I drive over southern hills of pine and oak, green despite autumn, and warm from the sun yawning slow in the sky today, because morning here settles inside the steady turning of a falling leaf, where every vein and wrinkle illuminates, and you can see the age of the land in hieroglyphs. These leaves breathe in them a land of gentleness and ghosts, troubled people aging, decaying, and speaking in polite sweet-a sweet chatter as I stand by watching their shadows wondering what they have hidden there.
This man, here, of potato leather skin, sways a rake hand and I think which past life have we met before? I drive past the city now neon flashes, crosswalks intersecting bridges connecting glass blocks of Lennox Square steel and brick and stones, women in suits and heels are after runaway buses, while ribbon ads and newsprint I thought were pigeons blow behind us.
Sometimes I listen to the buildings. It has a sound, deep in the quiet, like sleeping giants underwater.
Sometimes, I listen to the traffic, ever constant as waves upon waves crest around me and I can close my eyes and tell the make of the car in front of me, without looking, just how it sounds as it passes by-- the honey of a swarm of bees, or the gentle stretch of a tiger's purr.
I paint: I write. I comb over the ink with my tired hands, a pair of dalmatians chasing their tails, scribble scribble scribble scribble.
I cook: I dice onions. Something about cutting through layers and parsing them out in front of me thin by thin layer piece, fibrous and juicy: the pleasure of forced tears. I kinder my coffee pots, it doesn't matter the time of day, coffee rings stained my finger and proposed to me long ago, and since then I became a modern woman. I netflix. I skype. And sometimes I face regret, the speed at which I grow gray, and a cat swoops upon my belly mewling, kneading at ash skin.
For this critter, I'm a furnace.
I observe plants: I hear their rasping tongues licking for a conversation.
I collect spines of old literature, and the lost coat buttons, like decapitated heads in memoriam.
I bury those migrating ducks wandering too close to the road, how crooked, its neck. I remember I never saw a duck's tongue so close. Like shriveled peppers.
And although I've forgotten the mammoth of my father's kind hand, and forgotten what Xavier said to me on the night we stood as partners under a bridge, I remember the way telephone wires like latticework crisscrossed above our heads and we heard the whispers of the world, how when we were five, we picked oranellos, we made mooncake.
I hear myself cry at night. Anxieties carve out harsh marks and my hands wraggle and grasp and strangle themselves. Sometimes the world spins so fast I find myself completely at a standstill, grasping as though hard at breathing, my fingers chew away flesh for an anchor.
I love, hard. But slow, calm. I pay attention to the way the words spill out of his lips, they do not fall with gravity. I smell in him bread yeast, rising like pale moons, hear in his voice an evening: crickets galloping time, and spilled champagne, and a laugh like a horse. I forget that he loves, too. We are shivering, thinking without speaking, dreaming without sleeping, the thoughts in us vibrating like a morning alarm
seconds screeching after seconds that sound and sound again.
Thanks for reading all this way. This was an exercise in form and a practice of imagery. I used Ellen Akins' "What I Do" as a template and study.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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125,024 Literary Works • 672,762 Reviews
Hi Audy <3
So I’ve never heard of that thing that you did this based off of, and when I googled it, I couldn’t find it. ;-;
So I’m going at this blind.
There were several places where I thought you were making mistakes with commas, but then was like “noooo Audy would know what she was doing.” So unless you wrote this super-fast (which I don’t think you did, based on your author’s not), I’m not gonna waste your time with grammar. But if you did write it really fast, just tell me, and I’d be happy to point them out. Just know that those places made me cringe a lot.
The story was beautiful, though, I think I liked it better at the beginning. The line about past lives actually made me stop and sit and ponder for a good two minutes of being lost in thought. Once you got to “I cook:” and beyond that, I just sort of felt myself not loving it as much, but that’s probably because I write about mostly the things above that part—and I write about those things because I really love thinking about them. It only stands to reason that I would like it more. So the other half wasn’t bad, I just didn’t enjoy it as much.
… Actually, I do very much like “I observe” though “I bury.” I especially liked the part about the duck’s tongue. It was such an unexpected sensory detail .
I don’t know if you were intending on making up a word, but “wraggle” isn’t in any dictionary that I know of.
The very last line didn’t make much sense to me.
There were a couple niggling little typos like this that, again, I wasn’t sure if you did on purpose. This would be “…buildings. They have…” Let me know if you didn’t do these on purpose, because I think there were a few more that I found.
There was gorgeous imagery in here. Thank you for writing it. ^-^
Great job, keep writing!
~fortis
Audster
This is an incredible piece of prose poetry. It marks the form excellently, inviting us into a narrative we have no business being a part of. We are becoming a diary entry here and it becomes us, wrapping around our tongues as it does your own. I am in love with this.
I agree about netflix and skype because they remove me from your narrative. I also know why they are there - they ought to be because they have importance to the nature of what you're talking about. And you're talking about the every day the movement the one to the next to the tomorrow. I want to breathe in your narrative and swallow the images it ignites. Your imagery is spot on, divine. I sink into it and wallow about in the skyscraper skylines and inky footprints.
Embrace your punctuation, I love it, I haven't read Akins and may never, it doesn't matter because this is a piece of something beyond. You have a freedom here given to you by the poetry and not the prose, I like that you run with it and I would maybe want to see some playing with form, but for now this is grace.
Thank you for writing this, thank you for posting it.
♥
Timmy here
So I have had this page open since you posted the work, wanting to review it, but not knowing what to say. I am going to struggle through this as best I can, because your piece deserves it. So I suppose I will just head on in? I hope I can find something worthwhile saying, besides heaping loads of praise on you. Because I have read it over a few times and, uh, I can't find anything. >.< Let's take a closer look.
So I am sorry if this was simply part of the exercise you were doing, but I didn't like much the sometimes excessive amount of commas you had in this piece. Now while I know that in poetry there are no set rules and it's just go and have fun with punctuation (I tend to almost none on some pieces, and lots on others), and do as you like, but I think that if the way you use punctuation hinders the piece, then it is worth mentioning. I felt that in certain places, you did overuse the commas and such so much so that parts (like that above) seemed to have a jerkiness to it. Like, you, were, jerking, us, around. And I always thought prose was to be as flowing as possible, still hanging onto the nature of poetry. Feel free to correct me in anything.
This almost doesn't qualify as a nitpick, but since you were referring to buildings in the plural form, I would think you'd refer to them in the next sentence as plural, too. They have a sound.
The second part (after the Em-dash) seemed out of place to me since you were talking about the sounds of traffic, and how you can make out the brand of car in front of you. It just seemed weird that you would describe other sound afterwards - but natural sounds that have nothing to do with that of the traffic or manmade noises relating to that.
This was my favorite part of the whole thing. <3
This piece is simply beautiful. ;_; When I read through it, I didn't have only just a pretty image to guide my mind forward in this, but I had such a story to follow along. The different situations and life you spoke about, and the words you used to tell us about them. There are so many amazing little spots of breathtaking description you jotted down - "coffee rings stained my finger and proposed to me long ago". This wasn't a piece which demanded a ton of emotion or tears or anything like that, and I don't think it was meant to be that way. Okay, let me rephrase that. It didn't bring out any sadness at all, but did make me feel something as I went through the words you passed out to us - the places you'd seen and the people you had talked to, been close to. All that. I think just giving us this story, this beautiful prosish writing (it is prose, right? another ignorance of mine. hee-hee) of this life you illustrated so wonderfully, just taught me that a life is full of wonders. Truly full of so many wonders. That is what I got from this piece. Because even if you're meeting with struggles through your life (as you did mention), there are always the other moments to bring your life back into balance. I also really loved how your piece didn't even mention careers much, or college - anything like that. Instead, you mentioned the small things - like the onion, the coffee, the plants. I loved that.
I wish I could give you a longer review, but I think now I am just rambling and not making sense to myself. hee-hee Thank you for writing this. It was truly lovely. You have another poetry fan.
~Darth Timmyjake
Audy darlin'! So, I don't know your template, so this is just comments on this as a form and those little things I'm noticing, since a quick search didn't give me anything useful.
So, I think your imagery itself is fine, but I'm not sure about your form (one reason why I wanted to see what you were basing this on!). Contrasting the first and last, for instance - this is almost stream-of-conscious, but not quite. You come closest to that with your last, and the lovely break before the last line. With your first, though, I just read an endless line of commas where you could probably use maybe two and have it be more effective. Like... I run into them and pause in my reading, which brings me back out of the reading itself. It's one of those cases of punctuation distracting rather than aiding in understanding, maybe?
Side note, personally I do not like naming things like Netflix or Skype, I think it's jarring, but that's just me. Especially since they're brands, and I think you're going more for a feeling than a brand?
"I collect spines of old literature, and the lost coat buttons, like decapitated heads in memoriam." Love. This.
Interesting exercise! If I come across your base, I'll probably be back ^^
Bek
Hi its Katie here! Its also review day so try to help us out!
So on with the show eh? So to begin with, wow! That was amazing! Your imagery was so amazing! I was reading so fast just so I could see what the next line would say! Your studies really paid off. I understand to much imagery can be bad sometimes but I think for this size of text it was good.
Your work is the best one I have read so far! You should definitely write another and message me so I can read it, if you don't mind of course!
So thank you for letting us read this!
Hey there Audy.
I liked this piece and I really think that you have a very strong talent for writing and with practice you can get even better. I also like how you studied another piece to help you with this one. I always enjoy reading imagery pieces like this and you are one of the best sleeping writers when it comes to something like this. All in all I really enjoyed this piece and I can't wait to read more. Have an amazing day and keep writing.