This poem is beautiful, I absolutely adore the subtle dark and gloomy theme. Your word choice and metaphors moved me. It made me feel emotion and it moved smoothly. Amazing!
Ours
was a house always dirty, always
full of many others whom
we called family,
those sooty shadows smudged into
the dankest corners of my fondness
and if a yard could look more like
a warzone, you would need
a small army just
to reach the mailbox
I never knew then, but I
was living in my own
shoe-box diaroma of
hollowed-out poverty,
briefly, on the weekends
dirt roads, rising red dust,
hot grasp of horseflies
on dewy skin
each child a tragic painting;
dirt and blood, all
unframed, unfinished
each step a trap;
I recall heady smoke stacks of blackwasps (the hum they made still
haunts the nights and I fall prey again)
—swarming—
the rutilant welts later stained dark
with tobacco.
you gutted your precious death sticks
to try to draw out the sting
but it wasn't the bugs that got beneath my skin,
you know
This poem is beautiful, I absolutely adore the subtle dark and gloomy theme. Your word choice and metaphors moved me. It made me feel emotion and it moved smoothly. Amazing!
Hellooo.
I liked this poem. Especially the vibe running through it. Gave me the chills.
The flow was good. Not to fast, not to slow, and most importantly it was consistent.
The punctuation was adequate, and it had a nice look to it.
I loved the way it ended. The line in Italics was amazing and finished the poem perfectly.
My favourite lines were :
"each child a tragic painting;
dirt and blood, all
unframed, unfinished"
The unframed, unfinished part was perfect.
I couldn't find any problems with it.
Good job!
Rating: 8.5/10
Hassan 
Hi, rhia!
This ended so well. I love the end of it with the wasp stings and the tobacco. Just lovely.
That being said, there are a few things that could be changed to make it better.
Take out the first stanza. It tells us too much already. There is foreshadowing to the wasp stings, but it's not really needed anyway. The rest of the poem shows that this person is part of the narrator's family, at least. I feel like the stanza with the tobacco illustrates that this poem addresses the narrator's father.
These lines follow the narrator saying that the house was always dirty. So make them dirty. Say something like "The house was dirty, always/ full of people that floated like ash/ on air currents through the halls/ but remained attached to the furniture, our family" Don't tell us that they didn't feel like family, but make them unattached to the narrator, yet attached to the house. If that makes sense.full of many others whom
we called family, but they never
felt that way to me
"to get the mail" is a term that immediately conjures images of someone taking a leisurely stroll down the driveway. I would mix it up a bit so that that image isn't conjured in the middle of your demilitarized front lawn. Try "just to reach the mailbox". It also gives a feeling that there's more effort involved. Reaching involves effort, and the narrator implies that it would take a lot of effort to get across the lawn.just to get the mail
Do you mean a shoe box diorama? Like this?stand up model of hollowed-out poverty
Is this referring to children stepping in wasp's nests? If not, I have no idea what you're talking about. It struck me as odd here, but it works if you're referencing wasp nests in the ground-- I have never heard about blackwasps, to be honest-- the only wasps I've heard of nesting in the ground are cow-killers and yellow-jackets, but since I know that some species do, it's believable.each step a trap;
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