The Children I Bear

I’m a little dry
My poetic breasts no longer
Nourish
My womanhood is not sufficient
For pen and hand
The children I bear are runts
And they are slaughtered
Like pigs and cattle,
Hanging
For what I’m worth,
I’m bought and sold
I am an object, an automaton
My milk has no fat, no girth
Skimmed by the other
Processed and
Dry

First of all: I loved this. I loved the way it was worded. I loved the places were you split the lines. It sounds like someone who's having a hard time writing creative poems and bringing out the milk needed to create unique peotry. But then the children part confuses me. Clarify for me.

9 out of 10

The milk is like "creative juices" or whatever and the children are the poems themselves. If there is nothing to nourish the children, then they will die, be torn apart, etc.

Hey maryletsflyaway,

The biggest immediate problem with this effort is your enjambement, or line breaks. There doesn't seem to have been any consideration for them at all. Hence, your flow is choppy and the poem doesn't read very well.

The other problem is your idea is static. The narrator begins by stating their poetry is dry, and ends by saying it's dry. Nothing seems to have been moved, understood or explained through the lines in between. Indeed, those two lines are also probably the worst in the poem because they tell, rather than show, what this about. Get rid of them. I can gather from the idea of lack of nourishment, etc. the idea of dryness, and those lines take away from the rest of the lines by stating plainly your meaning.

For what it's worth, the idea is one you should keep going at. This poem just needs a lot of revising.

Good luck.