01-22-2023, 02:44 AM
(01-01-2023, 12:25 AM)s3 Wrote: 1st edit (thank you for the feedback!) :Thanks to Rowens for bumping this one back up the list. One of my favorite of recent posts.
I miss your original opening lines
How you could run so fast but never get very far
is a mystery, a tragedy
far removed from the prime of your life
yet still fully formed in its image. this line baffles me a bit
With growing unease
I stare at the fading edges of your photograph
and think of what you were,
what might have survived you: heat, water, bone,
a favorite lipstick. Your fear of the light.
Standing before the gorge, the hunter-gatherer
come to the end of his route, he finds comes
to the yellow canyons of his youth long exchanged inserted "to"
for an ocean of flat prairie grass. the transition from the hunter imagery and the next four lines needs work. the jump from a third person narrative to lines addressing "you" and "your" is confusing.
Looking for the warp over the scar,
the yolk on your fingers, a twin without twin:
what did you realize
when you saw in yourself an open wound?
I imagine you
nursing by the small window,
condensation tracking down the water glass
and breast milk drying on your skin,
the ants in my ear humming a strange lullaby. love this line almost as much as the last line
I used to listen to you sleep, sometimes, through the door - listened
you were almost always quiet. Rise and fall.
In stillness, I think stars could burn you
but metal couldn't cut you. Fabric couldn't touch you.
I slide the picture back into its cover
but am unable to flip the page.
Springtime has arrived in Texas: / white blossoms cupping your smile, maybe a line break here
the baby. Sunlight streaming in softly move over your head to this line
over your head, and the asphalt under your feet and warming, a warning to this line
warming, a warning. Maybe a line break to let that brilliant last line stand out
Entropy studies me the way I study
you.