Don’t Forget the Ladies

by JiRuiHe

Published April 30, 2009

In Poetry

PreviousNext

“Don’t Forget the Ladies”

She’s the silent villain falling into a slumber beside him in bed.
Wife.
Wife.
My wife is dead.
Where has she gone? Dense, cold bones are scraping my side.
Ice pick.
Ice pick.
My wife, with her ice pick, my dead, beautiful bride.
Her breath is timed to the ticking of the clock.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock –
Beneath her heavy head of moss, murky water, muddled thoughts, ticking clocks
Sickened by the sterile scent of midnight –
Time is constant, my wife, eternally buried beneath rock.
I feel unnatural, impure, sullied – my legs propelling me forward – in the light of day!
I’m ashamed,
So ashamed,
I fall astray.

She breathes deeper and I begin to suffocate.

Comments & reviews · 5
Random avatar
JiRuiHe
Comment
JiRuiHe commented Comment · May 1, 2009

Thank you so much June, bubbles, and Snoink! I really appreciate your comments. It will be difficult to maintain the rhyme scheme while making the poem more concise, but I will definitely revise it with that critique about repetition in mind. Also, the change in speaker is intentional, Snoink, but do you think that it may confuse the reader? Thanks for the link, bubbles, and thank you all again!

User avatar
Snoink
Review
Snoink wrote a review Review · May 1, 2009

Haha, yes, definitely an interesting style! I like how it repeats.... well, the tick tocks sort of annoy me, but only because I've been dealing with certain mathematical problems where time isn't a constant, and it's very annoying. And you reminded me of it. But yeah!

She’s the silent villain falling into a slumber beside him in bed.
Wife.
Wife.
My wife is dead.


For the first line, did you mean "me" instead of "him"?

Also, since I'm a mod, I changed your title to your actual title. No worries! ^_^

User avatar
bubblewrapped
Review
bubblewrapped wrote a review Review · May 1, 2009

Welcome to YWS :) You don't need to beg for feedback in the title, don't worry - we have an entire thread dedicated to that. Just follow the link in my signature and you will find plenty of people who will be more than happy to critique your poem!

With that out of the way, let me give you my thoughts.

This is certainly a unique poem, and I quite like the style. I agree with June that there are places where the repetition got to be a bit much - I felt it wasn't adding anything new to the poem, so you might want to look into trimming down on the excess verbiage. I also felt the rhyming made the flow a bit awkward in places, but you'll probably be able to fix that when you edit for repetitions, so no biggie.

Overall a very interesting piece. I'll look forward to reading some more of your work :)

Cheers,
~bubbles

User avatar
Juniper
Review
Juniper wrote a review Review · Apr 30, 2009

Hi JiRuiHe! Welcome to YWS! I'm June, and I'm going to skim over this for you.


I like the idea presented here. While it's not an original or new concept to touch on, it certainly is presented in a not-so-common way.

In some spots throughout, the repetition grew heavy. I'm not speaking of those places that intentionally have obvious repetition-- I'm speaking moreso on ideas here.

You had a delicate rhyme scheme playing in here that seemed neither forced nor dominant; great job with that.

Your style in this is remarkably wonderful. Great job on this, dear, and keep up the nice work.


June

(Welcome to YWS!)



Alakazam BIOS discography Philadelphia à la disco [...] Nitrogen! I.E. polyester Garfunkle'n Garfield!
— John West (The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson)