For Sam, seeing as it's her birthday
a quiver-full of
piñata birds
with intestine strings wadded up
like crumpled candy wrappers.
delicate wings as fragile
as the bones in a newborn's
foot.
kites look so much like
torn up credit card bills and
shredded-pork bank statements
when the wind sighs and
decides to make
paper airplanes out of them.
but we need to remember that
Icarus's wings were made out of glue
and bamboo twigs, too.
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139,585 Literary Works • 672,611 Reviews
This is just beautiful. I love it. I have one thing to say, I didn't like the line "but we need to remember that" - I agree that it needs to be more subtle. I like your voice a lot, original and pretty and simple.
Hey there! Let's get reviewing...
Good introduction in the first stanza. Your deliberate omission of capital letters set up our expectations nicely.
Is stanza 2 really relevant? The "bones in a newborn's/foot" image is shocking, but I think you can prune this away or work it into elsewhere. It feels out of place where it is right now.
Stanza 3 seems cluttered with adjectives: get rid of them! They're dead weight. As Colly says, the alliterative "bills and bank statements" is more than enough.
The Big Moral Lesson in stanza 4 needs a touch of subtlety and dexterity; it was slightly too heavy-handed for my liking.
As I have said, I won't reprimand your resistance to capital letters on this one! It enhanced the piece and gave it the feeling that it was stream of consciousness - me like.
All in all, this poem has a lovely, wistful tone that I think your addressee would very much appreciate! Hope they receive it well.
Best,
Gahks
(I refuse to rate this one because it's a present.)
I like it, but as always, I complain that it is too wordy and complicated. Here is how I would rephrase to make stuff flow better or sound less wordy. I also like having less-than-perfect grammar and syntax:
he carries a quiver-full of
piñata birds
strings wadded up
like crumpled candy wrappers.
delicate wings fragile
like bones in a newborn
foot.
kites look so much like
torn up bills and
bank statements
when the wind sighs and
makes paper airplanes of them.
and Icarus was
glue and bamboo twigs, too.
In the first stanza, I put in 'he carries' just so I as a reader can place the image a little more firmly, attach it to some person, perhaps, instead of it just being abstract description. Also, the intestines were a little too much for me. They had to go.
In S3, I think the way "bills and bank statements" just rolls of the tongue...the other stuff was getting in the way of the simple elegance.
In S4: I always hate it when poems end like, "But we need to remember..." it sounds too moralish and yuck. It needs to be more subtle, more of a surprise-like observation than a lesson.
-Colly
So, your image was stretching out the front page and [s]I put it in a spoiler[/s] I made it an attachment. I'm not certain the spoiler code worked when it's displayed on the front page. ^_^ Sorry!
I will review this with much love and kissing and perhaps knives too, but now I have to go eat before I pass out! Mwah, dearest Kylan.
delicate wings as fragile
as the bones in a newborn's
foot.
Ewwww...why are you breaking new born babies' foots? Haha, I kid. I really do. A poem based off the picture. I really really like it. Kudos. I refuse to edit it for grammar or content because it's for someone else and I don't need to be picking apart someone's present. I like it, just thought I'd leave a comment praising some poetic genius no and again.