The Meeting

by HausOfDay

  • Poetry
  • Dramatic · Supernatural

Published February 2, 2012

1. 
 
My left toe is cold upon the breath of
salt water, it folds over grey concrete
and recedes back, again.
 
Frilly white edges crooning the lonely 
sea wall, where my open book sits.
A book about a girl, and cornwall, 
And mermaids.
 
About six seconds later, after a gulp,
she reaches back up the concrete, and swallows
the whole foot.
Licks the saluted hairs on my ankle.
 
It occurs to me how easily she could turn 
this embrace into a feast.
Swipe my human legs with her cool, liquid hands.
Toss me amongst the waves, like wet hair.
 
I let her pull me out, and close
my eyes to the world.
 
2.
 
My swell.
A titanic pulse.
A worlds worth of heart
beats, 
dragged through the throat of a small
cove.
I gather all of myself
And appear, a blackblue
clot, before a child, standing at
The edge of the water.
I have come for him, 
he called me, his soft throat
peeling familiar notes from the wind
And falling in flakes upon my skin.
He seeks an embracing mother,
And I shall embrace him as a mother should.
Careful not to drown him.
Comments & reviews · 1
User avatar
Kale
Review
Kale wrote a review Review · Feb 24, 2013

Hello there, HausOfDay. In the name of the Knights of the Green Room and our Most Sacred and Tireless Quest to ensure that no works go unreviewed in the realm of the Literary Area, here I have come to free your long unreviewed piece from its state of reviewlessness on this fine Review Day. I hope you don’t mind. :3

salt water, it folds over grey concrete

The "it" here is ambiguous. Is it referring to the narrator's toe or the salt water? I'd recommend clarifying this as the ambiguity really weakens this first stanza.

Frilly white edges crooning the lonely
sea wall, where my open book sits.

I don't believe "crooning" means what you think it means... "Festooning" might be better, unless you're missing a "to" between "crooning" and "the".

she reaches back up the concrete, and swallows

Who is "she"?

Licks the saluted hairs on my ankle.

The "saluted" here just reads awkwardly, and while it could work, I just can't get over how awkward it is, and I can't help but keep wondering if perhaps you meant "salted" instead.

peeling familiar notes from the wind

Another case of "could work but can't stop wondering if you meant to use X word instead". Is he peeling notes from the wind, or pealing those notes?

There were also some spots where I wondered about your enjambment and choice of punctuation. For example, the enjambment here:

dragged through the throat of a small
cove.

and the period at the end of this line:

And I shall embrace him as a mother should.

made me wonder what the purpose behind them was, and I really couldn't see a purpose for either that justifies them as they are.

In the case of the period, it makes more sense to me to set he last line as its own stanza rather than end the previous line with a period. That way you get the separation between the lines, but without the sharp cut to their connection.

Overall, there were a lot of things in this that made me wonder what you were doing with them, which was really distracting from the piece itself, which is a shame because you do have some pretty good images and ideas going on in here. If you could just clear up the pronoun ambiguities in particular and watch the wordplay a bit more closely, so that it feels deliberate and natural, then this poem would be much improved.



they got that magical iridescence that you don't expect to be on a sky rat y'know
— Ari11