“Your face is red.”
They say it like an insult, an astute observation,
this uncalled for unwanted unwelcome
information.
“Your face is red.”
when I’m presenting talking laughing walking,
They describe what They’re seeing as
imperfections,
citing countless magazine inhuman humans.
“Your face is red.”
yes, and it’s a blush of roses lipstick tutus my
sister’s bedroom, They see it as
imperfections,
but i see my humanity through
the heart-beat hue
smeared across my face.
Look at my face!
the color an eight-year-old girl pretends to hate
in an attempt to reject every constraint
Society set upon her.
“My face is red.”
it's a feeling in my heart and a visible hue—
i acknowledge and love and admire it too.
Points:
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Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,805 Reviews
Hello VintageGirl!
As someone who experiences firsthand uncontrollable blushing, I was instantly drawn to your poem. I think it speaks volumes in your ability to draw upon an insecurity and create some sort of art from it, and I like how you rewrote the narrative of a supposed "flaw" or insecurity and embraced it as something you love about yourself. I think you perfectly encapsulated the perception of blushing from society versus the self!
One stylistic choice I really enjoyed/thought was effective while reading was your choice of italicization. I think having the line "Look at my face!" right before the last "My face is red" was an impactful decision in sort of reclaiming (?) the insecurity. Something to possibly consider is differentiating the speech of society ("Your face is red") and the speaker ("My face is red") just to emphasize that these are coming from two different viewpoints, if that makes sense.
I might suggest looking over the poem for some minor grammatical and punctuation editing, just to fine-tune and polish the poem so it's readability is optimized. For example, this line:
could have more natural flow if there were commas interspersed amongst the different listed actions. This also applies to the stylistic choice of capitalization; whether or not you decide to use it is up to the writer, but I suggest you stay consistent throughout the poem so as not to send mixed messages to the reader!
Given the specific subject matter of blushing, I really admired the abundance and variety in imagery! There are a lot of different colors you could have simply referred to, but giving descriptions that stray from the specific context of blushing is helpful in maintaining intrigue for the reader (eg heart-beat hue).
I also liked this line a lot:
simply because I am a sucker for alliteration!
Anyway, those are my thoughts on your poem, I hope this was helpful in some way! Take care! :]
- figmoon
Thanks! Sometimes I struggle with flow in my poems so your review is really helpful
Hello there, VintageGirl! Incoming review!
Has "They" capitalized. And as I went on in the work, I realized that was a stylistic choice, a very nice one at that. But, where I have issues is that "They" is at the very beginning of the line. It made me think you would go the route of auto-capitalization. So when I got further into the piece and saw that it didn't go like that kind of threw me off. (a quick side note but the line also has this issue but can be easily fixed.) I don't know exactly how I would "fix" this, though. Maybe making "they" stand out in a different way could work to keep the stylistic flow going.I like the concept of the poem as you stated in your description. An ode to an insecurity is quite profound and you made it twist and turn into quite a beautiful poem! With that said, lets get on with the review.
I'll start with some critiques I have.
In the first stanza, the line
A minor thing I also found was In this stanza, you have a list without commas. You consistently use commas in proper grammar style, so it would just make sense to have it stay consistent. One thing you always need in poetry is consistency or else it looks messy.
This line : does the same thing, just so you know ^^
Ok, that's all for critique, time to praise your work!
I adore the way you used rhyming in the poem. You don't use basic rhymes but you rhymed, "observation" with "information" and "hate" and "constraint". I am a sucker for half-rhymes. It elevates a poem that could have otherwise been quite plain and maybe even childish.
And this was my favorite stanza. Before I get into it, I saw a small typo. You put "it'a" instead of "it's". Ok but where do I begin? I like how you compare your blush to the incredibly human parts of your life that also look like your blush. It honestly speaks for itself. I like how in your poem, each line has its own world to it. Each line packs a punch. It's not too long nor too short. I'll take away the emotional impact portions because I'm personally trying to work on that in my own poetry.
But that's all I have for today. I hope you found some of it useful! Keep on writing such brilliant poetry and I'll see you next time. Anyway, byeeeeeeeeee
Thank you so much!