Young Writers Society

i.

I’ve been trying to escape my shadow;

it smells like cloves and cinnamon,
a time I thought I forgot in the midst of all my dreaming.
she complains I sleep too much,
but my eyes never seem to quite close.
my irises shift and sink and murmur from underneath their lids
and I—I try not to cry out too often,
because the house is quiet.

I do not want to wake them. I don’t even want to get up,
make any noise at all. the morning silence in my way of living now,
because everything is so, so exhausting.

I sleep in my shadow, and it rustles under my sheets,
trying to squirm out from under my back.



ii

I’ve lost weight. my shadow is still
skittering up my spine,
pushing its glass tipped fingers into my neck.
we fight, again and again,
but you know how it is arguing with yourself--

my bones are numb as if I’d
been sitting in my skin for too long.
they are steeped in the words I overuse,
and taste like silver, like porcelain,
like sampling tea that has no flavor.
I just taste spoon and cup and saucer, and then, numb
as I am, drop what I am holding
and look at the shards on the floor,
wordless as an empty bottle.
she screams because I can’t say a word,
and it stuns me into even more silence.

I want to slip away, drink up the moon,
lose my teeth and give birth to hollowness,
but they keep calling me, and I keep crying,
and I spoon food to my mouth and try to remember
how much there is left to burn,
how many more fires I must set.

I am already crisscrossed with flame;
she lights the match with a scream, tosses it in
like she tossed away dreams, decades ago.

swept up by the wind, I taste the blackness of night,
wonder how long eating stars will keep me alive,
and she wakes me from the only dreams I’ve dreamt.



iii.

I lose my shadow now.

it disappears into dimness,
tripping over cracked pavement,
sidewalks ruined over years.
I am aged as them now,
and my child is almost as large as me.

I am eaten up by nothing—
I eat nothing and my shadow,
fed up with starvation,
slowly withers away from my skin into dusk.

she is there now, waiting for me.
she rebukes me for being shadowless,
for lacking the spine that it ate away from me.

I strike a match across my palm,
and wonder what’s the quickest way to set myself alight.

Hello there! I'm Rose, and I'll be reviewing this piece today!

I'm not going to lie; your poem sort of put me in a trance. The imagery you used is absolutely stunning; you described things in ways that I've never thought of before.

I’ve lost weight. My shadow is still
skittering up my spine,
pushing its glass-tipped fingers into my neck.

I mean, come on! Who thinks of this? Not I! Yet when I read it, it still makes so much sense. Very, very cool.

As much as I love this piece, I have to admit that there are plenty of technical errors when it comes to punctuation and capitalization. I'll revise one stanza so you'll know what I mean.

My bones are numb, as if I’d
been sitting in my skin for too long.
They are steeped in the words I overuse,
and taste like silver, like porcelain,
like sampling tea that has no flavor.
I just taste spoon and cup and saucer, and then, numb
as I am, drop what I am holding
and look at the shards on the floor,
wordless as an empty bottle.
She screams because I can’t say a word,
and it stuns me into even more silence.

See what I mean? It's not major, but it'll make your writing cleaner, and that's important with a poem of this length.

All in all, incredible work! Always keep writing!!

-Rose

I have one word: Deep.
This was awesome poetry, and actually the flow was pretty good too, which is pretty amazing considering they were not short poems. Well, maybe they were kind of, but they had so much stuff in them they didn't actually seem short at all!

losing shadows, setting fires

it smells like cloves and cinnamon,

I noticed there are not very many capital letters in these poems, not even at the beginnings of stanzas sometimes! It's fine not to have capitals within the stanzas, but unless the beginning of the first lines should be capitalized. Also, a couple of times there were no capitals after periods either, which is still not correct. But your spelling was great!

my irises shift and sink and murmur from underneath their lids
and I—I try not to cry out too often,

These two lines still have perfect rhythm, but it's a different rhythm than the rest of that stanza, so it sounds kind of off and messes it up when you read it aloud. Also, the first line in this quote is way longer than the rest, so that also contributes to the rhythm bump.

I’ve lost weight. my shadow is still
skittering up my spine,

Those lines are a little confusing to me. Is the shadow actually staying still as in not moving, or is it still as in continuing to skitter up your spine?

I do not want to wake them.

I want to slip away, drink up the moon,
lose my teeth and give birth to hollowness,

I am aged as them now,
and my child is almost as large as me.

Last question: What exactly is this about? Some little hints above suggest something about giving birth or children or something, but not the rest of the poems really, they are talking about some sort of she. Anyways, you probably meant this to be mysterious, but a few more little hints wouldn't hurt.

Great poems! I really liked them so keep cranking them out.