My God, she says, rolling strawberries
between her fingers, I don’t think you’re dying
its much easier to believe that you’re lying
but how can I lie, i say,
when blood runs down my legs like a
raspberry harvest to the floor
where my skirts collect rainwater into
basins of salt, laughing all the while,
“this is all your fault.”
my life has been distilled by madness,
too glamorous a word, too
dim an explanation, distilled
by staining red juice,
the blood of fat berries raised to die-
it is time togoout into the orchard and
harvest lives, she says, and
dropping my bowl of blueberries,
i say let’s goandthe
blueberries bleed all over the floor, immobilized
where careless hands dropped them.
still they laugh- to make wine, no less-
“this is all your fault.”
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,852 Reviews
This was actually really interesting. I liked it.
The rhyming attempts at the beginning were awkward. I say get rid of them.
This was a unique view point about the stigma. I haven't seen much of it elsewhere.
I like the image of the berries and the quotations.
There were a couple of small mistakes (I'm not even sure if they were mistakes) like forgetting to have constant capitalization or non-capitalization, and forgetting to put spaces in words like "goandthe" and "togoout."
I'm sorry this review couldn't be more helpful, but I liked the meaning and the sounds of the words.
Keep writing! Let me know if you have any questions!
~fortis
I absolutely love studying and researching mind disorders like manic depressive disorder. Alongside with writing it's my #1 choice career at the moment.
I love what you've done here. and I love the punctuation.
I just have to ask if the lack of capitalization was intentional.
Also, one thing you should have, be it quotations or italics, is a clarification of what's being said.
We can't tell, especially in the first few lines, because there's nothing but commas separating the words.
I really like how this is laid out and it conveys a deep meaning within me. Very symbolic. I'll be looking forward to more!
Hola!
Retro here to do a review. First I'll offer some feedback on the piece then get into what I liked, okay?
Right first off, excellent idea. However, I feel the execution was a little sloppy and the ideas not always cohesive. For example if I take the line"when my skirts collect rainwater into// basins of salt". Okay what is a basin of salt? Where did this idea come from within your routed metaphor? So you use the idea of berries throughout and I'm not saying you need to carry it on at all but this just felt..awkward. For example it could be tied into the poem more. "Where my shirts collect rainwater into// shallow basins and when they spill I can't tell if it's the gooseberry blood cursing or just another rainy day. I am tired of raining days but the berries never tasted so sweet" okay that was off the top of my head but I hope I get what I mean? And because you're using an abstract form, almost beat poetry, then you have so much power to develop this. I hope that's useful!
But as I said I love what you've got going on here. It reminds me of some of my favourite poems. You have a really strong unique metaphor which hacks such a punch and I love it and I love the mental illness side of this and it's all your fault and just wow! I think this is fantastic, but it just needs a little work.
Don't ever stop writing like this!
Keep up the good work,
Here if you need me,
~retro