Stalemate

Hello Team B, this is a member of team Amegsing!

To start off I would like to say that the overall flow of the poem was good. It read well for me. The sounds were smoothly associated with one another and paced predictably through the piece making it easy to follow.

That being said, the actual translation of the words is something a little troubling. It's somewhat hard to determine what exactly the sister has to do with the story, or the depression. For me, she seems mostly the cause for the depression? Or perhaps she is just a confidant that the speaker has aside from us, someone to get the speaker talking about their feelings. It's hard to tell. To confuse the matter more, this line doesn't make much sense: "To rid pretense, exposition." Perhaps it is just that I am not sure what pretense is being spoken about, or what exposition this poem has.

That being said, I love the imagery of sitting in company of other prunes in the produce aisle, that really drew the poem back around to focus for me, and made it enjoyable to read. I think that you could touch up the relationship between the sister and the speaker, perhaps replace the sister with the reader? a you instead of her? It's up to you but currently I would say work on that.

Ah, what tragedy could drive you to wishing for prune-dom and produce exile? I think I can only just fathom something of that magnitude.

At any rate, I've been the prune sitting in the shower. Watching my fingers become wrinkled vegetables. Such a nice metaphor for aging, isn't it? It's like we can watch ourselves grow old by sitting under a deluge of water. Like we can expedite the process. It's like suicide, forcing yourself to look older so you can die faster. Except you don't really want to die. You want to wither in the produce aisle with the tomatoes and the broccoli.

You want a war to break out in the trenches growing on your hand. War like the one that drove you to sit in the shower, the one that's still going on inside of you. The one that makes your sister ask if you're asleep, you aren't, but you want her to think that you are. There isn't any air left under the pillows, you used it all. So you have to come back up for more. Then you come up with an excuse for her that she won't understand. Something that drives a person to wishing themselves wrinkled and pruny never happened to something as innocent and half-naked as her.

I've been the keyhole under the coverlet, wishing for all the world that somebody would please for god's sake unlock me. Release me from this position because I can't do it for myself. I've sweated, rubbed my hands on the covers to get them dry. I know where this poem comes from. It comes from under the covers, from a dark place.

If poetry is meant to convey experience... Well... You know I've experienced this because I couldn't describe it as I have from ignorance. That is the highest compliment I can pay your poem, because memory is essentially poetry. Your verse triggered my memories.

My one critique? Change the title. It probably makes sense to you, but I almost didn't read it because I thought it was stupid. That would've been a mistake.

This is a very intriguing poem indeed, yet also very well-written and interesting. I love the use of language, particularly the last stanza;
'Time could care ridges
in my flesh. I could engage...'

The title is particularly interesting, as the poem itself seems to describe someone wanting to change themselves in some way, either physically, mentally or both, yet there are no references to the 'intoxicating stalemate' featured in the title, which adds another layer of mystery to the poem. Is it based on any particular personal experience? Either way this is an excellent poem, with great descriptions and sense of feeling.

I'm not a huge poetry person, but I felt kind of lost on how the title relates to the poem itself. Your poem was great, especially the first part, and it came across as a message almost of rebirth, a breaking out of a shell, so to speak. But how is there a stalemate, and how is it intoxicating? I'm kind of confused, and I don't know if that's just me.
But hope that helps!

1 word- Breathtaking

Once again, your poetry blows me away.

Part I

Let me start with my literal translation. This was what I saw in Part I : In a scene of 'comfort' lies an uneasy you, contemplating under the sheets, troubled by thoughts that make you come up for air sometimes . You describe your desire to be pure and to rid pretense, exposition and take a break from it. You want to feel for the company of misery on the produce aisle and stay like that; Time could carve ridges in your flesh.

You describe otherwise commonplace scenes with an entrancing intensity. I don't say this lightly, one could read this poem in one breath. And mostly... mostly, the idea is what got me. If my interpretation was correct, I see in this poem, a poet's desire to shed pretense (the exact word used in the poem) and to come out pure and see the suffering that exists in this world, her wish to pause awhile for it, to feel it; battling even time and the way it could erode her. And yes, the ending:

Time could carve ridges
in my flesh. I could engage
in trench warfare
on the front lines of my skin.