White thread spun through your hair
tangles between my fingers
and ties knots around my tongue.
I gag, "love, kiss, touch"
to your earrings, your ears are reserved
for needles skipping like heartbeats on 45s.
I'm afraid to crack you,
be left standing over dropped eggs
in a supermarket with a dead attendant.
When no one comes to mop up my mess
the shoppers wait and stare
until my clothes unwind in my hair.
The thread pulls me naked into you.
Crossing the cold linoleum
you whisper, "kiss, touch, love"
onto my bound tongue.
Egg whites drip between my fingers
as I approach the cashier.
He takes the crumpled foam box and asks,
"Is that all for today?"
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141,354 Literary Works • 674,379 Reviews
This is a really good poem.
I just didn't quite understand this part.
Hiya Lad,
this hasn't gotten enough love to my tastes.
I've told you that I respect the fact you kind of go at your own pace to the beat of your own drum when it comes to poetry. And really this is quite nicely constructed. You have a nice tonality in this poem that I haven't seen much from your last few poem. It's consistent and fits just right.
As inkwell said, ambiguity is an issue. Why? Because you give me the corners of the puzzle, but the middle is still empty and I can't quite piece together exactly what is happening in this poem, or what is hypothetically being feared.
Alright, so after being left by Y, X drops the eggs and kills the attendant and the mess is left there? Or something else? Yes it paints a picture and creates this emotional playing ground where I can gage the feeling the narrator X feels towards subject Y but it leaves too many unanswered questions, loose strings. You leave us hanging, which is rather interesting but doesn't serve the poem and what you're communicating as well as it could, if you want this cliffhanger then narrow it down so by the time I get to the end there's only a couple ways my brain could go, or one way but I'm still uncertain. Makes it far more powerful.
Really your issue is the completion of your ideas in terms of how they serve your poem and how well the reader is strung along. You have to know exactly where to cut your reader off.
Yours,
Kamas
This is brilliant!
You have a lovely way with words, to be sure. I can't say how accurate it is to a 1954 supermarket though, yet you still took me there. The only real problem with this poem is that, despite your wonderful threading (lol) of words, the poem can be confusing. Sure, the title is used as a hint but ultimately this poem is ambiguous and hard to follow. Which at the same time when done right, is part of its charm in my opinion. But at other times it seems deliberately confusing. To be more specific I'll discuss the second stanza. Why all of a sudden do you mention that there's a dead employee with you? You say that you're afraid to crack it, but then we have to assume that you do because the following lines imply it. And whatever "it" is is not so clear. Of course, this could all be my inability to read and understand your poem correctly.
So maybe you can enlighten me with a PM, because as many times as I reread this poem, it doesn't reveal anything new to me.
As far as grammar, spelling, form, punctuation, tone, et cetera: you nailed it.