04-29-2015, 01:15 AM
This poem would benefit by punctuation, clarification and compression. I like the time stamps, if you were to change the title to something like “Sunday, My Senior year,” and then omit Sunday before the times. And it would be ironic that all this violence occurs on the day of rest. I would omit the age in ()s and somehow allude to the speaker’s age in the piece.
Senior year (If only my 18th birthday was 14 years away rather than 2 months past)
2:03pm
My father’s (fist?) breaks the shower faucet (it is faulty, or does he hit it?)
for the third time this month (period)
my mother drags her body up the stairs
mental exhaustion wears on her eye sockets
How about some compression---
My mother’s body drags
up the stairs, her eye sockets dark
pits of mental exhaustion.
Their vows (of hatred? Or vengeance?) ring in my ears.
He throws a wrench at her face
(but it’s blocked
by my father's drunken aim) do you need all that in ()s?
or could you simply put, [b]”and misses.” ?[/b]
Sunday Senior Year
2:03pm
My father’s fist breaks the faucet
for the third time this month,
his curses echoing in the shower chamber.
My mother’s body drags
up the stairs, her eye sockets dark
pits of mental exhaustion,
their vows of hatred ringing
and ringing in our ears.
(maybe throw in a simile here or an “as if” statement.
He throws a wrench at her face,
blocked by her quick
instincts and reflexes.
This merely an example above of what you might do to help the poem along to its next draft. The go through the entire piece this way, critically. I like how you engage the reader and allow them to understand and enter the scene.
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.
Can you compress the above 3 stanzas? Include the speaker in the room or outside the door, to solve the issue of how does the speaker know that unless he sees it?
In her bedroom, crossed-legged on the floor,
my sister sits within my view from the hallway
where I --------------fill in the blank----watch both scenes aghast (I don’t know, but tighten up the writing.), the contrast of----------it might be interesting to contrast calm with violence.
Sunday, 2:07pm
my mother's body slams
against a wall or a door
the thump is dead
it mocks her
Sunday, 2:11pm
I rip the bathroom door from its hinges
imagine the firm handshake
my father once showed me
I lumbar over the threshold
stand toe to toe with Goliath
I am David
I have come with neither slingshot nor stone
my father's crutch is my savior
he is too drunk to throw anything at my face
but not drunk enough to be conquered
Do you even need all the above in italics? A wrench at someone’s face is probably enough to give the reader a sense of the degree of violence this man is capable of. And much of the above is confusing, such as, how does the mother slam into the wall? Does he hit her now, or shove her? Finally I see what’s confusing me – so the father wasn’t actually taking a shower? I thought he was in the beginning, but maybe he was fixing it from when it broke earlier??? See how you need to fix these quibbles somehow? I could keep going through the entire piece but maybe if the beginning was clarified, things would change, so revise it and repost.
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
Ok--- Moses was a good guy, so this analogy doesn’t work.
Sunday, 2:37pm
the blue Subaru
shifts and submits under my father's hand
just as my mother has done so many nights
So does the father leave alone, drunk? That’s how I’m reading the above.
the car lurches backward
a diagonal course
those marks will scar the grass
for years
What about something like---
My father's hand shifts the blue
Subaru until it submits;
its backward lurching cuts a path
scarring the green lawn
like everything else his hands have touched (or come near).
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.
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
You might decide to shorten the poem and skip right to this---
She is a part of the blacktop now,
sun illuminating her umber hair,
grey strands bowing toward the light.
I pause (and ask myself) quickly (omit),
“Would I be that beautiful if(Will I be as beautiful as she is right now),
a cool March breeze was the only
thing in the world
allowed to touch my skin?”
I hope some of this is useful to you. I think you have quite a poem here. Keep revising and it’ll get there.
One more question---is the speaker male or female? If male, you might want to change "beautiful" to something like "attractive."
Senior year (If only my 18th birthday was 14 years away rather than 2 months past)
2:03pm
My father’s (fist?) breaks the shower faucet (it is faulty, or does he hit it?)
for the third time this month (period)
my mother drags her body up the stairs
mental exhaustion wears on her eye sockets
How about some compression---
My mother’s body drags
up the stairs, her eye sockets dark
pits of mental exhaustion.
Their vows (of hatred? Or vengeance?) ring in my ears.
He throws a wrench at her face
(but it’s blocked
by my father's drunken aim) do you need all that in ()s?
or could you simply put, [b]”and misses.” ?[/b]
Sunday Senior Year
2:03pm
My father’s fist breaks the faucet
for the third time this month,
his curses echoing in the shower chamber.
My mother’s body drags
up the stairs, her eye sockets dark
pits of mental exhaustion,
their vows of hatred ringing
and ringing in our ears.
(maybe throw in a simile here or an “as if” statement.
He throws a wrench at her face,
blocked by her quick
instincts and reflexes.
This merely an example above of what you might do to help the poem along to its next draft. The go through the entire piece this way, critically. I like how you engage the reader and allow them to understand and enter the scene.
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.
Can you compress the above 3 stanzas? Include the speaker in the room or outside the door, to solve the issue of how does the speaker know that unless he sees it?
In her bedroom, crossed-legged on the floor,
my sister sits within my view from the hallway
where I --------------fill in the blank----watch both scenes aghast (I don’t know, but tighten up the writing.), the contrast of----------it might be interesting to contrast calm with violence.
Sunday, 2:07pm
my mother's body slams
against a wall or a door
the thump is dead
it mocks her
Sunday, 2:11pm
I rip the bathroom door from its hinges
imagine the firm handshake
my father once showed me
I lumbar over the threshold
stand toe to toe with Goliath
I am David
I have come with neither slingshot nor stone
my father's crutch is my savior
he is too drunk to throw anything at my face
but not drunk enough to be conquered
Do you even need all the above in italics? A wrench at someone’s face is probably enough to give the reader a sense of the degree of violence this man is capable of. And much of the above is confusing, such as, how does the mother slam into the wall? Does he hit her now, or shove her? Finally I see what’s confusing me – so the father wasn’t actually taking a shower? I thought he was in the beginning, but maybe he was fixing it from when it broke earlier??? See how you need to fix these quibbles somehow? I could keep going through the entire piece but maybe if the beginning was clarified, things would change, so revise it and repost.
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
Ok--- Moses was a good guy, so this analogy doesn’t work.
Sunday, 2:37pm
the blue Subaru
shifts and submits under my father's hand
just as my mother has done so many nights
So does the father leave alone, drunk? That’s how I’m reading the above.
the car lurches backward
a diagonal course
those marks will scar the grass
for years
What about something like---
My father's hand shifts the blue
Subaru until it submits;
its backward lurching cuts a path
scarring the green lawn
like everything else his hands have touched (or come near).
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.
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
You might decide to shorten the poem and skip right to this---
She is a part of the blacktop now,
sun illuminating her umber hair,
grey strands bowing toward the light.
I pause (and ask myself) quickly (omit),
“Would I be that beautiful if(Will I be as beautiful as she is right now),
a cool March breeze was the only
thing in the world
allowed to touch my skin?”
I hope some of this is useful to you. I think you have quite a poem here. Keep revising and it’ll get there.
One more question---is the speaker male or female? If male, you might want to change "beautiful" to something like "attractive."