Yellow

And another great YWS controversy thus died.

Ah, okay. Sorry for the confusion. Seems as if I should be the one paying more attention. xD

Elinor, this is a continuous poetry thread. No lock.

-Kylan

Elinor Brynn wrote:

MegaLizardLord wrote:Very interesting... I liked it a lot! I don't have much to say... but I do hope you write a lot.

Just so you know, this poem is about 4 months old...should probably check the dates before you post.

Shall a mod lock this?

MegaLizardLord wrote:Very interesting... I liked it a lot! I don't have much to say... but I do hope you write a lot.

Very interesting... I liked it a lot! I don't have much to say... but I do hope you write a lot.

cadaver

we cut him open, slowly, and knowing what's inside,
like an electric bill. the squelched, strange fruit of the body,
cables and nodes, the heart sweating and shying away, like
a deveiled bride, petals of flesh, great rinds of tissue and little
pecks of blood, dimpling the basin beneath the dissecting table –
a distilling love potion.

cutting out his vital organs one by one, we hold them up to the lamp,
each warmed by a petticoat of congealed fat, yellow, greasy, the cast-off
honey of the body. bagpipe lungs, split, wheezing, containing the man's
final words as he died in a prison cell at an easel where he was painting
a picture of his first wife in a sailboat – O Mathilde! body-bagged,
he pupates here, emerging, his fingernails still laced with
orange and blue oil paints.

lamped eyes, palest skin, we place the studied organs on a tray, squirming
and uncovered, like children abandoned on a porchstep orphanage. his tongue
sits heavy in his mouth, fat informant, and as we press on his lungs, his heart,
he discusses the meaning of life to us, under his bloodlit breath, about life and
painting pictures of people on the seashore. the light from the window
comes in very delicately, fluting, like fetal gills and I reference
the medical diagrams on the wall of people in tetnus positions, skin shed,
the clippings and wiring of their veins, the drought of bones
in their habitual, tell-tale positions.

the man's name is on a tag attached to his big toe – we dissect him
to become more familiar with the human body, like adolescent lovers,
feeling, closing our eyes, breathing the smell and very clumsy. the
hole in his chest is disturbed, clotted, the eye of jupiter's storm
and we place his heart, kidneys, brain in neat, labeled formaldehyde jars,
where they float and keel, like thoughts kept to
oneself.

--

cidering

and when she would return many years later, she would first note
the apple tree in the front yard, bearing its little, yellow offerings,
with as many wormholes as a universe. on summer afternoons, when
the cherry blossoms shuddered and menstruated onto the dirt road
with its carriage wheel ruts, the air would smell like cider, made
from apples picked from the backyard in large, hooped picking baskets.
picked on ladders, ones with loose screws and bolts and soft,
spongy wood that we feared might collapse under us at anytime,
because they had been around since grandpa picked apples as a child
here.

and in the kitchen, we would scalp the apples like indian braves
and boil them and squeeze them and within fifteen minutes the room
was filled with applesteam, plundered cores, grandma's loose hair
sticking to her forehead, and the skins lying in yellow slugtrails along
the counter. she and her brother would sneak the apples from the table
and eat until they had the runs, and their bellies bloated. the skinned apples
on the table awaited their fate in the pot of boiling water, pale
and feigning sickness, like hypochondriacs.

and at dusk, when the sun melts against the horizon like a pressed seal,
we take cups of warm applejuice and dishes of applesauce and eat on the porch,
our skins and hair and clothes smelling like apples. the unopened poppies
along the house swaying and full, like unburped babies and the little
purple snapdragons in the lawn acting out a flourishing, tragic
play within a play.

the cider sits in her belly, even now, as she looks at the house in disrepair,
the cats curling in and out of the open doorways and the finches perched
on the windowless windowsills, tiny and retreating, like snail eyes.

--

to the flowerbeds

the black men sit in wickerchairs outside the mercantile with their hands
folded over their latesummer stomachs, watching the day-moths
come out into the open, startled, like confessions to a priest, and
greasebellied automobiles with scolding radiators gloating by. they
sit until it grows dark and coons of shadows come slinking from under
the houses and behind the rainbarrels, small at first, but growing larger,
like russian nesting dolls. he would sit among them,
the fireflies hotwiring the night, the padlocks of summer blossoms
in their keeps and catches, letting out their swathes of pollen, yellow
and dazed as peace-smoke from an indian pipe.

he had the most wonderful well-bottom voice. a voice that you could
drop a stone down wait for minutes until the rock made contact with
his heart, his tubed, bull-heart. he smelled of turned earth and he called
me child and sang me songs only when it was just the two of us because
his songs were very reverent and very sacred and not to be shared with just anyone,
slow gospel songs
about the land of canaan and coming home.

and in the night, we would sometimes sit out on the porch, because
the humidity would make sleep impossible, and the toadstools came up silently
and hollowly, like bones mending, and the gutterball moon stared
down, nitpicked by her stars, childless, and viewing all the children
enviously. Job, the bluetick hound, would pant and sprawl out beside us and
mamma's white carnations turned toward us, seeming to repeat our words
in the waxy dark
like lipreaders.

he would smile at me, his eyelids pulling apart like
cottonboles, crinkling, revealing their whites and as our shirts stuck
to our collarbones, and our voices quiet and very soft, like
peach-plush, he would sing me a song. and for a moment I would be
walking between trees, barefoot in the dead night, holding everything
I owned on my head, watching as the universe laid out a map for us
to follow, to follow to the land of canaan,

like bees dancing the route to the flowerbeds.

galatea

your lips have become rough from brushing the moonspilt ivory
of her skin, of her cold and queenly skin, her golem shiver, her
hands raised at the wrists slightly and cupped, as if they held
the birdlings of your soul. you keep her in the garden, in the courtyard
under the promenade, and at night the shelled stars cling to
the shudder and the breezeless folds of her summer gown,
like the tears of newborns. the piglet hyacinths
squeal in their clutches at her feet and the red, damask blossoms
are her indian braves, streaked with warpaint
and pollen.

and in the coldest of december midnights, you coax and prod and
thaw her skin with your hands and pray and sleep at her feet, but she
remains a creation of man, soulless collaboration of chisel and hammer
and sanded bellies of rock. she rises white and luminous in your
dreams, sick fever, pale ministress at your bedside, nurse with a cold hand,
finding the couplet your pulse, the red petal of your pulse –
the ivy greens and rots like gangrene and the nightingales on the treelimbs
pass a single match of song between them.

venus, venus
jealous venus with your glotted love potions and
your finger held up to your lips, your untried, un-
touched lips. i don't think i can stand this much
longer, i don't think i can rot
much further.

you go to bed, to your real bed. the blossoms at her feet raise their
sunless heads, quiet and nun-souled. you touch your lips, and she shivers,
shivers in the milklight.

on visiting mrs. perrine at the three fountains assisted living community

it is not the smell of unwashed bodies and urine in these halls – it is the smell
of death. it it the smell that glistens on the late roses at our kitchen table,
the smell that old men and old women wear on the undersides of
their pale wrists, the smell of a beach on a morning when the fog
undresses the driftwood and the rotting kelp sprawls in dreadlocks and cozies.
they stare at us from inside their rooms, wearing knit caps, socks, their
gowns folded like classroom notes and barely covering their bodies,
with their dairies of wrinkles and callouses and bolts of skin
hanging from dusty prairie bones.

we come to visit you, even though you aren't related to us, because mother
feels sorry for elderly people without family. you read old, largeprint westerns
and the tv is always on, tuned to baseball, and there is a bracket of daisies
left over from weeks ago on your bedside table, loosing their petals
like memories, yellowing and snoozing, like old men in the sun.
you tell us that you have always loved baseball and that your father would
listen to the world series on a transistor radio in the barn with you
and work on his hobby cars, in the hay.

you mumble under your breath for the most part, and you avoid eye contact.
you are confused as I am about us being here. flat face, feet swollen, madame
elephante in a wheelchair. we replace your flowers once a week, every monday,
the daisies moving in a slow softshoe. sometimes, you are tired and you
ask that we don't come to see you the next week. sometimes, you ask for mother
to read to you from some of your westerns, and you fall asleep.

on our last day together, mother
wheels you out into the courtyard where it is spring
and the clouds move by daintily, like sidesaddle riders. we
don't talk much, except that you tell us that your son is
coming from back east to make preparations for a funeral
because you reckon it's about time.

the birds in the skinny trees shuffle blackly, and you cough
unconvincingly.

Hey Kylan!

Behind the waterfall,

I'm not exactly sure where to start on this one. I like it for the imagery you're using, but I kind of think that you're a little blase with it here. The first stanza's okay, but in the second stanza:

behind the waterfall, the world is a blue cowl, dark bell of spray
and we can read the names of past lovers, initials etched into the sandstone

indelible and blue, we hold hands in this blue, pentacled womb,

we emerge from behind
the waterfall and stalk along the ridge,

where the flower are puckered
like sour mouths.

skinny wolf

the sky withers
in the early morning, halfmoon gourded in the sky,
dipping forward like a priest in prayer. the stars
shiver in their sockets and brackets – they are fading fast,
as the morning light brews behind the cauldron of the horizon,
wasting away and fading, they are little pining lovers, but immovable
in the winter sky, cast in their diorama of spin and curtsey,
milling constellations.

and we walk through the snow, though it is still dark, our breath
smithed by the moon, rising like stringless kites. we track the wolves
and the deer, their prints fresh and cupping shadows. they are close.
so close, we can smell the hot fearful blood of the deer, and see
the thin-ribbed shapes of the wolves between the trees. we
hold our breath.

dunce caps of snow, white and coned, fallen from the tired, wavering
bows of the pinetrees, trees that rise, stoic and resigned, bearing
their white, trundling burdens like wet nurses cradling
someone else's baby. the snow drops in nearly silent thumps,
followed by thin showers of crystal. the icicles drip,
like runny noses.

and we see them in the clearing, the wolves harrying the deer,
gray, imminent shapes – they have always been coming.
and the deer pacing, cornered, wheeling, eyes rolling back,
until the white shoals of their terror,
gleam dead in the moonlight.

your nose is red and your hands are retracted into your sleeves,
the leafless trees twine their hands skyward above us
and the moon is a robbed cradle. the deer escape, scattering
through the trees, nudging the trunks and the blank, white
humps come coughing down.

the wolves are skinny this winter,
regarding us
in the snow.

a/n: somewhat unfinished

dickon

1. foxglove

and from the cottage i can see the manor lights, yellow and lidded
like cat's eyes, and the great lips of ivy climbing the walls, rising like
falsetto voices. the wind scrapes the moorlands and the statues in the courtyard
stand tearless, their handcarved wings sloping, heavy in flight, their eyes
searching, searching.

white horse on the tableland, unsaddled, black muzzle, snuffling lips,
we ride home together, and i can feel every strand of muscle and bone
working under her skin, like fingerpicked strings, strum, chords. she smells of woodchips
and leftover dew. we ride through the last, diminished flowers of spring,
selfish in their drawn up petals, shying away like turncoats
the blackberry vines atrophy, the dark berries peering
under the leaves like undercover
agents.

2. the aunt's key

and in the garden, where the hunchbacked boy slumps, wooden feet, stringless
puppet, we work among the blossoms, and the hairy-toed bulbs, the bees
perusing the petals like pages. we look at each other, she and I, as the flowers
split open like atoms. the robins among us, plucking the wormfolk
and the rosebuds are just beginning to show, pink as noses
snuffling from a cold.

our hands in the dirt – the cool black dirt, overturned. in the wheelchair, his head
is a blonde lantern and he holds the seeds in his hand – tokens of creation.
the seedlings grovel, and we see an archipelago of blue sky in the bodiless
nautilus of clouds.

she holds my hand. the animals
are silent.

his legs twitch and he
plants a seed.

Helpful McHelpfulpants wrote:

slippery roots, wood spongy and pelted with moss, teaparty

I misread pelted the first time as the verb rather than the adjective, which led, let me tell you, to quite an odd mental picture. Maybe 'furred', the less unusual choice? Or 'with its pelt of moss'? I dunno.

of wildflowers on the ridge, wrinkled like noses and the little
choir of mistdroplets.

This, I love.

waterfall draped down, like hair tucked behind an ear,
and the forest deepens.

I want just a little more information -- 'and behind it the forest deepens', or some other more explicit connection.

you walk the backs of the logs, arms spread, teetering,
hands ruddering.

Again: <3

behind the waterfall, the world is a blue cowl, dark bell of spray

Never seen a blue waterfall. White, yes. Red, on one memorable occasion. The light refracted through it is blue, often. But the fall itself?

and we can read the names of past lovers, initials etched into the sandstone
the crude, empty hearts, fashioned like unearthed artifacts
from primitive times. your hair plastered to your forehead
and your earlobes honored with the tiniest globes of water –
this place smells of damp words, which cling to the walls
like nurslings.

<-- my awe.

'the tiniest globes' seems a little unfinished, somehow. 'Tiniest possible'?

lampshade, we are kept, we are promised
indelible and blue, we hold hands in this blue, pentacled womb,
our clothes sticking to our skin like postage stamps, your fingers
long and creeping, like wasps stricken with cold. the sound
is defeaning, yet beneath it all, I can hear
you breathe.

Again: You want 'deafening', though, not 'defeaning'.

and night falls – it always falls, the cooling sun dislodged, like a pulled tooth,
and the branch-tips lose their filaments. we emerge from behind
the waterfall and stalk along the ridge, where the flower are puckered
like sour mouths. gossip and smalltalk in the trees and the downy owls,
cast their eyes about, unknowing, yellow

systole of the night, filling up
blue chords, you wink in and out –
an indecisive, perishing
flame.

Yeah, I ran out of advice to give a while ago.

You are as amazing as ever, and more.

um its too long i think, it could've ended at, (please input text here) how does this work?
what the heck?
well any way i think the poem was pretty good.

well coming from me that means a lot.

you need to make some more work, cause that is good writing...poetry.
sorry I'm not good at all this stuff.

Hi Kylan,

Kylan wrote:yellow djinnis of smog rising from the spot, isolating the sun
like a variable

– red, lensed light, we squint our eyes and watch
the hills burn, sails of smoke pushed by southwesterlies,

mothervein of fire sketching the troughs and laps of land
and the banshee trees
crowned like heirs apparent.

we sit in the car, all three of us, for the afternoon watching the fire

and the dry, whittling stalks of tallgrass bow like debtors,
their heavy, dreary heads, holding onto the the indian summer, shuffling.
we speculate that it might
have been arson.

the dogeared summer wilts like a dying hand and little
twisters appear, the first leaves of autumn stirred and the crickets
sawing their odes, their grassborn verses. the fire moves, up and over,
bellied like a serpent, belching, and the ash starts falling, early snow
in our eyelashes, in dad's hair,
nestled, whispery
like secret kisses.

the firebombers drop their red guts over the houses and the fire, like
wounded birds, mulling over the hills. the helicopters and airplanes, carrion
over a dying landscape, the gray back, exposed and prickled with trees
bent as old nails, rough stubble. the red, tormented glow from within
the stomach of the smoke, kicking, pulsing, unborn and dad whistles
low

and lights a cigarette, blue lip of flame, twirling curls of smoke.

my nostrils burn.

slippery roots, wood spongy and pelted with moss, teaparty

of wildflowers on the ridge, wrinkled like noses and the little
choir of mistdroplets.

waterfall draped down, like hair tucked behind an ear,
and the forest deepens.

you walk the backs of the logs, arms spread, teetering,
hands ruddering.

behind the waterfall, the world is a blue cowl, dark bell of spray

and we can read the names of past lovers, initials etched into the sandstone
the crude, empty hearts, fashioned like unearthed artifacts
from primitive times. your hair plastered to your forehead
and your earlobes honored with the tiniest globes of water –
this place smells of damp words, which cling to the walls
like nurslings.

lampshade, we are kept, we are promised
indelible and blue, we hold hands in this blue, pentacled womb,
our clothes sticking to our skin like postage stamps, your fingers
long and creeping, like wasps stricken with cold. the sound
is defeaning, yet beneath it all, I can hear
you breathe.

and night falls – it always falls, the cooling sun dislodged, like a pulled tooth,
and the branch-tips lose their filaments. we emerge from behind
the waterfall and stalk along the ridge, where the flower are puckered
like sour mouths. gossip and smalltalk in the trees and the downy owls,
cast their eyes about, unknowing, yellow

systole of the night, filling up
blue chords, you wink in and out –
an indecisive, perishing
flame.

Kylan,

(I'm so rusty at reviewing; please bear with me.)

Hart

I can't review this one. I've tried a few times, but the words for this just don't come. It's not necessarily my favorite of your poems, but I do have an immense appreciation for it.

I think it has something to do with what I mentioned in your earliest Yellow poems. Something in the familiarity of it, the easiness to relate to, and how vividly you paint a picture. It's in these poems that your talent for underlying messages shines most, Kylan.


button-nosed

I like this one a lot; it's rather cute, how you emphasized the boring-ness of the house and contrasted that with the energetic personality of the girl. I'd say that it'd be worth it to watch the 'drifiting-description' in these sort of poems, because in a way, it detracts from the focus when you wander, if you know what I mean? Some of the topics you choose are more than excellent for this, but others kind of need to be a little more close-knit.

By this, I mean that it's a little hard to grasp. The obvious part of this in the words is easy, but the under story is a little hard to find. I know it's there, but some of the extra description kind of takes away from it, when the words could be spent on a little highlighting, y'know?


-

dad's toolshed

I think you've got an incredible abundance of images and feeling here, but I think you're lacking a story. The stanzas are all there, and I know that there's room for just descriprion, but I feel that you can add to this. It feels a little empty, but it's the perfect atmosphere for an interesting happening.

It's good-- I like all of the description about the smaller things. It's a great illustration of how there's more to the shed than what it's made to serve for, but it's lacking the main focus. To me, the tools seem a bit idle, and maybe a bit of highlighting on a typical day, or what an incident might occur like here would be good? It's excellent ground for building on, Kylan, and you should elaborate on this.


-


firewatching

I absolutely adore this poem. In excellence, it falls into the category with apostasy and cantelope and the others (which, by the way, Behind the Waterfall joins them, too). It's strangely beautiful in it's description-- the delicateness of the ash description, the dying summer. I love the way you've managed to make this sound peaceful and laid back, whereas I would've imagined it a lot more... angry. Really enjoyed this one, Kylan.


- -

(I'll be back to do Behind the Waterfall)

June

behind the waterfall

slippery roots, wood spongy and pelted with moss, teaparty
of wildflowers on the ridge, wrinkled like noses and the little
choir of mistdroplets. waterfall draped down, like hair tucked behind an ear,
and the forest deepens. you walk the backs of the logs, arms spread, teetering,
hands ruddering.

behind the waterfall, the world is a blue cowl, dark bell of spray
and we can read the names of past lovers, initials etched into the sandstone
the crude, empty hearts, fashioned like unearthed artifacts
from primitive times. your hair plastered to your forehead
and your earlobes honored with the tiniest globes of water –
this place smells of damp words, which cling to the walls
like nurslings.

lampshade, we are kept, we are promised
indelible and blue, we hold hands in this blue, pentacled womb,
our clothes sticking to our skin like postage stamps, your fingers
long and creeping, like wasps stricken with cold. the sound
is defeaning, yet beneath it all, I can hear
you breathe.

and night falls – it always falls, the cooling sun dislodged, like a pulled tooth,
and the branch-tips lose their filaments. we emerge from behind
the waterfall and stalk along the ridge, where the flower are puckered
like sour mouths. gossip and smalltalk in the trees and the downy owls,
cast their eyes about, unknowing, yellow

systole of the night, filling up
blue chords, you wink in and out –
an indecisive, perishing
flame.

A/N: Haven't posted in this for a while, though I've been writing a ton of poetry. Here are a couple new poems.

dad's toolshed

the rats scramble under the pressboard floor, light-shy,
avoiding the green marbles of poison – fat, graceless bandits,
their young squirming and pink, like bait. and in the night, the elbowed
lamp in the corner bows its head and kneels, like a widow at a gravestone.
on the workbench are sections of plastic pipe, prehistoric, jointless bones, ossified
by dirt, along with a trailmix
of screws and nails and bolts, rusted, swiveling, they bead
along their orbits when the bench is nudged.

the cobwebs hang in their longfaced disguises, abandoned,
they are fly-less, listless as daydreams in the rafters. the toolchest
sits, belching its tools, old inheritances – the hammer that's been in the family
for three generations, the monkey wrench tightening its mouth
into a sneer, and the old handsaw that hasn't been used since
we got the chainsaw.

and the harvester spiders scope on their spindles, tiny droplets of body,
they are lofty stiltwalkers, as we rummage around the shelves for
a paintbrush, old cans of paint sitting with their lids cracked open,
rabid with dried paint. dad's bicycles hang on hooks
like condemned men, snared. there is an old radio
on the windowsill, antennae snapped like a stem.

dustmotes swarm in the imposed light and the chickens stir in the coop
next to the shed, dreamless. the stars are huddled, the constellations vague
as riddles, and we watch the bats flutter flustered,
black oragami into the stomach
of the night.

firewatching

yellow djinnis of smog rising from the spot, isolating the sun
like a variable – red, lensed light, we squint our eyes and watch
the hills burn, sails of smoke pushed by southwesterlies,
mothervein of fire sketching the troughs and laps of land
and the banshee trees
crowned like heirs apparent.

we sit in the car, all three of us, for the afternoon watching the fire
and the dry, whittling stalks of tallgrass bow like debtors,
their heavy, dreary heads, holding onto the the indian summer, shuffling.
we speculate that it might
have been arson.

the dogeared summer wilts like a dying hand and little
twisters appear, the first leaves of autumn stirred and the crickets
sawing their odes, their grassborn verses. the fire moves, up and over,
bellied like a serpent, belching, and the ash starts falling, early snow
in our eyelashes, in dad's hair,
nestled, whispery
like secret kisses.

the firebombers drop their red guts over the houses and the fire, like
wounded birds, mulling over the hills. the helicopters and airplanes, carrion
over a dying landscape, the gray back, exposed and prickled with trees
bent as old nails, rough stubble. the red, tormented glow from within
the stomach of the smoke, kicking, pulsing, unborn and dad whistles
low

and lights a cigarette, blue lip of flame, twirling curls of smoke.

my nostrils burn.

button-nosed

I see her everywhere now – under the slate-sloped piano
among the baby-footed pedals, laughing at me, her hands flying up
like startled birds. she is wrapping herself up in the dreary, velvet curtains,
that cough dust, deflated like starved stomachs, and she explores every room
in the house, as if each holds some undisclosed secret under
their floorboards, in their sunless closets, where dens of moths
escape like stolen kisses. the beds are neatly made, but
stink of old sweat and sex.

she is in the phonograph, the lazy twiddle of arm and record,
I can hear her voice in the scratchy chords and tones of the greased
crooners – she hums along, even though the songs are too old for her to
know. she stomps through the kitchen with her button-hooked shoes and
hand-made dress. her laugh follows her around the house
like a bride's train bearer. she is delicate, easily displaced –
she smells of grass and stolen spritzes of perfume.

her glass-faced dolls hang their heads, the cut flowers lag
like lazy eyes. cellar-breath rising through the floorboards –
she is so cold, wandering around the house, her laugh congealing
as she puts her nose to the windowglass and longs to be outside.
I want to let her out, but I can't follow her there, out where
the trees drop their leaves like ransom notes and the pale etiquette
of the songbirds and the low-hanging smoke from the burnbarrels
slinks like jazz.

wallpaper ghost, freed from the clipped borders of a photograph,
black and white, where the people squint, face brassed like bedposts.
she roams where I roam, a darling reflection. hazy left-over,
she is temporary as a button-nosed
mushroom.

Hart

green, unripe peaches bobbing like Adam's apples
above him as he leads us to his front porch, smiling
a crooked, sloping smile that cups over his false teeth,
his skin hanging off of his bones like windless sails and
his eyes still haunted by a blue tease. the underbelly
of the veranda sags like a sigh.

we sit on his couch and he talks about irrigation and longforgotten
agricultural techniques. he is a teepee of bones – I can almost
see right through him – paperman – as his arms lie by his side, fingers tamed
and deviating to the side, drowsy with arthitis. in the late sunday
light, his eyeglasses catch and grieve and wink

the clock down the hall ticks patiently, arms in rigid salute
to father time, and the hanging flowers
outside the window bow their purple heads,
like children reciting prayers. his wife sits by his side, tiny
whippersnapper, fresh-mouthed despite the frost
gnawing her bones down, scissorgrinding them down
and the tiredness that she wears around her shoulders, black shawl.
they work their jaws together, heads nodding like
docked ships.

the sunlight fails over the unborn peaches, stealthy and cat-creeping
as the pumps and pipes in the house knock behind the walls,
like babies kicking in the womb. their hair, white and perfect,
swept clean, his pants pulled up to his bellybutton as they
sinks into the couch before us, becoming nothing more than
figments, watched by their children,

who squat in their framed portraits
on the piano.

Kylankylankylan!!!

Breathtakingly well done! I can't say that this is awesome in the same way that apostasy and hospice are, but, this is definitely beyond fantastic. Not to say that this isn't excellent, but it's different; like, you could place apostasy and hospice against each other, because they seemed similar to me, but this is different. It's awesome, Kylan, and I honestly mean that-- I just can't decide if it ranks above apostasy or not. It's still within your range or style, but it feels different, in an entirely splendid way.

vowels which sink into the night like scuttled ships.

the moon hidden away
like an unfaithful wife, hidden in the black sleeves of the night

a night at britt gardens

and as the evening spins, a party dress of nebula and solar wind,
the violin bows sigh on their bed of strings, heaving up
like cricket legs, see-sawing. white gloved hands whittling
the composition down, shaping the music into delicate black
vowels which sink into the night like scuttled ships.

and the rust-bellied cellos curl their heads like fetuses,
ribbing out their mournful speculations and the bald platoon of horns –
bonneted, valves and plumbing of their hearts,
trickery of key and lip – flaunt like bell-headed dandies,
their heads tipping forward like doffed caps.

and the conductor, his hands shaping out the curves
of a beautiful woman. trouncing, jumping, white and skinny
as a captured pawn. tittering with the piccolos and clutching
the breasts of the timpani notes, his hands pantomime the music,
fluttering like wounded birds,
stringing it along, crocheting each note
dragging the eveningsounds by the tip of his baton.

and if I look long enough at the sky,
it appears to be rotating, the moon hidden away
like an unfaithful wife, hidden in the black sleeves of the night
the sky turns, turns, turns again, the lazy-eyed stars
regarding us sideways, white as lies. I can feel your head shake against me
whenever you yawn, rattling, heavy,

and I vaguely audit
the debacle of bow and reed, of horn and pedal
as the crickets slowly harmonize
and the night slowly ambles,
pocketing the sounds of the orchestra
for later,
for when nobody is awake

to keep it company.

hospice

cold, unpitying sun, dropping in through the windowpanes
sullen as a truant, cast-off and browsing.
the light is unwelcome company, revealing your face like
a well-kept secret, white and masked by a cup of
oxygen – you are suckling again, overlarge infant,
crooked in the lap of the bed, eyes pacing slowly
under your dream-rimmed eyelids, like sleepless tyrants.
with every breath, you expel another moment,
another muttered minute, and the
O2 tank plucks it up
sharply.

those daisies
aren't lasting long. their heads drooping
like idiots: squint-eyed, gandering from the lips of the vase.
their brown-touched petals fall in such abundance
when you breath, and so I keep replacing them, and you keep breathing.
they are nodding, weary heralds. dipping, the sunlight pushing among them
like a boatman.

your face, collared blue,
your eyes retreating like a snails, shellward
until they leave only catacombs, ghastly chambers.
you don't cry anymore – I do it for you,
and you turn your head away and your hand
grows stiff, scaffolded with an index of loose bones,
hollow windchimes that make the quietest, most delicate
promises.

you
are a facsimile
skin sticky and color-changing, depending on my mood –
amphibian. cold, light-winded priestess, I bring you
news of the outside world: the blossoms are bowing their heads,
a wake for autumn, and the trees carelessly
toss out their leaves like handmedowns
south-bent birds unzip the sky, but somehow
the new daisies are holding out,
but
only just
barely –

they
emancipate their petals,
weeping for the loss of your pretty hair
mourning for the white choir
of your bones under
the bedsheets.

Kylaaaaan!

Okay, I officially suck at reviewing. Wasn't it last week when I promised you a review on this? At any rate, it's my 850th (which means I ruin the perfect row of blue stars >.> for a red one. But, anyway!)


the night is full of snails

While I really did enjoy this poem, it felt like it droned on. It's really slow compared to some of your others-- which, in a way, is good, seeing as snails are terribly slow. But, I'm saying this to point out that it was a little icky; I mean, we kind of pondered on these gross objects an itty bit too long.

And I have a nitpick:

hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,

they are the only sound.

but
the children move among the deadheads, the redheads
of the sullen field, walking around the goosebumps
daring, daring, darkeyed and white-mouthed,
glaring

little bald boys, with two legs
they walk in the red field in the morning
the dirt stacked

minesweeping

what crops are these?
unwilling, slumbering goosebumps, appearing
along the red wrist of the road, exposed
precious rumps, packed dirt
what blossoms will come from these?
baby-headed lillies, tongues lapping up the milked light
centered with little, yellow-lipped stamens nodding like
feeble historians?

plowed in the night, the soil overturned like tipped boats,
and the morning wringing its hands
over the field of buried redheads. the mothers
look outside and purse their lips and shake their heads
and forbid their children to set foot in the
red field. circumventing the mounds and humps,
the springblossoms are cheerful booby-traps
and the bees nuzzle them
like nosy neighbors.

but
the children move among the deadheads, the redheads
of the sullen field, walking around the goosebumps
daring, daring, darkeyed and white-mouthed,
glaring

little bald boys, with two legs
they walk in the red field in the morning
the dirt stacked
like kinged checkers.
tread carefully –
their mothers' warnings are hidden under
the crops of this field, taking root, until a jury
of seedlings will crane their necks from the
red dirt

and cry to the little boys with two legs and all ten toes

for the love of god,
watch your
steps.

Hi Kylan,

Kylan wrote:the night is full of snails
tread carefully –
the night is full of snails
hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,
on the shoulders of the grassblades
small and emerging, like baby noses.
they survey the starless night
they are the only sound.

depositing their trails behind them, like nuptial veils,
kissing trudge, stomach-born, the moon slips down,
like a child sneaking out, barefoot among the trembling
foragers with their eyes extended batons, probing and
dark-spotted, like gas planets.

tongueless language, grouping together
captives on the porchsteps, dutiful, crawling like toes
they retract their gilled muscle under my touch,
gentle mouthing, gentle breathing
silent and cornered, they conduct their blind courtship
and in the morning, the leaves on the marigolds
will be leprous and ungrateful with holes

they sit on their fat stomachs like sultans,
stretching their necks, nocturnal siblings,
humble barges fording the dark expanse

I listen to them sigh,
dropping out of sight,
one by one.

the night is full of snails

tread carefully –
the night is full of snails
hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage,
on the shoulders of the grassblades
small and emerging, like baby noses.
they survey the starless night
they are the only sound.

depositing their trails behind them, like nuptial veils,
kissing trudge, stomach-born, the moon slips down,
like a child sneaking out, barefoot among the trembling
foragers with their eyes extended batons, probing and
dark-spotted.

tongueless language, grouping together
captives on the porchsteps, dutiful, crawling like toes
they retract their gilled muscle under my touch,
gentle mouthing, gentle breathing
silent and cornered, they conduct their blind courtship
and in the morning, the leaves on the marigolds
will be leprous and ungrateful with holes

they sit on their fat stomachs like sultans,
stretching their necks, nocturnal siblings,
humble barges fording the dark expanse

I listen to them sigh,
dropping out of sight,
one by one.

Hey Kylan!

I cooked up a decent review, and Mozilla thought it would be a good idea to discard it, so, I took a break and reviewed your other piece... And then I went to bed and came back the next morning...

Anyway!

Ghost stories is a beautiful poem. I especially like it because it has a "family" touch to it (and I am a total sucker for family related poetry. Don't ask.) Anyway, here!

dark staircase leading downwards – an esophagus –

the burning season

wildfire in bush canyon today
and the sky is doubtful with ash, fluttering
like flirting eyelashes. the heat gasps in and lays low over
the heavy-lapped valley, like a drowned body, and
trees stand bare-armed as preachers
while the sun lapses over the horizon,
pressured into an attitude of reverence – a bland face regarding
frizz-tipped heads of grass bearing judiciary wigs
of ash.

insects wheedle and haggle and we sit outside on the porch
because the airconditioning is broken. we sit stickyshirted
with our mouths hinged open like trapdoors and the smell of
wildfire smoke burning stifled trails through our nostrils.
purple-crowned thistles stage a coup on the leftover august blossoms,
which kneel before them like prisoners of war.
the absent wind dazes, the valley cups up.
we squint,

we
hold our breath.

and somewhere the firemen move through the carcasses of burnt trees.
above them, birdsounds incomprehensible and drawn out, like the syllables of some
foreign tongue. black tree-fingers frozen in positions of damnation and regret,
wheezing stomachwounds, the red jewelry of cooling embers
and the wildfire ever-retreating, ever-eating –
bonecrack under firemen boots, they
wipe their brows
and pray for rain.

in answer, a passive sun,
bestows urinary rays of half-light
through the belching haze
and remains unmoved.

ghost stories

dark staircase leading downwards – an esophagus –
and us on the edge, like a nightly prayer, with the moonlight
hemming our nightgowns blue and a draft cupping them up
like mostly-deaf ears. the night hitchhikes in with
the old moon, an unwanted houseguest, making itself comfortable and
the house is full of snores. they flutter around us, through the walls –
blind, slumbering moths, which pupate in the corners
and hang there like nocturnal,
mummied earrings.

we share a candleflame between us, bobbing eagerly like a girl with an untold secret.
our faces pale, stiff masks in the light, cobbled, our eyes dim nuclei
and the darkness crowds in around the light, timid and worrisome
like a spectator of a séance. we hold our breath
and eye each other as wax tears up,
and drips down the sullen, fleshless candle
like runaway pearls.

it begins with a blood pact, a pricking, gimp-eyed needle
from mother's sewingbox, our fingers offering up warm beads
of truth and promise, black in the yellow light.
trees scratch at our windows, like prisoners tallying the days, the days,
the days.

we

whisper.

and the dark staircase creaks and fidgets, divesting
periodic statements as we hide under the covers and suck our fingers
and tell each other ghost stories, grey-faced and godless in the dark as heathens.
the night is fluent in stars and goosebumps
and the candle betrays us with its scooping, tribal shadows
collecting around us like black, clerical buzzards(they
will not eat us,
if we do not sleep)

our eyes waver
and we watch the moon pantomime an odyssey
across the throat of a wintering sky.

Hi Kylan!

You only told me that Yellow has been updated once! You didn't tell me about seasickness. (And when I was scrolling, I somehow accidentally locked the thread... )

Anyway, let's see:

seasickness

I'm at war with myself on this: I like this, and I don't, and I can't tell which side I lean more towards.

Your images are beautiful, you've described the setting here, and now we can imagine ourselves on the sea and get the full picture, but, it feels empty. You have the picture, but there's no focus; there's almost no story in this, and I think it needs one, dear.

Until the fifth stanza, you're talking dominantly about setting, which, if we try hard enough, we can place it in a metaphorical sense, but then you start to tell a story, fragments of it, and by the end of the poem, I don't think you're finished.

We do get the hints of nostalgia and homesickness in it, but we need more. I don't mean a whole preachy description of why he wants to go home and whatnot, but a little more story behind this would do nicely.

It's a beautiful poem description-wise, and other than the fragmented feel of it, I really, really like it. I just think it needs to be "filled up" so that it can be fully appreciated.


apostasy among the tallgrass(aka, the type of poem that wins fangirl squeals)

Kylan, this poem is amazing. It's... more like you than seasickness is. Seasickness read with a slight forced tone, and this just flows perfectly.

It's perfect.

I mean, seriously, it's amazing. In seasickness, you described the setting, and the setting didn't cater much to a story, but here, every image is the story-- it's just beautiful. I mean, really, this poem is amazing.

Epic win. It's terrific, Kylan. Keep it up.

June

apostasy among the tallgrass

and in the fields where the forget-me-nots
climb sideways, pious and succinct
with bees hanging like earbobs from their blue heads,
the minister composes a sermon and the cicadas
and scrub-legged locusts murmur blasphemies –
apostasy among the tallgrass.

the sun slides along the sky like a gastropod – on it's stomach –
and the houseboat snails ferry across the porchsteps
as mother kneads bread in the kitchen, which expands like the holy spirit.
she tells me that the yeast is alive – a thousand tiny grains
dehydrated creatures, which cluster like the white
membranous conclaves of ant eggs I find under the stepping stones.

the self-important clouds decay at a half-life
the brush of the wind gentle and loveless
and the men standing in the doors of the church as father
talks parables and scripture – he has not had a baptism in seven months.
it has been a dry season.

we hide under the eaves, in the shade after church,
like numbers huddled under a division sign
and father locks himself in his study to read the bible and to pray
as he always has these past seven months, praying for a baptism.
the trees stand waterless and black in the sun,
their leaves curling like lips in disgust
pageantry of the field, choir of the tallgrass

the dry mountain oversee us
like barons

and father's prayers evaporate from his lips.

Hi Kylan,

Kylan wrote:seasickness

meiosis of the moon;
splintered on the hump-backs of the new tide –
tiny petals of white light
water-born, like capsizing paperboats.

salt skin
and a new coat of paint on the house every spring
calloused beaches and the fractal skeletons
of bleached driftwood, sunning like pigmentless reptiles.

seasickness

meiosis of the moon;
splintered on the hump-backs of the new tide –
tiny petals of white light
water-born, like capsizing paperboats.

salt skin
and a new coat of paint on the house every spring
calloused beaches and the fractal skeletons
of bleached driftwood, sunning like pigmentless reptiles.

stovetop tea pot:
warden's whistle, and the steam departing like a morning-warm dream.
cooling bloodoaths in the sky, red throat of the heiress sun.
old man with the net-scarred hands sits on the porch

as the fog clothes the beach
and the buoys nod and plunge, celibate under the unpainted basilicas
of the earlymorning sky. seagulls with their undisclosed grammar
scream of tragedies longforgotten and commonplace.

it has been nine years
dull sun hanging like a uvula and the veteran cliffs
stare seaward with him; he keeps the stories and the poetry
of the congested whales and the sloop sails sagging like tired bridemaids

and the stargazing – virgo and orion and spika, shore-bound shepherds,
and the fish slippery and cold as corpseflesh, gills fluting pleadingly.
he still washes the grains of salt and sand from his hair in the morning
and he can still smell the tar and the hemp in the valleys and crevasses of his hands.

he watches the ocean
as a man watches a woman undress, undo her precious hair
draping her podded bullwhips on the crescent shore
her nightsongs infecting his ears,

whispering of homesickness

Kylan--

sanddollar

Chevy spoke on the lack of feeling in this poem, and I somewhat agree with her. I think that it lacks a dominant image of emotion, like how you feel about this scene and whatnot, but, I absolutely love the fact that you painted a picture with these words.

To me, it feels like you've just given us the scene. You're not giving us ways to think of this, but, you're allowing us to see it for ourselves. We get the full image, a peaceful scene on the water, but you're not restricting us with your thoughts at all. It's really beautiful, and in that way, I feel that you are carrying a lot of emotion by allowing us to interpret and feel for it in our own way.

I also really enjoy how you subtly, subtly slipped the description of sand dollars in. Overall, I think this is an extremely wonderful poem, definitely of your best. But then again, everything in Yellow is of your best...


* * *


windmills along the columbia

Beautiful description of windmills here; you actually make them sound pretty.

against the blue, whispered horizon
alabaster and slender, like mothers dead in childbirth

you said that you could tell,
the strawberries this year
will be as big and good as blood clots.

I've only got time to review one more poem of yours now, Kylan, because this time it's 4:30 in the morning and I'm starting to feel dizzy.

windmills along the columbia

alabaster and slender, like mothers dead in childbirth

mean, sour valleys fold upon themselves
and anoint the spinning heads who
stretching their hands skyward in some kind of
old, empty plea for rain
trolling the wind, the wind,
the tampered breath and the lipless faces

gardening

hard, green tomatoes hang bald and pious
like the sick eyes of a dying man
I wait for them to ripen, to blush,
shy under the leaves which offer themselves, like royal hands,
just like I waited for you.

frill-headed carrots plugging the ground
and potatoes subterranean, slumbering, unready
like betrothed daughters in their mildewed sleep.
I sit among the hook-nosed peppers
and the radishes gather around me
red as waterless planets.

I think
I spy your eyes
among the cornstalks, tall and hipless
austere and shaking their tasseled papooses.
lined, precise, the stalks are ordered like
letters given in a spelling bee. they are hiding you up,
whispering, shhh-ing
librarians.

I remember you planting the strawberry plants
your papery, skittish hands patting down the earth
and your stray hair sun-blessed and white.
straw hat and the zeppelin clouds
you said that you could tell,
the strawberries this year
will be as big and good as blood clots.

it has been two weeks
and I wish that you'd stop playing this
tiresome game of hide-and-go-seek
among the garden plants
among the bald orbs and the
chandeliers of vegetables hanging from sagging arms
among the flowers bowing like footmen.

it is hard for me to keep up.

Kylan, my dearest, darling-est moonblossom. I'm so sorry I've neglected this thread, but just for you I'm going to stay up a little later [it's already 4am] and review a couple of these poems, and come back for the rest later.

morning over cold tea

our unspoken words hang in the air like papal smoke

or the stolen, horny glances, excited and staticky

a headhunter's shriveled prize.

dress spreading
around her like a pandemic.

pale face, moondusted with cosmetics and grace
-ful abalone lips, her eyes downcast, like shillings
in a wishing well.

anonymous in the foglight as secret admirers.

misplaced, he is a fine memory.

abandoned feathers and heavy, yoked whips
of kelp and

and anemone with wild tireless arms
waving, sucking, a puckered mouth,
green pallet caved in like toothless gums.
a fresh stomach – childless.

canning peaches

plush of a peach
like the abdomen of a honeybee
lisps under my fingertips
pitted oracle, I pick it and the stem snaps
and the whole morning stands still –
dewy-eyed, fractured.
the treelimb bobs up and down
like a curtsying maiden.

line them up on the cutting board, outside.
the hot mason jars shuttled around like transparent bishops
with their dislocated jaws, hungering skyward.
water on the boil and the peaches plopped in
one by one, where they float
an armada of stubbly, red faces
staring up. the water consumes them
like coughdrops.

transition:
a pilgrimage from on the boil to on the ice
they nod and swell and sweat among the shrinking cubes
like bankrupt men, and their skins loosen
like collars on a hot day,
so that when you take them out of the pot,
their fuzzy slips molt off, scalped.
yellow nakedness.

hot and slippery, you cut them with a knife
and they pry them open to reveal a
pit, twisted and brainy, rutted like an intelligence.
sticky lobotomy, a quieted patient.
two halves lie with red calderas and you sneak two whole peaches
away from the table and eat them and the juice
winds down your lips and chin and wrists and all the way down
your shirt and elbows.

butchered peaches in a mason jar,
you slide them into shelves (stomach
full of soft, digesting fruit)
and the tree outside in the yard is childless
as a barren woman.

A/N: Different from the last few. Feels like a reversion. But it's a potent feeling of mine, and I wanted to write something with feeling. This is a poem about not wanting change.

homeostasis

i remain undeveloped
regardless of your chemicals & your
red eye, staring & searching,
like a jealous wife.

you fold me, tampering.
quiet mechanisms, open doors, the slickheaded
screws & the thoughts removed like tonsils.
somehow, if i stay completely still,

unshuttered, closed up tight
your alterations make no difference.
i keep going & going
like an irrational number

repeatingrepeating, cycling
(if i stop & listen, then the careful
architecture described around me
will come undone, like a fancy hairdo)

i cannot grant you access, i cannot.
you are malignant, creeping,
i forget you, i lose you purposefully
& the memories, too

(the loyal evenings at the park
sitting on the playstructure & talking about
god & life, the night full of
unnamed stars & a starving moon

scooping the night like a pale gourd-dipper,
or the airplane & the bald, cheerless peanuts
lined up on the tray-table & your hand next to mine,
foreign & impossible as an implant

or the hot morning & the sun breasting the horizon,
rising like a baby's cry in the next room,
milkless & bored, & your unwashed hair
spread across the outofshape pillows)

i banish them. all of them –
stasis in the darkness
maintenance & consistency
i remain unchanged, unwilling.

and you fade like plush.

windmills along the columbia

single-footed
standing like white cranes
against the blue, whispered horizon
alabaster and slender, like mothers dead in childbirth
soundless against the bald forehead of the hills –
those otherwordly sentinels.

harvesting, sweeping
longsuffering godesses, spooling up the clouds
and the summertime
through their solitary fingers
like unkempt hair.

mean, sour valleys fold upon themselves
and anoint the spinning heads who
stretching their hands skyward in some kind of
old, empty plea for rain
trolling the wind, the wind,
the tampered breath and the lipless faces

they sprout from the scrubland
like strange, sunless flowers:

emigrants
displaced.

You have a beautiful way with words. A very conscious and observant writer and I enjoyed reading the poems that I did, particularly the first one. My only critique is to probe at the emotion hiding behind the imagery in your poetry. You're poetic, and your words are certainly capable of sustaining themselves throughout the entire poem. However, there seems to be a lack of...feeling throughout. As an example in this last poem:

"scribed in the sand's flat chest under
nebulas of blue starlight, descendants that
prick the skyline, like berrythorns.
and you talk to me about the sanddollars underfoo"

Perhaps this is a vague statement, but when "you talk to me about the sanddollars underfoo," as first person, how does the narrator react to the conversation? What is going through their conscious?

Just some thoughts! However, keep up the good work and I look forward to reading more from you.

sanddollar

fast, easy tidewaters
nudging up against the thighs of the dunes
and pulling away, a gray, fogsocked game of
hardtoget.

abandoned feathers and heavy, yoked whips
of kelp and beer bottles brown and one-eyed.
the musselbeaks on the rocks black
as plague sores.

the moon's envious leer,
a mouthful of stars, unnamed, like
stillborns. lazy, spreading starfish
adorn the rock surfaces

and anemone with wild tireless arms
waving, sucking, a puckered mouth,
green pallet caved in like toothless gums.
a fresh stomach – childless.

we walk along the sandbars
and watch the stifflegged seagulls
squat and squabble like fishwives.
the old charters of long departed men and women

scribed in the sand's flat chest under
nebulas of blue starlight, descendants that
prick the skyline, like berrythorns.
and you talk to me about the sanddollars underfoot:

pale, broken faces,
leftover coins from some ancient,
timeswallowed generation.

Hello.

While looking over this thread, I had an idea I thought I'd share.
It seems the more I read of your poetry, the more I realize they aren't poems at all. At least, not in the traditional sense. Collectively, they are more like a novel. An intensely personal, gripping novel in a never before seen dynamic.

Maybe you would consider building a collection, filling the spaces in between, and reintroducing the poems as a complete story... a memoir of sorts.

In any case,
your poetry is fabulous.
It never seems quite finished, but I suppose a writer is never done. Each new poem picks up where the last one left off.

Sensational work,
BABANUUK

Wonderful poetry.

Your writing has personality.

It is very abrupt and temporary, which is a good thing, but you might consider tempering it with something concrete, something the reader can hold on to throughout the entire piece.

Your writing is defined by your style, which is in my opinion the very best kind of writing. The challenge is to avoid losing your audience in the immediacy of the details and the images you are using.

These are very engaging, beautiful pieces, but they are a little overwhelming.
Don't lose your rapid, high-impact voice, just give your reader a platform to stand on while they absorb everything.

Babanuuk

Kylan! So, so, so sorry for leaving you in the middle of our conversation. My computer quit and I couldn't get it to work.

So! You get my 750th review, not that it'll say anything worth the review. It's just worth pointing out because it awards me my next star.

To start, I especially love how your two last poems are so similar, and so different. Really amazing touch there, Ky.

I especially like how this poem is built out of fragments. They appear to be full sentences with heavy description, but most of these aren't complete thoughts-- at first that stood out as odd to me, but in the end, when I finally saw the full picture, I found it very appreciative.


This

pale face, moondusted with cosmetics and grace
-ful abalone lips, her eyes downcast, like shillings

mourning over cold tea

the fingers snared around the teacup
like button-hooks and the girl sitting pink
and wilted on the capillaried wood, dress spreading
around her like a pandemic.

pale face, moondusted with cosmetics and grace
-ful abalone lips, her eyes downcast, like shillings
in a wishing well. the tea steam winds up –
contortionist, infiltrating like squid-ink.

the squat teapot and the sticks of incense
and the smell of dead fish and ocean.
outside the fishingboats slump and nod
anonymous in the foglight as secret admirers.

the seat across from her is empty and the tea
grows cold, like a loveless heart. he is not coming.
the dock falsely announces his approach a thousand times.
she folds her hand around the teacup

and listens to the sea mourn,
jealous, gray coral
and the taxed
sunlight.

misplaced, he is a fine memory.

Hi Kylan!


Kylan doesn't get worse, he only gets better?

In morning over cold tea, I think that the first and third stanzas are my favorite. They're so easy to relate to and understand, so well versed and overall just beautiful.

In the first stanza this

wide and humorless as winking eyes and

morning over cold tea

the morning is full of dead breath and tactless birdsong
blue teacups squat on the tablecloth,
wide and humorless as winking eyes and
you enter unannounced, frozen and stitch-lipped:
a headhunter's shriveled prize.

you sip your tea and we split down the middle –
a cell in mitosis, amoebic division under a microscope plate,
our unspoken words hang in the air like papal smoke
and we eye each other on and off,
eyelids lowered and raised like rung churchbells.

abalone sunlight, you cup it in your hands like a broken shell
and you scalp the silence with your niceties.
we talk about frivolous, empty things,
words calculated and precise and
simulated.

whatever happened to the fat baby, pink and lovely
as an oyster-tongue, or the handsqueeze under the eaves
on a hot summer nights that would stifle us like ether
or the stolen, horny glances, excited and staticky
as electron orbitals?

the rain sympathizes and the clouds creep in
on their purple bellies, like ashamed dogs.
strange, foreign thoughts knock on our door
dressed in a black, legal suits and carrying
a briefcases filled with agreements and ugly, spinstery signatures.

Kyyllaaaan!

rooftop. It's love.

I mean, that poem is just gorgeous in every way. It's so pretty and perfect and wonderful; it's amazing.

It's so sweet and realistic and wonderful and beautiful and I can't offer any sort of anything constructive on it. It's terribly beautiful.

The end of rooftop was beautiful, but it felt as if the narrator's actions by the end were halfhearted, almost as if he(?) still partially hates her(?).

And, at the neville family's farm is so so so wonderful. My favorite part is the second stanza-- I'm not sure why I like it so much, but it's totally wonderful.

These last two are so summer-y and amazing; anyone (who hasn't been confined to the city) can relate to this tone of summer that you write in.

Beautiful job, an absolutely amazing collection here. =)

Juniper

Gosh, Kylan! I love your summer poems. They're beautiful and have exactly the taste of summer that I love and want and need and actually miss out on so I need them to read and imagine and feel. AND YOU GOT ME caught in your 'and and and' like the poem.

Which I liked. I loved that. Because with the images you portrayed, the 'and's' seemed appropriate. You just see one thing after the other and describe them as they come. So, I'm sure you already know this, but that was a good choice. =]

Nothing in the poem really stopped me until I got here:

low sunlight sneaking in
like a stowaway.

bloated, soulless bullfrogs plop waterside, grey and warty as old noses –

the radio turned
to a scratchy remembrance

at the neville family's hayfarm

skinny shirtless boy whose skin sucks around his ribcage
revealing every line and contour – the ribs stick out like tongues
and his arms are knobbed by elbows. he smiles a hidden smile –
one that speaks of bullfrogs and the handful of unripe plums
and some unspeakable atrocity that has occurred down by the irrigation pond.

frustrated haycart, lumbering and lagging uphill
like a reluctant child and the four grown men sitting atop the bales
the coronated kings – sweat lines and hayseed on their faces
hands gloved and their skin red as sunburnt adobe.
the wife of one of the men in the cab of the close-set pickup truck

yoking the haycart, sits with a baby in the crook of her arm
fat and industrious as a worker bee and the radio turned
to a scratchy remembrance and the low sunlight sneaking in
like a stowaway. we keep walking to the irrigation pond,
which sits flat and green in the hayfield, hoarding the new dusk.

the unripe plums on the overhanging tree are bald as sucked thumbs, sour
and tongue-numbing, and we stand at the perilous banks
and the dog plows into the water which doesn't even go up to his neck.
bloated, soulless bullfrogs plop waterside, grey and warty as old noses –
we listen to their lovesounds and the wildflowers bob tiredly
and i close my eyes for a moment.

Wow. Like, you don't even understand. This is how I'm feeling. This is what I'm going through right now, twisted a bit, but the emotion is still there. The thing is, though, that it's not strong enough, after reading this through once. I get the shades of sadness, but I don't get that ache of desperation that would warrant the last stanza's message. I don't know where this came from for you, but if it came from this feeling, I know you can bring that out. Maybe it'll take a little more writing. I might just be biased because of my own experiences, but I think that an emotion like that could definitely use a little more description. If you can pull it out, I guess. ^___^ Anyways, other than that general, silly plea, let's get on to what you /do/ have.

that minefield of freckles
has appeared again across the ridges of your face
and my fingers creep across your cheeks
like timid soldiers.

stray hair sticks to your face; I peel it away and

an ugly legend

and I look away and the novice stars
encrypt themselves into the blue deepening
like binary numbers.

rooftop

it is time –
that minefield of freckles
has appeared again across the ridges of your face
and my fingers creep across your cheeks
like timid soldiers.

the smell of cut grass clots in the air
like a cholesterol and the roofshingles dig into our backs
and the dusk moves in noisily (traffic and those last songbirds
clinging to the thin stanzas of sunlight)–
a new, unwelcome neighbor.
stray hair sticks to your face; I peel it away and

you whisper in my ears about the future –
an ugly legend – about the days that lie outside
the summer wombs and for a moment I hate you
and I look away and the novice stars
encrypt themselves into the blue deepening
like binary numbers.

september holds you ransom –
I hold you tight and wish to god that
the crickets and the dillydallying sun
could fossilize you here.

-gigglefits- Yellow!! ! ! ! ! !!! <333 Why was I not even notified of the existence of this thread? I have just found my new home. xD I was stalking around in your 'see all Kylan's posts' and saw this 'Yellow' and I was like 'teehee, must go!' So here I am~

Alright.

I. Granny

wearing your best skin

like a funeral suit.

the old dusty words, dug up, unearthed:

and the sloughing skin – you marry away

your youth like a promised daughter.

you come stirring up potions and gossip like a negress

and the old whitesuited movie stars, and the small, plotted garden.

each stitch is a vengeance.

each stitch tucks away a secret, a bitterness, a complaint

like a sleeping child.

your hair smells of motoroil and rising dough and grass seed,

There's too many hard sounds in there. "Phur" in sulpuric, "ck" in knuckle, and "sk" in skitter-eyed and the "ck" in firecrackers. Those are hard sounds, and when you put a whole bunch of them together like you've one here, it's kinda hard to say and read.

Kylan,

I've been meaning to critique this for a while. Well, ever since I saw that you posted it. Mainly because I'm kindaalittleokmaybealot in love with your poetry. So, yesterday, I began to critique it, wrote up the whole thing, pressed submit, and my computer crashed. So. I was quite angry and didn't want to come back to critique this anymore. So, I'm sorry if I don't make this one as long as my other one. It's not my fault. ^_^

GRANNY

pinching fingers –

old sweater with the embroidery.

you smell of pills and dentures,

wearing your best skin

like a funeral suit.

Like prose, poetry should have this great, fantastic hook at the beginning. After all, if I'm not compelled to read this poem to the end, I won't. I'd read the first stanza and probably quit with this beginning. Pinching fingers. To me, that doesn't describe a granny very much. I don't know. It sounds more like your Aunt Betty, except that would be pinching cheeks. Snoink wrote up this article for me a couple days ago, and I've been relentlessly studying it. If you haven't read it already, I really advise you to do it. It's absolutely fantastic.

In some of the poems she quotes, they all have these wonderful opening lines. Here are a few:

Robert Frost wrote:He saw her from the bottom of the stairs.

Susan Wood wrote:Morning broke like an egg

Ann Standford wrote:The first blow caught me sideways, my jaw

John Donne wrote:FOR God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love;

June wrote:For Cantelope, the first thing I want to raise is your title's spelling? I understand that a misspelling can be used for style, local color and such, but I'm not sure if that was intentional? Razz I can't help but mention that the melon is spelled Cantaloupe.

Hi Kylan! June here!

This is a wonderful idea. I'll definitely keep an eye on this thread to look out for updates.

For this first poem, granny, I really enjoyed the familiar voice and tone that you used. I do agree with Eric; you write mainly based on sensation to create an entire picture-- I think you do it excellently. You always seem to show us at least a fragment of a story in your work.

In the first stanza of granny, I think that the word the can be eliminated before embroidery. Using the makes us expect more information and details [about the sweater] to come after, but without it, we're not expecting much, if that makes any sense?

I found that this poem is quite like Josephsdotter in some indirect ways, such as family memories and heirlooms.

The closing of the poem is excellent. In the previous stanzas when you describe, you seem to be spanning further to catch everything that is needed to describe what you are saying; here, I feel that you didn't reach as far; almost as if you were staying in a close range, pulling the pieces together. (Which by the way, the reaching and not reaching that I just mentioned translate into awesome sauce) You've done a beautiful job on this.


- - -

For Cantelope, the first thing I want to raise is your title's spelling? I understand that a misspelling can be used for style, local color and such, but I'm not sure if that was intentional? I can't help but mention that the melon is spelled Cantaloupe.

For this one, my favorite stanza is the first; it is beautiful, and though your poem shares the same unique, descriptive style of imagery that is used in the following stanzas, I think the first one comes off most beautifully.


That being said, I love the poem as a whole. I absolutely love the way you have captured summer. It's seemingly a very personal interpretation of the season (if that makes any sense?) and it has an extremely wonderful effect on the audience.

I could look at this poem and say that it's complex, but at the same time, I think it's very, very simple. Beautiful job with that. This joins list of my favorite Kylan poems.


Keep writing! Your work is amazing.

June

Also, I hope I made sense.

You seem mainly to be writing about sensation, the look and feel of different things.

Story wise...there is none, beyond an in the moment theme your using to keep the whole thing in relevance.

You have some great images in it dont get me wrong, but really its all along the same lines as far as content goes.

I like how you handled all this however, but I'd rather you go on to fully develop a story, not a situation.

Cantelope

1

dusk settles in like a pilgrim --
dark, planetary face, a marriage
of horizon and constellation.
paddies of stars: we wade through them
like ricefarmers, harvesting.
we pick the sky clean of its dreams,
nits from the hair of god,
and eat them like apes.

2

watermelon juice dribbling off lip, off chin.
sulphuric crack and knuckle of skitter-eyed firecrackers.
trees bend under their fruit like migrants, and we
pick the tomatoes straight off the vine in the skinny garden and eat them,
warm, sundrunk, offered like alms,
we walk hand in hand
barefoot.

summer infests our attics.

3

I take a step back, appraise you,
in the moonlight, your body sickles.
your hair smells of motoroil and rising dough and grass seed,
milky skin, pulled tight like a corset;
we curl under the bony, nibbled night
our eyes downcast, nervous, your face hidden
by the compartmentalized night like a priest in a confessional.
we whisper – visitors under painted ceilings.

the night is full of cast-off computations and dead
literature – leftovers. we breath easy, finally
our fingertips touch, transmitting, broadcasting
and we orbit around the obvious
like abandoned satellites.

4

the creeping hayfever, perishing sun
shades the sky after a thunderstorm the color of canteloupe.