Patchy

*About my dead dog and my sister*

The wind disturbs
the silence,
uttering silent whispers
that surround
my body
with tingling chills that hug
my arms.

I feel none of it though
all I can do is listen and see.

Listen to the childlike voice,
and to see the
short, stubby, extremitites,
extended from her palm,
move in a continuous pattern.

Her hair trembles as if the air is combing it,
trying to comfort her and remove the pain.
The innocence hiding the evil that occured.

Her hands continue to move in familiar patterns,
she watches his fur ruffle gently.
Her mouth moves as she breaks the silence
with her tiny voice.

She clings to the words
and tries to believe them.
"He is only asleep daddy,
he will wake up soon."

Very sad and beautiful. I had to read it a couple times to make sense of it, but I guess that means its good. I always have trouble understanding a decent poem. check out my poem, "The After" its my first attempt at poetry. I really liked yours. especially the way you puncuated it.

Hey Flower. Feels like I haven't reviewed you in ages.

This is your usual style, and but it's maturing a bit. You're using more visual language, and a few more senses in your wording. It's nice to see.

Still room for improvement, though.

The first thing I noticed was stanza one line four. Your tense is off with "hugs"; it should be "hug." Jerked me out of the poem a bit.

That whole stanza I'm a bit torn on. You have good language and some good images, but it doesn't feel thick enough. The linebreaks feel like they were just tossed together without thought, when you could be using them to draw emphasis to a certain line/word. Right now this stanza feels slow, because there doesn't seem to be any consistent rhythm to the lines or the stanza as a whole. Try playing with the linebreaks a bit, to see how you can change the flow and make the beginning more interesting to read.

The impressions themselves also feel like a bit of a weak lead-up to the couplet that acts as stanza 2. Lines that indicate great shock I've found work best with a more solid lead-up. This can be in length or the strength of the impressions. I'd make the images just a bit longer and more complete (right now they mash together a bit; before we can register one we're hit with another) to make the couplet stronger. You might also want to try making stanza one into a 6 line stanza, just for a greater contrast in length.

My second problem is with "things" in stanza 3. It's vague, and instantly undermines any solid image we might have been getting from the poem. I'd seen it more as magic threads spilling out, but upon my second read/later on in the poem I realized she was petting the dog. Strengthen that word so we get a solid image of what she's doing right from the start, and we're not jerked out with a vague image.

The rest of the poem was good. That's where I saw some of the most maturing in your style and the strongest image use. It's rather heartbreaking, but I think it could be so much stronger if the images were cleaned up and fleshed out in stanzas 1 and 3.

PM me if you have any questions or comments.

~Rosey

Hey Flower - This is the review that you requested in my WRFF thread. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get this done... Anyway, this is about your poem. This is absolutely beautiful, and very mature.

There are a couple of things that I would like to suggest, though:
I agree with Rosey about the first stanza. It definitely feels the weakest, and because the rest of the poem is so powerful, it stands out. The format is very different than the rest of the poem, making it seem odd. In a different poem this would be fine, but it doesn't suit this particular one. Having a stronger introduction will make the rest of it seem that much better.
In stanza three, the word 'extremities' seems a bit out of place; it interrupted the flow of the stanza. Maybe a different word would work better there. Also in that line, you have an extra comma there between 'stubby' and 'extremities'.

As a whole, I loved this poem. It is extremely poignant and has a certain magic about it that describes the scene well. The last stanza was brilliant, showing the innocence of a child, even in the face of tragedy.

I hope this is helpful, and if you have any questions/comments, feel free to PM me. I look forward to reading more of your work!
-Alz

Hello there,

This poem manages to be sad and gloomy whilst at the same time beautiful and graceful I am once again impressed by the power of the written word. Generally I found this amazing it definitely told a story and I got a lot of imagery expressed in this whole piece of writing. I found the last stanza incredibly true and exactly the kind of thing a lot of people can relate to. I would try to make the length of all the verse's approximately the same length because at the moment it's a bit disjointed apart from that though it's great.

From CuteJackRussell