Screen Doors and Looking Glasses

Sick from yeastless bread,
I keep my tongue at the top of my mouth and
await your return in the doorway,
chill filling the front hall -
I still think I can see you,
beyond the last touch of light,
past the line by the
ocean where footsteps disappear.

This could mean I still love you,
even if I'm plucking your charms off this bracelet;
"He loves me,
he loves me not."

I have to say, this is one of the clearest and most vivid poems I've read of yours, gummy. While all of your images are gorgeous, you tend to overstuff your poems a little bit--and while everyone likes an overstuffed chair now and again, sometimes we'd rather sink into something soft. This is perfect.

Well, the imagery is, anyway--the flow's off a little, but for the life of me I can't figure out how to fix it. That last stanza, and the "past the line by the / ocean where footsteps disappear" were two places where it really stood out to me.

Otherwise--gorgeous.

I agree with Fand. I liked this poem; it didn't feel too abstract, there weren't any annoyingly complex double metaphors, etc. The more I read it the more satisfying it is.

Transition.

This could mean I still love you,
even if I'm plucking your charms off this bracelet,
"He loves me,
he loves me not."

I liked the first stanza, but it pales in comparison to this one. I like it, I like it! My only problem is that there's a bit of a division between the two stanzas. The transition is a lot better than in some of your other work, but something about it still seems abrupt and it throws me off balance.

Punctuation/Sentence Structure. It does bother me that a twelve-line poem is made up of only two sentences. It wasn't difficult to read, but the first stanza seems a little drawn out.
In the last stanza, I would replace the comma after bracelet with a semi-colon or even a period...my vote is for the semi-colon.

Metaphor/Allusion.

Sick from yeastless bread

Great beginning, and great metaphor. It also made me think, "Passover!" How much did you intent to allude to that...making bread without yeast and suffering of our ancestors and all that? I'm not Jewish, but I have been to a seder before. Could you elaborate?

-Colleen