Cadaver

Cadaver
I’m just another Cadaver.
Formaldehyde sits in my veins
Like fragrant pink blood.
I live in a refrigerator.
I am cold, dead.
Mute.
My teeth are yellow
From the fluorine
In the well water I drank.
My fingers are callused
From the guitar
I loved to play.
My orbits are porous
From the iron
I failed to eat.
My lips are blue
From the air
I couldn't breathe.
But I’m just another Cadaver.
Formaldehyde sits in my veins
Like fragrant pink blood.
I live in a refrigerator.
I am cold, dead.
Mute.

Author's Note: I wrote this because of the aversion our society has of the dead, and those who can learn from them. Sometimes, it is the dead who speak the loudest. And they never lie.

I must say I find it very hard to critique poetry, but I enjoyed this very much. Not often do I actually enjoy poetry, but I did enjoy this one. I liked the way you didn't try to sugar coat the dead with a grandeur of supernatural proportions, because you're right, people have a tenancy to avoid not only the reality of death but also its involvement in the world.

I don't know what else to say. Well done, and please PM me when you write some more!

Cadaver
I’m just another Cadaver.
Formaldehyde sits in my veins
Like fragrant pink blood.
I live in a refrigerator.
I am cold, dead.
Mute.
My teeth are yellow
From the fluorine
In the well water I drank.
My fingers are muscular
From the piano
I loved to play.
My orbits are porous
From the iron
I failed to eat.
My lips are blue
From the poison
That killed me.
But I’m just another Cadaver.
Formaldehyde sits in my veins
Like fragrant pink blood.
I live in a refrigerator.
I am cold, dead.
Mute.

This is an interesting idea, but very hard to carry out. Have you seen Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings of cadavers? He got into a little bit of trouble because he would cut up cadavers to study anatomy, and in fact the drawings he made today are still shown to medical students, they're very observant. It is strange to think of these people some of them pregnant women, living in absolute poverty, struggling their whole lives, and yet through their deaths are immortalized and made forever beautiful by the pen strokes of a genius.

In part it's a question of purpose, because this is quite an aggressive piece, there are moments of melancholia, but it's not really empathetic. If you wrote this to make people deal with the taboo of corpses, you may have to have a softer touch. At the moment it is quite stilted, partly from the short line lengths, it makes it very stark.

I’m just another Cadaver.

I think that this line contradicts the rest of the poem. It is difficult if you are looking to describe a kind of everyman, and then you provide exact details, which isolates it from this idea. You've heard the phrase 'personal is political', if you are genuine emotionally people will connect to all cadavers by default, sometimes the individual story can mean more than the mass.

Formaldehyde sits in my veins
Like fragrant pink blood.
I live in a refrigerator.
I am cold, dead.
Mute.

Again, the short lines, it makes it hard to sink in to, hard to approach. Keep reading it allowed to make it sound pretty. I don't know if it would be cliche to have 'voiceless' instead of muted, but hey blah blah double meaning, blah blah. Fragrant is an awkward word, and in conjunction with blood is kind of **suspenseful music** Twilighty. 'sweet' would be simpler, on the other hand you could be more specific about the smell of formaldehyde, can be a small simple word, but evocative.

My teeth are yellow
From the fluorine
In the well water I drank.

Well water? What is there a time period here? I'm curious about this, and correct me, I don't know what I'm talking about, but fluorine is something that is added to water in pumping stations usually, why is it in the well? I feel this is kind of dangling, would like a little more context just to be kind.

My fingers are muscular
From the piano
I loved to play.

This is a music geek thing, but there are many fun hand related things that show that you are an instrumentalist, boring ones are things like guitarists with ring hand with perfect nails, left callouses. Bassists, cellists, thumb callouses from stopping, callouses in general. Bassoonists, very developed thumb muscle, they call it Bassoonists' thumb. Violinists and viola players have permanent hickeys from their instruments. Clarinetists often scar the inside of the bottom lip from reeds. Harpists usually have lost skin on their thumbs and first three fingers. Pianists, they generally have something similar in their hand shape, but I don't know how to describe it. A friend of mine who is a pianist say they get microscopic splinters on the backs of their fingers from glissandos, but I'm not sure if this is true.

My orbits are porous
From the iron
I failed to eat.
My lips are blue
From the poison
That killed me.

I would like to see more of the specific anatomical thing, in fact I would like that even in the pianist hands, mention specific muscles, that would make it cooler. I did have to google 'orbits', and I'm fairly sure most people would, but I get the feeling that's what you were going for, right? I have no problem with big or obscure words, or technical jargon, but it would be better appreciated if you could imply the meaning through context.
Also poison no name? As I understand it, poisonings are generally more messy, you could mention the specific poison or more effects of it on the body. When you said people who learn from bodies, I think that would be an interesting angle to take, the relationship between like a med student and the corpse their dissecting, reconciling that.

The repetition at the end doesn't do a whole lot, because it's not really a conventional style, if you wanted to write it as a villanelle or something, well, sure, but as it is it's doesn't go anywhere or resolve anything.

I really like how you're thinking, I want to see how your poetry evolves.

Okay, so not to be one of those obnoxious people who make excuses for their work and try to explain why their work is awful or, worse yet, why the reviewer is wrong and the work is not awful. I just want to explain what I was going for here.
First off, I don't write poetry usually. I don't know how.
Second, when I started writing this in a fit of madness, my plan was to make it factual/informative/thought-provoking even while approaching a somewhat...unorthodox subject. If you say "cadaver" most people think: "dead, ew, cold, stinks, and dead" usually in that order. For the longest time I wanted to be a forensic anthropologist or medical examiner and everytime I told someone this they would either a) laugh as if I was kidding or b) look repulsed and quickly excuse themselves. So, I decided to write this. The goal was a sort of cynical look on people's views on cadavers. (I was inspired by Mary Roach's Stiff)
So I started with what most people think of as a cadaver. Then I tried (and I say tried because I am not a med student and have never taken an anatomy class so I can't claim to know anything for certain) to widen people's perspectives a bit. I wanted to show people that, through the facts, you can have a window into who the person was. They are not just a mass of flesh and bones. They were people, people whose lives left marks on their bodies, marks that can tell stories even when the people cannot.
Lastly: a few things to clear up:
1: "orbits" are the bone surrounding the eye; iron defeciency can result in porous bone in the orbit area, termed "cribra orbitalis"
2: Well water is still used in rural areas today. Depending on the area, some of this water (like mine) contains high levels of fluorine that, while protecting your teeth against cavities, also stains them yellow. Because fluorine is so useful in preventing cavities it is added to some water supplies at treating plants but in controlled amounts so your teeth stay whiter.

I assure you, I only spend time on a poem if I think that it has merit, there's no point critiquing someone who doesn't have the intellect and talent to not only understand it, but also be firm in their approach and style so they can defend it.

I understand what orbits mean, and fluorine's effect on teeth, but my point was that it's not necessarily assumed knowledge, it would be helpful if you could add context so the reader could work out the meaning without external resources. You could add definitions as a footnote, AD Hope was into that, but I think exploring it in-text would help flesh out sensory elements of the work while making it more immediately clear and vivid to the reader.

Hellue, I'm Demoness and I've come to inflict my opinion on your little poem

So.. well, I like how you're thinking and you're totally right about people turning death into something it isn't... you're poem seems more realistic for sure but I still think it's a bit sad. People make up stories because believing death is beautiful doesn't make it so painful. If someone you know pass away you'd rather think that person is happy and safe, instead of being a mute, numb corps in a refrigator... I think your poem takes away the beauty of death and turns it into dust... But if you're intentions with this was to make people see death in a more realistic way I think you managed.

But that was the contest.. now to the more structural stuff. So, I like the flow on this one, it was simple and smooth to read and that's a plus. Í do wish it had been longer though, because even though it wasn't the shortest poem I've read half of it was just reptition of what you'd already said... so I feel like there wasn't much new to the poem. I can sense you try using imagery, but as some has pointed out it's a bit awkward... Well.. overall I think this has got potenital and if you just tried to make it more interesting and descriptive it good be lovely

Good Luck & Keep Writing

// Demoness