i.
he presses the bridge of his nose
between two fingers,
the same way his father does when he talks about working late.
his shoulders stay sunburnt from april to august,
peeling in sheets like onionskin book covers,
the scent of old pulp bleeding out beneath his nails.
ii.
his mother keeps the knives dull,
says a boy should know his own limits.
we were kids when the dam split its teeth,
when the fish lay belly-up like split spoons
and the sky folded itself into a mouth.
you could hear it, even through the screen door —
a sound like hands rubbing raw.
he wiped his nose on his sleeve
and said the river was just turning itself inside out.
we were thirteen, hair burnt soft by the august glare,
our knees packed with dust.
he smelled like salt and the underbelly of train cars.
someone had been teaching him to shoot.
iii.
he lay in the grass
like a boy
waiting for a flood. the air stinks of iron.
he asked if i believed in omens,
and i said no, but i still watched the hawk carve
a wound in the sky. he grits his teeth like i owe him something,
a body restless with debts neither of us can name.
i pick glass shards out of his hand
and push him into the reservoir.
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Canary word: Present
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125,006 Literary Works • 672,809 Reviews
hi helvetia!
oh this is so good! i'm loving the southern gothic vibes!
the way you handle memory, violence, and inheritance here is so raw. it's like everything is just on the verge of splitting open. restrained but furious. i feel like it's full of things that are never quite said but felt, which is exactly what makes it hurt so much. you see your own story in it. that is powerful. you need to say things to portray them, and that's something that's incredibly hard to master with poetry.
something about the first section/stanza is particularly haunting for me. it introduces the boy, but it doesn't mythicize him. even without stating details about him, this tells us that this is a boy who absorbs, who carries things, who watches and learns from his father. this is whether he wants to or not. i think that already sets the scene of the generational trauma to come. i am a sucker for foreshadowing!
OUCH this line is devastating!
there is protection, yes, but also an imposed restraint. i take that there’s a sense that she wants to keep him from going too far, from becoming something "
"dangerous" or the like. maybe dangerous equates to masculinity and male puberty. the mother, like the father, is shaping him in ways that aren’t explicit but are undeniably affecting him. his age is never written down, but i assume he's in that sweet spot of adolescence where you act like you don't care even if you do.
then, you get into "someone had been teaching him to shoot." now this is the turning point of the whole poem to me. the lack of elaboration makes it hit harder. it’s ominous, really. it’s the first clear sign that something is shifting in him, that someone is shaping him into something dangerous. and it’s left ambiguous, which could mean anything. a father figure, or a friend? maybe himself?
the last section is a perfect culmination of everything; he already knows what's coming, especially with the flood image before, and there’s nothing to do but let it happen. the image of picking glass shards out of his hand is this act of care, of intimacy. but then you push him into the water! it’s not clear whether this is playful or violent, but i could see it being some metaphor for baptism. there's a lot of biblical allegories in here. either way, it feels final.
anyway yeah this is stunning! the boy and the narrator are trapped in something cyclical, something bigger than themselves. it doesn't make me feel claustrophobic, just complete. like it's meant to be that way.
best,
milkweed
Hello, Helvetia!
I had to sit with this one for a minute. I felt stunned. Still do, so this review is going to be a mere attempt on my part to briefly put into words how the poem made me feel.
Lucid imageries. Striking similes. Sensory details were never too much, never too little, in my opinion; effectively utilized. The similes, specially, I loved. They were not random either. Very appropriate, in the context of the setting described and explored within the limits of the three parts, which kept the poem tonally consistent despite being sectioned.
The narrative voice is solemn, honest, captivating. More than that the voice is believable. When the narrator said, "and the sky folded itself into a mouth," I did not question whether it was literal or a metaphor. On the contrary, I could simply see it, the ominous image. I felt doomed, just as the narrator may have.
It reads like a dream, like a movie directed by Tarkovsky perhaps. Very stream-of-consciousness in nature, it seemed to me.
The last two lines perplexed me the most. After a few more readings, I can see something of a story thread, weaved among the three part.
Could be alluding that the boy is reckless in nature, maybe lacking in sense of self-preservation.
A daredevil, perhaps, who likes to play with knives.
Possible that the boy has fallen in with an less than ideal crowd.
I interpret that the boy isn't lying in the grass to rest but that something terrible has happened to him. All the dares acted in the summer -- close calls and fortunate escapes -- had incurred some debts. Luck, if tested, runs out eventually. So, it seems that the boy's actions have caught up with him.
The source of the smell of iron could be blood from his wounds or from literal split spoons or metal junks laying around in the river bank.
Perhaps the thing owed is a burial into a river restless. I'm still uncertain as to the glass shards. Did the boy like to collect river glass? If so, it makes sense that he'd clutch them in his last moment. And if the boy is a brother or a friend to the narrator, it also makes sense that the narrator want to pick them out, to keep as remembrance. At least, that's my interpretation of the final section.
Overall, I loved the poem. I liked how rich it was in details and imagery. I liked how the boy's nature was shown, subtly, in flashes. I liked the use of specific metaphors and similes to illustrate the narrator's perception of the world. And before I forget, I thought the poem description "heat warps the soul like stretched sinew" -- which is a profound line by itself -- was an appropriate appetizer for the mood of "dry season."
That is all from me for now. I enjoyed analyzing this one. Wishing you a wonderful day/evening. Keep on writing!
~ MAS