Kiely Sweatt
3 poems
**
I’ve been taking really long sit down showers.
My word of the day is cold.
Living alone is freeing,
........but lately I find the lonely side more.
My 1990 car is working nicely
........and I’m inventing the need for you.
I hope you’re a fag with a french accent in a floor length fur.
I’m on the bedpost screaming for morning sex and burnt toast.
**
Sequence
In the first paragraph
the reader understands
her intention. A string
of liquor blues. Lover
walks out of a movie,
and daylight makes her fall.
The second paragraph
ends with him. Understand
this wasn’t meant to string
together like this. Over
decades, sexes make moves,
change like leaves in the Fall.
But this, he ended. Graphed
it in a map while she stands
in a question. A string
hung from the table. “Love,
at what rate do thoughts move?”
His head and gaze, empty, fall.
The ending paragraph
he will not understand
as she pulls the long string
from the table to her lover’s
neck. His eyes turn. Movie
ending. Watch the man fall.
**
The Brick Wall to the Penguin and After (in collaboration with Ed Smallfield)
Wall: Remember the time you sidewalk fought against the rain and the man across the courtyard flipped a switch? It was then, the first time you saw me standing somber in the grass.
Penguin: Certain moments remain illuminated, glued within the interior vision. The sticky light on on your once-red now-rose bricks, your crumbly gray mortar. Some things are never forgotten.
Wall: It’s been months since you last touched me.
Penguin: Touch of the wings, touch of the soul. My font is austere. It’s my penguinness.
Wall: Every spring begins the same…
We keep having these talks.
Penguin: But talk is our source, our soul. Have you thought about cross kingdom breeding, since I am animal and you are mineral? Think of the children.
Wall: I have been here since you first arrived. I’ve never stayed for anyone I wanted except you.
Penguin: But the stayingness of walls is legendary. Is it really only me for whom you wait? I remember an old, old song about a girl who waits beneath a lamp post...
Wall: When you used me to scratch your back or lean against I thought we had something. Was I right, or are you like this to all of us?
Penguin: The wallness of walls and penguinness of penguins. Some questions cannot be answered, but I normally like to scratch my back in the privacy of my igloo while reading the Bible. I have only walled myself with you.
Wall: I could go mad with thinking of these things.
Penguin: So could I. Do you remember the night I turned up wearing my pengüino?
Wall: The other day someone kicked a stone and chipped one of my sides. But the pain is not comparable to the one in which you leave me for cooler climates.
Penguin: Your chips, your nicks, your crumblings are very much a part of your mysterious allure. You know I cannot summer here, not with sunglasses, not with sunscreen. I wish you could see the Pole in all its whiteness.
Wall: Everytime someone casts a shadow I think it’s you.
Oh, how you tease.
Penguin: What you call teasing is the notorious shyness of penguins. We are a diffident bunch, and do not know how to approach directly. I admit that I never know exactly how to touch you correctly.
Wall: I can’t help the fact that I fall, sometimes literally, to pieces.
Penguin: The crumbliness of walls is actually very appealing. Irresistible, the way you fleck on me.
Wall: I will admit to my fairly jealous behavior. Like the time you flapped your wings at a gawking passerby and I threw a stone to defend you.
Penguin: Your jealousy is quite dear to me, as I’m sure mine is to you. I can’t stop thinking of who or what (a bicycle?) might be leaning on you when I am in the South.
The wing flap is involuntary behavior for penguins and cannot be controlled. And you hit me with the stone. And of course I loved it.
Wall: I agree to both but am distracted, making sense of stilettos
on a bridge across borders.
Penguin: Do you remember the night I walked across the top of you? You were indeed my bridge. That was quite something.
Distraction too is quite becoming in you, as is agreement. As are stilettos.
Wall: Crunching leaves, the grandeur of words,
Sheaves of gold paint chip from the sky
fall back down to earth in a mirror of our reflections.
Penguin: Chips and more chips. My love of crumbling things. I little bit of your mortar, a little taste of your brick between my lips. The words are things and the things are words, each the other’s mirror.
Wall: I become a shadow, question
your girth which blocks my sun.
Penguin: The shadows mingle. I cannot tell which is which.
Wall: But tonight I don’t want this. Tonight, I have left the stars for you.
**
return to sawbuck 4.2
**
Kiely Sweatt is currently living in Barcelona, Spain where she started up the bilingual reading event Prostibulo Poetico in partnership with the Poetry Brothel in NYC. She holds a degree in Spanish Literature from West Virginia University and an MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work has appeared online and and in-print through such publications as Best American Poetry blog, Shampoo, and Pax Americana.
Ed Smallfield is the author of The Pleasures of C, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (a book-length collaboration with Doug MacPherson), locate (a chapbook collaboration with Miriam Pirone) and his poems and stories have appeared in 26, Barcelona INK, New American Writing, Parthenon West Review, and a many other magazines.
**
I’ve been taking really long sit down showers.
My word of the day is cold.
Living alone is freeing,
........but lately I find the lonely side more.
My 1990 car is working nicely
........and I’m inventing the need for you.
I hope you’re a fag with a french accent in a floor length fur.
I’m on the bedpost screaming for morning sex and burnt toast.
**
Sequence
In the first paragraph
the reader understands
her intention. A string
of liquor blues. Lover
walks out of a movie,
and daylight makes her fall.
The second paragraph
ends with him. Understand
this wasn’t meant to string
together like this. Over
decades, sexes make moves,
change like leaves in the Fall.
But this, he ended. Graphed
it in a map while she stands
in a question. A string
hung from the table. “Love,
at what rate do thoughts move?”
His head and gaze, empty, fall.
The ending paragraph
he will not understand
as she pulls the long string
from the table to her lover’s
neck. His eyes turn. Movie
ending. Watch the man fall.
**
The Brick Wall to the Penguin and After (in collaboration with Ed Smallfield)
Wall: Remember the time you sidewalk fought against the rain and the man across the courtyard flipped a switch? It was then, the first time you saw me standing somber in the grass.
Penguin: Certain moments remain illuminated, glued within the interior vision. The sticky light on on your once-red now-rose bricks, your crumbly gray mortar. Some things are never forgotten.
Wall: It’s been months since you last touched me.
Penguin: Touch of the wings, touch of the soul. My font is austere. It’s my penguinness.
Wall: Every spring begins the same…
We keep having these talks.
Penguin: But talk is our source, our soul. Have you thought about cross kingdom breeding, since I am animal and you are mineral? Think of the children.
Wall: I have been here since you first arrived. I’ve never stayed for anyone I wanted except you.
Penguin: But the stayingness of walls is legendary. Is it really only me for whom you wait? I remember an old, old song about a girl who waits beneath a lamp post...
Wall: When you used me to scratch your back or lean against I thought we had something. Was I right, or are you like this to all of us?
Penguin: The wallness of walls and penguinness of penguins. Some questions cannot be answered, but I normally like to scratch my back in the privacy of my igloo while reading the Bible. I have only walled myself with you.
Wall: I could go mad with thinking of these things.
Penguin: So could I. Do you remember the night I turned up wearing my pengüino?
Wall: The other day someone kicked a stone and chipped one of my sides. But the pain is not comparable to the one in which you leave me for cooler climates.
Penguin: Your chips, your nicks, your crumblings are very much a part of your mysterious allure. You know I cannot summer here, not with sunglasses, not with sunscreen. I wish you could see the Pole in all its whiteness.
Wall: Everytime someone casts a shadow I think it’s you.
Oh, how you tease.
Penguin: What you call teasing is the notorious shyness of penguins. We are a diffident bunch, and do not know how to approach directly. I admit that I never know exactly how to touch you correctly.
Wall: I can’t help the fact that I fall, sometimes literally, to pieces.
Penguin: The crumbliness of walls is actually very appealing. Irresistible, the way you fleck on me.
Wall: I will admit to my fairly jealous behavior. Like the time you flapped your wings at a gawking passerby and I threw a stone to defend you.
Penguin: Your jealousy is quite dear to me, as I’m sure mine is to you. I can’t stop thinking of who or what (a bicycle?) might be leaning on you when I am in the South.
The wing flap is involuntary behavior for penguins and cannot be controlled. And you hit me with the stone. And of course I loved it.
Wall: I agree to both but am distracted, making sense of stilettos
on a bridge across borders.
Penguin: Do you remember the night I walked across the top of you? You were indeed my bridge. That was quite something.
Distraction too is quite becoming in you, as is agreement. As are stilettos.
Wall: Crunching leaves, the grandeur of words,
Sheaves of gold paint chip from the sky
fall back down to earth in a mirror of our reflections.
Penguin: Chips and more chips. My love of crumbling things. I little bit of your mortar, a little taste of your brick between my lips. The words are things and the things are words, each the other’s mirror.
Wall: I become a shadow, question
your girth which blocks my sun.
Penguin: The shadows mingle. I cannot tell which is which.
Wall: But tonight I don’t want this. Tonight, I have left the stars for you.
**
return to sawbuck 4.2
**
Kiely Sweatt is currently living in Barcelona, Spain where she started up the bilingual reading event Prostibulo Poetico in partnership with the Poetry Brothel in NYC. She holds a degree in Spanish Literature from West Virginia University and an MFA in poetry from The New School. Her work has appeared online and and in-print through such publications as Best American Poetry blog, Shampoo, and Pax Americana.
Ed Smallfield is the author of The Pleasures of C, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo (a book-length collaboration with Doug MacPherson), locate (a chapbook collaboration with Miriam Pirone) and his poems and stories have appeared in 26, Barcelona INK, New American Writing, Parthenon West Review, and a many other magazines.
Labels: 4.2, kiely sweatt, summer 2010
