i
a beam of light emits from the window
through the thin green curtains,
letting all of the tiny dust particles manifest.
they dance and linger in the air
like snow under the streetlights on winter nights.
the lampshade muffles
the screams from the light,
turning them into gentle whispers that
don't reach across the whole room.
gentle whispers that don't reach
me.
i hold a flashlight to my fingertips,
trying to find my bones in the red translucency,
but i can't quite make out the image.
faintly, i can see where my joints connect.
i can see the outline of my bones and the marrow around them.
ii
the mouthwash burns.
like a fire that fades until it is
nothing.
i grit my teeth;
tectonic plates collide,
pulling and pushing against each other,
keratin eroding until it amounts to nothing.
all happening in-between my jaw,
as I try to tell you
it's not your fault.
i clench my teeth so that
the words can't slip out of my mouth.
my teeth are a dam of sticks and stones,
because i know my words will be liquid
if i do.
iii.
my lungs are paper bags
filling with apprehension
and crinkling when i exhale.
my breathing patterns are,
in, out, in, out, inout, inoutintoutinoutinoutinout,
it ends with out, the last breaths leave my body.
it ends with out, because I will die without
anyone at my funeral.
iv.
i live in patterns.
i've memorized my bus route
all the turns and street names--
i think i could walk home if i wanted to.
the birds start to migrate for the winter,
after the frost starts to gather on their wings.
the rabbits hibernate underneath the earth,
their eyes not to see the sun until it's a better place
and a better time.
but it isn't migration if the birds don't come back,
and it isn't hibernation if they don't come out of the ground.
v.
and it isn't love if it isn't returned.
in a letter that i never wrote,
words that i never spoke.
you can find them if you slip the small thin letter opener
underneath my ribcage.
the words seep out of my body,
the black and blotted letters in the steady flow of red.
vi.
my bones will become pieces of sidewalk chalk.
they are brittle and they are fragile,
but weren't they always?
the stress of fingers is pressed down onto their shoulders,
and they snap into something smaller.
the surface of the pavement whittles them down
until there is nothing in my hands.
i sing a nursery rhyme with broken rhymes;
rain rain, go away,
you'll come again another day
even if i don't want you to anyway.
please just go away.
the rain washes away the nondescript drawings,
dragging them into the sewer drains.
the traces of my existence will be reduced
to old photo albums
and memories sculpted by personal bias.
they say the body is made up of 70% water,
and i ask, how does water lead to so much hurt?
vii.
the alligator eyes are tinted yellow,
a thin black slit lacerates through them;
a rip in the horizon.
they look at me and i look back at them
and i look back at what i used to be but progress forward.
viii.
nothing is what it seems,
when everything is cut at the seams.
her faded t-shirts are worn by time,
now only a faint outline
of what they used to be.
now isn't forever,
but it's all i know.
now is a single ball of thread
unraveled until it stretches across the floor;
i guess that's why they call it a lifeline.
and at 79,
i'll grow out of my clothes again.
one. last. time.
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,827 Reviews
Kaos,
I see your poems growing in scope and material and it is such a pleasure to see, it is a pleasure to see also the deep, richness in its sensibilities and depth of experience that the poem attempts to capture, so I applaud this wholeheartedly.
All the same, I felt a bit breathless after reading this. I got an overall hazy sense like perhaps this is the narrator's feelings of anxiety or feelings of overwhelming existential crisis, and there are some gems of lines here: i live in patterns, whispers that don't reach me, etc However, my overall sense is that the imageries are presented to us in such a spinning, quick-whiplash manner, that it prevents us from actually sitting still and connecting and digesting and understanding deeply.
The poem is so internally entrenched, it is hard for me as a reader to connect with it. Before a poem can whisk me away into big ideas and emotions and inner feelings of abstractionland, it must first capture me here in the gut. In prose, we call it a hook. In poetry it is much the same, but a hook isn't just about capturing my attention, it is about framing for me this world or experience I am about to delve into and connecting with me .
The poem begins well in starting with a scene. Scenes help ground readers. A scene helps orient me to something physical and real, but this scene here that we start downplays itself and comes across weak because of it. Stanza one enters strictly as a narrative with line breaks, which isn't an issue on its own but style needs consistency. We open shining a light on dust particles and what could be dramatic "the lampshade muffles the scream" immediately gets downplayed in the next line "turning them into gentle whispers". The space of time from scream to whispers is not only anticlimatic but prevents us from understanding the screams in the first place, let alone the whispers. Where are the screams coming from, that alone is so visceral and intriguing but the poem whisks me away as though it assumes the image speaks for itself. It doesn't.
So, by the time we get to a person and where we are supposed to connect with our speaker, "whispers that don't reach me", we're already spinning in circles trying to find our subject. The light? Existential crisis? The metaphor? Hazy.
A scene is meant to tie us down, meant to make the readers care over what is happening. If a narrator begins questioning the reality of its existence, give us first a taste of what the narator is losing, give us the stake of that conflict before rushing us in. The rest of the poem flushes through spinning imagery after imagery in our minds: from mouthwash to earthquakes to teeth, lungs and birds, but all of this is thrown at us framed in the internal. The narrator is saying, this is my existence, my anxiety, my pain. Unless you tell me HOW this pain relates to me or the rest of the world we share, it is hard to care or understand. By no means get rid of it or rewrite it completely, just try to focus and hone and open it up more to work on its subtleties.
I hope this helps! I am happy to chat this one out with you as well.
- As always, Audy
Thanks so much for this review! It helped a ton.
Like seriously thank you so much >>
Wow!!! For a while I forgot I was reading this on my phone, I got so carried away. You really have a talent. I loved stanza IV. The line of "living in patterns" is true and it is something we all do not even realize while it happens daily. You really brought life to this poem. Perhaps you could change the title, I think that would attract more people to read this because at first you talk about teeth but it goes way deeper than that. Continue to write because you have a talent. Great poem!