Young Writers Society

Rated 18+ for language, sexuality, and alcohol references



When I was little,
you told me I was all snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.
Now you just tell me I'm hormones and fucking and conquest.
Problem is, when she's curled up on my lap and I'm watching her hair flutter with each exhale,
bedsheets couldn't be further from my mind.

Last night I passed out on the bathroom floor,
and when I woke she was watching me from the corner.
She usually cries when I drink, but today she didn't;
she just stared at me with one flushed lip tucked between her teeth.
I'll never touch a bottle again.
You could say that the hole the vodka burned in my memory would've been enough to make me quit anyways.
You could be right, but I don't think so.

Dad, you were wrong the entire time;
she's more than the flap of a skirt, and I've never had a tail.
You see, I stare into the mirror every night
to decide whether I want to wake up in the morning.
My breath inevitably erases the human staring back at me,
and in that moment when there's nothing left but a choice,
it's not your voice that tells me it's worth it—it's hers.

I liked this.
Its a strong emotional piece. Its also short and sweet. Kept me reading though I did gain a little bit of confusion at the begining but once I read it again I understood.
I do think a bit more body could of worked with it.
Apart from the fact I wanted to read more a good piece
Well done!

A very good piece...
It invokes raw emotions and i love it how you have conveyed the whole story....
AWESOME....
I would relate to all the teen guys out there...
Loved it....
Keep up the good work...
PM me for anything...

Hi there
So, I just want to start off with a little bit of gushing. Cause, again, this was freakin' amazing. Overall, this piece was really strong, and had some great images (balanced with some awesome emotion, which I still can't do!). I DO have some nitpicks though, picked more to create some semblance of a review than anything else:


The first line:

When I was little, you and mom told me I was all snakes and snails and puppy dog tails.

I can't quite make my mind up about this line. I always thought that "snakes and snails and puppy dog tails" were supposed to be the bad things in life (no matter how much I love animals) but here they're put into a context where they seem to represent something good, or something that was good, before you were told differently. Just my initial thoughts.


Second thing:

She wasn't crying like I would've expected,

Without context for the reader, this little clause seems really random. Was she crying because you passed out drunk, or was she really hungover and upset about it or.... what, exactly?
Same type of thing with this line:

I'm deciding whether or not I want to wake up in the morning,

The two tones that these clauses portray don't quite seem to fit the tone of the rest of the poem. I would try conveying an greater emptiness of some sort in order for them to fit in a little better. Maybe I just read the rest a little bit differently than they were supposed to be, but that's what I took away from it.


Third thing: I think that the lines could be broken up a little bit more, especially in the second stanza. You could create a stronger rhythm to help set the tone, which full lines like this usually aren't excellent at accomplishing. They remind me more of prose than anything else.


Last thing: I just wanted to say again that this is excellent. You are extremely concise and you definitely get images and emotions across without them being blatant or confusing. Simple, but wonderfully expressed. Great job.

-Coral-

I'm really enjoying this series of poems. It's a cool idea, and all your poems are gorgeously written. I read this last night, and since I was in that half-tired state of mind, there were some things that confused me that are clearer to me now, but it was still such a lovely piece. One of the things I see you already cleared up: instead of saying "you and mom told me", you changed it to "you". That's a good clarification, because then I was going through this poem thinking that the mom was watching you drink and curled up in your lap and whatnot, and I was confused by the sexual undercurrent. But. It all makes sense now.

Here's another thing I think you can consider, and this is a half-baked thought so it's obviously just something you might want to think about or consider. I read this lovely piece a couple of times, and the first times I did read it, I thought it was a girl who was narrating.

This is actually credit to you. I think your voice is both distinctive but it does bridge that gap between sexes; it's the male stereotype but he's actually thinking and loving and caring, etc. The only part where I think it's clearly male is with the snakes and snails and whatnot, but now that I'm reading this through again, here's the part where I slipped the narrator into a female voice:

Now you just tell me I'm lust and hormones and fucking.

I love this line. I love how abrupt 'fucking' is, and how the narrator has made the transition from innocence to a kind-of adulthood. But 'lust' is a very female word, in a way; 'hormones' almost is as well, but you can let that slide. Because here's the thing, the unbelievable part: I can imagine the dad, maybe sitting in his armchair with a beer, saying, "All you want to do is have sex, and you don't care who it's with," or something to that effect. But I can't imagine a dad saying anything about lust to his teenage son...though maybe that's just because of the dads and teenage sons I know. I think you might want to think about the word choice there; girls lust after boys, but boys want girls. Could that work? Want and hormones and fucking? Or, if you wanted to take out hormones, want and lust and fucking. I'd really like you to play with that to make it decidedly more masculine

I loved your second stanza, absolutely adored it, especially the contrast of your last and second-to-last lines, and the almost prose-like style. Wonderful.

I think that for your third stanza, you should replace the first period with a semi-colon, as in: "Dad, you were wrong the entire time; she's more than the flap of a skirt, and I've never had a tail."

Other than that, I love this poem, and I can't wait to see what Love III, or what-say-you, will be.

Thanks for sharing!

I loved this and related to it so well.
I related to the parts in reference to the father.
I liked the use of language and certain phrases such as "flap of the skirt".
I thought that was clever. It made it seem as if you were taling directly to me and I always love that.
All in all, a great poem, I realyenjoyed reading it, I look forward to reading more of your work in the future
"like" x

Pop

Hey there! Thanks for the request.

This is fairly good. I like the meaning of the poem, but I think you could do a better job at conveying it better.

What I mean is that several things are unclear in this poem. One of them being very important: I really don't know who you're talking to. I'm pretty sure it's talking to the speaker's mother, but there are some lines that make it seem like they are talking about a lover. And then you add in another character with this line:

Problem is, when she's curled up on my lap and I'm watching her hair flutter with each exhale,

So what it seems is like in this poem, you are talking to a mother about a girlfriend and how your character isn't thinking about her in a sexual way, at least for that moment in time. It's lines like this one that make this poem confusing. Be sure to clear up when you're editing: who you are talking to, and who about. And don't spend one line on each new character, like the father or the girlfriend, or the mother. So that we aren't confused, find another way to incorporate them into the poem.

That's pretty much the only problem I have with this. It's really good and you were very careful with the lines. Not one line in this goes without purpose, and I love it. So thanks for giving me a wonderful poem to read!

Keep writing,

Classy

Oh my God. This poem is simply beautiful. I honest to God started crying when I read this. I can definetly relate in a way. I hope that one day the person I care about more than anything in the world could think like the person in this poem. I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this poem. I love the emotion in it and I think you are exceptionally talented. Out of all four poems in your "Love" series, this is the most heartfelt and emotional one I have read. This poem dearly touched me. Thank you for writing this. Please, PM me for anything at all.