Sharpie To The Flesh

I like this piece a lot! You've got some great word choice and imagery. My one critique would be that I don't think it's necessary to repeat 'sharpie' so often. In a poem, especially one this short, you really want every word to be pulling it's full weight, and the reader already understands the concept that the person is writing on themselves with sharpie from the title. Returning to it in the last line is good and a powerful iteration, but the other points where you mention 'sharpie' just feel a bit flat for me since you're not really adding anything new to the concept of sharpie from the repetition of the word. Just having "Her lashes were the same color" would be fine and get the point across.

I love the juxtaposition of the stuff that is who girl is, (eg her eyes and the crooked grin and the nimble hands) next to the sharpied images that are just kind of a facade and almost show what the girl is projecting herself to be or wants to be. She wants to be fierce and brave, so she draws he claws. She wants to be skinny, so she draws this starved skeleton which ironically falls beneath her "caved in ribs". It shows a longing within the girl that is sad and profound and I think says a lot about how we define ourselves by the traits we want or think we don't have, rather than what we have. It's also interesting that the narrator chooses to call the drawings "intriguing" but likens the more natural parts of the girl, ie her eyes, to something as natural and wholesome as fruit. Like we're too busy trying to be more than we are, be intriguing, to see the beauty and goodness in what we actually are, which might be "smudged" like the eye shadow, unlike the sharpied images. That's what I got out of the piece, anyways.

This poem really made me think, and I always love poems that allow the reader to explore deeper meanings like this one. Wonderful job!

-tgirly

Apparently you're the cats meow and I'm the Kat so...

Seriously your work has been getting some serious attention and I can see why. It's very composed and well structured, the boxy format makes it a little daunting but it quickly makes up for that in substance. It's a pretty intense and unsettling poem but that's why I love it so much. I can clearly see a skinny girl in her teens with pail skin marked up with cryptic drawings of sharpie. I like how you gradually added more specific detail about the girl as you progressed through the poem. It goes without saying that your imagery is superb and if you are in fact 13, your writing has a level of sophistication that mine surly lacked at your age. Your style is unique and something I have trouble writing, it's simultaneously creepy and beautiful. I'm trying to give you some sort of constructive commentary but all I really have for you is to keep moving forward with your writing. Try different types of writing and different stylistic choices, the worst that can happen is you find something that doesn't suit you. You have a gift, expand upon it.