A young couple walks into a side of town they’ve never been before,
stepping and scrutinizing,
calculating and claiming,
And gushing on about how this place has “good bones.”
The barrier for the couple was simply all the pesky flesh,
grown through generations of shared pain and common culture,
the living and breathing bits,
the spirit songs and the people parts.
The bones were at most a mere inconvenience,
As they can be ground down,
flipped around,
sawed,
reassembled,
broken,
arranged,
tricked into a new memory,
a new history,
a new culture,
But the flesh always remembers,
and that simply wouldn’t do,
no that would not do at all.
And so, the couple got to work.
Ripping into skin like a child opening presents on Christmas morning.
Meeting friends at new juice bars before the blood had dried onto the stoop,
Grasping the treasured “good bones,” with red sticky fingers,
showing them off to the new neighbors who looked back with manic smiles and stories of their own renovations.
Soon the street was lined with couples who were in a part of town they’d never been before,
and the sidewalks grew dark red along the paths to the sewer drains,
and the gloriously good bones shone in homemade garden fences,
as doorknobs,
and in macabre bouquets of fibulas and phalanges,
lying motionless and dull under the morning sun.
Yes, that is the fate of good bones,
of very good bones indeed.
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Canary word: Present
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125,021 Literary Works • 672,740 Reviews
This is so specific and haunting in the best type of way possible. The phrase "good bones" is so eatable (if yk what I mean) and it's repetition is so amazingly cohesive. The almost conversational tone (e.g "that simply wouldn’t do/no that would not do at all") really works in contrast to the deeper, rawer lines ("the sidewalks grew dark red along the paths to the sewer drains").
My favorite lines:
"the living and breathing bits/the spirit songs and the people parts." I don't know why I love this line so much I just do.
"and the gloriously good bones shone in homemade garden fences/ as doorknobs/ and in macabre bouquets of fibulas and phalanges/lying motionless and dull under the morning sun." My favorite section of this piece. The use of specific bones as building materials is creepy as hell to picture and words like "macabre" and "glorious" are doing wonders for imagery and vibes in general.
To me, this piece is very clinical while also being very abstract in the best possible way. I will never ever get the sewer imagery you used out of my head. It lives there now.
I might have more feedback later but for right now I genuinely can't think of any.
All in all, this piece is amazinnggg.
I LOVE the little examples like,"
ground down,
flipped around,
sawed,
reassembled,
" It's beautiful and fantastic! This shows emotion, empathy, and life. This poem is seriously cool and super creepy! It’s like something out of a horror movie, but it’s actually talking about real-life stuff like neighborhoods changing. I really liked how you took the phrase "good bones," which sounds like something a boring adult would say about a house, and turned it into something totally gross and literal.The part where you wrote about the couple "ripping into skin like a child opening presents on Christmas morning" was my favorite because it’s so dark. It makes them seem like they’re excited to be mean, which is way scarier than them just being accidental villains. Also, the "red sticky fingers" at the juice bar is a great detail because it shows they don't even care about the mess they made or the people they hurt.The ending is also really strong. Using "fibulas and phalanges" as garden fences is a super smart way to use science words to make the poem feel even more clinical and spooky. It makes the whole street seem like a graveyard that people are just walking through like it's normal. The way the bones end up "motionless and dull" makes the whole "renovation" feel really sad and empty at the end. lol sorry for yapping heh AND AMAZING SCRUMPTIOUS WORKKKK (my way of say beautiful, chef's kiss, and TRULY AMAZING.