1000 Words

1000 WORDS


The photograph is labeled neatly
Pinned to a corkboard
Reminder of a girl
Thirteen years old
Clawing her way out
Of the middle school box
Finding a hole to peek through
A short skirt
Lowcut top
Fishnet tights
All in black
Angry face
Mad at
Who knows what?
The bitches she has to put up with
The boys she loves but hates
Her eyes glaring at the camera
Her eyebrows above them
Arched sarcastically
Challenging you to mess with her
Her lips smirking arrogantly
"Such a sweet girl,"
The tongues around her contort into words
That were once true,
But not anymore.
Not anymore.

------------------------------------------------------------------
This is about a photograph of me that my friend took early
this year, when I was fed up with the shit I had to deal with
and started going down a pretty bad path... Tell me what
you think please. And be nice.

Princess Prettie,


What is this, anyway?

The first half is a narrative about some girl, and the only thing it seems to do is to set up the word "bitches" in the second half.

For that matter, the second half sounds like a tour of the speaker's navel. What is it here that you thought might be interesting for an audience?

What, exactly, are you trying to say here that hasn't already been said a million times before? I, for one, have no clue, and I don't see promise in any attempt to re-read in the hopes that clarity might suddenly arrive.


All the best,
Brad

Be nice, Brad.

Princess Pettie - sorry to back the sour side, but this is relatively often heard. I would favor some original imagery or some-such. For example, the description of her outfit is very concrete. Perhaps you could incorporate some more abstract and creative imagery.

I like it and think if we reword what Ican said, perhaps you could take it out of the narative, and restructure it, you may have something.

Eesh not so popular piece of writing lol...
but I'm kind of confused by your comments. What do you mean by narrative? And with the word 'bitches' do you mean that it sounds as though the word was sort of shvoed in there to make the poem more... cusswordy or grown-up? Again, not exactly sure what I should do with this.... just scrap it?

Never scrap it. It makes more sense once you read the afterword. I think it starts off well, but gets a bit misguided. Maybe you could find a different, more interesting way to incorporate the descriptions. Experiment a little.

I think everyone's comments were true
I love the ending and the bit where you say
"Clawing her way out
Of the middle school box
Finding a hole to peek through"

very nice imagery
Charlotte

is your poem a 1000 words or are you lying





p.s i like pie!

Uhhh... I called it that because every picture is supposed to speak 1000 words...

Agreed. Top half seems nice enough. But as soon as "bitches" comes in, it sort of just lost my attention. It gives off a feel of junior high kid stuff. But it's not just that particular word. The whole second half following that line is kind of icky.

Rewrite and revise.

As always,

Miss POKE

Ah, I see everyone has already beat this, and I shan't beat the dead further.

But: the lack of punctuation up until the end is disruptive. Punctuation creates a guide for how the reader should understand the poem, a comma or period or ellipse or anything in one place (or another) could change the meaning entirely.

Take advantage of such an easy tool.