Laundry Line, Edit #2

[Cousin Kil]

Laundry Line


Cream sheets and blue jeans
       wave, flap, snap –
            twisting, floating – should it be "twist, float"? That threw me off a bit coming off of "wave, flap, snap".
                 stiff. maybe "but stiff" or "yet stiff" might make it less awkward for the reader after reading of all this twisting and floating, though I'm not necessarily sold on adding another word. I like the singularity of that line, so maybe another word instead?


                 Old-fashioned wood pins,
       two or maybe three,
leave firm marks. I don't mind "firm". Maybe speaks to the permanence of this memory for you. Me gusta.


Run underneath,
       nose first! Inhale
            the wind, the grass –
                 chickens, lilacs,
                      axle grease, dirt. I'm glad you wrote axle grease. It gave me pause because it's not commonplace in this kind of a scene. A flair of individuality to make it less Hallmark-y or done-before I suppose. I liked it.


                 There's a storm coming in! 
            It's on the horizon!
       Rush to bring them in
before they get wet again. Not crazy that this rhymes. I would rewrite this stanza. The language is commonplace (at least I thought). End on a single word maybe, or something with a little punch-- you did this with "stiff" in the first stanza, maybe mirror it here. The way it reads now feels almost immature in a sense (just this teeny tiny slither of writing, not the writer of course). All I mean is that it's a weak way to end the poem after experiencing the good imagery that you have and being brought into a very soft feeling and well-realized scene.

Hey!

My only complaint is the last stanza. It can be so much better because the rest of the poem is very well crafted.

An idea:

This imminent storm alongside the scene of the laundry line isn't that new of sequence. I feel like I've seen it in a movie with all of the clothes flapping in the wind and the idealism of the scene suddenly canned in a coming twister or what have you. However, I think you can still make this coming storm work for you-- maybe it can show the permanence of this memory has been shaken or will be or can be. The comforts of home and childhood torn in some fashion. The one thing I like about your last stanza is that the simple rhyme makes light of this idea of a coming storm, a sense of doom.

If you could keep the child-like paradigm/voice in place when it comes to perceiving this storm while shifting your language to match the rest of the poem, then I think you'd have something very special. The idea that this child sees the only consequence of the storm being the clothes getting wet when in fact it is the loss of their own innocence, or the shaking of their state of being so that this childhood has become merely memory... I don't know if I'm ranting or not being very clear in what I'm thinking, but in my head it sounds like a great idea.

Have you seen the film A Serious Man by the Coen Brothers. This poem reminds me of the end of that movie.

Thanks for the read, I really really enjoyed it!

Cousin