After Seven Years

[71degrees]

I think it's good, but i don't understand what the plastic paradise meaphor means, could you clarify it a bit, just to me, i don't mean in the poem. I also think that it seems a little weak that she only "dislikes this plastic paradise, of comb and mirror, the thickening scars" for such abuse i personally think dislike lacks some intensity.

Would agree w/your "dislike" comment. Hate just didn't seem to fit the character, I guess.

As far as "plastic paradise"….feel free to connote either the plastic (fake) existence of the marriage and/or life or just the physical existence of the world that surrounds her. Or both. Or neither, I guess.

Thanks for the comments.

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She hears him lift another can,
pour the beer into a tall glass
as sure as her key slips into a lock. this line seems strange to me. Her key; a lock. The significance of the lock is diminished, or am i missing something

She dislikes this plastic paradise
of comb and mirror, the thickening
scars, the courted sleep. sounds sterile to me

Arguments are all her mind recalls lately:
the fists, the remedy afterward. She does is this the what the mind remembers vs what the heart remembers?
remember an August marriage, his dark
good looks. And now sitting beside this bed
of snow, the room is a jail cell. Outside
her window, on a thin black telephone wire,
is a mourning dove with her mother's eyes.

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Like the poem very much; "the courted sleep" leaves me guessing-could you illuminate that plase. Loretta

If a poem doesn't make a reader second guess at least once, I would call that poem one to put to sleep. My guess would be that she enjoys the courtship of sleep much more than whatever the man is offering.

Thanks for the look. One of my favorite noir films is an oldie "The Accused" (1949) starring Lorretta Young and Robert Cummings. Classic.