untitled 1
Beneath the narrow wooden slats,
tannin stained water and dead leaves swirl
like days old tea.
Minnows spark and stripe like paths stained
by teardrops
above what was once forest floor.
I can’t find the trail in all this murk, so I
swim in memories, swim in the rustle of
wind against palm trees, saw grass;
that soft sound from the sharpness
is more likely to drown me
than to buoy me.
Until all the robins finally take upwards,
leaving the the forest to burn to a pile of once-kindling ash
ignited by the blaze of their chests,
I will just stay here and stay
waterlogged.
cactus isle
stumbling over roots and the piles of sand gutted up onto the surface
from freshly burrowing crabs,
I wipe the last run of juice from my lips and fingertips,
both puckering fuschia with Prickly Pear.
Fiona went for a full fistful of it,
came back with stinging skin bristling outward with stern repercussions.
My method was just to scrape away all the pain
with a seashells serrated edge; then, I tore it in two between us.
As we walked, we dropped the seeds,
still warm with the memory of its flesh,
from our mouths.
Just this once, we would
grow something more than words from
our sour tongues.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,005 Literary Works • 672,798 Reviews
Your poems are very detailed and thorough. I love how each one has its own story behind it.
Also, the vocabulary that was incorporated seems to be quite fitting for the message you are trying to illistrate to your readers.
Although, In your first poem, I believe it would sound better if you lengthened the shorter lines. That is only a personal preference though. Nothing to worry about.
Overall, well done! This is great writing and I sure hope you continue making more!
Somehow your description is so simple and subtle, yet spot-on. I tasted every word, drank every stanza. Loved it.
What inspired this? You have a way of painting pictures beautifully here. Are these poems in any way symbolic, or are they self-explanatory?
Also are you planning on titling 'untitled 1'? I assume so.
I'm curious as to what your title means. It doesn't tie in to me, but maybe I'm just missing something.
One suggestion: I either like to see every first letter of a line capitalized, or none at all (excluding "I" or other proper nouns). Just preference, but that's what I would do.
Yeah not much else to say here. Really enjoyable. You took me to each scenery quite nicely.
in the spirit of Review Day,
~iron.n
I revise not as a judge, but as a fellow writer eligible for judgment on the same level.
Hi, Rhia!
There's a lot going on in that line, and I think you should at least organize it differently. Try "minnows spark and stripe like silvery tear drops". It feels a little better, and allows the reader to focus on the actual subject of the line, the minnows, rather than the figurative and nonexistent tear drops.As always, beautiful work.
untitled 1
The first thing I notice is the title. Specifically, the uselessness of the title. It says nothing about the poem, does not draw the reader in. It sits there, a testament to a little bit of laziness that prevented the author from finding the theme of their own poem and summarizing. I admit that I have a bias against untitled titles. But really, I have good reason for it. It does nothing to aid the poem, and a million other poems are titled the same thing. If you're going for a series, I would probably name it something else. At least "meditation 1" or something like that. I have a series of love poems titled simply "Love Poem No. 1" and consecutive numbers. That works. Untitled? Does not compute.
I love the scene you paint. A boardwalk leading into a trail, is it? It takes me back to a certain campground in Michigan that my family used to visit annually. There was a certain trail called "the lost lake trail" that had a lot of swampy, undecipherable bits in it that always smelled like pine duff and clover. And gaptoothed wooden bridges that led you over the shallows of the lake.
The "justs" aren't working in these lines. They're unneeded. Take 'em out.
"stuff" isn't cutting it for me here. I would say instead "from the sharpness" because 1) stuff isn't used, and stuff is vague and sounds weird in such a lovely poem, and 2) sharpness creates the place from where the sound comes, a physical and metaphorical setting that creates softness from its antithesis, and it creates a better metaphor.
I feel like "upwards" is redundant, but after looking about on the internet, I find that it's grammatically correct. I probably would just leave off "upwards," especially because it's repeated so soon (after robins) in the next stanza, but that's your choice.
I'm not quite sure why Robins is capitalized. Obviously they're a symbol of something, but there aren't quite enough clues as to what the robins symbolize.
These lines feel a little wordy, as well, and if I were you, I'd say "burning the forest with their blazing chests
to a too dry pile of once-kindling ash"
Overall, I enjoy how you use water and sound as a metaphor for memory and how nature helps you meditate on the past.
cactus isle
This one is just really gorgeous. Meditative and yet playful, smelling of lazy days spent exploring and not caring about the current world.
This is the only stanza I could find something that could improve. The first thing I'd suggest doing is rearranging it a bit. The second is small, but "and body" should be dropped, as flesh is referring to the same thing, and body becomes redundant. I'd rearrange it like this:
"As we walked, we dropped seeds
from our mouths,
still warm with the memory of its flesh."
Altogether, these are both really lovely, and in different ways. The first is brooding and melancholy, the second as carefree as breeze. Very nice job on both. I hope this review proves useful to you! Happy poeting!
ooh reviews from you are always such a welcome treat.
Yessss, I have the same hatred of untitleds, it was purely laziness, but I didn't think to give it something like Meditations no. 1 because I fully intend to title it...eventually. But I'm with you, I cringe at it too.
All of your edits are super helpful as per norm, you have a wonderful talent for targeting the things about my writing that bother me, and then giving me just the solution that I couldn't find myself. I'll fix things, hugs being sent your way.