of side pony tails and doughnuts

[tectak]

revision (thanks to milo and billy)
Hi cloudy, a line by line on this delightful piece of 1st person narrative, and that is what it is. Comments both ways on the prosiness ( Shit...I am becoming Serge) of it but for me you still need to have SOME poetic device in evidence to get away with the lack of meter and rhyme...it is that difficult to define thing...rhythm.
5 years oldNit. Always best to write numbers. Five years old.
and I couldn't hear
my mother's accent. So..rhythm. Best you can use in such short lines (why?) is syllable count. 3,5,5 in this "stanza". Triplets imply that you are making a stand against rhyme...so I can expect 3,5,5 in the next stanza?
There were four of us,
I was the side-pony tailed,
stubborn queen of antics.5,7(8?),7...huh? I am going to back off on this now. You see, there is an apple-pie naievety in the language which is pleasantly acceptable...but once accepted, tends to argue the case for story telling. You may as well just write the whole thing out in paragraphs and abandon any delusions of poetic endeavour. Yes. That is what I advise. This happens more and more on this (and other) site(s). A few good thoughts get stuck up and strung out in short lines to masquerade as poetry...but it ain't. It is the easy way out and forces crits to praise mediocrity. Could you consider restructuring?
Big brother was my idol Punctuate. Semi colon would be good. I read it out loud.
oh I envied Wrong use of "oh". When used this way it is an implied answer to a previous question. Normally you would then go on with a rebuttal. "Were you jealous of your brother? Oh, I envied his big, striped dinosaur blanket BUT I guess I idolised him, too." If this is a correct analysis then you need to restructure the stanza. If incorrect, then the "oh" is a redundant dramatic cliche...your poem.
his striped dinosaur blanket.

He envied right back
my room to myself. Syntax errors here. This makes no sense
(Even if it was pink.) Semi or full colon after "myself" and drop the brackets. Brackets are used as an "aside" to insert prerogative information but by using the word "even" you are disavowing the reader of that privilege as the implication is that the colour is a known.

I ignored my little brothers
with a toss of my hair.
Anyway, they were boring. Again, saved by the simplicity of immature logic. Nice.
That day we went grocery shopping;
always a delicious adventure
for big brother and me.

We littered pistachio shells
snuck from bulk food bins;
mom pretended not to see. You are on a roll. Even got a serendip rhyme in.Me and see....longer lines?

She got us glazed doughnuts
we munched them through the aisles,
forgot to beg for brand-name cereal.

She paid by showing the cashier
our sticky faces and two
waxy bakery papers, empty.

Feeling somewhat devious, we schemed
and under the egg cartons, slipped
the new Carmen Sandiego VHS, just out.

I don’t really remember,
but it was probably my idea…
me, the sneaky sister.

Baby brother distracted mom at checkout
but our little lying faces told Loving it
of an illicit triumph.

We couldn't hear her accent.
But that day,
the whole parking lot did.
From last comment to here it is honey. Really, worth restructuring. Go on....you know you want to!
Best,
tectak

original

I was 5 years old
and couldn't hear
my mother's accent.

There we four of us then,
I was the side-pony tailed,
stubborn queen of drama.

Big brother was my idol
how I envied
his striped dinosaur blanket.

How he envied
my room to myself.
(Even if it was pink.)

But I ignored my little brothers
with a toss of my hair.
Anyway, they were boring.

That day we went grocery shopping,
always a delicious adventure
for big brother and me.

Mom pretended not to see
as we littered pistachio shells,
snuck from bulk food bins.

She got us glazed doughnuts
we munched them through the aisles,
forgot to beg for brand-name cereal.

(She paid by showing the cashier
our sticky faces and two
waxy bakery papers, empty.)

Feeling devious that day, we schemed
and under the egg carton, snuck
the new Carmen Sandiego VHS, just out.

Baby brother distracted her at checkout
but our little lying faces told
of an illicit triumph.

We couldn't hear her accent.
But that day,
the whole parking lot did.