I wish I could leave you and
my memory of you behind somewhere,
like under the dirt in the backyard,
held in a tin box.
Let dirt seep into the electricity in your eyes,
worms wrap their slime bodies over your skin
you will feel small insects tickling you feet.
Maybe some lost kid could stumble upon it
and scream “Fate! Fate!”
as he climbs out of a social closet
the same way you pushed the doors in
and “allowed” my freedom.
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140,703 Literary Works • 673,672 Reviews
Hi Ekk15,
I want to do one last Review for Review Day, so here it goes,
First off, I love the contrast of the title "Lovely" with the actual imagery of the poem which depicts sort of dirty grimy desire for revenge and just wanting to be done with the relationship.
You've a good instinct for using [albeit odd] interesting imagery in this. And none of your poem sounded cliche, which is quite difficult to do in relationship poems! So really, well done there!
I have a few suggestions:
Flow
There were a few areas where I thought the flow of the poem sort of struggled through. The images and overall story of the poem I really don't have a lot of critique on, so I'll focus on this aspect of where you could improve.
1. Being Concise
One way to improve flow is to be concise. Extra words, add extra opportunities to get caught under phrasing or lose the thought between the words. So if a word is unneeded (especially in a short poem like this) it should generally be thrown out, unless there is some reason you have it for alliteration or symbolism or some other actual purpose.
I'll mark where I think the extra words were:
2. Being Consistent
Another way to help with flow is through increasing the consistency of your line lengths.
For instance check the flow of these two poem versions:
"they said goodbye
then walked away
they left so they
could go eat"
versus this one with worse flow:
"they said
goodbye then walked away they left
so
they could
eat"
I don't know if that helps illustrate it or not, but basically having lines that are closer to each other in length (syllables and visually) will help out the flow of your poem. The lines with "fate, fate" and "tin box" were both noticeablly long, so I'd either do a stanza break after both of those lines, or try to even out the rest of the lines somehow.
Formatting/Phrasing
Some of the phrasing was a bit vague - like "somewhere" and "some" -- I'd try to make it concrete and specific instead as this'll paint a clearer image and message for the reader.
Meaning
I interpretted this poem to be about someone who was being limited in their expression (maybe of their sexuality based on the closet reference, or their conduct, or voice) by another person, and now they're reflecting on how they want to be rid of that influence completely, even though they admit someone (or maybe the speaker even) might very well stumble into this situation again because it seems unavoidable like fate.
Overall, this was an interesting piece, and although I left mostly suggestions, the strong points the imagery, language use, and narrative were all really strong.
best,
alliyah
Hello!
This was interesting in that while reading this I actually thought it was a happy poem- that the narrator wanted to store good memories in a tin box, like a time capsule (I always love the idea of time capsules, so naturally I really connected to that image). But then of course I read back (sometimes it takes awhile for me to actually comprehend what I'm reading) and realize that the memories were being discarded, rather than being stowed away. Which then makes us wonder why this person what's to get rid of that. Towards the end it almost seemed like it was something to do with an LGBT+ person being discriminated against in some way, but maybe I was reading that wrong.
One thing I'd like to say is this poem is a little wordy, I found. In poetry, less usually equals more. For an example:
A lot of the words in that sentence don't really add anything to the poem, and because of that, they weigh it down. "you will feel" really aren't that necessary because you can reword it in such away that those extra, plain old words aren't there, and "small" isn't needed because we know insects are small. c: And you'd get something like this:
That's gotten rid of at least three words, which is huge even though it may not seem like much at all! My advice is to read through your poems after you write them, and ask yourself if there's words in there that aren't needed, or if you could reword somethings so that it still basically says what you want it to, but also diminishes the amount of fluff words.
In any case, this poem certainly made me ponder, and I found it interesting how it could have seemed like a nice poem in the middle, without the beginning or end- it seemed as though it was a happy poem, but with the beginning and end it's certainly clear that there are bad feelings.
Keep it up!
-Holysocks
Radrook here for a review.
Thanks for sharing this poem about a gruesome desire for revenge for a wrong that isn't clearly described but hinted at. The speaker feels wronged. A memory is mentioned but not explained. There is anger but we aren't told why.
I did try to figure out exactly how the speaker was wronged by meticulously going over the poem. But try as I might I couldn't. Why? Well, because the speaker tells us that the hated person had done him a favor by kicking in a door and freeing him or her.
So the expected natural reaction is gratitude not hatred. Also, a kid coming out of a social closet angrily shouting "fate"when he sees the speaker's benefactor in such a gruesome condition is puzzling. What exactly is the little brat's beef? In fact, what is the speaker's beef? Beats me! So if the intention of the poem is to puzzle-then yes, certainly, it did puzzle me.
Nevertheless, you are obviously a very skillful writer and I do want to read more of your work.