I would stop speaking English for you.
I’ve hung maps across my walls, great canvases
to paint with my bare feet.
The glaciers shift and move like ghosts,
and I track them with my fingers.
I have bowlfuls of flowers, paper petaled and dry,
lining my window sill. They lost their scent
like I might lose a memory or a name.
I collect and keep them like shells,
and when I hold them up to my ear,
I can hear the garden they bloomed in.
I would stop speaking English for you.
I’d trade my name away, in fact, I would forget
the word dahlia and glacier and
relinquish the tracks I have so carefully
marked on my maps. I would hold my breath for you
in the same sense that we hold our breath
when we look at something beautiful,
and forget that I need to breathe at all —
we are a caesura, a garden whose soil
falls into our palms like water,
smells like god, we are a church
of breath that stretches
all the way down to the ground,
I am hanging maps with you, we
are painting each other’s bodies,
we are listening to each other bloom,
we are speaking something more than language.
Points:
Time spent:
IP address:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
137,435 Literary Works • 672,020 Reviews
Nia!
Was this the work you asked me to look at ages ago? I apologise so much for not getting to it, if it was! I am so very terrible times a million!
This is beautiful, but you know that because your work is very often beautiful. More to the point it is beautiful because this is a poem about giving up English, giving up language, for another person. It is only one language, as your poem says, there are other languages but this language has glacier, it has a word that sounds like what it is. It has words which you are ground inside, bloom and garden and caesura. It has words stolen from other languages because we want it to be as complete as it could be. We steal the heat from the earth if it will give us lava and molten and quake.
This is why this poem is utterly touching, and why it doesn't quite reach what I know you want it to. Because this poem is a petal, skin being held against skin like osmosis will happen through the thinnest membranes. It won't happen though and we're being held back because this is a poem in English about giving up English. I want it to be in another language, I want it to be in images. I want this poem. I think there is a lightness, a delicacy to this poem which belies the strength of feeling it is detailing and that might be why I don't think it is working right at this moment. The maps and colours work, the petals and the paper work, the bodies and the language work, but altogether they create a picture of broad canvas walls in a city that is distinctly foreign - no English here, non parle pas anglaise - and I want it to saturated in that other world, but only part of it is. Maybe the shells are what I don't feel? I feel shells here but that is because I am beach.
I can't help you and feel terrible. I am sorry for that, but not sorry you posted. Thank you for your talent, it breathes for me.
♥
<333
Brilliant opening line! Why? Because it feels like you are talking directly to the reader. 'I would stop speaking English for you.' Love it!
I also admire the way you have come up with unique metaphors/similes/imagery etc... that specifically fits your piece. xx
Such as: 'They lost their scent
like I might lose a memory or a name.' Excellent!
Overall, you have separated the thoughts and ideas of the poem clearly in different stanzas which give the reader time to digest your message. I particularly love the line. : 'we are a caesura...' This gives the poem some central force, some focus. Brilliant, original job. Well done.
Yours in ink
~Bloodink
Knight Dragon, here to review!
Are you attempting to go for incorrect capitalization? "we are a caesura", the we should be capitalized.
And in most of the stanzas, the last stanza especially, you have a lot of comma splices. Example:
"I am hanging maps with you, we
are painting each other’s bodies,
we are listening to each other bloom,
we are speaking something more than language."
Each of those commas in standard writing should be a period. And I felt with this poem the breaks caused by periods would fit better.
Also, you keep mentioning that you would forget English, yet you never really say why. What's the significance? What motivates you to desire to forget English at all? You should explain that a little.
Hope this helps!
Aah! Totally spaced on the capitalization, thanks. I tend to accept comma splices in poetry but maybe I'll look at how to change the rhythm (in this case I was using them because I wanted them to kind of pour out of one another with no break in the continuity). As for the English, the entire poem is about leaving home, travelling, and transcending language with each other in general, hence the last line. That's what the English thing is about
Actually, looking at it again "we" isn't the start of a new sentence so it works as is.
ah, I see that now. my apologies. the hyphen at the end of the previous stanza is what threw me off.
Knight Malachi here to review for the Knights of the Green Room.
Wow! This poem has so much descriptive, imaginative, metaphoric writing. It was beautiful. I loved the whole thing. You had so many different things: the flowers, maps, the paint, and the garden, and you made it all come together into such a beautiful poem.
I have bowlfuls of flowers, paper petaled and dry,
lining my window sill. They lost their scent
like I might lose a memory or a name.
I collect and keep them like shells,
and when I hold them up to my ear,
I can hear the garden they bloomed in.
I really, really liked that stanza. And punctuation/grammar-wise I saw no problems. Everything looked in tip-top shape to me.
Keep it up!