open up your wrists and your
bones
and remind yourself — convince yourself
that this will not hurt.
you are child
screaming, naked—
bathed in the creek of road runoff water
and strengthened by hemlock leaf.
do not forget you were raised by green spring onion and
honeysuckle nectar.
gnash your teeth thirteen times
and rebuke the name your father gave you.
know.thyself.know.thyself.know.thyself
shed this shadow, burn this soul, do not turn back.
when you no longer need a mirror to
remind yourself that you are but brittle bone and
thick blood and
scarred skin,
plunge.
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140,561 Literary Works • 673,439 Reviews
This is very incredible.
The first thing I notice is the deliberate use of spacing, punctuation and style. Through the chopped sentences, the voice of the poem really comes through.
I particularly liked the line "you are child / screaming, naked - / bathed in the creek of road runoff water". For me, that really strikes home the sense of trauma and loss of innocence. The line of repeated "know thyself" is a reminder that someone traumatised must repeat this mantra to keep their sense of self grounded.
Overall, the poem manages to evolve from a tale of trauma into a reminder to oneself that one's trauma doesn't automatically prevent them from being able to have intimate relations with someone else.
I just really like the overall, almost bitter yet determined voice this poem has. It reminds me a bit of a someone who's a fighter, who refuses to go down even when there seems to be no other choice. It carries a message of hope, without being cheesy and skirting around what happened to make someone hesitant.
I really enjoyed reading this, and I look forward to reading more from you in the future! Keep writing!
- J.
Hello, shaniac here to review your poem!
This was a magnificent read. It was full of twists and turns and a lot of different messages that were scrabbled into each of the lines. But beyond that, there was also a sort of tone that was set within the first few lines that definitely stuck to me, and kind of made me think about those poems you'd see in one of those poetry book or something. You truly do give a sort of guide on when preparing someone for love by creating different themes and terms throughout this piece.
In the first stanza, it is a bit wordy and when you read it aloud, 'road runoff water' kind of jumbled together. I think you should reword it to 'runoff road water' because that also gives the visual of dirty water running off the road and runs a bit smoother. In the second stanza, 'leaf' makes it sounds like it doesn't go with the rest of the tone. Like, if you have a dozen of something, you can kill off more than you can chew, and in that case, I suggest maybe changing 'leaf' to 'leaves'.
Since this poem is directed towards the reader, I would say instead of saying 'this', you could replace it with 'your' since 'this' makes it sound like something completely different. It doesn't have a point in bringing the line together if that makes sense. You want to make the line tie in with the rest of the poem because you did mention 'your father' and 'remind yourself' in lines both prior and later on. So, you want to have some consistency throughout to make the poem run a bit smoother.
Now the ending of this poem is a nice way of saying 'after you've done all this, go head first into it'. I do like that you use imagery to tie the knot and it kind of echoes what you have in the beginning. I learned in my English class that when you are writing a poem, usually, you want to have the same tone as you did in the beginning at the end so it keeps your reader's attention, and you do just that.
To cap, I did like reading this. There was a lot of different tones that were scattered throughout this poem, definitely keep a consistency in the poem with the 'your', and the ending was a nice touch as it echoed what you had previously in the beginning. Have a good day/night and if you have any questions, let me know!
Thank you for your kind words, and the helpful critique!