Young Writers Society

Two smaller separate poems, that could possibly work together. Iunno.

*

It’s August. The sun shines but a breeze flutters
through grass and hair and a teenager’s litter
of cigarette butts and orange-flavoured condoms.
She lays in the field with short hair, carelessly plucking
green grass blades. She plucks until
the horizon is pink and orange, until
she has indeed plucked the whole field bare.

*

there is a lot of screaming at the house.
happiness, it seems, has run away and won’t
come back soon – she pleads.
but when the stepfather becomes
a martyr and the mother turns to
hysterics, she runs
barefoot
from the house.

I really loved that first one - although, admittedly, "orange-flavoured condoms" caught me off-guard. But the imagery was great, and that last line was just beautiful.

As to the second one, definitely not as much imagery, although there's still some good figurative language, like with the personification going on. (Also, I like any poem in which people are barefoot. Probably just because I like going barefoot myself and can't do it very often.) But I would like to see perhaps a bit of imagery beyond the image of bare feet. Or maybe, considering "Barefoot" is also the title of the poem, you could simply describe her bare feet more. Does she have painted toe-nails, carefully pedicured, or are her toe-nails cracked like an old lady's? (Okay, an old lady who does not get pedicures.) Are her feet dirty?

I'm assuming if the title of the poem is "Barefoot" and within the poem the word "barefoot" is on a line by itself, it's because the fact that she runs from the house barefoot is important to the poem. If this is the case, I think "barefoot" merits a little more weight and description.

Hope this helped!

~Blue