Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for mature content.
Maybe I want to be a peer-reviewed artist,
weaving self-portraits out of tears drawn
from the white circles on my eyelids to ellipses
hovering on my skull like a Dias de los Muertos celebration.
Yes, let me paint my tears as I wish,
pouring translucent lines across bloodshot eyes,
so that I might see where the salt lies
and how it withers my lips into ashes.
I am more colorful than concrete, as in fear,
when my bones melt through my feet
and congeal on my countenance like butterflies,
wings splayed to capture my stomach,
to lift its slumping figure into a hungry shadow
that smirks at me as it points a finger
through my lungs, yawning joyously to the tune
of my convulsions and dilations.
Yet where is the beauty of a quilt
patterned by a thousand identical designs;
a patchwork tapestry of the same?
My mind is greedy, grabbing all it sees
and consuming it to make emotional labels
printed out as smiling business cards
to be passed around a roulette table.
Call when you have time, I am told,
but I worry that my number will be voided
by a gravestone blocking radio signals,
suffocating words (or half-hearted gestures)
beneath the bleeding, withering cherry tree
here on my epitaph - se murio para ti;
or what I hope is Spanish for
I died for you.
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139,685 Literary Works • 672,648 Reviews
Silver!
it is like HUGE understatement is that intentional? Regular, old dirt is more colorful than concrete, no? Concrete isn't known for its color.
My instinct is to say murio "por" ti, rather than "para". Por vs para is a tricky beast though as I've been agonising over it because on the one hand, se hizo para ti, is correct which seems to be the meaning we're going for, doing something FOR somebody but on the other hand with the verb, murio, I most commonly hear this and the usage is "por". I shall ask a fluent speaker and double check for you xD
Now. You said hammer, so I am going to bring forth the hammer c:
First stanza, we have the verb "weaving", but the image I get with "tears" and with the muerto masks is more like a painting and in the next stanza this idea is confirmed because painting is actually used. So there's a disconnect for me with "woven" because the skulls are not woven (neither are self-portraits) I mean they CAN be, but it isn't clear what is the effect of "woven" here even despite the fact I zlove it on its own c: I'd suggest a different verb or a different image other than self-portrait or tears (let's be honest tears isn't particularly the strength of this stanza anyway and as a word in general that is dangerously cliche and self-portraits is a MOUTHFUl) I loved loved loved the specificity and vibrancy of Muertos skulls. I did not expect them! So they have an element of surprise going too. They bring a lot of imagery and history and lore in ONE WORD (or sets of words whatev) it is just so efficient.
Eye lids, bloodshot, withers, wings splayed- these kinds of words do the same thing, they say A LOT and have a lot going in terms of vibrancy and uniqueness and concreteness.
Whereas words like self-portraits, transluscent, figure, identical designs, roulette table - these are vaguer and don't do much for the syllabic-monsters that they are.
The lines in these poems are long, which suggests to me that this is a thinking piece, by that I mean there are concepts, thoughts, expressions and a message it wants to say. I feel the desperation of the narrator in every utterance of the declarations:
I died for you
My mind is greedy
Yes let me paint ... as I wish!
I am more colorful than...
These are POWERFUL. Though in the latter, I'd change concrete
I will echo Hannah, I think the lack of cohesiveness gets the ideas in this piece tied up in itself. However, it is common in edits to pare things down and I just think a paring down of some of the images and a focus on finding cohesive, stronger words could really improve the piece.
The emotion and strength behind the voice though that is still here, will still be there, the heart, and it DOES come across. I think with some cleaning can come across even louder.
Hopes this helps.
~ Audy
Hi there, SilverFox.
So this is the first time I'm venturing to review yer poetry, and I know that's always an awkward event. I don't know a lot about your style and how you communicate, yet, so let us be gentle with one another and see what happens!
To be honest, I read this earlier but didn't know how to approach it in review, so I did not come back until now. I couldn't really grasp onto an emotion or image that stuck with me, and maybe that's because the style is so different from what I'm used to writing or reading.
So the first thing that stands out to me in reading this poem is the variety of objects that are brought in and passed over. I see Dia de los Muertos skulls, a strange tar sculpture, a quilt, business cards, and a gravestone. It is hard, for me, to find a thread that weaves them together. So what I look to, in that case, is a thread of emotion or narrative in the poem, and that is hard for me to find as well.
For example, this is the narrative I see:
Maybe I want to be this.
Yes, I want to try this art.
I am stronger than misshapen fear.
But where is the beauty?
My mind grabs things.
I'm worried that I will be too late.
Does that ring true to the story you were trying to tell or the emotions you were trying to bring out?
I mean, here's the thing, there's a lot of language I enjoy here!
I like the image of the salt painting, the cherry tree, the epitaph.
But I feel like untangling it just a bit might make it more accessible?!
Of course, as always, I am just one reader in a sea of readers. Other readers might get it and love it all right away, and I'm just dull when it comes to this style. But if these thoughts are helpful at all to you, I'll be happy!
Feel free to PM or reply here if you have questions or comments.
Thanks for sharing,
Hannah
Hey SilverFox,
I've followed your poetry for a while now, and I think that you're definitely getting better. What I like about this poem is that you're weaving a story for us. You're including things that are more specific, and you're developing a character as you go along. I think you do that very well. You give me a lot of specifics to know about this person. They're related to Latino/Latina customs, they feel like they're being yanked around, and they don't like being told how to do things.
I think where you could improve this poem, and this is potentially just because of my current state of mind, is with your emotional content. I feel like this poem is a little dry with the emotion because while you're talking about emotional stuff, you're not really getting into the nitty gritty of it. I think this poem was trying to be less emotional potentially, and more just a poem talking about letting you do art as you want to, but I feel like there still needs to be more of a connection to the reader, which makes more of an emotional connection.
Right now the poem feels like it's trying to run too fast. You're not spending time with what you're talking about, you're racing through it. Adding in more lines about the particulars will get rid of that feeling for me.
For instance, when you're talking about painting teardrops however you want, you go on talking about how you pain the tear drops, but you don't go into what that means for your main point of "being what you want to be". If you added in why this is important to the artist, then we would have more of a chance to see exactly why these things are included in the poem. Was the artist told not to paint like that? Were they told it sucks? Why is that image what popped up in the poem rather than using punctuation however you want? These are the questions I'd suggest you try to answer.
Since it's NaPo, I would suggest that you just write the poem again. Use what you used for inspiration, and keep the same main idea, but write it again. Just try to write it a few times, and test things out. See what different affects you can get, and what effects the reader.
Aley
I think I might need to take a hammer to my first stanza, because that was never the major idea of the poem. I do appreciate and respect your advice, particularly when it comes to the fast pacing and lack of emotional development provided in the piece (the latter of which I blame on my implementation of figurative imagery and metaphor whose emotional messages are probably not easy to read), but the main idea of this poem is not independence in art. Apotheosis is about paranoia, fear, and an internal conflict that rages within the narrator. It is, more or less, the narrator taking shots at his/her own emotions and wishing to be a "peer-reviewed artist," or somebody who focuses on other people's responses instead of their own fears and tears. In effect, it's based on my own paranoia, and the third stanza is me taking shots at the perceived sameness of all of my works. Hence, while it does proceed swiftly, and perhaps I need to work on my own emotional development, I think I need to revise this poem heavily because of the miscommunication conveyed in my opening stanza, intensified by heavily ambiguous imagery. If I cannot convey accurately the message I set down to write, what good am I?
Thanks for the review, however; I do believe it will be a lot of help!
-Silver