dust / waiting

You've already gotten comprehensive reviews on this piece, but I will go down and point out the goods/bads/do's/don't's in accordance to any desire to publish this piece.

1. Your flow is excellent, and you're really showing improvement in your skill to choose line break positioning to better that flow. I'm sure it's no secret that line breaks, spacing, and flow are my priorities in poetry, so once you deliver it well, I'm inclined to digest the rest more easily. This should be subconsciously true for each reader and consumer, so always remember to grow in this right.

2. While this is written about dancing and being shoved aside as a rejected member of the team, there are tons of implications the reader can take from this. As a default romantic poet, to me this spoke about being brushed aside as a new love enters the significant other's life. Another view is that of spirituality, or perhaps general abandonment issues leading to the final two lines, which really drive it home for me.

3. I'm a fan of your casual and unforced rhymes. If you didn't recognize them at first, they're dust/rehearse, and later dust/enough. They improve the flow, they give momentum to the theme of the poem, and generally improve the quality because of their natural belonging on the lines.

Overall, great job. You're improving again and again; for this reason, I really hope you don't stop.

Ty

Literally everything that somehow ends up under my bed for months.

Radrook here for a review.

Thanks for sharing this poem about someone who feels ignored and abandoned as if he had been excluded from a staged play. The comparison to an unused prop such as a chair and broken mirror is nice. The poem touches does arouse empathy since most of us experience that type of feeling sooner or later and can appreciate the psychological pain that it involves. People shuffling by as if one were invisible makes the rejection worse. The pain of such a rejection is even worse when One knows that one is qualified and that others who are participating might not be. It is like adding insult to injury.

Suggestion

Capitalizing the first letter beginning each line would be better.

Traditional punctuation would enhance reading flow.

"You left me backstage.... '' is more economical and packs more punch.

[I] was built to perform...." Otherwise meaning is a bit confusing.

Looking forward to reading more of your work.

Hi! Royal here for a review. I liked this poem. I used to be in musical theater, and this brought back some memories. But let's get right to it.

First, I think the ending is better than the beginning. Starting with "you've forgotten me," doesn't pack the punch I know you want. It sounds more like a whining complaint than a damning accusation. And the addition of "left me in the back," feels a little laying-it-on-too-thick. You could use this first stanza to give us some more of that imagery like the broken chair and mirror. I get that you want to drive home the idea of being broken. But I think the point of this poem is that the speaker's potential is wasted. A broken chair has no more potential. When you compare the speaker to the broken chair, I'm thinking the speaker also has no more potential. It makes me think like, "Well, yeah, they shouldn't be onstage if they're useless." But the speaker isn't useless, they have so much to give and no opportunity to give it. A broken chair doesn't. You want to draw a comparison between the speaker and something that has been discarded for no other reason than that it was replaceable or extra or in the way. Your speaker isn't broken, they are forgotten. So you want to be careful about the parallels you draw.

Second, I want more imagery. Talk about the lights or lack thereof. Describe the dust some more. There's some fun metaphysics you could play with here, that whole Biblical "you are dust and to dust you shall return," thing. You almost have it in the last stanza, but I think you should expand on that. You could take this super deep.

Third, I love the last line. But I had some trouble understanding what made the speaker think that they would be discovered if they waited long enough. Did that happen to a prop? Did someone take a prop away after a while and put it on stage? I think you could include something like that, like someone came back to where the speaker is to get a prop and then left to go back onstage. Like, they take something away and ignore the speaker altogether. Lower than even a chair. And then that last line will add to the context and the narrative. Like, will I be next? When is it my turn? It'll take a little editing, but it will pack a harder punch.

I liked the form you chose, and I liked the sort of staccato rhythm to each line, like the speaker is grumbling to themselves. I'd like to know why the last two lines of the first stanza are indented, and why you chose not to repeat that for the others, but as I'm a big fan of wonky spacing, I like it regardless of your intention.

Good job overall, keep writing! I liked this a lot.

Lives4Christ24 is here for a review.
Wow, this is really good.
You have your formating correct, and I like how you made your i's lowercase to show how you feel small.
Being in a chorus can sometimes feel like you don't matter and you don't get attention.
I like how you showed that people in chorus do have talent they just need to be discovered.
I hope to see more poetry and I will read your other work.
Thank You