Heyyo! I've been eyeing this piece for a while but I'm actually going to sit down and write this now. So the way I review is usually going line by line, and I get into what I think everything means, how I feel about it, stuff like that. After that, if I have any suggestions, I'll make them! And I'll generally wrap it up with something I forgot to include in an earlier paragraph regarding how awesome the poem is.
Okie-dokie, let's get into it!
Green and white vegetable shreds
piled high on a sushi plate that is
floated around by conveyor belt.
Okay SO-- love the particular choice to have the plate floated instead of floating. It takes away the responsibility from the sushi plate and almost gives it this feeling of "this is how this is always meant to be". As if the universe just put it there one day. Love love love that choice, very unique. You don't really see that verb form often in situations like this. I also love the word choice of "vegetable shreds". It gives this feeling of things falling apart, but as we know, sushi is pretty well held together (until you actually try to eat it XD) so it feels like a contradiction. I like that. I also like that it's a sushi plate, and not the sushi plate. It's like it was put here by the universe (floated, not floating) but it's not alone and therefore not special in its situation. Am I smelling a metaphor for us as humans on Earth? >.> We'll come back to that later.
The street-cleaner steps onto
its chipped emerald rim,
Gonna cut this here because I couldn't see a better place to do it, and I didn't want to do six lines at much because I feel like it gets messy to differentiate between which thoughts are regarding what. Alrighty, so for one, I love "chipped emerald rim". Awesome imagery, and immediately puts me in the moment. We can assume because it's chipped it's been worn. It also gives a feeling of authenticity, like this small restaurant that makes great sushi, but it doesn't have enough money to put towards fixing the small details like that. Despite the appearance, people go there anyway all the time, and it's very well-loved. Similar to when people say a worn-down object has just been "loved", that's what I imagine in regards to the chipped emerald rim. I am, I will admit, slightly confused on the word usage of "onto"-- if this is a restaurant, I'd assume he's stepping into the restaurant and onto the chipped emerald rim. Although now, as I'm writing this, he may have already entered the restaurant and just now made his way over to the sushi bar, which seems the likely intention of that line. I'll leave this in anyway in case it makes you think of something XD but I don't actually think there's any issue there.
eyes wide that he
could fit at all, and eases down
resting his bones in the cushion
and drifts off to sleep.
Love this! Love love love! I very much feel for the street-cleaner. Sushi can be something a lot of people see as fancy, but in actuality, it, like everything, is what you make it to be. And for this street-cleaner, it's a place to rest. : ) Alrighty, so for the actual words, I'm wondering if you meant "could fit it all" rather than "could fit at all." My mind automatically changed it, and if "at" was an intentional choice, then I'm slightly confused at its meaning. I also enjoy how you choose to cut the lines, such as the enjambment from "eyes wide that he -- could fit at all". It gives a flow to the poem, and less of a jolting stop at the end of each line. The last few lines, I can't even say much about, save for they make me feel things and I like them very much. I love that he is using the space how he needs to use it, which plays into the "a sushi plate" rather than "the sushi plate", and the "floated" rather than "floating." It all plays into the passiveness of the space, and how people can use it for what they want to use it.
Okie-dokie we made it through all the lines! Now let's talk about some suggestions/ideas. I already pointed out a few places where I couldn't figure out if you meant a word to be that or not, but for this, I really don't have much to say. I think adding "old" so it's "resting his old bones" might be nice. Also, I believe, technically speaking, it would be "resting his bones on the cushion" not "in the cushion". I also feel like the poem could benefit from a comma at the end of line seven, since the verb type changes to "resting". Generally before changes like that, commas are added in writing, and though those rules don't necessarily apply to poetry, I think it could help the reader's mind to have a second's pause before moving on. In a way, I believe it would make the end more impactful.
Alrighty, and now onto the final part: overall meaning, aka my interpretation that could be completely wrong in comparison to what you meant this to be. So, this is going to be a stretch, and you'll need to stick with me here-- earlier I mentioned the sushi is reminding me a lot of humanity and our place on Earth. By this, I mean that we were put here (or evolved here, whatever you believe) and even though existence within itself is a miracle considering how much the odds are against us, each of us is not unique or alone in being in that miracle situation. This does not mean we as individuals are less special, but it does mean that to an outside eye, we might look rather similar in this situation. This is where the sushi comes in. The sushi is us. We're just being floated around by a giant planet around a sun in a constant spinning cycle. Most of us will do that our entire life and never know anything different. The street-cleaner, in my eye, is a higher power. Whether for you that is the Christian "God", Muslim "Allah", Jewish "G-d", or some other being of some sort (apologies for anyone I left out, I know this is the bare-bones covering of religion), the street-cleaner represents them. He takes in his creations in a small, run-down restaurant at a small, run-down sushi bar. To us, our world on this conveyor belt seems spectacular. To him, someone who has walked the world outside not only the conveyor belt but outside the RESTAURANT, it may still be spectacular, but not to the exist which we think of it as. He is tired. He has done a lot today, keeping at bay the mess of the streets for the others walking by. (We can't think too literally about this, because if we do, it implies somehow that there are other more powerful beings than the one who created us, and if you believe that, great, but otherwise, it gives you a headache thinking about XD). He comes to our corner of the universe, sits down to watch us at our everyday, simple lives, and drifts off to sleep, resting after all his hard work. (Daoism, anyone?)
I imagine that most of this is stuff I'm making up right now and you had no intention of putting into this poem. It is, after all, a silly poem about sushi : ) and I love that. I also love finding something that means something to me in a poem, even if it isn't exactly what the author intended. And then I try to share it, because it can be fun to hear what people think.
SOOOO that there about wraps up my thoughts. I generally include a paragraph or so on the title, but it's pretty straight-forward. It's nice and pretty. I like it : ) If you have any thoughts or questions about everything I've written here (it's a lot, and most likely not incredibly coherent XD), please feel free to ask in a comment to this review, or we can move a conversation to PMs if you would rather! As for anyone I review, I am here if you ever need to talk about something-- writing-related or otherwise. I consider myself good at offering advice, but I am also good at just listening and empathizing, so I am open to either. That's gonna wrap up this review for now. I hope this was helpful in some way, or at least enjoyable! Have a fantastic day, and keep writing!
~Winter
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Reviews: 33
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