A Vodka Tonic Promise

She sits and sips sweet liquor,
wrongly deeming her thick-bottomed glass a crystal ball.
A mess of tangled, red veins stain white irises
with spots of blood;
Two crisscrossed brown eyes fix on
two crooked worlds
that spin away from her heavy hands,
fleeting faster with every pulse of her
barely beating heart.


Liquor-laced breath escapes parched lips,
silencing a potbellied tongue that's
never still;
A million tiny fingers knead her liver into dough,
sifting through endless piles of guts and
butterflies with clipped wings.


Four walls and forty empty voices who
will never speak of anything with ardor
or passion,
who will never ask for more than a
Molotov Cocktail
or lime twist;
forty dead laughs that deafen her ears
and pierce her dreams with a panic-stricken fear
that this is it.


She sits and stares into her thick-bottomed glass
wrongly deemed a crystal ball
and sees nothing;
then she whispers to herself with a steady slur
that she will escape.

Hi,

I thought that this was beautifully written.I love your imagery and use of language, and this flows well. I especially enjoyed;
"Four walls and forty empty voices who
will never speak of anything with ardor
or passion,
who will never ask for more than a
Molotov Cocktail
or lime twist;"
I thought these lines were nicely direct and very powerful, without any superfluous words.

I love the last stanza, especially the sibilance of "steady slur".The ending is very effective.

My only criticism is that the second stanza seems a bit over-done, especially "pot-bellied tongue". I'd reduce the descriptions and make them more simple, like in the first lines I quoted, as I felt they were too consciously poetic and rang a little false.

Other than that I thought this was beautifully written and very effective.

Hope this helps!

Jas

You picked a very meaningful subject to write about, I've been around a lot of alcoholics, and you portrayed this really well, especially in the last line.

She sits and stares into her thick-bottomed glass
wrongly deemed a crystal ball
and sees nothing;
then she whispers to herself with a steady slur
that she will escape.

really had meaning to it. Sometimes I got lost in the metaphors you put into the poem, and had to go back and read it until it made sense. Very good job on this, I thought this line in particulier was beautiful.

Two crisscrossed brown eyes fix on
two crooked worlds

Keep writing!

That topic is REALLY eyegrabbing. I like the thoughts that the main character says to herself, and it makes for a very good ending. Keep it up!

I had to reread it twice to understand the whole, but in the end, I'm quite amazed. That's a great piece of work about alcoholics, keep writing!

This poem is very well written. Gold Star!

I liked the imagery of the glass as a crystal ball. It was perfect for capturing the image of a depressed drunk.

fleeting faster with every pulse of her
barely beating heart.

I liked the structure here. It is a nice adjective-verb combo, which is made interesting because the adjective and the verb start with the same letters. If it weren't for the same letters, it would have been much more purple and much less interesting.

There was a few things that seemed awkward.

silencing a potbellied tongue that's
never still;

I think that "potbellied" doesn't make much sense and it would be better to just cut it and move "never still" up.

Overall, this is solid work.

Eek, I didn't see this!

Anyway, you probably know by now that I adore your poetry, so I won't go on and on how awesome that is (although you should know that it's awesome!) Instead, I'll give a tiny suggestion, just in case you want to revise this poem or something like that.

I would like to see a little story of this alcoholic. Like, I want to know why she drinks. We just see her drinking, but to know what she sees in this crystal ball, to know why she's doing this, to know what she's escaping from... that would be awesome.

Thanks for posting this!

Your imagery is the best feature of this poem, though that's not to say that the other parts aren't excellent as well.

A way you could make your poetry better, I think, is by choosing new and unique subjects. Your imagery and description and structure and all that is wonderful, although this is still a poem about an alcoholic. A strong topic to be sure, but I'd like to see something from you that is about something unique and interesting. If alcoholism is important to you, you could focus in on a sub-category of alcoholism, to the point of putting a new spin on it.

Regardless, this is a great poem.

~Aet