There is a fresh organic feeling to reading a handwritten poem! Thanks for sharing, and I'm a big fan of the phoenix doodle off to the side as well.
Interpretation
I interpreted this poem to be about someone who wants to hope and move on to something more in life but they are weighed down by the heaviness and neediness of life all around them. I like how you bookended the poem's meaning by repeating that hope / replaced/swapped / needs" line at the end and beginning - which also really created a little phoenix - reincarnation effect too.
It was a bit of an unusual usage of the phoenix which is more often associated with death and new life than just hope and need which aren't quite as stark, but maybe it was being used to show the starkness of the needs the speaker was encountering.
One ambiguity in the poem's meaning - was that hope seems to be central to the meaning especially because you put the word hope in the two most important lines of the poem (the opening and the closing ones) but I have no clue what exactly the speaker is hoping for - so it's left a bit generically - giving some content to the hope of the speaker would make this poem even more striking.
specifics
I liked your usage of sound devices throughout in using alliteration in "long / lived" , "soul / searches" , "tough / tongue / tastes", and "forced / forged / false / full / filled" etc. these make the poem even more fun to read and make the lines really stick in your mind! The flow and formatting of the poem was also very clean and easy to understand each line and concept.
One spelling error in the 2nd stanza "minds" should be "mind's" I believe because it is possessive.
Another ambiguity of the poem - is what exactly prompts the phoenix to have new life - how did the speaker change from having all this need to having hope again?
One strength of the poem was you did a great job illustrating some really poignant bodily imagery with the hunger and teeth that were quite interesting. I think something to consider for revisision is how to fit the phoenix motif into those middle stanzas a bit more - maybe with continued bird / nest / feather imagery or even fire imagery because fire is often associated with the phoenix - you could talk about hunger burning / searing to connect that imagery into it. That's something that I think really brings poems to the next level when the imagery all weaves together from stanza to stanza and every image is somehow tied to the next.
Overall, this was a nice read, and I can tell you have a really good ear for poetic sounds! I'm eager to read more of your work in the future.
all the best, happy Review Month!
~A
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