She huddles against the grit of a brick wall,
In the grime of the alleyway,
Unable to keep warm,
The knife of hunger in her belly,
Too tired to look for food.
A stranger walks by, frowns at her,
His lip curled,
And her instinct is to run
Before she is struck again,
Simply for living on the streets.
Every now and then, someone kind
Will give her a scrap of food,
Even say something in a warm tone
That makes her feel less like
Garbage scattered across the alley
That she calls home.
She often wonders if her situation
Would be considered any more tragic
If she were a human being starving in the cold.
© Shenita Etwaroo
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Canary word: Present
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125,011 Literary Works • 672,841 Reviews
Hi ShenitaEtwaroo, Felistia here with a review for you on this wonderful review day.
Theme: This is one of my favourite theme I have come across this review day so far. Man I completely agree with the concept (Why should a man's death be more tragic that a dog's?). This is a really sad poem and I wise it had a happy ending, but then it wouldn't be that realistic would it? Great job on the poem and sharing the message with me.
Description: Your description in here is about as good as the emotion (Whish means it is good). You start out with descriptive lines and then towards the end you bring in what I believe are the dog's thoughts. This really helps add to the mood by making us feel what the dog is feeling and then introducing thoughts. Well done.
Small problems: The one small problem I have is that the title is really boring and doesn't attract attention, which is probably why there aren't to many reviews here. I will highly recommend making it more interest, so that more people will read this work.
Over all a great poem and I look forward to the next one. Never stop writing and I hope you have a great day\night.
AMAZING ! It takes me into an emotional mode. Honestly , this poem has left behind the perfectness of feeling a creature as conditioned above can actually have . This is something really wonderful . This gives us an insight to a world the ones with status and stature can not look into. Besides this is so pleasing to my senses because I am glad to see that a person is including all sides of life . Even giving it such a broader space post on this side . I AM ALL ON THIS !
Hiya! Gravity here to do a review!
Let me just say right off the bat that I absolutely love the power and the concept of this poem. I feel like animal rights are often ignored by people because for many it doesn't touch people's lives unless they adopted a rescue animal or something of the like. But it's still a very prominent issue. Abusing a helpless animal is even worse than abusing a human in many ways because the animal oftentimes cannot defend itself.
Anyhow, onward with the review.
I want to suggest some things. First I want to suggest more powerful words. Oftentimes, stronger vocabulary leaves a larger and longer impact on the reader after they have finished reading. Like instead of the word "tragic" maybe try something more powerful such as "devastating" or "wretched" or "dismal". (Wretched may not apply, just a suggestion).
Another thing I think you could really work on is your flow and poem structure. For example (I'm just going to use these last few lines)
This reads really strangely and it's kinda choppy. I think a better way to structure this would be
"She often wonders
if her situation
would be considered any more tragic
If she were a human being
Starving in the cold"
I feel like breaking it up like this also puts more impact on the last line. Starving in the cold. It leaves the reader with a more dismal feeling in their bellies.
One last suggestion, other than your title and last few lines I really have no way to tell that the narrator is an animal, so maybe make subtle hints at that? Also maybe specify which kind of animal? (Perhaps a dog). And I think if you did this you could change your title to something more powerful because this poem isn't about animal rights, it's about animal abuse.
So overall, there are definitely things that can be fixed but I think you did a great job with concept and the fact that you narrated from the point of view of an animal is very unique. I love it! You use very good description. I loved the metaphor of when you compared hunger to a knife, I thought that was brilliant. You're a great writer and I must applaud you for this poem!
I hope this review helped,
XOXO,
Gravity