This is one of two poems I wrote with Calligraphy for the YWS Poetry Pairs contest. We're trying to decide which to submit for the contest, and we'd appreciate your advice. Here's the link to the other poem. topic77754.html Oh, and one more thing: the non-haiku verse at the end is intended to be that way. Just saying.
The numbers scream out
Against me: Eighty. Ninety.
Stupid, lazy, fat.
I'm just not hungry.
All I want is ten pounds less.
I promise that's all.
You lose, it feels good,
You are unbeatable. Right?
There is always more.
The numbers decrease
Daily, but not fast enough.
Trapped in this body.
Others don’t see it.
Disgusting bulges of fat.
They force me to eat.
They say I’m too thin.
They are trying to trick me.
Just have a little.
I won't fall for it.
They would make me hideous,
Make me eat: more, more.
I'll be beautiful
If it kills me. Just ten pounds,
That will be enough.
They don’t understand.
Bones are the beautiful ones
Thin and delicate.
I need to see bones
Ribs are waves under my skin
Hip bones curve, gorgeous.
Okay, I'm hungry.
I admit it. Just one taste.
No. I just can't be fat.
I'm wasting away,
I know. It doesn't matter.
I am beautiful.
Sometimes I doubt it.
I know it hurts my loved ones.
But my need deepens.
I can’t stop for anything.
I am past help.
I have gone too far.
There is no turning back now,
Only an ever-shrinking future.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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This is good. I feel the craving and missunderstanding as I read it. The crave of being thin is something most girls can understand. Most of us have felt it before. I have felt it, but now I see the beauty in the curves I have. Imperfection is a beautiful thing that a lot of us are now blind of. It really captures the what girls want now a days.
Ooh, scary. In a good way. I only have a couple minor suggestions:
I assume the last line in that stanza is spoken by "them." In this case it would be a good idea to either put it in quotations or just italicize it (I usually italicize dialogue in my poems because I feel like quotations marks are too, I dunno, harsh or something for poetry, but that's personal preference).
Here I feel it would be better to make the second and third lines one sentence, i.e. no period at the end of line two, but that's personal opinion.
Also, it bothers me a little bit at the end that there are more than three lines, just because you uniformly used three lines in every stanza throughout the rest of the poem. I do, however, love the very last line.
Hope this helped!
~Blue