Senior Year

[Todd]

Hello, here are some comments for your consideration:

Senior year (If only my 18th birthday was 14 years away rather than 2 months past)

1.--if you're going to use numbers to break the scenes, I don't know if the date/time stamp buys you much. The words alone can tell us that we're in the same scene.
Sunday, 2:03pm,
my father breaks the shower faucet
for the third time this month
my mother drags her body up the stairs
mental exhaustion wears on her eye sockets


--The weakness here from me is this is more of a rendition in the narrative of this happened and then this happened. Look at your opening line especially what is interesting about "my father breaks the shower faucet"? Even if you are going for a mundane way to set him off it isn't interesting language. The only thing interesting in the opening strophe is "my mother drags her body up the stairs" If this was expanded on more then the mother could see herself as already dead, and that could be interesting. L4 Mental exhaustion wears is telling and not a good way to allow imagery to come forward in the poem. You need a much stronger opening.

their vows ring in her ears--This has possibility if you started possibly remembering their wedding and retelling this as a warping of their marriage tying together with aspects of the ceremony. Instead of her throwing a bouquet she throws a wrench. The vows drawn out a bit more here.
he throws a wrench at her face
but its blocked
by my father's drunken aim--There has to be a way to bring this in more subtlety than just calling it out.

Sunday, 2:05pm
my sister leaps on spot
her legs still crossed
on my bedroom floor

she is not met with an iron tool
but my stare
of both embarrassment and pity

fear lazily strikes itself across her face,
panic is barely noticeable,
the angry words and drunken slurs
were nothing less than habitual.

This entire section needs tightening. There's tension in the family got it. This is a lot of words to get that simple idea across. If you haven't read Dorianne Laux's The Tooth Fairy check it out as ways of blending narrative with imagery and action.

Sunday, 2:07pm
my mother's body slams
against a wall or a door
the thump is dead
it mocks her

This is all a bit awkward you are shifting Point of View. You probably need to stay with the I of the poem.

Sunday, 2:11pm
I rip the bathroom door from its hinges-- seems a bit over the top, but cheap interior door maybe.
imagine the firm handshake
my father once showed me--odd way to say: I'm worried that my father even drunk is stronger than me. There are better images to use of casual strength.

I lumbar over the threshold--Lumber (typo) again though words like this come off as self conscious. We don't need to see every transitional step just move to the essence of the encounter.
stand toe to toe with Goliath
I am David--Not necessary the next line makes the implication clear. You need to take economy where you can find it. 
I have come with neither slingshot nor stone

my father's crutch is my savior--Too telling. Let the reader draw this conclusion don't spell it out.
he is too drunk to throw anything at my face
but not drunk enough to be conquered--This feels like telling us a blow by blow but this method does provide any real stakes or emotional power.

Sunday, 2:19pm
my mother and I part
as if he is Moses and we are the Red Sea
he half tumbles down the stairs
whisky becomes lead in the blood stream--I really think you are bouncing from one set of images to an other set of unrelated images. This really needs a central guiding image that you draw on.

Sunday, 2:37pm
the blue Subaru
shifts and submits under my father's hand
just as my mother has done so many nights--Requires more build up and a bit more subtlety on the line to pull it off. 

the car lurches backward
a diagonal course
those marks will scar the grass
for years--These two lines: those marks...years have promise. It's an observation that allows the environment to convey what it means without you spelling it out so much better than the Subaru one above--because it implies the issue rather than telling us how to interpret.

Sunday, 4:01pm
my mother's vocal cords have seized
her body hugs the memory
of my father's driver's seat

the warmth of the blacktop
a better husband
than my father could ever be



2.  I feel like some of this needs to be up in 1 and the final Sunday stuff probably belongs here.
Sunday, 4:57pm
my lips shift in tandem
with my vocal cord's vibration
diaphragm expands and contracts

I need to cringe at the drone
the officer's voice
mixes, so irritatingly
with the phone's
electrical buzz

shallow breaths between
automated responses
supplies just enough oxygen
so I cannot forget tonight

Sunday, 5:28pm
I open the French door
the familiar sound of suction
seems less nostalgic tonight

my bare feet tango
around the missing deck boards
another project my mother thought
could fix my father

she is a part of the blacktop now
the sun illuminates her umber hair
the grey strands bow toward the light--This strophe is where the poem starts to work for me.

I pause quickly--unneeded
will I be that beautiful when
the cool March breeze is the only
thing in this world
willing enough to touch my skin--these last few lines minus the first one are the most poetic part of the poem. This is a great payoff. It requires a build up that takes us here. 

I hope some of the comments helped. There's a lot that would need to be worked on before I could really go through the lines in greater detail. There are good moments though that you could develop.

Best,

Todd