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Hey all. Getting ready to submit a few poems and was wondering how you all feel about these. Nothing in particular, just a lil back and forth amongst fellow writers.
My Mantis and Me
Spoiler:
Before sleep, I leash a mantis to my big toe,
like a price sticker on a cadaver in a morgue.
He guillotines those nasty bed bugs.
But I have to be vigilant, too.
I’ve already caught a few girls
sneaking into bed with him.
For now we watch each other’s backs
like grown men in a public shower.
Worm
Spoiler:
Your brain is earth. Absences
of tissue in each flat
MRI scan are thoughts’ worm.
The doctor hangs them before you
like pictures of a fossil
brought to light. He traces the cigarette
burn in the white mass, explaining
something about concentric death
the way mother used to explain
about father and his drinking:
a human singularity that distances itself
by its own weight.
Love, mother knows, drowns.
The doctor’s diagnosis drags
your tongue back into your cerebellum:
then what survives?
A blind worm with five hearts
rises out of mud, its mucus trailing
out of one blackness and down
the throat of another.
Tequila Lollipop
Spoiler:
The candy imitates tequila’s transparency,
petrifying the worm as it circled the center stick,
like a Maypole with a single streamer unraveling
to a playground’s wood-chip pyre. Sound can also
be solid, holes in galvanized chains
my pinky can no longer pierce. Cold Steel
monkey bars, prison windows, reflecting
the day’s last dip into the eye. The worm
is a pink larva of a butterfly
Celebrating my 5 year anniversary tonight (if you call yummy dinner out followed by Legend of the Seeker a "celebration"), so I'll do more in-depth tomorrow, probably.
For now, this is fantastic:
[...]Sound can also
be solid, holes in galvanized chains
my pinky can no longer pierce. Cold Steel
monkey bars, prison windows, reflecting
the day’s last dip into the eye.
I have a thing for lists, they're immensely useful.
Hey all. Getting ready to submit a few poems and was wondering how you all feel about these. Nothing in particular, just a lil back and forth amongst fellow writers.
My Mantis and Me
Spoiler:
Before sleep, I leash a mantis to my big toe,
like a price sticker on a cadaver in a morgue.
He guillotines those nasty bed bugs.
But I have to be vigilant, too.
I’ve already caught a few girls
sneaking into bed with him.
For now we watch each other’s backs
like grown men in a public shower.
Worm
Spoiler:
Your brain is earth. Absences
of tissue in each flat
MRI scan are thoughts’ worm.
The doctor hangs them before you
like pictures of a fossil
brought to light. He traces the cigarette
burn in the white mass, explaining
something about concentric death
the way mother used to explain
about father and his drinking:
a human singularity that distances itself
by its own weight.
Love, mother knows, drowns.
The doctor’s diagnosis drags
your tongue back into your cerebellum:
then what survives?
A blind worm with five hearts
rises out of mud, its mucus trailing
out of one blackness and down
the throat of another.
Tequila Lollipop
Spoiler:
The candy imitates tequila’s transparency,
petrifying the worm as it circled the center stick,
like a Maypole with a single streamer unraveling
to a playground’s wood-chip pyre. Sound can also
be solid, holes in galvanized chains
my pinky can no longer pierce. Cold Steel
monkey bars, prison windows, reflecting
the day’s last dip into the eye. The worm
is a pink larva of a butterfly
that never knew what it was to become.
Okay, Greg, we go! I'll start with the big pictures.
My Mantis and Me
Visceral images. Amazingly crisp, in most cases, but "off-putting" is my response. In all, I find the piece "jarring", as if the images aren't "natural" or "clean". This, in all, isn't a bad thing, and taking a reader out of a "natural" image can be an amazing thing. Since this is for submission, I'd say that this kind of work is amazing when part of a grounded sequence. Yet alone it tends to be a touch touchy. There seems not enough movement between the images, as if all you have is a collection of pictures, somewhat unrelated. Amazing lines and images, especially the "public shower", but to an extent I feel as if it is all less than what it could be in sequence to be grounded.
Worm
Best. I'd touch little without nitpicking.
Tequila Lollipop
You have my initial reactions, and I like it and find success inside. "that never knew what it was to become" strikes as unnecessary, and can be cut. The tone doesn't match and nor does the epistolary concept.
Actually all of these are part of a larger work, so it's good to hear which stand as an island and which stand as archipelagos.
I think the unconnectedness of My Mantis and Me adds to the creepiness as I feel the entire poem is pretty damn creepy. You're comments though have helped with revisions. I'm thinking of some new things to add to mantis to help build it on itself.
He eats those nasty bed bugs
that eat me like tiny scoops of ice cream.
Alpha Queue Registered User regular
Posts
For now, this is fantastic:
I have a thing for lists, they're immensely useful.
Okay, Greg, we go! I'll start with the big pictures.
My Mantis and Me
Visceral images. Amazingly crisp, in most cases, but "off-putting" is my response. In all, I find the piece "jarring", as if the images aren't "natural" or "clean". This, in all, isn't a bad thing, and taking a reader out of a "natural" image can be an amazing thing. Since this is for submission, I'd say that this kind of work is amazing when part of a grounded sequence. Yet alone it tends to be a touch touchy. There seems not enough movement between the images, as if all you have is a collection of pictures, somewhat unrelated. Amazing lines and images, especially the "public shower", but to an extent I feel as if it is all less than what it could be in sequence to be grounded.
Worm
Best. I'd touch little without nitpicking.
Tequila Lollipop
You have my initial reactions, and I like it and find success inside. "that never knew what it was to become" strikes as unnecessary, and can be cut. The tone doesn't match and nor does the epistolary concept.
Actually all of these are part of a larger work, so it's good to hear which stand as an island and which stand as archipelagos.
I think the unconnectedness of My Mantis and Me adds to the creepiness as I feel the entire poem is pretty damn creepy. You're comments though have helped with revisions. I'm thinking of some new things to add to mantis to help build it on itself.
He eats those nasty bed bugs
that eat me like tiny scoops of ice cream.
Stuff like that I'm playing with. Again, cheers.