canada dry

by Jas
  • September 22, 2012
  • Poetry
(for lucy)

there are flood lights pouring 
into my eyes and there are bright spots 
in front of me that blacken and melt into the
crescent cracks in the sidewalk.

i am:

1. a cocktail of diet coke and ginger ale
2. the screams that come from children in chuck e cheese 
3. a dream or maybe something more lucid, something that involves more cold sweat and bliss
4. a bottle of small talk that spills fluidly down my throat

i let everything and everyone influence me like
lila the little girl who can’t pronounce m’s and 
soumaya, my saudi arabian cousin who tried,
in all good intentions, to convert my friend.

i don’t really write anymore. i simply bruise,
blood oxidizing internally in something that
defies the laws of my nature.

but.

there’s this girl who writes like a falcon, picking at your brain 
and i know she has doubt in her knuckles, her knees and the cavities
 in her spine but she’ll grow out of it, the same
way flowers grow out of their stems, with a determination to succeed
and a conviction in change.

(and i don’t think that girl is me)
Comments & reviews · 2
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User avatar
Audy
Review
Audy wrote a review · Mon Sep 24, 2012 3:35 pm

Jas,

I'm excited every time I see a poem from you :)

I do have a question. Why ginger ale?

It's funny because as it so happens, me and canada dry have a long history together. So much in fact, that it's tainted my buds of what ginger should taste like - but doesn't - so when I told somebody I loved ginger, and they gave me a shot of gingerbeer, it was so horrendously far from what I had expected, I had to spit it back out, and profess that I must have lied and I don't really like ginger after all. So, that 3rd stanza there hit me hard in ways, probably not even intended. But that's why I love poetry I think.

As in all of these reviews, I have to say I admire your voice. Your voice is so painstakingly you, I'm sure I've said this before, but I can easily pick out an untitled poem of yours out of the masses. I love pieces of this poem a lot. As a whole, I think it's very personal, so I'm sure I'm bound to misinterpret things.

For the first stanza, I'm just not feeling it. I feel like if you removed that stanza completely out of the poem, it won't really make a dent to the poem as a whole. I don't see that the stanza does anything except perhaps introduce a concept that I think is better portrayed later on. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful stanza. Well written. But to me it's the poetic equivalent of purple prose - I feel like it just pulls the poem fatter and larger with too many ideas and too many tangents. It needs slimming.

The next part - the number list - I absolutely adore. I see it as a list of ingredients, so I would say yes, you've got the form covered. I love how it refers back to the title.

This part:

i don’t really write anymore. i simply bruise,
blood oxidizing internally in something that
defies the laws of my nature.


If blood is oxidizing inside you, I think that statement in itself is implying a sort of unnaturalness, so that last line isn't needed. Instead, maybe try to construct a line that ties this all together?

The ending there, as much as I disagree with it, was powerful to me. I see this as a (non) proclamation of self, like what the speaker is and what the speaker aspires. Pretty cool.

~ as always, Audy

User avatar
FLyerS
Review
FLyerS wrote a review · Sun Sep 23, 2012 12:23 am

This is a good poem. Its not perfect, but what is? I liked it. It's thoughtful.
There's two things you need to make a good story.
1. You need to take it seriously.
2. You need to tell the truth.
Now just because you are taking your work seriously doesn't mean you are writing a serious poem, it means you are taking care and sculpting with words, instead of throwing them at a wall and seeing what sticks. And just because you are telling the truth doesn't mean you are writing non-fiction. There is truth in every great novel, every great poem.
You obviously took your writing seriously, and I think you told the truth.
Great job!



Teach a man to fish, he eats for a day. Don't teach a man to fish, you eat for a day. He's a grown man. Fishing's not that hard.
— Ron Swanson (Parks and Rec)