Not Being From New York

[just mercedes]

Hi - I really responded positively to your poem. The imagery is well done and the comparisons remain in my mind. Your rhyming is unobtrusive but serves to knit the poem well together.



Not being from New York I can’t say for sure
but I hear there’s an up-charge for whiskey, neat,
in bars with women with wheat- colored hair the two 'with's here felt a bit clumsy. great rhyme neat/wheat
and coral lipstick; wearing dresses, all black
with no sleeves and, mostly too, no shoulders needed?
and cut high to show tiny thighs not touching,
and they say it’s because of no ice, three 'and's join this sentence
the up-charge, in whiskey bars with booming music
by and large too loud played by DJs with blue-dyed needed?
hair and silver high-gauge studs nearly touching
their thin, beskulled t-shirts, black and stained I don't get this image
with gin, costing more than a week’s pay gin doesn't actually stain - my grandma used it to remove stains
plus dry-cleaning and delivery.
 
Here we mostly drink beer in cold dark bottles,
the Midwest flat and arid, needing rain
yet only dry thunderstorms come,  not a splat
of wet, just bright lights and loud booms; yet and just feel too close
not even the cows are impressed.
Grazing, they stand in open fields,  in winter drink this line break caught me off-balance
water from icy troughs,  their black coats
shaggy then and full, beautiful like furs walking needed? maybe 'beautiful as furs'
down  fifth avenue only alive; Midwest rated capitals - why not Fifth Avenue? There's something a little clunky about the structure here
when I take the axe to break the ice clever play back to the ice in the first stanza, a nice rounding-up of your poem.
I wear a black woolen coat with wide shoulders
that belonged to my father;
it hangs thick and heavy, like a familiar embrace. great strong finish
 

Thanks for posting this, and keep writing!