Kelly Lydick is a writer and photographer based in the San Francisco bay area of the United States.  She received her B.A. in Writing and Literature from Burlington College (VT), and her M.A. in Writing and Consciousness from the New College of California (San Francisco).  Her photography has appeared in Vista Magazine, Photographer’s Forum Annual, Photographer’s Forum College Annual, and the Queen City Review.  Kelly also pioneered the ‘Storyboard Wall’ photography project, a permanent display for the Arizona Lost Boys Center.  Her writing has appeared in Twittering Machine, the Burlington College Poetry Journal, and the New College Review.  Kelly’s work has also been featured on NPR and KQED’s The Writers’ Block.  She is the author of the chapbook We Once Were (Pure Carbon Publishing, AZ), and the experimental fiction novel, Mastering the Dream (Second Story Books, CA).  Her website is: www.kellylydick.com.

Summer

Beneath the picture

blue and frantic,

summer felt like a knife: steel.

Rust as drool

over meat.

Shiny: a sun is

in use.

Narrow as a Glen

Most days have some rust

those of you who shine

white tongues

pant or dream her

yet

leave only to let cool

a language so languid

no whisper could

water the iron

Eloy

Exit 203

points the way

to a desolate oasis

of fertility.

I am pregnant

with music, horizontal

lines and

egg whites, I am

invisible with atoms.

Exit 203

I am

giving birth to desert branches,

Cholla evolution,

Your hubris.

Will Decompose Like        

Eyes bulge but don’t water for

headlines that matter.

Languages speak in alphabet strings.

We have been taught by fairies

whimsical dust over eyes,

sleep and tomorrow the “Meanies” have gone,

stomach un-knotted, speaking the letter

“A”.

The tired journeys of stiff bodies

have become liquid nectar.

Our movements snap pictures

that look like lifetimes and faces

that are primates under wrinkles and

studio spotlights.

our yellow leafy pages are gold

embossed eye orgasms, fingers

feeling for the young minds that

have been sheltered by

spherical blankets and bindings,

and taught to disappear.

flicker

flash flash

Candles burn to melted wax.

Babies are born every second.

flash flash

Mothers become grandmothers.

Time is hypothetical.

Mathematics is a figment

of the imagination.

flicker

flash…

We have waited for the blackened

eclipse of two moons to orbit

our bodies as auras of light.

We have waited for the prickly pear

bulbs of cacti to become

sweet virginal lips,

thirsting.

We have waited for eyes,

three wings flying,

paisleys blinking figure eights behind

aboriginal sacred dances of

fire walks like oil in heat,

and all the while

the decrepit have curled up

on the oak stairs of the front porch,

and will remain there until

the sun goes down and the

harmonicas have been lost

forever.