Young Writers Society

"harvest moon nights on the bike lane" is such a vivid and unique image! I like how it takes something timeless and a little surreal like the harvest moon and contextualises it to something modern and specific like a designated bike lane on the road.

"i am a lonely graffiti heart" was also an unexpected metaphor, and I like how it nonetheless fits right in with the images of a lonesome town/ city area.

Great poeting, Silver!

Hello!
I really enjoyed this poem and all the concrete (heh. like concrete and asphalt hehe) details you've used! I feel like this is a town that I can really visualize with the details like "cracked wall corners" and "rainy novembers."

There is definitely a sort of bittersweet, melancholic emotion here that is very engaging and atmospheric. It is very consistent throughout the poem, aided by your word choice and general syntax. Great job!

I wish there were even more specifics though! I'd love to know, for example, what this town's name is, when it became a ghost town, where in the country/world is it (a PNW town is very different from a southeast town, and that's just in America!) I realize that the town in this is likely very much a metaphor, but making it more specific doesn't make it any less capable of being a metaphor.
If you want to give the town a name but don't want to pick a town you're from for internet safety reasons (which is something I highly recommend you don't do!) I always think it's really fun to just pick a town on Google maps or make up a name. But just "this small town in the midwest" is pretty specific too!

The other thing that I think could be improved in this poem are a couple cliches!
-"hearts beating" what other ways could you say these are the only people alive in a ghost town? Eyes blinking? heads turning? something else? hearts in general are overused symbols in poetry.
-Speaking of which, "lonely graffiti heart" is just not doing it for me. I don't like the adverb and I honestly just have a personal vendetta against hearts in poetry.
-"the only ones left to breathe in others’ faded dreams" this whole line, but "faded dreams" especially.
-The whole ending stanza feels vague and cliche-adjacent. I think it's the weakest stanza which isn't a great note to end on. Could you just cut it? or find another way to end the poem?

I have some clarification questions:
"someone else was here to warn us of it" what is "it"? the end of the story of the town? of the people in the town? of these visitors to the ghost town? I'm assuming the first. What is this warning? is it one of those like, fundamentalist ads about how the end of the world is coming? or is it something else? I wasn't sure what you were referring to here in more than one way.

"1st wave" first wave anarchy? first wave feminism? first wave ska??? What do you mean?

"left behind on the streets leading to breaking." I didn't know whether to put this in the cliche section, but I think I'm more just ??? what does this mean. Don't get me wrong, this line sounds super cool and you might not need to "fix" it at all, but I just. Don't get it I suppose. Or maybe I do but I'm tangled in grammar and nitpickiness and if i wasn't reviewing this I'd really like this line.

Anyway, I really thought his poem was very cool! I hope this review was helpful, but please let me know if you have any questions!
~Rook

I enjoyed reading this poem.This talks about how people can be forgotten from the world,fading away into nothingness.Everyone wants to be heard,but not everyone is heard.People are lost and are nothing more than blogs in the world.At times,they won’t even care and will be used to being nothing.It’s a beautiful poem.I liked it.I hope you have a lovely day/night.

Love it.

I'd like to say that lonely graffiti heart didn't totally fit the tone of the poem, which is fine because it fit the theme and brought us down in a way, not sure how to exactly describe it. It worked well.