http://slow.writerscafe.org/Kylan The original writings of author Kylan en-us Copyright 2026 WritersCafe.org 1775981037 WritersCafe.org RSS Generator 15 A spring cold was basic biology.  Annie had learned her freshman year in high school how viruses worked, what they looked like, how they attacked the body. She remembered being disappointed when the most delicate, alien looking viruses were specific only to bacteria, designed like lunar landing.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/588667/ mane of flares and split atoms --whips of nuclear fission punching inadvertently,like newborn baby fists -- i wonder how longit would take for blindness to follow fromlooking into the sun, retinas curling and sickeninglike a blood poisoning, black strainsof anti-light, and the sun quiet and bri.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/513598/ glass-eye, seeing eye, showing the bee-dances of stars andconstellations. through his telescope,the universe expands                     red, inhaling, knittedgasgiant temper tantrums  &n.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/503717/  painting by Thomas Eakin -- they nudge their horses into the singularity of the morning, the sun redand breeding though the seamist that rises along the cliffsides. it is autumn,and the wind from the coast is cold and murmuring through the rocks and thescrubtrees like a .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/496701/  the sheets fold you up carefully, cleanly, and you rattle and shiverinside them, like a packet of dry garden seeds. in the scrubbing light, thetulips on the bedside table turn toward you, their lips smeared sloppilyand red, like children experimenting with their mothers' make-up. i sit.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/486903/  woodsmoke -- 8/1952On sunday afternoons after church, when daddy had quarantined himself in his chapel with its sagging roof, spindled steeple, and crooked yard of crosses, we would go down to the creek and swim. The best way to get to the creek was through Mr. Fredrick's land. He lived on a.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/482290/                 sisters – 8/1952 pale, distracted moon, gray as the lobe of a brain, squinting through theshutters, through the dusty, solemn curtains, leaning across our bedspreadand droop.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/481006/  dog heaven – 8/1953 and along the scooping, interminable road with a finered dust that kicks up like facepowder and turns all the brownlatesummer leaves pink, i walk. one step at a time, as if eachstep was the last time i'd feel solid ground under my feet. allthe sun.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/479077/ an experimental project -- a story written in poetry and prose. will most likely be an extended short story/novella http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/479076/ tray of cracked pastels, overturned, they have smudged each other –yellow the dirtiest of them all. and in the mason jar the paintbrusheslean with their stiff, wandering heads, avoiding the sun and quarantined.the dead flowers snore in their vase, elephant-eared, clinging vainly to their.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/477947/ shadows hang in chandeliers, in the corners, catching the littleflies of light coming from the oil lamp on the beside table. he stands, shesits – both are silent, except she is trembling a little, her shouldershiccuping up and down. she holds her hand to her mouth, and doesn't cry, she.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/462794/  across the stratospherea final message'give my wife my love'then nothing more – Peter Schilling, “Major Tom (Coming Home)” It is very cold. Hands won't barely move anymore, fingers tight, unfeeling. And I'm very tired. I can't stay awake much lon.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/461780/                 and the lamplighters come, one by one, putting theiriron nightcaps over the dawdling gaslights, as the morningpeels the stars from its back. weathervanes pointing theirblack, accusatory .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/450008/                  green, unripe peaches bobbing like Adam's applesabove him as he leads us to his front porch, smilinga crooked, sloping smile that cups over his false teeth,his skin hanging off of h.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/447541/                 I sit in the courtyard garden with Tabby in my lap. The tulips are red-headed traitors, bobbing, with bees in their mouths. The water fountain gargles, froths, sputters. Dragonflies land l.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/445437/  When the revenant came down We couldn't imagine what it was In the spirit of three stars The alien thing that took its form. - “Concerning the UFO sighting near Highland, Illinois” Sufjan Stevens  Three stars. I can see them through the shutters.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/442817/ cold, unpitying sun, dropping in through the windowpanes sullen as a truant, cast-off and browsing. the light is unwelcome company, revealing your face like a well-kept secret, white and masked by a cup of oxygen – you are suckling again, overlarge infant, crooked in the lap of the b.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/442041/ They are always watching. I stand among them. Watching me with their soft eyes. Sluffing the ground with their trunks, brushing around me, so close I could reach out and touch one. Their hard, many-folded hides, with all their years tucked away inside the valleys and trenches of skin. The.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/440476/ what crops are these? unwilling, slumbering goosebumps, appearing along the red wrist of the road, exposed precious rumps, packed dirt what blossoms will come from these? baby-headed lillies, tongues lapping up the milked light centered with little, yellow-lipped stamens nodding like f.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/439670/ tread carefully – the night is full of snails hobble-backed aborrances, making their slow pilgrimage, on the shoulders of the grassblades small and emerging, like baby noses. they survey the starless night they are the only sound. depositing their trails behind them, like nupti.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/437906/ wildfire in bush canyon today and the sky is doubtful with ash, fluttering like flirting eyelashes. the heat gasps in and lays low over the heavy-lapped valley, like a drowned body, and trees stand bare-armed as preachers while the sun lapses over the horizon, pressured into an attitude .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/436855/ dark staircase leading downwards –  an esophagus – and us on the edge, like a nightly prayer, with the moonlighthemming our nightgowns blue and a draft cupping them uplike mostly-deaf ears. the night hitchhikes in with the old moon, an unwanted houseguest, making itself comf.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/436413/ (I can still remember the blossoms of Phnom Pehn. I think about them now. You cannot take this away. Stomachs may shrink, shackles may chafe, wife and children may and raped beaten and burned, but the single image of a blossom in bloom, a face cupped, the stem leaning, like a wom.. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/436227/ and in the fields where the forget-me-nots climb sideways, pious and succinct with bees hanging like earbobs from their blue heads, the minister composes a sermon and the cicadas and scrub-legged locusts murmur blasphemies – apostasy among the tallgrass. the sun slides along the .. http://slow.writerscafe.org/writing/Kylan/436160/