A Brooklyn bus is always the same,
Bubblegum under seats,
Crossed legs blonde in front of you
Reading, smiling
He's drinking beer from a can,
And scratching his neck.
She's pushing her way to the back of the bus,
Her hair is red
curly
her child is 9 months old
When he gets off the bus, he walks right by me
He stutters when he mumbles excuse me
But he smells like curry and home
A bus in Brooklyn is perfume,
And cigarettes
And shame
And bagels
She plays music loud enough to hear
And clacks long nails on her phone
She's chewing bubblegum
And her hair smells like whiskey
He falls asleep on my shoulder,
My stop is next
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,014 Literary Works • 672,845 Reviews
Hi,
This poem addresses some quite interesting thing. It's a little funny, but sometimes, sad. Ironic as people said.
I've never known where is Brooklyn (only heard about it) and sorry, but you didn't really spin a very concrete accurate details about it. It just doesn't feel that the images just describe Brooklyn specifically. Even in my country, I have found cases like you mentioned in the poem. So my first advice here is try to be more specific. Give us something that only the place you mentioned has this kind of thing. It's hard, but trying to experiment on a very unique and detailed description on the exact thing you've watched. Try to make it as realistic as you can.
Like for example: when I ride a bus to my school, I will always see this particular men that's (put your descriptions here). This is only example though, but I really mean it.
I agree with Lumi about:
This poem is a lovely read, but this small mistake really can ruin all the fun. It's like you're trying to make transitions so abruptly, jumping from one point to another without really hinting us that we are at different dimension now.
And I really love your descriptions about the red-haired woman with her child. It is a very calming image and lovely. It is something that all of us can relate to.
And I feel really goosebumps about the last line. It's weird to not see any dot there. It just makes people wondered what could "My stop is next" mean. If you don't want that, put the dot there, so no misunderstandings could appear. Another thing I've felt about the last line is that the person there is sad to leave the bus. Although it could just be my random thought.
Overall, this poem is interesting, but try to find something that's unique and special for your poem because I think this poem lacked it.
Keep writing.
~memo
Thank you
)
You're welcome. ^_^
hey, here for a review.
I just want to start off saying that this is the essence of buses and real life captured inside of a poem. Well done!
Now to the review part.
I feel if you were to put these lines into stanzas, grouping by each idea, the poem would essentially "flow" better. You could cut them up like so,
Something like this would make it seem as if it was not a run on sentence. Also, regarding sentences and grammar, I would like to know why you haven't been punctuating and capitalizing these sentences.
Here you have
with "curly" and "her" not capitalized like very other line. And then here, you have them like every other line. My point here, is to say that you need it in somewhat of an organized manner. You should either, go with the emphasis of the capitalization throughout the poem or you could simply leave it not capitalized.
As for the punctuation, I have some questions about it. I was wondering why you only have one period and multiple commas in the whole poem. I am not saying that punctuation is needed throughout every single poem you write, but I am saying that it needs consistency.
Put it where it is needed and if it is not needed don't put it in. Either go with it all the way through the whole poem, or just leave it out throughout it.
That is really all that I have for you, the content is great and it's just a great topic to write about. Good job, best of luck on your other works and I hope to review for you again!!
The stanzas actually were how I originally wrote it, but the format got messed up. I totally agree! Thank you for your awesome review
This piece serves as a thorough and potent sensory experience, and it's heavily enjoyable and immersive. For that, be proud. Your flow is nothing spectacular, but it doesn't trip over itself either, and your haphazard choice in punctuation leaves some lines confusing as to addressing pronouns and who the descriptions belong do, etc. For that, just make a sweep and be sure everything is constructed intentionally so that there's no flop during reading.
You succeed in spanning generations and cultures and classes in the American caste, and I'm very impressed. It's a wonderful sampling of what's found in New York (I would say America in general, but realistically speaking as someone who lives in the south, that's just not true!) That said, that's really all I get from it, but that's not necessarily a negative - simplicity and one-dimensional existence isn't a disqualifying trait of good poetry. Elaboration and complexity aren't needed for the publishing world. All-in-all, know that I enjoyed the read here, and that's what matters. I took something away from it. Is it profound? Not entirely. Can it be? Certainly. If you want to try to tackle poverty or class segregation harder here, then you definitely can, but do so on your own volition.
A good read. Hope this helps,
Ty
Thank you so much!!
So, I've got to start this review with WOW. The descriptions in this poem are amazing! You tie everything together nicely. I feel like the words "my stop is next" is the perfect way to finish it off. You put everything in the right place and used the correct grammar, but in a way that makes this poem your own. I absolutely love it! You capture an average day on a bus make it so interesting for the reader, causing them to want to know more. You could include a few more bits of information on sentences like, "He falls asleep on my shoulder," and "He's drinking beer from a can." It could just create more a detailed picture if you added more about these people on the bus. Overall, it's great. I really hope to read more from you in the future!
XXX
SapphireLuna
Thank you! I was trying to create a melting pot type of scene by just using little imagery snippets, but I really appreciate your review!
Hello
First off, good poem. It captures everyday life quite nicely and your word choice is great for the meaning you want to convey. It paints a picture in the readers mind without telling them what to think or see. Your flow is nice and steady and you break when you either finish a thought or would take a breath. You also have a nice theme and it is relatable to everyone.
Happy Writing!
-M.
Thank you!
Heya, Celkin! Casanova here to do a review for you! Also, welcome to YWS! Anyway, to the review!
I just have a few points to cover on this.
You randomly insert people into this without introduction, and I found that a bit odd for the poem. Like, instead of saying,"there's a man in the back drinking from a beer can," you go ahead and say,"he's drinking from a beer can," and it felt a little odd to me, and I think that could be easily fixed with some introduction.
The next thing I wanted to talk about was you randomly start cutting off lines in just a couple of words, and I think that it really hurts your flow. sometimes smaller lines seem more powerful, but I don't think that it worked that way here. I would suggest making a couple of lines out the lines that are really short. Kind of like,"A bus in Brooklyn is perfume and cigarettes/and Shame and bagels." Or something like that.
The next thing is the imagery here is good, somewhat, but you don't tie it all together. You keep listing it off as if it's a separate thing, and I'd prefer to see it all connect.
Anyway, that's all I have to say on this one and I hope it helped.
Keep on doing what you're doing and keep on keeping on.
Sincerely, Matthew Casanova Aaron
I definitely agree with the random pronouns, but I decided in the end to create a hodgepodge of culture without necessarily creating characters in the poem. Thank you for your detailed commentary! I sincerely appreciate it!