when my father's belt dug into my chest
and his jeans pooled around my ankles, i used
to visit this stillwater pond with you, remember?
dangle my feet in, wiggle my toes
in the mud. the water is motionless
in the day, simmering like my mother's pot
on the stove, but at night the hazy air dances
on its surface and we skip rocks, you and i:
-
smooth, rounded ones worn out by boyish fingertips.
or were we men by then? when we
pulled off our knee socks with blue
knitted into the seams and
disrupted the flow of night air?
when i pushed you in and gave you that
scar on your right cheek, just below your
eye? i told people you had gotten into a fight.
you should've seen the other guy.
-
when you went to college, you started covering it
with your mother's concealer. it left an ugly white birthmark
on your cheek, but i guess you liked it better than remembering
that place. i went yesterday. not that you would know.
i took my socks off and dipped my feet in. then i skipped a rock,
one of the smooth ones, and tried not to remember.
it touched the water once, then sank.
i watched the sun set.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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129,796 Literary Works • 671,510 Reviews
Hi, outoftime! Mage here to do the promised review! So let's get to it, shall we?
I'm not experienced enough with poetry to make any comments on the formatting, but I will say that I like how you chose to use lowercase letters throughout the entire piece. That was an interesting choice. I would also like to say that I really loved the story this told. After rereading it, I truly grasped the story you were conveying, and felt a pang of understanding because I've lost friends myself. Then again, we all have.
I love how the narrator starts with the past, and ends with the present. The scar, which had symbolized their friendship, is covered up - i.e., the narrator's friend has chosen to ignore the times they spent together. The narrator, on the other hand, clings to the memories (though he tries not to) by returning to the place where they had so much fun together as children. It was an interesting conflict.
Keep up the spectacular work - which I doubt you'll have trouble with - and good luck on your writing endeavors! Have a great day/night!
This is a very good poem and I would
Like I put it in the form of a poem
Because I love love love poems. So lets
Get started on talking about you poem
To me it is very good and has lots of
Detal in it which I like in a good poem.
Also when you were writing this ii was
Thinking to myself and saying that you
Had spent a lot of time on this poem and
If you didn't I think you did.
Another thing I would like to tell you is
That you are a very good and talented
Writer and if you grow up in the future
To be a writer then please do that because
You are ver good at what you do.
I like at the beginning of the poem you
Had put a lot of good simile into the
Writing and that is what I look for
When people read your stuff I look
For detal an good word choice.
Thank you again for letting me read
Your poem today.
Kazey here, again for my thoughts more than a review.
So, I guess the idea is that two friends grew up together, but something awful happened and they grew apart? The main character still misses their old friend though.
You use quite a lot of evocative language, like in the part where it says;
simmering like my mother's pot
on the stove, but at night the hazy air dances
on its surface
I found that really great. Perhaps it's just my personal preference, but some capitalisation would be nice. It was a really great poem, but I think because I'm finding it hard to grasp the concept I'm also finding it hard to review. Thanks for a great poem Jonathan!
~Kazey
Totally meant to come and give you a review, but read this and all I can say is that it's really beautiful and sad, and good job and keep writing forever.
Um... sooo... 'you' is a friend?? okay you should capitalize the i's and overall it was a good poem but I couldn't grasp the whole concept but yeah it was good in a way. I t describes two friends[I guess] who were friends once but got far away from each others as they grew up and you miss 'you' and is hoping that 'you' was there while he skips stones at the same lake years later or is it like you loved 'you' but 'you' never loved you. Okay that's just confusing. anyway good. keep it up.