Poetry Telephone Complete!

[milo]

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Wait a second... I just went to the other (uglier-than-ours, hehe) forum. Milo is leading a double life there, masquerading as someone name Horatio! My world just became so much more confused.....

Yes, I noticed the same thing. Don't worry, I am certain to get to the bottom of it . . .

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So, I thought it might be nice to comment on ella's poem. First, I was intrigued by her method of rewrite, she created an interesting parallelism out of it - almost finding another completely different poem within the first but sharing many of the sonics, devices, etc. If ella had just posted this poem out of nowhere, i would have liked it. I think it needs some polish, but I also think it deserves some polish.

Truth of a Chambermaid

She relies upon her good humor-
tames her hair to some degree
whips up a bun with carved comb,
doesn't wear her skirt above her knee.

This was an interesting start - I liked the juxtaposition of her personality with her hair. I am ambivalent about skipping the one article while including others. Maybe "doesn't" could be replaced with "and won't". Also, "above the knee" to avoid the double "her's"

Her warm brown eyes dim
with memories of the siege.
Somnambulant through vacant halls,
she startles as her cellphone rings,
still wary of calls to leave her hometown
she harbors fears they'll come for her.
She shakes herself, resists the urge to flee.

In here it gets a littl pronoun happy. It gets a little clumsy starting with "still wary" which continues through the rest of the stanza. I think siege works in it's generality.

She moves to clear debris of guests, aloof
in berths they laze, at long buffets they graze.

"long" feels padded and the inversion of "they graze" doesn't help

She can't pretend she doesn't miss
the taste of scraps and local greens
seasoned with her mother's spice and tears.

"scraps" is an odd choice. "seasoned with her mother's tears" is a little twee and I don't think you pull it off here.

Her babe sleeps safe and free to dream:

I don't think you need both safe and free to dream.

not bound to ragged past he'll sing a newfound song,
her lullaby imprinted on his breast-
a queen, head high, who faced the beast.

-Ellajam

once again, the missing article is too disruptive. There is some confusion with the pronoun switch at the end.

Anyway, I think it has promise, thanks for participating