Young Writers Society

WARNING: If you're offended by curse words, don't read this.

“Left”
By K.J. Hascall
9/24/06

There’s a dusty cloud following my car,
bouncing up and down on the washboard road.
The sun is bright on this autumn afternoon and the sky is blue between nomad clouds.
We roll the windows down and turn the music up.
Grasshoppers sunning themselves spring from the road,
they seem to be growing spontaneously out of the gravel
and shuttling themselves at my car: insectisuicide.
One grasshopper finds itself stuck, but still alive, behind my windshield wipers.
You pick it out and throw it across the road, while I tell a story
about smoking grasshoppers –
“You light their heads on fire and smoke their asses.”
“What, like a roach? Now that’s fucked up.”
The sunflowers on the side of the road are tangled green and yellow
blowing in the breeze by the side of the road.
The clouds pass overhead, the cornfields, brown and broken this time of year,
pass beside, and time passes like the water in the Platte.
I tell you I wish I could just drop everything and drive.
The road is lined with trees that shade half of it and paint my face with shadows
that grow longer as the afternoon lengthens.
Next time I’ll turn left instead of right and leave the day turning to dust.
The hills will be steep like they are today,
and where the road crests it will seem to end and the sky will begin –
the rolling grass conceals what you see until you’re there.

I like it. A lot. I particularly like the little bit of dialogue, how you don't make yourself the center of attention, just part of the description. The end of the poem is very nice. And I love the image - by the time I finished the poem I was sure I'd been there before, it seemed so real. I think I'm in love with that image, the idea of dusty freedom and that big hill and the best way to waste a day. Beautiful subject matter, and wonderfully captured.

I, too, enjoy the imagery. I saw it in my mind wonderfully. I'm not sure if it's just me or not but I failed to see any pattern whatsoever. It's a good read if you ever feel like taking a quick vacation. Title suggestions: "Leaving the Day Behind on Grasshopper Drive" or "A Turn Left Away from Day". that's all.

I'll second the other two with a HURRAH, LOVELY IMAGERY. I could practically feel the sun on the back of my neck. It made me think of when I used to live on an unpaved road on a hill in rural New York. This poem was successful; it made me feel.

The only major problem I had with this was with the line breaks. These lines are too long. Example:

The sun is bright on this autumn afternoon and the sky is blue between nomad clouds.

One LONG sentence. One line. I'd suggest breaking it after "afternoon". You seem to be line-breaking at natural pauses and at the ends of phrases. This doesn't work when you have long sentences or long phrases with no natural break.
It would also be nice to see these separated into stanzas. A big chunk of text is intimidating to a reader. Of course, there are a thousand ways to divide it up, and you as the writer can best decide where you want to place those divisions. Here's an example of how I might do it (I didn't put in any line breaks, just stanza-breaks):

There’s a dusty cloud following my car,
bouncing up and down on the washboard road.
The sun is bright on this autumn afternoon and the sky is blue between nomad clouds.

We roll the windows down and turn the music up.
Grasshoppers sunning themselves spring from the road,
they seem to be growing spontaneously out of the gravel
and shuttling themselves at my car: insectisuicide.

One grasshopper finds itself stuck, but still alive, behind my windshield wipers.
You pick it out and throw it across the road, while I tell a story
about smoking grasshoppers –

“You light their heads on fire and smoke their asses.”
“What, like a roach? Now that’s fucked up.”

The sunflowers on the side of the road are tangled green and yellow
blowing in the breeze by the side of the road.
The clouds pass overhead, the cornfields, brown and broken this time of year,
pass beside, and time passes like the water in the Platte.

I tell you I wish I could just drop everything and drive.

The road is lined with trees that shade half of it and paint my face with shadows
that grow longer as the afternoon lengthens.

Next time I’ll turn left instead of right and leave the day turning to dust.
The hills will be steep like they are today,
and where the road crests it will seem to end and the sky will begin –
the rolling grass conceals what you see until you’re there.

Of course, just a humble suggestion. I leave the poem and its line breaks in your able hands.

Excellent work, fantastic job of making me feel the poem.
Colleen