A Lament

[ellajam]

Not a serious crit, but overall I find this to be more of a brain-storm poem than I real poem. Eg, you kept writing to bring out more ideas, but never made the appropriate cuts.

The poem has some great imagery, I especially enjoyed the last stanza's first few lines.

However, it is hard to see how everything fits together, beyond a list of things. You move toward increasingly unnatural things that you lament (the grass, a bug, a cabin, an artificially flavored popcycle) but the reason for that isn't clear, if there is one.

I also find the last line of the first stanza to be strange. I mean, if we are just talking about mowing the lawn most people do that more than once a month. It kind of conjures up a period/ovulation image and I'm not sure you were going for that.

Thanks, P, that brings a whole other level to the read, interesting.

I'm not ready to crit yet either. I'm enjoying the imagery and emptiness, but off the bat "while my
2-year-old melts into red-faced tears." didn't sit well and hasn't settled in on subsequent reads. The toddler will skip away at the first distraction no matter how heartbroken he is in the moment, and I don't think the N will.