Forge

[RiverNotch]

Clean, or maybe I'm more lenient with this sort of stuff. Yeah, the forum format don't really do it justice. Thoughts:

Indent to start each paragraph improves the weird formatting, I think, each including the start.
                She was a contortionist, sword-swallower, and a failure, accordingly. "accordingly" is not a style of speech heard anywhere else in the poem -- sets up false expectations Her brother, estranged, was a contortionist, sword-swallower, and strongman with a business, making bespoke throat bent ironwork. "bespoke throat bent ironwork", lovely sonics, though I'm sure there's a better term than "making" He'd won prizes. He had a profile in the New Yorker, he was an artist. lol But she was just a performer, touring cross country under the smell of sawdust and candyfloss. not sure "under the smell" is the right usage. i feel like "smell" could be better, say a more tangible term like "wind", "smoke", even "aura"
                Every evening she draped herself around a blade, bending with the crowd's ooos... don't see the need for the ellipsis she was a candelabra of cutlasses, a human vane in the night-wind. nice But no matter how good her act, she was not satisfied. For each time the supple metal righted itself, removed edge straight again; not sure if semicolon instead of the probably wrong comma, or the abused-by-myself em dash impressed only with the ghostly slick of her gut.
                The tent was put up and taken down, the people blew in then out, the sword inserted and withdrawn, limbs switched and returned. now this is something i'm more sure should be em dashes instead of commas -- periods would make it too choppy, so would semicolons, but commas don't give each statement enough breath. but still, i do abuse that mark... Her manoeuvres left no imprint upon the sword. would prefer, just for a more coherent image, "imprints" All was pointless. veers too close to a joke, for me. maybe i've heard too many sword puns
                 Her self-doubt deepened. Her coiled body, a fallow tract, a whorl to nowhere. She became her own slowest torturer. The roars of the dusk audience dimmed.  After many years all she could taste was the metal, all the time. When the circus closed she did not move. When her brother died she did not speak. She billowed and bloomed like a jellyfish, transparent and torpid. She only animated when she put her sword in. somehow, this whole paragraph reeks excess for me, as if the poem strives to reach an epiphany it already has an equivalent of. "her own slowest torturer" sounds a little too maudlin; the bits of decay, incidental, as if that was never the point of the poem; and the final two sentences, hollow. the only good sentence here is "her coiled body a fallow tract, a whorl to nowhere", which as ellajam noted has the singular problem of being one comma too many -- perhaps move it to another place, delete the rest. otherwise, lovely work









(Sorry I know prose poetry looks shit in forum formatting, thanks for reading!)