Soon

Spoiler

This is something I did quickly in class. The poem is meant to be disjointed as we had to relpicate the style of an other Poet, Judith Beveridge. This poem is heavily influenced by her work, which is amazing by the way! Enjoy

Soon, her hands will reach into the sudsy grey water
Feel the familiar sting of detergent, each drop
a tear of misery. She watches her

child run into the dying sun chasing cream crested cockatoos
feet moving the sharp hum of the cicadas calls. The
child’s blue shirt are caked with garden dirt, brown like

the stains crushed upon the cheap plastic plates
She knows how many motions will scrub the plate
clean; how many plates to divvy up

each meal, the child’s hungry mouth open in
an static joy. Now the magpie sings his smooth lament,
a hymn to the dying day, as the child

dances her cares away, as she scrubs the stubborn
stains away. Today, who can explain
the misery she feels, surely this

is a day to be treasured, yet each plate
piles into a stack of mediocrity. The evening
was so beautiful, sun glowing red and blue

patterns of joy upon the green grass
her child leaves like food stains upon
a white plate. Her old latex gloves become

her standard, the water reaching a certain
height before it must be changed,
replaced with something cleaner and

pure. Soon her child will tired, and lie still on the
green grass, amongst the thorn-ed garden roses, lined up in rows.
She sighed, knowing that she won’t

Finish the dishes today.

I am sure this one goes deeper than just the cleaning of dishes.. Hmmm... Would like to read more of these.. Keep it up

Excellent poem. It has a lot of depth to it, and that's something that I really appreciate. I loved the misery that was conveyed at the duties of a mother/ woman, and I'd like to congratulate you on a spectacular piece of work. Keep it up! I'd love to read more from you!

So...I wasn't logged in when I read this a minute or two ago...and I was gonna be lazy and not comment at all.
But then I thought about how your poem has as many comments as the poem I just put up, and then I thought about how I hate not getting comments on my poetry, so I'm gonna give you a review-comment-thingy just to give ya one more than me. : )

Okay, here I go.
First off, I like this poem as a whole. I really did. I love this style of writing, where it's cut and whadya call it? Oh, disjointed. Yes, I love. this. style. Which is a thumbs up for you!

Though I wanted to talk about your punctuation a bit. I'm picky in a strange way about punctuation. I think that some peoms should have it, but then I think other poems don't have to have punctuation at all. Now, since a majority of your poem has punctuation, I'm just gonna nitpick some spots that I think should have extra punctuation that you didn't put in. And if you don't agree with me, then that is a-okay, and you can toss my punctuation-critique to the curb.

(I'm gonnna do this stanza by stanza, because that's how I liked to review a poem.)

Soon, her hands will reach into the sudsy grey water
Feel the familiar sting of detergent, each drop
a tear of misery. She watches her

So after soon there shouldn't be a comma, but I understand you want a break there, or at least a pause. You can make this pause two other ways.
The first would be to move soon.

You can rearrange it like this:
"Soon
her hands will reach into..."

Or, like you did with the last line, move it away,

"Soon

her hands will reach into..."

Because I think you're trying to keep that three lined stanza thing going on.

If you don't wanna move soon, but you still want that pause, there are magical ellipses that sometimes people hate. But if you're like me, you probably use them too much.

So it would be like:
"Soon...her hands will reach into...yada yada yada" : )

Back to punctuation now~

Soon, her hands will reach into the sudsy grey water
Feel the familiar sting of detergent, each drop
a tear of misery. She watches her

So this first stanza's a bit rough. You have punctuation, but I feel this could go entirely without it. I'm going to try my best though to kind of fix it up and keep punctuation. The way your first line goes with your second line is awkward.

Also, grey is not a color. Gray is a color, Grey is a British last name. I know they're both used, but it should technically be gray. Just ta let cha know. And I know I"m doing a lot to this poem... well, not maybe, but it's actually a really good poem. I'm just working on the smaller stuff to make it look nicer. And like I said, you don't have to listen to any of this.

"Soon... her hands will reach into the sudsy gray water.
Feel the familiar sting of detergent. Each drop,
a tear of misery. She watches her"

or

"Soon...her hands will reach into the sudsy gray water,
and feel the familiar sting of detergent. Each drop,
a tear of misery. She watches her"

For the opening, it's not too powerful or compelling. Your poem actually gets better towards the middle. You should try making the opening a bit more catchy so people don't stop reading. The first line is good, but kind of bland. And then the next part is boring and cliche in my opening. Words like sting, drop, and "a tear of misery" or unoriginal to me. Use synonyms, use different comparisons to spice it up and make it more lively, more deep, so the reader is intrigued and not put-off.

child run into the dying sun chasing cream crested cockatoos
feet moving the sharp hum of the cicadas calls. The
child’s blue shirt are caked with garden dirt, brown like

The first line of this is wonderful. I'm a total sucker for alliteration and assonance (although I'm not sure that it really is, since the c is making different sounds...) Anyway, I love "chasing cream crested cockatoos". Especially cream crested. That's a beautiful line of imagery.

But, once again, if you're going to put in punctuation, you have to follow through with it.
"child run into the dying sun chasing cream-crested cockatoos..."

And although the last part of this line is lovely, the "dying sun" is once again boring and over used. Synonyms or other words can be used here to make it more interesting to the reader. There are other ways to say that the sun is setting, than making it a "dying sun". What about a "falling sun", or a "sinking sun" if you want alliteration.

child run into the dying sun chasing cream crested cockatoos
feet moving the sharp hum of the cicadas calls. The
child’s blue shirt are caked with garden dirt, brown like

Another thing I wanted to talk about is the second line. It's awkward like with the second line in the first stanza.

Altered, I think it should be like this:

"child run into the dying sun chasing cream-crested cockatoos.
Feet moving to the sharp hum of the cicadas' calls, the
child's blue shirt is caked with gardent dirt. Brown like"

or

"child run into the dying sun chasing cream-crested cockatoos,
and their feet move to the sharp hum of the cicadas' calls. The
child's blue shirt is caked with garden dirt; brown like"

The second stanza's pretty good imagery-wise. I like the sound of cicadas, and can hear it in my mind. (They were singing earlier this morning when I was at home.) The last line could be tweaked. "caked" is a common word used with dirt or mud, perhaps find something different?

I know I keep suggesting synonyms, but I don't mean replace every word with something extravegant. No, that would look to chaulked and wordy and it would just be awful. But here and there are certain words that can be replaced with other words that may be simpler or just may fit better in the stanza. There are other words that seem more creative and give the poem a flare that it didn't have before when you use normal and bland words.

the stains crushed upon the cheap plastic plates
She knows how many motions will scrub the plate
clean; how many plates to divvy up

I don't have much to stay about this stanza. It's so-so. I think the word motions is awkward. I mean, I get what you're saying it's just weird? It's a different word, which is nice. It's not bland, but at the same time it doesn't fit all too well. I dunno. Others may like it.

For punctuation:
"the stains crushed upon the cheap plastic plates.
You just needed a period there.

If this were my poem, which it's not (it's too good to be my poem, lol), I would alter the stanza to be like this

"the stains crushed upon the cheap plastic plates.
She knows how many motions will scrub the plate
clean, and how many plates to divvy up"

I don't think the ; worked there for that purpose... But I'm not a perfect grammer person, so what do I know? Lol.

Oh and if I sound like a complete jerk through this I don't mean to. I'm always afraid I sound like I'm a know-it-all and that my poems are better and that this sucks, blah blah blah. I don't mean it that way, though. I really am only trying to help. In fact, I think this is an excellent piece. But you did put it up for others to comment, read, and critique, so I'm only doing that.

each meal, the child’s hungry mouth open in
an static joy. Now the magpie sings his smooth lament,
a hymn to the dying day, as the child

Just to fix this up a little:

"each meal. The child's hungry mouth opens in
a static joy. Now the magpie sings his smooth lament,
a hymn to the dying day, as the child"

An is only used in from of vowels and one exception which I can't think of at the moment... Oh yeah, x-ray. You don't say a x-ray, because x sounds like ex and e is a vowel, so it'd be an x-ray. I'm sure there are others... but yeah. So it's "a static" and not "an static". I'm sure that was just a wittle mistake that you read over. I read over a lot of things. I probably have errors all throughout my review that I'm not going to go back and fix, because I'm laaazy.

"a hymn to the dying day..."

You used dying again. Why's everything dying? Lol. Try and find a different word. There are plenty out there. I think it's kind of boring and repetitive to use the same word unless you use it a lot and it's intentional. I'm sure this is intentional in a way, but it's not enforced enough, and it can be represented by other words. (Did that make sense?)

You confuse me with lament and hymn. A lament is an expression of grief and mourning. A hymn is praise and adoration. They don't really go together, yet they're talking about the same thing.

dances her cares away, as she scrubs the stubborn
stains away. Today, who can explain
the misery she feels, surely this

The line that this is continued with all together looks like:

"Now the magpie sings his smooth lament, a hymn to the dying day, as the child dances her cares away, as she scrubs the stubborn stains away."

Sometimes in these disjointed poems the lines can tend to get a little too long. Which you've had kind of an issue with. Which is why I believe that this poem would have worked better without any punctuation at all. Because with punctuation it's hard to find where to stop the sentence without disrupting the stanzas and flows and stuff.

The only way I think to fix this is ...ellipses! Yes, and now I get stabbed to death. Lol. They help draw out a sentence and give breaks, especially to the super long ones like this one.

"dances her cares away... as she scrubs the stubborn
stains away. Today, who can explain
the misery she feels? Surely this"

There was a question in that stanza, so I thought I'd add the question mark.

is a day to be treasured, yet each plate
piles into a stack of mediocrity. The evening
was so beautiful, sun glowing red and blue

Punctuation, punctuation, punctuation. It's actually kind of hard to type punctuation. : ) And I think it's good that all I'm really focusing on is the punctuation and some words. These things are easy to fix. At least I'm not saying go rewrite your poem, because it's terrible, because it's not. It's a good poem and I like it.

"is a day to be treasure. Yet each plate
piles into a stack of mediocrity. The evening
was so beautiful. The sun glowing red and blue"

I think the word piles can be replaced by something else. Piles is a boring word, to me. And it's too much like the word stack. So when you have two words that are close to one another in the same line it's kind of... Bleh...

I love the last line of this stanza. When I think of a sun I do think of red, but I think of red, orange, pink, those colors. So blue is so cool and so vibrant that it creates such a nice imagery piece in my mind. I think that a lot.

(Glowing's a boring word, but there are others words, too.) I bet you're sick of me saying this. Also, if you look at the this sentence:

"The sun glowing red and blue patterns of joy upon the green grass..." That doesn't work. So glowing should be replaced with another word to make it work as a sentence, even though I know its disjointed.

patterns of joy upon the green grass
her child leaves like food stains upon
a white plate. Her old latex gloves become

Punctuation~~~

"patterns of joy upon the green grass.
Her child leaves like the food stains upon
a white place. Her old latex gloves become"

I like the "patterns of joy". I thought that was nice. I like how it connected with the previous line, too. It was nice.

her standard, the water reaching a certain
height before it must be changed,
replaced with something cleaner and

We're gettin' closer to the end~~~ ^^

"her standard. The water reaches a certain
height before it must be changed,
replaced with something cleaner and"

This stanza was kind of boring. It felt kind of filler to me. Didn't really work with the whole plate, stains, children, sun thing you were working with before.

pure. Soon her child will tired, and lie still on the
green grass, amongst the thorn-ed garden roses, lined up in rows.
She sighed, knowing that she won’t

tired should be tire

"pure. Soon her child will tire, and lie still on the
green grass amongst the thorny garden roses lined up in rows.
She sighs, knowing that she won't"

Congratuations on this stanza, because I had to go look up something and it turns out you were right!
So I got a grammar lesson today on the difference between lie and lay, or lies and lays, anway. Lol.

You used green grass again... I don't know whether I like that or not... Oh well, lol.

Thorn-ed is not a word... It sounds like some Shakespearean thing. Unless you were going for that.

Finish the dishes today.

And now for the last line!
I'm confused, why is finish capitalized? I don't think it needs to be, because it's not the start of a sentence.
On my computer, I hate it when I'm trying to type a poem and it capitalizes the beginning word of every line. I'm like, no! I dun wan it to be, lol.

Maybe you capitalized it on purpose? For emphasis? But to me, it shouldn't be, so I'm just telling you that...

ANYWAY, here I've put together your poem with my corrections and punctuation. ^^

Spoiler

Soon

her hands will reach into the sudsy gray water,
and feel the familiar sting of detergent. Each drop,
a tear of misery. She watches her

child run into the dying sun chasing cream-crested cockatoos,
and their feet move to the sharp hum of the cicadas' calls. The
child's blue shirt is caked with garden dirt; brown like

the stains crushed upon the cheap plastic plates.
She knows how many motions will scrub the plate
clean, and how many plates to divvy up

each meal. The child's hungry mouth opens in
a static joy. Now the magpie sings his smooth lament,
a hymn to the dying day, as the child

dances her cares away... as she scrubs the stubborn
stains away. Today, who can explain
the misery she feels? Surely this

is a day to be treasure. Yet each plate
piles into a stack of mediocrity. The evening
was so beautiful. The sun glowing red and blue

patterns of joy upon the green grass.
Her child leaves like the food stains upon
a white place. Her old latex gloves become

her standard. The water reaches a certain
height before it must be changed,
replaced with something cleaner and

pure. Soon her child will tire, and lie still on the
green grass amongst the thorny garden roses lined up in rows.
She sighs, knowing that she won't

finish the dishes today.

Overall, I liked the poem. I thought it was good. ^^ There was some nice imagery, and I love how even though the mother is washing dishes there is so much more meaning to it. There's a lot of deeper connections and emotions that you can pick out of the poem. I enjoyed reading it, and I hope you enjoyed writing it, and will continue to write more.

(Sorry if that was a little long...)