Young Writers Society

Hi there EtherealGarbage! Your poem caught my eye so I thought I'd drop by with a quick review ^^

(Also, if I make any stupid typos please excuse them; it's getting a bit late and my editorial skills quickly deteriorate the later it gets whoops!)

crimson trickles

through my veins,

spiraling

into clusters.

I adore this opening stanza - it's so concise but the few words you do use are incredibly vivid. I've also got to admit, I'm quite fond of the colour crimson in poetry, so perhaps I'm slightly biased ;) Altogether, the use of strong descriptive words such as "trickles", "spiraling", and "clusters", works really well to set the mood and tone of the poem.

the blood is colder

than i expected.

Something I really enjoy throughout the poem is your repetition of temperature phrases - first cold, then lukewarm, then heat, then frost & icicles, then tying it back up with cold again. It creates a sense of continuity and progression across the stanzas, which strengthens the effect of the poem. My only suggestion regarding this would be to try to spice up the words you use to describe the temperature. Sure, "colder" works just fine, but "more frigid", "freezing", "numbing", "icier", and "more wintry" have a bit more oomph, don't they?

i can feel

it in my fingers,

frost grows,

icicles form,

These descriptions are pretty simple but they pack quite a punch! I just have one note about punctuation - you seem to be using conventional punctuation throughout the poem, so if you want to be consistent with that, technically you need a semicolon [ ; ] after "fingers", instead of a comma. However, punctuation is an artistic choice in poetry, so it's definitely not a must!

I really like how you switch up the formatting at the end of the poem with the indented lines! I want to suggest a couple of other formatting things you could play around with, but they're not necessary at all, so whether you implement them is totally up to your taste :)
First:

circulation slows.

^I'd like to suggest you split this up into two lines:

circulation
slows.

as a pause between those two words would illustrate how the circulation is, in fact, slowing.

there must

be something

wrong here.

^What if you messed with the formatting to convey how something is wrong? For example, align the final line to the right, or align the middle line to the centre so the three lines form a zigzag - there are lots of different options!

crimson trickles

through my veins,

spiraling

into clusters.

^"spiraling into clusters" is a phrase full of so much movement and I'd love it if the formatting of the poem reflected that. You could do something similar to how you ended the poem, but moving right to left, like so:

crimson trickles

through my veins,

.........................spiraling

................into

clusters.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this poem. The lack of capitalization complements the simplistic imagery super well, and boy do you pack a lot into such a short poem! I think it'd be nice if you played around a bit with heat-related language and with formatting, but other than that, I don't have any real critiques! I hope this review proves useful, and if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Keep writing <3

whatcha

Oooooh I love this poem. It's a bit gruesome and one of those rare spine-tingling good poems that I read and just get this satisfied chill. I love your formatting with the varied stanza lengths and the short, abrupt lines. It conveys this shocked, confused mood perfectly.

The only thing I would change, and this is minor, truly, is the last line:

colder than ever

It doesn't feel right with the rest of the tone and flow, but then again, this may have been entirely intentional to show the whole abruptness of this "frozen blood". If it is intentional, than perfect!

Loved reading this,
Mordax