Day One Hundred and Twenty One Thousand
Maybe the shine is off the apple
but the milk and honey oozing
from cracks in the sidewalk feels
sarcastic now. The choirs
of holy voices praising God
seem to be getting a bit flat.
My neighbors, at least two hundred
of them, brought me homemade meals
yesterday and I'm beginning to suspect
that some of them were just passed on.
It's hard to work up the motivation to eat
when you don't strictly need to, but
food waste is a sin and therefore unthinkable.
Nothing ever rots here either
so that's why, despite milk flowing
in the always-sunny street,
the world always smells fresh.
The smell of fresh milk mingled
with golden honey nauseates me now
but vomiting, too, is a sin.
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Yes, yes, yes. This is going somewhere and is almost there.
I love the images you choose to focus on: the milk and honey oozing from the cracks, the shine of the apple. You keep up strictly poetic description even through to the idea of voices going a bit flat.
Then you've become interested in the descriptions of specific actions that feel more like a story than a poem, and I really also like the idea of just passing around homemade donated meals -- I think that shouldn't be taken out of the poem, but I do think you can work it into a more poetic description that bends further from prose language.
That's what largely makes me lose connection to this poem at the end -- it seems to fall into prose and explanation, and although the idea of vomiting being a sin even though you are nauseated is a really great strong image, I'd like it presented in a more elegant way, like how you've described oozing as sarcastic -- that's not literal! I like that!
If you're going for a slow descent into less poetic to kind of match the descent from paradise that is the theme of the poem, it's too obvious for me, and takes away from my enjoyment.
Finally, I think you'll have to rework the logic into the milk/honey smelling fresh but still nauseating the narrator. We don't feel the reasoning if they've just described it as fresh!
I hope these ideas are helpful to you, and I'd love to see a reworked version of the poem, because the premise is absolutely wonderful and feels original to me.
If you have any questions/comments feel free to reply here or message me.
Hannah
Thank you Hannah! This is extremely helpful!
I am so glad! If you end up reworking it, please let me know as I would love to see it!!
1000 years of no dying? Pure perfection? Somehow, that’s even worst than the flaming pits of Hell! I like how this poem describes a perfect world where even vomiting is a sin. If this is what world peace is, then I don’t want it. I fear a world where everything is perfect and peaceful.
I wish I could hear more of the narrator’s pain with living in this world, so I could really understand what it’s like to live in this world. But those are just my thoughts.
I wish you a lovely day/night!