Kyle Hemmings- Three Poems

Kyle Hemmings has work published in Pure Slush, Your Impossible Voice, Abstract Jam and elsewhere. He loves manga art, pre-punk garage bands of the 60s and The Cramps.

 

 

In Her Sleep, She Became a Toy

While the night exhaled clusters of swallowtails,

 the little girl's plastic bear, one with eyes

that glowed a radioactive yellow in the dark,

awoke her and led her by the hand.

 Under the empty playground of sky,

they ate the scraps of this afternoon's picnic,

 or sucked the ragged rinds of honeydew.

They became giddy at the thought

 of owning the left-over world,

scavengers of candy fish and lost shoes.

When morning slipped in hues of insidious blush,

 the grown-ups remained sleeping.

 Or they dreamed of eating

 until their bellies went bust

and they would never be too bloated to fly.

The bear and the little girl prepared a breakfast

for two and sat across from each other, eating in silence.

They knew that the only thing that would rise now was the sun.

 

The Orchard Saint

It will cost you your life, if you embrace thorns & cabbage patch roots. For you, they are two reflections on either side of a dewdrop. Your mother prayed for twenty years that you would not get wet. Dust motes appear between the lines of the psalms she sang. But now the hang-dog king of make-believe boundaries & fantastic derivatives believes that you have a green thumb& a golden tongue. Rumor has it that he caught syphilis from the maiden of wishing wells. At the insidious edges of dawn, dogs yowl the insanity of hunger. The barbarians leave footprints in the night.

 

Saint Abha, the Amphibious Queen

She married three disposable kings of Siam & left each one dreaming of flying fish. Incarcerated for infertility, she tricked the guards with a flash of mermaid eyes. Fifty miles from shore, she invented her own island. There, she fed bits of herself to the sharks, nurtured Beluga whales. She mistook a wasp for a wisp, a bird for a telegram. Carrier pigeons carried to her bits of mainland. At night, she slept next to open coconuts. She heard the drip of voices--someone from afar still loved her, perhaps a prince-in-waiting with shoes imported from Lombardy. She wished he had wings & could share a span of warmth. She wished she could shunt a cold lonely wind. Legend had it that when war came to her tiny island, she turned into a sunken treasure ship or to the glistening dots upon saltwater. Some said her name stuck like taffy to their teeth. But not before leaving the enemy with a mouthful of scorched earth.