Pilot License

Pilot License

Make of your mind a radio Make of your mind
a flower

Yes it might hurt but allow it

Go searching before sleep
Helicopter over the cake-frosting water

Fill a pinata with rose petals
but never send it

Mayday might be the thing you want to yell
while dancing with garlands and lambs
but what it means
is help me

On Creativity: Kyle McCord

Many of my favorite poems do an interesting dance between funny and sad, cavalier and earnestly wounded. In Sympathy from the Devil, Kyle McCord has mastered this ha-ha/ouch, swing-yer-partner-round-and-round sound. One moment, he’s talking about the Quikstop and werewolves; just a moment (well, a page) before, he drops this bombshell of a line: “Did you know that the best translation of Adam is earthling?” Full of deviousness, mischief, joy, and honesty, McCord’s poems will make themselves at home in your memory.  


Note: After the interview below, read “Lycanthropy and You” and “I’m Concerned You Will be Reincarnated as Office Supplies,” both of which appear with permission from the author. Order your copy of Sympathy from the Devil here.

 



Q: Sympathy from the Devil is well-stocked with names of places, people/characters, and brands: Hello Kitty, Perseus, Nancy Drew, Sydney, Arkansas, Jenny Holden, Pikachu, Old Man Wilson, Robert, Sarah, even Kyle McCord. What is the power of names, for you (in poetry, or outside of poetry)? What is the magic of the inside joke that the reader can’t know?

A: I was about to start this by mentioning how Nick Courtright and I were just chatting about this the other day.  I immediately realized that I would be falling into the exact phenomena you're describing!  I revised much of this book while I was studying Hebrew and Ancient Greek at Bethany Theological Seminary.  In the Bible, names are powerful.  They invoke, provoke, and even kill (as in the case of God's name, which one can't even pronounce safely).  And while no one can will be smote for uttering the name of Hello Kitty, I'd been thinking about names, and I wanted to harness that power that names have to capture and to characterize.

Flower Food

Flower Food

This is the bouquet falling into its own hands
The pink ranunculus wants to give the heaviness
of its head away

The flowers offer you the robe
their bodies become

Every day at this time in the afternoon
you think of the previous day
and in this way time is a beaded necklace

In all of this that is visible
and all that is not
who’s to say what is adornment

The Doldrums

The Doldrums

Today the bus stop came apart around me
and was hauled away

as unceremoniously as a jacket
removed in the heat

This is no longer a place even though you
are standing in it

Someone will tell you this and they are
clearly and adorably wrong

A kite is not only a kite where there is wind
A kite can exist in the doldrums

Back and Forth

Back and Forth

The ferry carries the people in its jaw
Before the island you need to see water

all around you The smallness of your
eyeball The smallness of that empty

stroller The large ferry’s smallness
which seemed so large leashed to land

To forget what is in front of you
look through it Another thing lingers

in the hall These shapes are always
faint They want to be seen but only

barely The ferry won’t let you any closer
any faster This test is about distance and

decisions The problem with logic
problems is all the left-out elements

Sure, you’re heading from the mainland
to the island But you’ll get there when

you get there Let the water work on
you This planet is an island