Plums

A/N: Finally eh Penezeka? I love biology poetry.

--

Sometimes, I forget where brain overlapped in your mind;
was it at the synapses,
or that summer day, three years ago
when we skipped stones on frozen water.
That's how things replayed until it lay on dissection trays,
and you watched me lay out each neuron
to paint the way you would take to the back staircase,
the one with boards that sagged apart like tissue might.

I cut your frontal lobe like the plums you had for breakfast,
the cold ones in the fruit bowl. You could hear the way the stairs cracked
when you bite in.

and sink your teeth into the parietal, but when your fingers shake so much
you wonder how you haven't dropped it yet.

Plums bruise like your brain might and gloss over,
softened tissues where the occipital cracked.
Don't keep your eyes so wide, they might gloss over too.

Did you skin your fruit before you ate them
so you could follow the fibers until things went
dark, temporal and all you could smell was the antiseptic
and kitchen air after all the fruits had gone bad.

Nice poem.
Grammar is in red.
Others are in Blue.

Sometimes, I forgot where brain overlapped in your mind;- I think you should try to keep a consistent tense in this one, it got a little shaky there.
was it at the synapses ( comma isn't necessary)
or that summer day, three years ago
when we skipped stones on frozen water?
That's how things replayed until it lay on dissection trays, - Things? what thing? specify, please.
and you watched me lay out each neuron
to paint the way you would take? to the back staircase,
the one with boards that sagged apart like ( a torn piece of?)tissue might.

I cut your frontal lobe like the plums you had for breakfast,
the cold ones in the fruit bowl. You could hear the way the stairs cracked
when you bit in.

And sunk your teeth into the parietal, but when your fingers shook so much
you wondered how you hadn't dropped it yet.- Again, inconsistent tense is a little confusing here.

Plums bruise like your brain might and gloss over
softened tissues where the occipital cracked.
Don't keep your eyes so wide ( open?), they might gloss over too.

Did you skin your fruit before you ate them(?)
Could you follow the fibers until things went
dark, temporal and all you could smell was the antiseptic
and kitchen air after all the fruits had gone bad?

Overall, I love your idea and concept here, but they whole poem just threw me off a little, because sudden changes in tense were confusing and there was a lack of punctuation in certain areas which made for and overall shaky experience.

I suggest you just try smoothing out a few of the areas in question, and it''l be a great piece!

Nice job, though.
Keep writing!

----------------------------
-Jojo

Ryba! Thank you kindly. Did the jackhammer finally do the trick? No accidents with that, I assume?
Anyways. Review time. Forgive me if my lucidity is a bit... meh. I wrote this at a couple of different times, ranging from about 6AM to right after I got home from school, after which I am always just the slightest bit braindead. Anywho.

So, first off, I found your phrasing pretty awkward in more than a couple of places. I think that they were supposed to be stylistic phrasings, but to be perfectly honest, they came off more as not being fully stated. Almost like they were more concepts than actual words. While this can be good sometimes, they were fat too noticeable to work.
The other thing that kind of bothered me is the fact that this is written in first person, and yet, the narrator is barely there; we only get mention of actions they take in the first two stanzas, and then you drop them altogether. You could resolve this by either involving the narrator in the actions, or changing the structure/subject you have further down. You could also take the route of making this completely second person, but I think that you would lose a great deal of the tone.

Sometimes, I forget where (the? your?)brain overlapped in your mind;
was it at the synapses,
or that summer day, three years ago
when we skipped stones on frozen water[b(you need a question mark here)[/b]
That's how things replayed until they (you changed from plural to singular) lay on dissection trays,
and you watched me lay out each neuron
to paint the way you would take to the back staircase,
the one with boards that sagged apart like tissue might.

Okay, so I played with some grammar above (which I actually hate to do in the text but... oh well). I think that you could make a full stop after the first line, and maybe play with the phrase a bit. I also think that you could perhaps play with the wording at the line "watched me lay out each neuron/to paint the way". Another phrase to play with: very last bit. I really like the image of tissue paper, but the "like tissue might" feels a bit off to me for some reason. It's mostly awkwardness in the phrasing or little things that are making me stumble over the words-- not a big deal, but I'd say worth looking into/working on.
Strong beginning, but you might consider making some of your imagery a bit more concrete to pull the reader in at first. To be perfectly honest, there wasn't anything for me to really grab onto except for a bunch of pretty language, and I was left more bored than anything else. You might have peeked my interest a bit, but the story itself wasn't developed enough to really pull me in.
You might consider establishing a relationship between the two characters (at least somewhere in the poem, because right now it's quite ambiguous... kind of niggled at me), even if it's something really subtle. All we have so far is skipping stones, and some figurative images that didn't really provide any concrete feelings.

I cut your frontal lobe like the plums you had for breakfast,
the cold ones in the fruit bowl. You could hear the way the stairs cracked
when you bite in.

The clause "the cold ones in the fruit bowl" feels a bit awkward to me, almost like it was sloppily stitched onto the phrase before it. Consider playing with it a bit more, and I think it could be really effective.
So, I like this part a bit more, though to be perfectly honest, I don't get what it does. It almost feels like a filler, more like a separate piece of imagery that doesn't really accomplish anything. This feels doubly obvious to me because you separated it into its own stanza. I'd combine it with the next stanza, maybe relate it with the narrator a bit more, and put something a bit more meaningful into it. It needs to further your story a bit more. Or at least your characters.

and sink your teeth into the parietal, but when your fingers shake so much
you wonder how you haven't dropped it yet.

So, the full stop in the last stanza made it really awkward flow-wise when coming up to this next. Other than that: nice job. Not much to say on this little snippet, other than adding it to the last little snippet.

Plums bruise like your brain might and gloss over,
softened tissues where the occipital cracked.
Don't keep your eyes so wide, they might gloss over too.

So, first line, I'd suggest switching the simile so that the part about the brain precedes that of the plums. This reestablishes the subject that you're talking about, and honestly, it just sounds better. I really love the concept though.

For the next part: your word choice. So, this really wasn't too bad in this poem, though I've noticed it in other pieces you've done. You have a penchant for scientific terms. While this is all jolly and whatnot, a lot of times it comes across as unnatural or forced, and it can make it kind of difficult to read. Personally, I'm not a huge science person, so while I'm able to gather what you mean through context, it still feels odd to see words like "occipital" and "parietal" in poetry. I'm usually not for limiting one's vocabulary in writing, because I think it's stupid to have to dumb down things for lazy/ignorant people (in this case, me), but I consider scientific terms on another level. Like I said, it wasn't too evident in this piece (primarily in that one word), but it's something to think on. Don't substitute precision for concision.

Did you skin your fruit before you ate them
so you could follow the fibers until things went
dark, temporal and all you could smell was the antiseptic
and kitchen air after all the fruits had gone bad.

AAH! Where did the narrator go? We completely lost them! D:
Aside from that, this was a bit awkwardly phrased. You definitely need to cut this up a little bit. Keep in mind that this is still a question. You've expanded the line so long that we actually kind of forget the beginning of the sentence, and it makes us lose track of your imagery. I'd suggest cutting it off after the first line, where we still have that concept and thought on us. After that initial question, you kind of float off into a bunch of describing fragments that become almost overwhelming. While your descriptions are nice and everything, make it more effective.
Also, this needs to be more concrete. We don't have much emotion, don't really know the situation... pull us in.


Overall, I think that you have some great imagery and some excellent concepts, but the situation itself is so ambiguous and almost impossible to actually imagine that the effect is lessened. There were some phrasing issues and some tense changes, but they should be pretty easy to solve/edit. Lemme know if you have any questions or want to talk about stylistic stuff more. Awesome job, Ryba.

So.

This was... intriguing, I suppose. But. Here's what I noticed. In numerous places, your wording was pretty weird. I understand that some of it could have to do with trying to maintain some sort of rhythm, but, if you thought there was any advantage to the way you phrased some things, it completely eluded me. It came across as being more awkward and unfinished than stylish. Even in the very first line:

Sometimes, I forget where brain overlapped in your mind;

Reading that does not make me want to have to go through the rest of the poem. You've managed to alienate the reader in the very first line by failing to insert a definite article/indefinite article/possessive pronoun where there quite clearly needs to be. In addition, the jump from present to past tense is very disorienting, which is not something you want to be right at the beginning. And then, just when I'm hoping your grammar's going to improve, you throw this at me:

was it at the synapses,
or that summer day, three years ago
when we skipped stones on frozen water.
That's how things replayed until it lay on dissection trays,
and you watched me lay out each neuron
to paint the way you would take to the back staircase,
the one with boards that sagged apart like tissue might.

1. The second line should end with a comma.
2. The third line should end with a question mark.
3. I don't know where you're going with that last line. Seems like you had an image in your head, but were unable to put it into words without being confusing. That can pretty much sum up that whole stanza: you know where you want to go with the imagery, but it's all so cluttered and vague that I'm not sure what to make of it all. Try homing in on what you're actually trying to get across.

I cut your frontal lobe like the plums you had for breakfast,
the cold ones in the fruit bowl. You could hear the way the stairs cracked
when you bite in.

Right away, I've got a big problem with that first line. See, your overdoing it with the similes. You've got two lines right next to each other that are both comparisons. Just because they're separated by the space between stanzas doesn't mean that it doesn't sound odd. Reading through the rest, I'm getting really confused with the tense changes, especially in that last sentence. "Could" is past tense, as well as "cracked," but then you switch to present tense with "bite." This really reinforces the sense of disorder established pretty thoroughly in the first stanza. If this is intentional, I would really try to clean up the mess, because it's not doing you or your poem any justice.

and sink your teeth into the parietal, but when your fingers shake so much
you wonder how you haven't dropped it yet.

First off, why isn't "and" capitalized? The last stanza ended with a period.
All this strange wording is throwing me off balance. This is how I would phrase it:
"And sink your teeth into the parietal, but your fingers shake so much that
you wonder how you haven't dropped it yet."
One other thing I noticed. What happened to your first-person? You got it planted in pretty well in the first stanza that the poem is going to have a narrator, but since then you've really been just dropping it more and more in favor of second-person. It's a bit annoying, really.

Plums bruise like your brain might and gloss over,
softened tissues where the occipital cracked.
Don't keep your eyes so wide, they might gloss over too.

I don't even think you need this stanza. You've once again managed to estrange me with your awkward phrasing, which is most evident in the first line. I really don't feel anything as I read this, either. This could in part be a result of the wording, but I wouldn't attribute all of the feelinglessness to it. Again, your images are cluttered, and this time I don't even see a particular point to this stanza, either.

Did you skin your fruit before you ate them
so you could follow the fibers until things went
dark, temporal and all you could smell was the antiseptic
and kitchen air after all the fruits had gone bad.

At least you picked it up at the end. Here my only problem lies with the apparent disappearance of the narrator, which has been bothering me for a while now.

Besides all that, you did a good job. Sorry if this was a bit harsh. Keep writing.

-Kafka

I don't believe I've ever reviewed anything by you before.
So. Hiya.

First off, I admire anyone who can or even just attempts to incorporate sciences into poetry. This poem definitely has a lot of potential to it, given a few good polishings in a couple of places.

Kamas wrote:Sometimes, I forget where brain overlapped in your mind;
was it at the synapses,
or that summer day, three years ago
when we skipped stones on frozen water.

1) First off, love the imagery here. As Kafka said, your wording here (and throughout the rest of the piece) is a bit odd, but I don't think it took away from the piece for me as much as it did for him. The concept of the poem is still understandable regardless of the wording. That been said, again, I like the imagery in these first lines.
2) This may sound wierd, but I like where the lines break off. A lot of writers break their lines in a way causes their work to sound incredibly choppy, which gets quite irritating the more I see it. However, you obviously don't have that problem.
3) Technically, you should have a question mark after "water". However, if the period was intentional and it's there for some reason that I'm just not able to pick up on, disregard my suggestion.

Kamas wrote:That's how things replayed until it lay on dissection trays,
and you watched me lay out each neuron
to paint the way you would take to the back staircase,
the one with boards that sagged apart like tissue might.

1) "Until it lay" sounds a bit off when I read it over a couple of times, as if you're switching from past to present. I could be totally wrong, but I thought I'd point it out.
2)"like tissue might" - fantastic comparison, poor wording. It's not that it's a strange kind of wording... it's more or less just weak compared to the rest of the stanza. Honestly, if you just took off the "might" from the end and maybe add a descriptive adjective before "tissue," it would sound just fine. Do with it what you will.

I better be following you by the time I'm done reviewing, otherwise I'm insane.

Kamas wrote:I cut your frontal lobe like the plums you had for breakfast,
the cold ones in the fruit bowl. You could hear the way the stairs cracked
when you bite in.

1) For the sake of keeping the entire stanza focused in the past, change "bite" to "bit."
2) Love the way you brought back the image of the stairs.

Kamas wrote:and sink your teeth into the parietal, but when your fingers shake so much
you wonder how you haven't dropped it yet.

I like these lines, and then again I don't like them.
Let me rephrase: I like what they're saying. I don't like how they're worded and the position they're in regarding the rest of the piece. First off, initially, these lines came off as a fragment. Sometimes incomplete sentences are okay in a poem and off on their own, but this one not so much. I suggest reworking these lines a bit.

Kamas wrote:Plums bruise like your brain might and gloss over,
softened tissues where the occipital cracked.
Don't keep your eyes so wide, they might gloss over too.

1)Again, with the "might." Like last time, it's rather vague and just dulls down everything else.
Other than that, brilliant final stanza.

Overall, I loved this, and I really like your style. A couple of grammar issues here and there, and some punctuation as well, but it's not really worth going through and picking out every little flaw. Normally I critique word choice and syntax and whatnot too, but biology poetry isn't necessarily my strong point, so yeah. Great write, though. Keep it up.