Young Writers Society

Hello, Cairo, racket here to review your poem!
Okay, this is very, very good. Your detailed setting is admirable and the whole poem is so well done in the description department you can almost feel yourself watching, or being, that (girl, I assume) in that bar. The memories described almost feel like my own. So, well done! Just a few suggestions before I leave you and your poem in peace.
The first is that you have stanzas from the middle to the end, but you have one giant block right at the beginning that needs to be made into at least two. I think that may have been a formatting issue, or just a forgetful blip, but it shouldn't be too hard to fix up.
Also in that first stanza, I found it interesting how you left one thought stretched kind of randomly over two lines (lines 2 & 3, 4 & 5), but you did not repeat that in the rest of the poem, so I would either add more of that strange disjointed-ness to the rest of the poem, or fix those lines, as they set up the reader's mind for an interesting sort of reading that is never followed up with. I think that makes sense.... In other words, move 'your' to the third line and 'briefly' to the fifth.
I really like your decision not to capitalize; it really fits the mood of the poem and works well in context as well. Gosh dang, this is a fantastically written poem! I absolutely love the last line, as it adds just enough emphasis to the pain of the narrator. I really, really enjoyed this poem! Keep writing! I look forward to reading and reviewing more of your works in the future!
~racket

Hello!
I liked this poem. I liked the story of what happened here. I like the silence of the poem, how little happens externally, but internally, inside the narrator's head, there's this whole story. I like hearing about the sort-of betrayal. I like your images here, and your tone, and your rhythm. You make good use of pauses.

Despite the story being pretty good, I wish that there was a little more to it. It took me a second reading to figure out what was going on. You're very careful and gentle and quiet about getting to what happened, and I think that helped your tone, but the first time I read through it, I wasn't sure what the significance of anything was. For example, I was pretty confused as to why the narrator would be "Swinging" on the hand of the other man. I didn't realize s/he was WITH him until the end of the second time I read through it. Also I feel like "swinging" was an odd choice of word for that.

I think you might be toeing the line of cliche in a few of your images and this story itself. I'm not sure I want to point out particular instances of this, because what is cliche to me, might not be cliche to the rest of the world.

I really like your word choice in this, and how everything feels so tenuous and futile.
Honestly, I don't have anything else to fix. I think somehow you could make this more memorable, but I don't know how. You did a pretty bang-up job already. Great work!
I hope this helped somewhat. Let me know if you have any questions!
Keep writing!
~fortis

Hi Cairo!

I really liked this poem, but I feel like content wise, it's strong, but structurally it's a bit weak. The way that it's formatted is kind of distracting, and I'm not sure if it was for effect that you didn't capitalize your "I's", but there's that. There isn't that much flow, but this poem has a lot of potential. It has a melancholic feel to it, and is definitely deep and meaningful. I just find that if you edited the overall structure and design layout, it can make this poem stronger. grammar wise, there were a few mistakes, but nothing major. The structure will make it a lot more appealing to read and will create better flow, as I said, but your thoughts are very strong. c: