tornadoes {and other things} **previously a smile like suicide**

Hello there, Luata here to write a review. I've not been sleeping at all and running myself ragged so I apologize if I begin to be a bit nonsensical. I apparently get more and more verbose with lack of sleep! Anyway, onward and upward, shall we?!?

Overall

To begin with, I feel as though this poem is very cryptic. I started off believing I knew what you were writing about, but by the end, I was a bit confused. I'm not sure if you meant to do that or no, or maybe it's just because my brain is confused and tired. It was an enjoyable read though, that is for sure. You had good flow (which I hold in very high regard) and no grammar mistakes as far as I could pick up (though I commonly confuse personal aesthetics with grammar mistakes ...) so you might want someone else better at grammar than I to review your piece.

Beyond that, I couldn't really find a lot wrong with the piece, other than it was a bit confusing. The italicized bits in particular.

If you have any questions or just want to talk, PM me, I'd be glad for the conversation.
~Luata

Hey Spark! I see you asking for some opinions on this piece so I thought I would give it a go.

My first question to you is that - if it's the weakest part of the collection, why are you keeping it? If it isn't on par with the rest of the poetry, then you should probably, regrettably cut it (even if it's to do with flow which, from briefly glancing at the other thread, seems like something you want to go for - you can edit around the space that this poem would leave if you cut it). Sadly sometimes that's what writing (or more so, editing) is - letting go of things you're emotionally attached to but are dragging down the side. But if you're really too in love with the poem then what you have to decide is what is it about the poem that makes you love it, and focus on that meat, and cut away all the fat and make it into something new & tender (I'm stopping with this steak metaphor now).

So. To business.

First of all, the italics. I'm not sure what they're doing. They're not delineating speakers, or a theme, or dialogue, or a poem within a poem or anything else apart from emphasis that I can see - and this is poetry, you have smarter ways of creating emphasis than italics. Mostly I just found them really distracting. In the second stanza in particular this created problems for me, because it messes up with your voice and who is speaking as well.

The narrative of the poem didn't seem right to me - it begins with the speaker stating that their lover will spend their whole life trying to fix them, and the first and second stanzas paint a picture of a troubled, cyclical relationship - which is why the ending of the poem makes no sense. At the end, the speaker states that they are no longer picking up the pieces and trying again - so surely that's an end to the cycle? Except that nothing has changed during the poem, there has been no evidence that this is a cycle that is ending - so the idea that it is seems hollow and honestly somewhat accidental - surely the speaker is not leaving the pieces of the relationship 'on the floor for the dog to eat' unless something has changed in the course of the poem - no, they will be carefully glueing the fragments back together. So that didn't ring true at all to me either.

There were some really nice lines in here - I enjoyed "I am a black hole meant to be a girl" in particular, and the following:

"when you wake up screaming i will tell you about your handprint on my ribcage
about how i just can't seem to scrub it off."

The only thing about those two lines I would mention is a fairly personal note, because we have had the word 'seemed' rooted out of our vocabulary - to feel more direct, and more certain, "can't scrub it off" works better. But "seem to" seems more vernacular, which I think is what you're going for, so it's a toss up.

Which actually leads me onto my third issue - language. There's a weird kind of mix in here, between imagery and literary language and a vernacular, dialectical tone to the tone. That can rock, in some situations, but here the switches just felt too random to me. For instance:

"it hurts and i want to go home. baby, take me home.

really, you can’t be bothered with this today, but fine "

These two lines in particular are jarring. Why does the speaker use the word 'baby'? Initially I thought that was because this was a song lyric, but it wouldn't appear so, and it just feels really strange and actually unnecessary - we know the speaker wants to go home from the previous sentence, this is repetition that detracts from the original statement purely by how it's said. Then the second line after that - it rings off to me as a petulant teenager. "Really, I can't be bothered with this today, but fine!" "Don't speak to your mother like that!" Again, it felt tonally off because of the language, it doesn't fit with the mature voice in the rest of the poem.

My last final point on language is:

"i am not your cup of tea."

This was an almost comically small metaphor in comparison to rainclouds and burning buildings - "not my cup of tea" is what you say when you don't particularly like an album but you respect the artist for trying, or the icing on a cupcake is just too sickly for you but you can appreciate why someone else might have more than a sweet tooth. It's a pretty weak statement to end a poem full of huge, expansive imagery on, especially when it's followed up with another very strong statement. I'd swap it out for something with a bit more bite to fit the rest of the poem.

Hope I helped, drop me a note if you need anything!

-Stella x