z

Young Writers Society



To Clean Where You Sit

by reowine


For one night,
His arms were steel rods, his hands were pliers.
They cauterized at the iron bands that were his wrists.
 
He braced a sponge from a pale of water and bleach,
Then scrubbed his bedding,
Until his metal fingers began to rust.
 
For one night,
He was both the machine and the factory.
He forced his equipment back and forth,
To remove orange stains.
 
Afterwards,
His body was a furnace;
Every part of him was alight with agony.
His hands were as coarse as his neighbors.
 
He slumped over like a fallen branch,
He slept with the ammonia scented dirt,
The sponge lied next to him on the floor
Like an obedient dog that knew everything.
 
The next morning,
The beginning of a school day.
He dumped out the remnants of his night.
His eyes floated just above hell,
As a nebulous cloud of darkness boiled below them. 

Note: You are not logged in, but you can still leave a comment or review. Before it shows up, a moderator will need to approve your comment (this is only a safeguard against spambots). Leave your email if you would like to be notified when your message is approved.







Is this a review?


  

Comments


User avatar
696 Reviews

Points: 5533
Reviews: 696

Donate
Sun Feb 03, 2013 9:49 pm
View Likes
Audy wrote a review...



Reowine,

We haven't met, so I'll introduce myself - I'm a poetry buff, and if you're gonna produce stuff like this on a regular basis, then we will become the best of friends. This is impressive, and I don't say that lightly.

Your introductory stanza is a great set-up to the imagery of the piece and to the telling of this narrative. I appreciated how,
Everything is clipped.
Seemingly, fragmented.

Well done on that part, it really captured that precision of the rods and the machines in such a delightful way. The tone/voice as well is excellent, matter-of-fact, it's very much like "Here it is. This story that I'm going to tell." For that split moment, we forget that we're reading poetry, and that's exactly the kind of thing a first stanza should aim for. Cauterize by the way, such a beautiful word choice. <3 By using that word, you throw a lot of high expectations - such a word is so very specific, so very precise - what you'll want to do is keep the standards that high. There are places in the poem where the diction falls short, I'll point them out as I go through them.

Until his metal fingers began to rust.


Here's an example. He has piers as hands, yeah? The use of fingers here disconnects us from what you have done so well setting up before. Plus, it's just too natural, too body-like a thing. I'm not sure what the specific name for the blunt-scissor end of the plier is called, but I would've accepted anything but fingers. Maybe "grips" or "jaws/teeth" or "claw".

This stanza is intriguing. I recognize it as the moment for the given title as well, and as we read on, it seems this becomes a habitual practice for the speaker, which just gives me explosions of thoughts. Why is he so set on cleaning where he sleeps, what is the significance? And yet, don't we do it too? Make our beds each morning. Ahhh. <3 So wonderful. There are just soooo many ways to look at this.

Your next stanza repeats the previous stanza, and while I normally hate repetition, I think in this case it actually works, because it is a repetitive action and we get to experience that. It's as though the night stretches and all he is doing is scrubbing back and forth - the "one night" is intriguing as well, and because it's repeated, I tend to ascribe importance to it.

Every part of him was alight with agony.
His hands were as coarse as his neighbors.


This part again, verges on the general. "Alight with agony" is verging on melodrama, and I would allow it, except we don't really have a feel for that agony. Is it a torturous agony, is it an emotional one, or a physical one? or a combination? This is an important moment for the reader to connect with this piece, and yet it is wasted because of the generalities. Likewise, I don't like "hands" - because it is the same thing with fingers. I'm okay with "body" - but if you're going to go through so much trouble portraying the pliers/rod, you'll need to stick with that imagery, yeah? I understand you might mean it only as a metaphor, but the thing about metaphors is that it is more powerful when it is directly stated: He is earth; is more powerful than "he is like the earth to me" -- so when you have an extended metaphor, the same applies. Carry the image through!

The coarse - I kind of wonder about that word? What makes it coarse? The rust? And his neighbors, what exactly are they? More tools/machines? It isn't stated anywhere else in the piece.

The next morning,
The beginning of a school day.


A new day. Love it. I get a very strong sense of mechanization/ robotic routines we go through in our everyday lifes, and maybe some questions of our humanity/what makes us human despite all that, kind of glimmering through, particularly in that "bedding" stanza. Now, I still feel as though there is something somewhat hazy in this, something I'm not quite getting - as I don't really see the purpose of the ammonia/dog/branch. I can see how the sponge may be privy to the boy's darkness firsthand, as it is essentially the thing that'll clean up his messes. By the end too, I do sense that darkness very much, but if I'm to believe that, then I feel the middle parts just need a little more thought/work to really connect and lead up to that.

Let me know if you have any questions/want to chat this over. I'd love to hear your own intents/meaning behind this.

~ as always, Audy




Audy says...


After reading through the previous reviews, I was able to gleam that this poem dealt with child abuse. I think the power of this piece is that it portrays a very specific experience and way of being. I definitely felt emptiness/darkness, I like the transformation that the boy undergoes. The mechanization rid of all emotions, and that was nicely done. That is what this piece does well, it focuses in on the frame of mind.

No where though, does it allude to the abuse, and that's the part that's not getting across, you need to throw your readers a bone. This piece was a focus on the boy's actions. The red stains could've been anything: his own shame, sins, secrets, etc. (that's what I read it as)

My suggestion for you is to work on stanzas 4&5, while I understand the progression back to normal, you were able to do that effectively in one line: "The next morning". Spend those stanzas instead recollecting. Possibly tracing the dents from the body, or basking in the uselessness of his life (abuse victims often feel useless/helpless)? I dunno. You're more creative than I, and these only mean to serve as suggestions.

Best of luck with this.



reowine says...


ee gads!! Wow, I really did a terrible job at conveying a story of child abuse! It was supposed to be a boy cleaning off his dried blood from his bed, (you know, to clean where you sit, I REFUSE to go into further detail because you are intelligent enough to get it) and that hes doing the work a washing machine couldn't.
the coarse hands of his neighbors are just that. how would he know his neighbors hands are coarse without experiencing some sort of close contact with them? So this was to show his abuser.
The skip from a machine to a branch was supposed to be his transition back into reality, and back into the natural world.
The ammonia scented dirt was his sheets that still reeked of the bleach.
The next morning with the school reference was supposed to show that he was just a child, and the eye thing was to show that he was tired and that he spent a lot of time trying to clean his sheets.
well now, with that out of the way, thank you kindly for the review! I hope that cleared all of the weird stuff up! but you gave me a good idea of what does and doesn't make sense so I'll try to change it :)



reowine says...


Haha well sorry about that awkward reply i just sent you then. I just wanted to get the meaning across without writing everything down that i already wrote, wow i gotta pay attention thanks!



User avatar
862 Reviews

Points: 29096
Reviews: 862

Donate
Sun Feb 03, 2013 9:02 pm
Morrigan wrote a review...



Hi there.

Okay, the imagery here is fabulous. I love it. It's very focused. You keep one image (the machine boy) fairly constant throughout the whole poem.

I feel like with your talent, you can do even more with the images.

They cauterized at the iron bands that were his wrists.

Cauterized isn't the correct word here. I don't know what is, but Cauterized sticks out of the line like a sore thumb. If you're going for burning, you could say blazed. Or something.

Afterwards,
His body was a furnace;
Every part of him was alight with agony.
His hands were as coarse as his neighbors.

I feel like you could make this into one sentence with the next stanza. Don't combine the stanzas, just let the sentence run into the next stanza. If you say
Afterwards,
his body a furnace
alight with agony,
hand coarse as a steel worker,

He slumped over...

It would be interesting there. Also, "his neighbors" isn't working for me. I don't know who his neighbors are, so why would I know how rough his hands are? I changed it to steel worker in the stanza above, but feel free to make your own choice of how rough his hands are.

He slumped over like a fallen branch,

This breaks the whole "Machine boy" thing you've got going. It's natural in a world that is made of gears, coal, and steam. A branch makes me think of a tree. I can only think of one thing slumping over in a factory. A lever. "He slumped to the floor like a broken lever" would work more than the branch.

He slept with the ammonia scented dirt,

If the boy was just cleaning, then why would there be dirt? I suggest changing this to "He slept with the ammonia scented floor" or something of the like. you could even remove "scented" and say "ammonia floor" to create a strange and wonderful image, such as the images you've created before.

Like an obedient dog that knew everything.

This is the line that got me. This is the line that made me say, this kid's got it. The idea of a dog watching his master fall into ruin quietly is so strong that it hit me. The wording of your idea could use a little work, though. It's a little clunky as it is. I don't know how to fix it for you, and it's not a horribly worded line by all means, but it could use something, you know?

The next morning,

I would change this to "When morning came" because it's got a much more modern feeling to it right now than the rest of the poem.

The beginning of a school day.

This line should be taken out. It doesn't focus on what happened last night, and it tells us something about the speaker that really doesn't matter in this context.

As a nebulous cloud of darkness boiled below them.

I would say "as nebulous clouds of darkness boiled below him." It's only a slight change, but it'll scan a lot better.

Now that we've got the stylistic stuff out of the way, here are some grammar things.
He braced a sponge from a pale of water and bleach,

"pale" should be "pail"

Then scrubbed his bedding,

omit the comma at the end of the line.

The sponge lied next to him on the floor

"lied" should be "lay"

His eyes floated just above hell,

omit the comma at the end of the line.

Altogether, I really liked this. It could use some polishing, but that's what I'm here to help you with. Good job, and keep writing.




reowine says...


Wow, I did a terrible job at conveying a story of child abuse! It was supposed to be a boy cleaning off his dried blood from his bed, (you know, to clean where you sit, I REFUSE to go into further detail because you are intelligent enough to get it) and that hes doing the work a washing machine couldn't.
the coarse hands of his neighbors are just that. how would he know his neighbors hands are coarse without experiencing some sort of close contact with them? So this was to show his abuser.
The skip from a machine to a branch was supposed to be his transition back into reality, and back into the natural world.
The ammonia scented dirt was his sheets that still reeked of the bleach.
The next morning with the school reference was supposed to show that he was just a child, and the eye thing was to show that he was tired and that he spent a lot of time trying to clean his sheets.
well now, with that business out of the way, I appreciate your review! It made me rethink the poem and how I should really change it so it makes more sense. Thank ya!!



User avatar
378 Reviews

Points: 3775
Reviews: 378

Donate
Sun Feb 03, 2013 8:27 pm
Omni wrote a review...



Here to review!

My name is Omniyus! You may know me, you may not, but I do care! I will make sure you know me after this! Onward, into battle of that merciless monster that is called poetry!

His arms were steel rods, his hands were pliers.
They cauterized at the iron bands that were his wrists.


Love the imagery here! I could visualise this with no work whatsoever! I just had to point that out. This entire pieve has a lot of imagery, very good imagery at that, in it.

He slept with the ammonia scented dirt,


So the place he sat at is dirt, and he is cleaning it? Wouldn't that make it mud?

Eh, don't mind my ramblings.

Overall, I like this piece of poetry. Very streamline like, and in a good way. Provides a lot of mystery.

Great job!
Omniyus




reowine says...


The ammonia scented dirt was supposed to be his bed and how it still smelled of the bleach. Thank ya for your review by the way!



User avatar
10 Reviews

Points: 548
Reviews: 10

Donate
Sun Feb 03, 2013 8:20 pm
AwesomeSauce wrote a review...



Hello!
I'm Sarah, and welcome to YWS! Anyway, this is really emotional and....well, aweosme! It's has this dark air around it, it's a nice feel to have every once and awhlie!

I...I don't have anything to say! This is very well written!

This reminds me of the Victorian times, the boy working his way into the world! It's as if he's evil in a way; he has this....dark side to him, if I may say. It's like he's waiting for that right moment to strike, like a snake! That's it! *laughs* Sorry, I was trying to think of what to say. He's, to me, like a snake in a way! Also, *dark music* Gloomy! XD

*spok sign* Until next time,
-Sarah!

P.S I love your name! Also, if you have any...things you want to say about this, anything at all, then come and rant on my page. I don't mind!




reowine says...


why thank ya kindly for your review! This is actually an interesting take on the poem, its quite different than what it was supposed to mean, but I love that! ahhh the glories of poetry!! oh and thank you for the compliment on the name, I'm a fan of yours as well :)




mashed potatoes are v a l i d
— Liminality