Kyle Hemmings And The Reverse Harvest Of The Night Sky

Heroes of War # I

The nights remind me of old x-rays

of grandmother's arthritis. It was about

as intimate as she got during the late phases

of the war. When it rained, we prayed

to the sea anemones reciting chants in our ears.

Vladimir, with one arm in a sling, tapped

my shoulder & said to look up at the night sky.

He said it was a kind of reverse harvest.

We opened our hands. What fell were the things taken from us.

Heroes of War #2

Her face in the low-key of mist.

The tattoo on her shoulder reads

"Ark Begin Again." Her gun jams

& I signal her that I'm past perfect.

We share a bottle of anyone's soda.

We are one mile from the railway,

but the trains are stalling underwater.

We can hitch a ride on a stone, I joke.

Her eyes devour me.

The post-landscape is a variety

of breadcrumbs. Her belly growls

that she is tired of long needles

to put her to sleep.

She's tired of stick-figured rapists.

Heroes of War #3

After we heard our fathers and brothers had lost,

we were naked to the comets. There was the sound

of wind chimes imitating ruined choir girls.

Mother tried to face herself in clear broth.

My sister fabricated stories about eagles landing

on her bare arm. At midnight, we held hands,

hoping in some way to peck the eyes out of the night.

After mother died by slipping in her sleep, we exhaled

the souls of our old toys. The soldiers of Ark came

knocking on our doors. They said "You have company."

Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Your Impossible Voice, Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere.His latest ebook is Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys at amazon.com. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/