Heartbeat

I think what you have here is a fun little exercise in rhythm. I like reading this poem out loud.

It might not help to hear this, considering Nikayla's review, but I think the last stanza is the weakest simply because it breaks away from the structure of the poem. If you kept yourself in line with the system you've set up for the previous stanzas, perhaps adding a couple more stanzas describing the narrator's smitten state, you'd have a very good, very fun bit of sound on paper.

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Nitpicks:

Why the parentheses in stanza two?

Hyphens and em dashes are two different creatures. For example, on the line "My heart- it bounces," that hyphen should be replaced with an em dash and there should be no spaces. That way you'll have "My heart—it bounces,". You use the "—" if you want to separate ideas.

There's an extra space at the end of "my heart beats faster -" between the last word and the hyphen.

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Don't be afraid to take this poem and have some fun with it. Experiment even more. Make some noise with these words!

This is Nikayla here dropping in for a review!

So the standard 4x4, with four lines and four stanzas. Nothing wrong with that. I can see how you're playing around with repetition in this poem, which I admit is interesting, but it doesn't feel consistent. You start the first and third stanzas with "My heart", the fourth with "My heartbeat" and the other two don't even relate to this repetition at all. An argument that could be made is that the second and fifth stanzas start similarly, and there's no doubting that, I'm just suggesting that you're aware of the flexibility that you're currently using with repetition.

It's interesting too, because repetition is usually the exact repeating of a particular line or phrase, but this plays it a little differently. What I would enjoy seeing is more of a focus on the structure and if you wanted to, you could probably play around so that the repetitions pair up together (stanza one and stanza five start the same, stanzas two and four, three is on its own) and I can see this working if you wanted to pursue that. As for the actual content of the poem, this feels like an experiment.

That's okay, because there's nothing wrong with experimentation, I just wanted to note that. The rhyme scheme is also something that I wanted to touch on--or specifically how you're rhyming with a seeming lack of one. If you could shed some clarity on that, it would be great to understanding the poem. The ending is nice. The last stanza is my favorite of the poem just because it contains the most substance behind it, I think.

If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. I hope I helped and have a great day.