Fifty Shades of Grey Mice

[Todd]

Hi Leanne, Thank you. I'll address your comments below.

--Three blind mice, three blind mice -- personally I'd leave this out here, and put in a more solid allusion in the poem body --This was a carry over from the prompt. The epigraph isn't necessary as long as its grounded somewhere in the poem--as you mentioned. I'll give it some thought.


She wanted to be the only voice
in the universe to divide
dark from light--like God. -- the breaks in these three lines seem off to me but I can't think of a solution, unless it is to remove "like God", because I'm not sure that's necessary.  Also, perhaps you could break L1 on "only".  --I tend to resist longer lines, and I might have moved myself into a clipped format coming from a nursery rhyme. I think if I were to simply rework the breaks without moving the content much it might break on universe in line 1 and pull up line three to end line 2 as a longer line.
In the beginning, she used bats
but found they saw better without eyes. -- now that I read it again, I could actually see "in the beginning" as your opening line.  This would make sense without the first three lines, I think, but of course it's hard to tell because I've already read the first three lines --I hadn't thought about the Genesis 1/John 1 opening but it is an option to consider. I'll give it some thought.
We were blindfolded as we ran
through the hedgerow maze
past roses blooming in a perpetual night. -- I'm thinking something along the lines of "through the maze of hedgerows and roses that threw scent into perpetual night" -- because a visual image of blooming is out of place and not enough of a contrast to work as absurdity.--That's a very good point. It also means that I should probably review this in its entirety to include more sensory details beyond sight.
Beauty painted with a thorn's brush -- this is a bit gooey and overly romantic-sounding.  Again, the visual image is not right, plus that abstraction of "beauty" really detracts from the sensual nature of the poem.--I take your point. I could see how this could be a shorthand cheat and should probably go deeper.
against our skin. There was no red -- what about "we could see no red word"? Because I read this and just went, yep, well, they wouldn't see it anyway would they?  Even non-literal blindfolds need to be respected.--Yeah continuity issue or at the least an of course you can't see morons issue. This will probably get worked out if I work to engage more senses.
word hovering over the waters
that we might speak to stop -- how do you think "to stop" would go on a line of its own?--I think I'm annoyed I didn't see that myself.
the descent of the knife.

~~


*Very old NaPM poem with a few updates.

Appreciate the comments.

Best,

Todd