fleur de lis

hey, you!

I feel like it's my duty to review this.

First of all, I like how you approach intimacy in your poetry -> the opening image here is strong because it establishes two different relationships to the other person at once: a landscape painting suggests beauty and untouchability, etc., while "I had filthy hands" places the narrator in a position of shame before that beauty. Then, almost immediately, the other figure changes from landscape painting into a storm, which is a smart escalation because they go from something framed and viewed to something atmospheric and uncontrollable. The poem’s first movement is basically, I saw you as art, then I experienced you as disaster. Love is tricky, yknow.

The Styx reference is doing a lot of conceptual work, and I think it mostly succeeds. Hmm. I think that by invoking the river, your poem frames memory as something death-adjacent and difficult to retrieve from. The narrator is trying to salvage fragments of another person from a current associated with death and irreversibility, and somehow, they seem content with it? I also enjoy the saltwater, as I think that ties in the Styx allusion well - the other figure irritates, preserves, burns, cleans like saltwater; the speaker refracts, yields, distorts, and reshapes around them like light. Isn't that what poetry is, anyway?

I mean, your imagery is evocative. But... there's a lot! The water imagery feels especially central, with Styx, seep, flash flood, saltwater, etc. That cluster of imagery gives the poem a coherent motif around drowning and memory. I also think the light / shadow imagery works, especially in the parenthetical, but it begins to compete with the water / death language rather than deepen it. If you wanted to revise, I would consider letting the water / underworld / domestic concepts dominate more fully.

^ I also think your poem explains what its imagery already proves. The parenthetical line is very clear, but compared to the images around it, it feels a little general. We already understand the narrator is wounded through the broken glass and saltwater, for instance; we already understand the other figure is obscured through the blur and the fleeting quality of their return. Because of that, I thought the parenthetical leaned towards becoming a summary rather than some kind of revelation - the same could be said, a little, for "Everything else in between is a blur," which is understandable but quite familiar. WHY is it a blur? How does the other figure block / reframe the narrator's "vision" in that way? I actually like the poem having a sense of confusion, but I think you need to back up why it does.

You know I love your writing, especially your lovey-dovey stuff. I find this to be one of your more memorable poems, even! It's very sensory, smart, a little theatrical at times, etc. Post more! You've got it going on.

<3

hello!

this is so so beautiful while also having underlying tones of unease and unrest. i love how it feels that this person is trying to cling onto something larger than life itself, something that can only be loved from afar. it's haunting, and your language is so incredibly impactful. it makes me feel that even though these similes and metaphors are describing tough, hard-hitting conditions, it feels so easy to get wrapped up in the beauty of the situation, in the big picture sense (if that makes sense).

my only things are that the word should be "lay" in the first line. it flows a little better, and the language in the first few lines really roll off the tongue if you were to speak it. the other thing i wanted to mention, and this is me being picky truly, but i think "i am so covered in wounds & you are so covered in shadows" may add to the poem stylistically if italicized. once again, picky and preferential, but i really love the whiplash and intensity of this poem. it's grandiose without trying to be.

-rainforest

hey hey! ^_^

thoughts
[1] this is so lush! your writing has this really gorgeous sense of disorientation, like the narrator is trying to describe intimacy after it has already become dangerous/impossible to hold. we love the way the beloved keeps transforming: landscape painting, storm, flash flood, shadow. it makes them feel beautiful and a little unstable, which is fitting for the subject,

[2] the imagery is so tactile!!! filthy hands, broken glass, saltwater, wounds feel physical and painful. there’s a really strong tension between wanting to touch and being hurt by touching. the line everything about you stings like saltwater / & everything about me bends for you like light is especially lovely for this. it feels romantic, but not soft. more like they are being actively changed by the love they feel.

[3] the ending is SO interesting!!! the hyper-specific time measurement is strange in a good way! six hundred ninety one thousand two hundred seconds makes grief/desire feel obsessive, if the narrator has counted every second of silence. then the plainness of eight days pass lands really well after it.

suggestions
[1] tiny grammar thing: in the first and last lines, laid should probably be lay unless you’re using it colloquially on purpose. when you lay in my bed is grammatically cleaner, and since the poem returns to that phrasing at the end, it would make the circular structure feel organized.

[2] some of the metaphors are gorgeous, but there are a LOT of them competing!! individually, they’re strong! together, they make the narrative throughline feel a crowded. we’d maybe trim down one image so that the poem’s central idea becomes clearer.

overall, this is REALLY beautiful!!

~ adore