I'm going to the church to die. For all I know,
I'm kneeling legless in the syrup sand
that is neither warm nor cold. As though
the broken glass from the nail polish bottle
became an ocean that I stepped in.
Slept in. Taping the torn photograph back
together before shoving it, gently, face down
back into the drawer. Drinking darkness
from stone mugs when our ears were clogged with satin.
Scarlet like my favorite crayon drips deeper,
darker, denser, swelling surface tension
tight from slender fingers left in dye.
Do you remember when we drowned?
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Specific questions: should "nail polish bottle" be "bottle of wine"?
I want it to be shorter, but I'm not sure what works (or if anything does). Also, the title may not make sense. Any advice is welcomed.
Don't you dare change 'nail polish bottle' to 'bottle of wine'.
ReplyDeleteI love the nail polish bottle because it sounds good and it is out of the ordinary. Bottle of wine sounds... cliche, quite honestly.
I love this whole poem. The way it twists and turns is so wonderful.
The ending is also lovely and almost unexpected, but when you read back, it makes perfect sense.
I would maybe be careful with the 'neither warm nor cold' - that can come across as cliche as well, and it makes me think more of lukewarm than anything else. However, it sounds fine in this, and I wouldn't change it unless you really felt it needed to be changed. Just something to be aware of in the future. (: (Though I'm sure you already know of that.)
It's a wonderful poem. I love reading it~
I like the idea of nail polish bottle, but it needs to be read with a very specific rhythm for me to like the flow of it, personally. "Bottle of wine" flows well, but, as said above, is cliche. I look at pretty much every poem as something that is meant to be read out loud, though, so that may not matter to you nearly as much as to me.
ReplyDeleteAs far as shortening it, the only thing that jumps out at me is making the start:
I'm going to the church to die. For all I know,
I'm kneeling legless in the lukewarm syrup sand
I'm not getting the scarlet sentence. I think having it there improves the poem, but it could be touched up some. Maybe hyphenate some things? I'm thinking it's meant to be "surface-tension-tight," for instance, but that was unclear to me reading it at first, and it just sort of came at me as a line of words strung together ungrammatically. Seeing that specifically as a phrase gives the sentence actual meaning, though.
I like nail polish bottle wine would feel cliched. I like it a lot especially the ending. And you are a poet nothing you write say or do has to have any connection or meaning for anything else.
ReplyDeleteI really like the stepped in-- slept in bit. That was beautiful rhythmically and I could just hear it being read aloud.
ReplyDelete