ADR poetry published in 2021
mechanics
As if you’ve been given a how-to guide,
I come apart.
My breath lost to your eyes,
my hands held at my sides by your words,
my control lost in your kiss—
desire takes apart the bits of restraint
that have reminded me in the past
to be myself, apart from others,
and imagines me forward into a love
I’ve been given no map for.
Broken Whelk
There’s always beauty
even in broken things.
This small whelk once held
an ocean in its chambers
before that same sea
battered down its walls
the occupant, long ago
gone, only its ghost haunts
the emptiness, the shell
lying on the shore shows
its whorls, jaggedness
smoothed with polish
of time. Morning glistens
inside the glossy pearl
white—all that is left
of its soul.
Image credit: The sea-worn whelk, collected by Finn Bille on Sanibel Island, FL, and photographed & post-processed using Toolwiz Photos with Prismart filter and with a Van Gogh effect by John C. Mannone.
9 to 5
I ate an apple fritter once
A honeysuckle whisper
Glazed each hair within my ear
And told me to look from the screen
I sat by a window
Happy and soft
A dimple tugged shyly at my cheek
A coat of sugar crowned my teeth
Then the clock, upon the ninth hour
Ticked and tousled its morning hymn
I swallowed in shame, a begging whisper
And closed the drapes another day.
I sipped warm tea with lemon once
A cumin seed powered a song
And stretched the deepest baritone
To juice my piercing bones.
A lime drop rested on my tongue
And drowned the cracking skin
And dared to dress behind a hum
The scarring screams within
Then the half-hour struck,
And coughing up, upon a pulp
My bare feet plead again
Not to walk on that burning dessert
Of golden sand
And golden coins
Once I ate an apple from a tree
And upon the fifth hour
My teeth ripped from my skin
And my blood drenched
the yearning soil
And the tree stretched high
And its green leaves flapped away
Sighting whispers
On green-driven eyes
And I sat with a half-eaten apple
And with blood-stained soil
And browning leaves,
To rest and mourn.
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Image credit: Desert abstract (vecteezy.com)
The Rapture
Not as big a thing as I anticipated.
For many, it did not go as expected.
They would see someone start bodily off,
Smile in preparation, roll
To their toes, jut out
Their arms – and nothing. If
They had closed their eyes
They would open them one
At a time, looking about
To see who was still abandoned
On Earth. From the looks of it,
The final selections were a bit thin,
There is going to be a fearful horde
Of us left to face what is next. No
Airliners pilotless falling from crowded skies,
Few cars suddenly driverless spinning
Pinball-like on shocked highways. Mothers
Checking perambulators not sure whether
Finding the baby or not is best.
People running outdoors thinking God
Might need a straight shot, standing
A few awkward moments, sullenly
Dragging themselves back in. Cell phones
Still working, I call the wife
To see how it looks where she waits.
It rings and rings and rings, and I start
To leave a message, then pause.
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Image Credit: Ciker.com
The Caste-Priests of Jabberology
Here, they open their mouths, the doors to their temples.
What spills out are river-smoothed pebbles on a drumhead.
Only the elite are given this gift, a font of nonsense.
Nature is a dumb miracle. Never a faithful explanation given.
When mumbling, all words are equally incontrovertible.
This is the ritual: a tongue swollen from sea salt,
ears plugged with wax, eyes dull and silicate.
A thing preserved so long it’s meaningless except as memory.
Speak except when spoken to, accept when spoken to.
The universe is misunderstood. That is its blessing.
Here, they function their eyelids, the dongles to their tumors.
Sip, sip at that blessing. Here, hear a calling.
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Editor’s Notes: “What can SA [South Africa] learn from Mao’s deadly chaos?” by Chris Mann, Mail & Guardian, November 17, 2016: Trofim Lysenko, Stalin’s scientific adviser, rejected genetics as an “expression of the senile decay and degradation of bourgeois culture”. A colleague called scientists who used experiments to verify results “the caste priests of jabberology”. In the book, “The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair,” William deJong-Lambert discusses “the reaction of a number of biologists in the United States and Great Britain to provide an overview of one of the most important controversies in Twentieth Century biology, the “Lysenko Affair.” … including the interwar eugenics movement, the Scopes Trial, the popularity of Lamarckism as a theory of heredity prior to the synthesis of genetics and Natural Selection, and the Cold War.” In the book, he dismisses scientists and academics who sought to understand problems to be answered by Mendel’s statistics, calling them “caste priests of jabberology.” In a more recent paper, Mendelian statistics is vindicated (https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/ibers/news/archive/2020/january/title-228982-en.html). Ultimately, however, my interpretation of this eloquent poem points to the “caste as a neurotic and psychotic system that has now been transfigured itself as an ethno-religious fascist state,” which is a political sentiment and statement.
Image Credit: abstract art evoking violence (img.wallpapersafari.com)
Leaf Spinning
Leaf tornadoes whirl in funnels
shuffling fronds like playing cards,
I watch ragged edges tumble
into scattered mosaic shards.
But Momma wants the whole yard raked,
says all those leaves will kill the grass.
Let them mulch, is the road I’d take,
But I know not to give her sass.
She lingers
She who is the silence of the hills
sits today in a grassy bowl
on their northern flank
white hair streaming behind her
in a wind that is not there
She is larksong ascending
bleats of sheep
cries of blind baby rabbits within
the safety of deep dug havens
She is a bird of prey on the wind
runs with deer, fights stags for the joy of it
leaves gates open, flattens corn
dances with magpies, parleys with rooks
eats with the badger, leaps and twists as a vixen
loves a dark crow in the night
She walks in the distance
is the figure approaching in the corner of your eye
never there when you turn
the unexpected footstep when you are trying to rest
the laughter of storms
She is the buzz and burr of tractors
yet winces as they corrugate tracks
flinches as they plough and harrow
her skin
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Kim Whysall-Hammond grew up in London but now lives where the skies are much darker. She has worked as an Astronomer, in Climate Research, and in Telecommunications. Her speculative poetry has been published by Kaleidotrope, On Spec, Space and Time Magazine, Star*Line, Andromeda Spaceways, The Future Fire, Utopia Science Fiction, Frozen Wavelets, Crannóg, and others. She has two poems in the Dead of Winter anthology from Milk and Cake Press.
Image Credit: Mother Nature (wallpapercave.com)
Yen
In a mid-life dream I was trying to kill a blacksnake,
hacking at it with a hoe,
as wrong a thing as I would never really do.
It slithered its sleek retreat like grace itself,
winding onyx through the undergrowth,
thick as my wrist, nearly long as I am tall, and beautiful,
more beautiful than anything it might have harmed.
I woke up wanting to touch its silk skin,
follow warmth from where I’d found it in the sun.
Love Baby
I was born into sunshine
and darkness.
I was Daddy’s love baby;
Mommy and sister’s hate baby.
I know, black and white, even though I live in the gray.
It’s easier to say I had good mommy and bad mommy.
Growing Up
Sometimes I borrowed my mother’s clothes
and her make-up, her high heels and handbags.
Of course, they were too big for me.
Same with daddy’s briefcase
and the suitcases we took on holiday trips.
When I saw the tiny red suitcase in the toyshop
I bought it with my birthday money.
It had thick shiny plastic
and looked really swish.
I took it everywhere.