loose

those old lynched creeds coat your childhood
like the televangelists during dinner that told you
just how much He loves us when we're good--
ma nods with her knife, cutting carrots,
"Yer gonna grow up to be nice 'n tall 'n good too,
dontcha worry, no, it's in yer blood. Heaven's in yer blood."

but there is heresy in the way you
spoon casserole to your mouth--a slow defiance,
but your eyes are big, big and blue,
"Like an angel, he's an angel, ain't he?"
--you brush momma's gospel hands away
when you fix your collar because you know
that you'll be nice n' tall, and your
hands are big enough already, big enough to hold a bible.

but when you say your verses, your teeth feel
lumpy and crooked in your mouth and
your hands fidget across the lines
to a place that you like better than heaven;

sundays are always the worst:
you have to worry about your soul
and the buttons on your shirt --
faithlessly loose.

Spoiler

Lumi and Kamas are wonderful, wonderful people.

Awwwwww. This is so amazing! I love it, and how you've built it! X3 Beautiful.

Persy, I do love you as a poet! Its one thing I definitely have to say first before I go into any nit-picks or little things because personally, I find this poem to be intriguing and interesting. But everything can be worked upon and bettered! Even Michelangelo, on his death bed, admitted to being sad that he should die having hardly learned the alphabet of his proffession, and he was one of the greatest sculpters of all time!

Firstly, I would like to note upon content. The topic is great and it comes through quite easily, but what you gain in substance, you lack in flesh. The imagery, which was there to an extent, did not really do this piece justice. We want to have a taste of not only the reality and the internals, but also the colour and the feel. Good metaphor equals good poetry of which I found a hard time locating in this poem. It was kind of just straight up, like prose.

but when you say your verses, your teeth feel
lumpy and crooked in your mouth and

This section here wasn't very strong. You started out all gung-ho but started to get a little sloppy near the end with any notes being rather... bland? I love the idea of teeth feeling crooked, but lumpy is just not the right word for this section. I would change that up. Try to strengthen what you've already got here.

those old lynched creeds coat your childhood
like the televangelists during dinner that told you
just how much He loves us when we're good--
ma nods with her knife, cutting carrots,
"Yer gonna grow up to be nice 'n tall 'n good too,
dontcha worry, no, it's in yer blood. Heaven's in yer blood."

This is my favourite part of your poem. It pretty much puts down everything you stated in prior stanzas. In fact, if this was the poem on its own, I may have enjoyed it a little bit more but it would have been terribly short xP. Either way, this stanza made me love the poem so keep it, if anything!

sundays are always the worst:
you have to worry about your soul
and the buttons on your shirt --
faithlessly loose.

I can see where you were going with this last stanza but the lines were too short in comparison to the first stanza. Creative license is already being used in the fact that its non-rhymning, so don't abuse it. Try to keep things balanced and level for the flows sake.

Personally speaking, I really enjoyed this piece, but you start to repeat your topic a bit too much as if you have not much here to talk about in the first place. That could be changed with a little editing!

~Walker

Ah now this poem is much more to my liking, dear. You have strong images, a clear context and there's some really lovely lines and a great use of repetition, some rhyme. Basically there's not a lot I don't like about this, except perhaps for the beginning and the occasionally careless wording. It starts off slow and your vocabulary is a little clumsy, dragging down the flow. Here, a few comments:

those old lynched [This is quite hard to say. Lose the old or change lynched into something softer like servantile. Not a fitting word I meant but see, soft and sinister. The problem is that old ends on a plosive so the next word will flow much better if it either starts with a plosive which will make it dramatic and powerful, or with a soft word (I forget the fancy term) which will make it slow and sneaky or lyrical. I like the idea of you making it lyrical because I feel anything pertaining to creeds or hymns should be and it would both reflect and mock their nature.] creeds coat your childhood
like the televangelists during dinner that told you
just how much He loves us when we're good--
ma nods with her knife, cutting carrots,
"Yer gonna grow up to be nice 'n tall 'n good too,
dontcha worry, no, it's in yer blood. Heaven's in yer blood." [Love the regional dialogue and the repetition, the rhyme. All very nice here. Not sure about the line about ma cutting carrots though.]

but there is heresy in the way you
spoon casserole to your mouth--a slow defiance,
but your eyes are big, big and blue,
"Like an angel, he's an angel, ain't he?"
--you brush momma's gospel hands away
when you fix your collar because you know
that you'll be nice n' tall, and your
hands are big enough already, big enough to hold a bible. [I love the image of this, the meaning of it. I just really like this line.]

but when you say your verses, your teeth feel
lumpy and crooked in your mouth and [Not sure lumpy is the right word.]
your hands fidget across the lines [Not sure if fidget fits the tone. Maybe just have another think over some of these words.]
to a place that you like better than heaven;

sundays are always the worst:
you have to worry about your soul
and the buttons on your shirt --
faithlessly loose.

An excellent ending, nothing to fault there. I love the image of the loose buttons on the shirt and the combination of the material worry with the worry of the soul. That was extremely nicely done. I wouldn't have minded an expansion on the faithlessly loose though, an extra simile or something just to pad it out and round it off. It seemed a slightly abrupt ending.

Thanks for the read,

Heather xxx