it for me, ever so slightly. You'd just given me such a marvellous image on a platter, with minimal crazy and exotic spicing, and this 'flavour' travelled right over my head.

you tell me that we might drive forever, or until the road ends, but
I'm fairly certain that the road will never end, that it is all one webbed

Again, I like this. I see a bit more of the character here, and, best of all, the character's voice is quite evident. And the character is interesting and someone I can like, or identify with. Always a good thing.

unpumped circulatory system

Ouch. That killed the first couple of lines for me. Too overwritten.

I keep quiet and let you have your romance
and turn up the radio, so that the guitar comes through on strings of plucked stories.
we pass mile after mile of orchards and fields, great ribbed irrigation
machines, a bazaar roadside california poppies, saved for the latest
part of summer

Beautiful - not too literal, not too figurative - 'just right'. It creates images without you having to say them in complicated ways, which is the sweetest thing. Is there meant to be a comma after 'bazaar' - or the word 'of' in there?

like the precious china set reserved for the choisest
dinner company. the sun deepens, spilling its little, untouched wildfires over
the distant mountain range, and it smells of manure and exhaust outside.
I wonder if these agricultural doldrums will ever end – a thought
I will regret in retrospect once we reach los angeles.

It works - to an extent. But I wasn't too keen on it all the same. The 'like a precious china set' bit wasn't really all that required. I enjoyed 'sun deepesn spilling its little, untouched wildfires over the distant mountain range' but I thought you killed it with the 'smells of manure and exhaust'. I mean, I like the vividness of description, and if that's the smell you want to convey, go ahead and do it - but please, not after you've just dangled a tasty morsel of words and images in front of us. 'Agricultural doldrums' - another ouch. And the last line is mysterious and interesting, but could definitely be cleaner.

after an oil spill of purple field blossoms, we reach the mountains
on the other side, rising all at once, like a church choir.

Oh...I'm feeling too nostalgic at this. 'Oil spill of purple field blossoms' - how inventive! But 'church choir' seemed an unecessary simile. The image is beautiful and wild enough as it is, without unecessary clamping down.

the evening summerbirds are out, the ones that remind me of home,
the ones that must remind everyone of home, and the smell of fresh cut grass
and sweating lilacs, that pant in the house-shade. an old man sits on the front porch
of the five and dime that looks about to be as old as him, and I figure
that he's been sitting their since he was a child, in that weeping wickerchair –
you buy a bag of snap peas; they split open like bodices. we keep

All of it was a WIN, except the repetition: 'the ones that must remind everyone of home,' a tad cliche, maybe?

Like Jas, I was iffy about 'it feels good.' On the one hand, it makes a nice statement - a bit of voice. On the other, you really don't need to spell it out for us.

The ending could be improved, jazzed up a bit more, I think, but it's pleasing enough as it is. And I, um, actually did not understand the title - what did it signify? (Come on, just answer this; I'm too tired to think...).

Overall, I think I had a love-dislike mildly relationship going on with the poem. There were some brilliant lines and...not so good ones. But, all I've got to say is: five more days to go!!! (- in my timezone, ahem).

april 24

fishers of men

islands emerging from the syllabled waves
like knuckles, and the sail hanging limp and slack,
like the milkless breasts of an aging women. you show
me how to tie the knots in a fishing net, crocheting,
and old virile stitchery that you pass down to me here
after generations of fishermen, their fingers rough and thick
and thimbleless and smelling of tar.

it is just barely dawn – poinsettia redness in the east,
clouds incubating and curling like foetuses felt kicking beneath
a mother's belly. the seagulls cusp and hinge, crying a song
that I will never forget, a song that will always remind me of dawn
and the sea shifting and breathing beneath a fishing boat,
and you sitting at the bow of the boat, thin-faced, shirtless
tribal in the dawn, warpaint of light, your face pushing forward
eyes closed, smelling the rubbed saltsmell of the spray – sea baron.

wash of bullwhip kelp, the pods like cowbells, and the day is already
hot, even before the sun has fully emerged. in the west, I can still
see the faintest uncapped vigils of stars, small and tinkling
like servant's bells, their sister constellations scrubbed from the sky.
you tell me that this is the best time to fish, just before morning,
just as the world wakes, and the fish are caught unaware.
the boat creaks and recites its old nails like a strange beatnik
poem, the wood fingersnapping. you stand
and cast a net

into the morning, the fish flashing out
like alley knives.