The whiskey on his breath
Makes me feel so queasy
Though I was scared to death
Leaving was not easy
***
I watched him hit her all day
And there was no way to interfere
I would love to run away
But my daughter keeps me here
***
One day I heard a horrific shriek
Blood everywhere, I stood at the door
The awful sight made me feel weak
There she was, lying, lifeless on the floor
***
He stepped towards me with his evil glare
I tried to run but he grabbed my arm
He threw me on the ground; his fist up in the air
He kept beating down really hard
***
The blood stains are drying
Over is the war
Because now I’m lying
Lifeless on the floor
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Hey there, welcome to YWS!
Specifics
1. Loving the rhythm in this first stanza but I think you could drop the 'so' from the second line as it feels like it's there only to be a filler word. That would put you out a beat but maybe you could have something like 'Makes my chest feel queasy' or replace chest with pretty much any body part - legs, lungs, blood, skin etc. There will nearly always be a better word to use than 'so' or 'very'.
2. The rhythm changes in the second stanza! I think if you're going to have a rhythm you should choose to keep it at least mostly consistent throughout. Whether that's going to be consistently 6666 or 6868 is up to you but having a pattern across the stanzas will make it flow better. I often think aiming for the common meter (6868) is a good way to go and your first stanzas would be easy to adapt, like:
I've not changed many words and I've also left that last line one beat off because that actually has a nice effect and the 'here' kind of extends into a second syllable anyway. Just thought I'd give you an idea of how it might sound if it was in a constant rhythm!
3. I think the phrase evil glare is over-used and it doesn't really tell us anything specific about this character. Cold eyes would tell us that he's mean even when calm while hot eyes might tell us that he's angry or worked up or glazed eyes might tell us he's been drinking.
Overall
I think you've got the start of a good poem here but it could use a little tightening up on the word choice and the rhythm. It has a good subject matter though and you do a nice job of building tension.
Best of luck with this!
~Heather
I really liked this poem. It rhymes and has a bit of suspense. It made me want to keep reading. Keep up the good work.
Hello cmullin!
I'm very familiar with "My Papa's Waltz" so I was drawn to this poem because of your description.
First, I'd like to say that I think you did a really good job working in the rhythm of the poem to begin with. When I read the first stanza, I was very impressed at how well you got the two to sound similar, so I was really excited going forward into this poem. It was easy to recognize what you were doing after hearing the tone and knowing what this poem was about.
I feel like later, after that stanza, you sort of got away from the tonality though. This is because "My Papa's Waltz" was done in iambic trimeter, mostly, meaning it has 6 syllables per line [trimeter (3 feet)] and each foot is pretty much iambic [soft strong beat]. While you do that a lot in your poem, at the second stanza you go as many as 9 syllables in a line, and the most the poem ever did was 7, so you need to trim it back. Once you get 6 syllables on the first and third line, and 7 syllables on the second and fourth lines of each stanza, I think you'll actually be spot on.
It might take some doing, and rewording, but I think you can do it mostly by trimming your lines down, and beefing a couple of them up.
I find the best way to count syllables is to read it in your head and have your hand over the number pad on your keyboard. Each time you say a syllable, touch a number heading upward. That way the number you land on is the number of syllables per line and you can read instead of focus on counting.
I hope this helps! I'm really happy to see this on here. I think it's great.
Aley