Bio
Kyle Hemmings is a what? A fluttering gnat of despair? A mooncake in your face? A subversive astronaut floating in your garage? Kyle Hemmings may be all or none of these things. Kyle is who you want him to be. He has been published Elsewhere.
Snake Girl #1
She was hardly competent
with her hands,
her eyes rolled
to a distant Muddy Waters
record that kept skipping.
She slithered around me
squeezed tight
as if to force out
all the bad love.
She sunk her fangs
into a throbbing artery.
I burst on the spot.
I bled over her scales
the hard leather skin
that hid the ancient hurt.
She never took rejection,
lightly.
Snake Girl #2
I always kept her
well-covered at carnivals,
camouflaged on dense
city streets. I sold her
to a man who lived on
a diet of horseflies
& frog's eyes.
He lived alone in a basement
on Browning street,
where if someone went missing
they would not be missed.
Delicately, he unraveled
the white cloth hiding
snake girl's face & torso.
He melted before her,
the face resembling a smashed mirror,
with two bottomless holes,
where the forebrain should
have been.
He said Yes, it was indeed
the daughter he had given
up for adoption.
Snake Girl #3
The hunters kept us
in windowless rooms,
our breath must have stunk
of ancient lizard, dead flies,
sweltering holes beneath the desert.
We tried to tell them
that even though we looked different,
we were still girls & should be
treated with respect.
But they had already cut out
our tongues. When the ugliest one
entered the cell, I coiled in the corner,
lunged so hard, that I lived in his brain
for years. In time, he came to accept me,
although his family could never explain
the dilated eyes, the occasional bleeding,
the fetid breath. They placed him in a room
similar to the ones my sisters & I were imprisoned
in. It's funny how man & reptile always crawl towards
their humble origins. At night, inside him,
I slither downstream, through tortuous routes,
wrap myself around his heart, warm, beats slowing.
I claim for myself the love he never offered.
Kyle Hemmings is a what? A fluttering gnat of despair? A mooncake in your face? A subversive astronaut floating in your garage? Kyle Hemmings may be all or none of these things. Kyle is who you want him to be. He has been published Elsewhere.
Snake Girl #1
She was hardly competent
with her hands,
her eyes rolled
to a distant Muddy Waters
record that kept skipping.
She slithered around me
squeezed tight
as if to force out
all the bad love.
She sunk her fangs
into a throbbing artery.
I burst on the spot.
I bled over her scales
the hard leather skin
that hid the ancient hurt.
She never took rejection,
lightly.
Snake Girl #2
I always kept her
well-covered at carnivals,
camouflaged on dense
city streets. I sold her
to a man who lived on
a diet of horseflies
& frog's eyes.
He lived alone in a basement
on Browning street,
where if someone went missing
they would not be missed.
Delicately, he unraveled
the white cloth hiding
snake girl's face & torso.
He melted before her,
the face resembling a smashed mirror,
with two bottomless holes,
where the forebrain should
have been.
He said Yes, it was indeed
the daughter he had given
up for adoption.
Snake Girl #3
The hunters kept us
in windowless rooms,
our breath must have stunk
of ancient lizard, dead flies,
sweltering holes beneath the desert.
We tried to tell them
that even though we looked different,
we were still girls & should be
treated with respect.
But they had already cut out
our tongues. When the ugliest one
entered the cell, I coiled in the corner,
lunged so hard, that I lived in his brain
for years. In time, he came to accept me,
although his family could never explain
the dilated eyes, the occasional bleeding,
the fetid breath. They placed him in a room
similar to the ones my sisters & I were imprisoned
in. It's funny how man & reptile always crawl towards
their humble origins. At night, inside him,
I slither downstream, through tortuous routes,
wrap myself around his heart, warm, beats slowing.
I claim for myself the love he never offered.
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