Fernley, NV

[[Syl]]

Ever been in a small town
A small town in Nevada
Sitting inside of summer
Everything feels so dry
You can lick dust off the back
Of your hand
Especially if you’re a child
The red van sat parked
In the dirt grin parking lot
Outside the Branding Iron
One Fourth, the other kids and I
Waited there for the sky to turn
I could read the marquis
I didn’t, though, I think
Though now I’m sure it spoke
Of patriotic prices for beer
We didn’t see the first light
But we jumped with excitement
When it cracked
The closest thing to climb
To see over doublewides and cottonwoods
Was my mom’s van
Three footholds up the back door
And the three of us sat on the roof
Close enough to the park
That the sound still pinned our hearts
Against the cool sheet metal
Every year some field would burn
Small, dry towns can’t afford
Perfectly straight rockets
But there are always children to watch
People sit inside, drink, and ignore
And the volunteers
That got to drive their trucks
At least once every July

[[Syl]]

what? is it that average? i don't want praise; i just want feedback. i mean, this is one of my more... comprehensible poems. if it sucks, or even if it's just incredibly mediocre, let me know.

[Worm of Despite]

Sounds like somebody has a case of the Mundays... I’m sorry for that...mercy! But I'm not worthy of critiquing poetry. I liked it--very vivid display of a small town’s spirit/Fourth of July...or maybe it was meant to be something else, and I’m just shallow. Told you, I’m no critic. It’s just that I had a hard time reading it, because, personally, the poem’s style (whatever style it’s called) isn’t my favorite. It’s kind of like reading The Silmarillion, for me. But don’t get me wrong--it’s GREAT...but it’s just tough for my brain to digest. Nothing wrong with it...I’m the PROBLEM...not the solution here. Here--for example of what is more to my tastes, I’d say my favorite poem is “The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls”.

[[Syl]]

ha. that's more like it!

i don't care if you're an expert, i want to know what everybody/anybody thinks. you got the idea straight on, and i think it's pretty cool to be compared to tolkein, even if you don't dig it.

i'm serious. if someone thinks my work is a piece of pretentious s*** (and trust me, some of it is...most?), I want to hear that. i probably won't agree, but i still want to know. you can always go show your poems to your spouse, mother, etc. who will more than likely say something like, "that's very nice dear," but where does that get you as an artist?

likewise, if i see what I consider to be a flaw in someone's work, I will do my best to constructively point that out. i figure it's the least i can do as a fellow artist.

[duchess of malfi]

I like the description of the dust and the heat. It brought back memories of our camping trip a couple of years ago in the summer in Utah. Baked girlie, anyone?
Seriously, though, you do give a good impression of the heat and the waiting -- and I like the bit about the firetrucks that only get driven once a year.

[Damelon]

The background means nothing to me. The only place in Nevada, or indeed the West that I've been to is Vegas. I don't think thats represenative of the region.

It works as an evocation of youth. It made me think of back to when I was around that age. A summer storm came through town during the local festival. The sight of 50 of the town's worthies hanging on to the beer tent to keep it from blowing away still makes me chuckle.

[Reisheiruhime]

you just described a small town where i used to live.

[[Syl]]

yeah, it is a little bit of a regional piece, especially if you haven't seen any of the desert outside of the Vegas city limits (and even then it's hard to explain how different the northern nevada desert is from the southern nevada one).

i like that it can be seen as an evocation of youth (a mix of impatience and surprise... maybe a bit of wonder), though I was also trying to go for the contrast with older age, complacence, etc. it definately needs some fine tuning, though (sometimes it feels like i fix one line only to make the one before or after it sound forced). there's something important from that time that i meant to include, but i can't quite put my finger on it.

ce la vie

ha, and i can see the people in my town doing the same thing. I have seen some fairly respected people get falling down drunk (some of my own elders included) in parades and other such social gatherings.

[[Syl]]

Revised.

First Fourth

They sat us outside in the summer air.
Mom said, “You can’t come in. Play with your friends.”
I didn’t know these kids,
But that didn’t mean she was wrong.
“Fine. Can I have a cherry coke? With the cherry?
How about some chips?”
I waited entire minutes in vain,
Excluded from what was mine by right,
On any other day, even if it was almost dusk.

I showed them the old dryer behind the saloon.
A rusty drum inside a sun-worn husk,
Its hinged face long since torn away,
It could do nothing but spin freely.
Unlike the smaller, plastic one Ms. Hart had,
This device tolerated no water,
Promised no smoothness.
It sifted sand and tumbled stones –
Nondescript rocks that would always be rough
No matter how many days I returned to revolve it,
No matter how often I replaced the ejecta.
And so we made a game of it –
Spin and spin and throw and cower.
Washed up, abandoned, and washed out,
It loudly resisted the worst our small hands could inflict.

Chasing dust devils choked with tumbleweeds,
We threaded between the sage to the tracks.
We examined the remains of half of a cat,
Worked the spikes from old planks,
And matured ourselves on the immature ramblings
Graffitied on the underside of the overpass.
We felt the hot breath of the desert replaced,
Cool alfalfa air coming in like an evening tide.

We returned to play tag in the graveled grimace of the parking lot,
Ignoring the faded marquis in its center.
Its promises of two dollar Buds and a happy 4th were not for us –
Not for anyone, once the setting sun left it illegible to all.
We licked the salt and dust from the backs of our hands,
Sucked it through the collars of our shirts.
I remembered a forgotten cup,
Shared the melted ice and hint of soda.

We only saw the first light as reflection,
Jumped and squealed at the bang.
The bumper and three handholds up the back of the van
Led us to our lookout post, front row seats.
Gouts of flame rose over doublewides and cottonwoods,
Pinning our hearts to the metal sheet of the roof,
Drawing oohs, ahs, and applause –
Faintly from two blocks and a minor highway away,
Faintly from the birds up in the crow’s nest,
Faintly from the doorway of the Branding Iron.

[aliantha]

Much better!

I like that you kept the part about licking the salt and dust, and the "pinning our hearts to the metal sheet of the roof". And playing with the broken dryer is a great motif for kids left to their own devices.

I'm no poet, nor am I a poetry critic. But I liked it.

[[Syl]]

Thanks, Ali.

[lucimay]

wow. to me they are two separate poems.

first one written in 2003, i'd chop off the first two lines cause to me it really starts at "sitting inside of summer"
and to me that is the title of it.

certainly there are things i would have done to the first piece to tighten it up, some extra words that could be taken out to great effect.
and i like the first one VERY much.
it gets me there.

the second piece which is the revision seems like it's about something entirely different to me. it's...communal and immediate. it doesn't have the same feel.
whereas the first piece i get a sense of your "aloneness" or you as a solitary figure in the events, the second is much more communal, much more a sense of "we". (if that makes sense to you)

it's absolutely apparent that you are a much better writer now than you were in 2003. (the more you do it the better you get, right?)
so in that regard (but that regard ONLY) the second piece is written better.
you have a better handle on your tools, your craft.
however, the first piece is my favorite of the two because i can see you better in it. i feel more connected to the author. i feel the dust.

gah. i'm rambling here. i hope you get what i'm trying to say.

[[Syl]]

They really are (two different poems, I mean). Especially since the first poem was probably written closer to 2001 than 2003. I was a different poet then than I am now, not just the skills, but where I was coming from. Back then, it was about me, my experience. Now, it's situating the event in the larger narrative. Not just how it felt, but what it meant. It does put me at a remove from the piece, but that makes it bigger than me, important apart from the personal, I think.

I didn't even think of the poem until I was recently looking at Last Fourth and realized the connection. Going over and editing First Fourth, it became more of a prequel.

For one thing, I removed the entire thing about fires. That was from a story, or a way of talking, that my mom used a lot. Makes it difficult to make it truly mine.

I like very little of what I used to write, back before the muse left me for several years. There's a lot of good stuff to go back in and mine, though, so I'm glad I kept it.