GIRLHOOD

[RiverNotch]

 
The opening paragraph is silly. The poem is clear enough as it is in conveying all that -- spilling the beans so early is distracting to those who are patient, and detracting to those who are not.
While in, ribbons around my throat
As they knitted my hair out of streamers.
Manners for every meal with crushed 
Ignorance to wash it all down. I yearned 
Stupidly: rocking chair. Light bulb. Scissors. Hot and choking. 
I kept having a dream about being in a
Garage, the smell of wood thick, and hitting Then somewhat cooler, yet still choking -- choking chemically, instead of physically.
The ground until it sank beneath my crooked
Fist. I always cried when I awoke. The jaunty enjambments of this whole stanza is definitely something to be commended -- frenetic, stuttering, all with purpose. Although there are a few points of confusion: "while in", as already mentioned, and "yearned" are made clear only on reaching the next stanza. 

Once out, I slept naked whenever I could,
Shaved my head and crammed my apartment. Crammed....with what? I mean, it is made somewhat clear by the following lines, but it reads as awkwardly as the above-mentioned points of confusion.
I spent stupidly: name tag. Notepad. Sheer Curtains. 
I kept waking up in the middle of the night, scared 
There would be somebody to drag me back. Wee point: I think, cadence-wise, "There'd be someone to drag me back" would be better.

I washed my clothes and you came home with me
And that was that. She got you too, sometimes I 
Think worse, right by the fucking wrist. Sometimes 
You would turn to me in the morning when you 
Thought I was asleep and whisper it - "Am I pretty?"
And each time I kept my eyes closed. This stanza just doesn't work for me. The mood of a lost childhood was clear in the first two stanzas. Then, in this stanza, the speaker moves on to something else -- the speaker introduces a "you". This addressed seems to have the same lost childhood as the speaker, and the intimacy of the following actions suggests that he or she is a sibling, but that isn't made very clear -- I at first imagined this "you" was the speaker's younger self, as nothing concrete actually ties the addressed to the world of the speaker. "I washed my clothes" doesn't evoke the moment the "you" came home with the speaker, since the rest of the stanza doesn't have imagery to support it, unlike the various interjections of the first two stanzas. "She got you too" doesn't evoke any memories of abuse, especially because the single suggestion of actual abuse in the earlier stanzas, "hitting the floor", is undermined by its being presented via dream, and by the other lines suggesting a position of privilege, eg "Manners for every meal"; and because "right by the fucking wrist" sounds more like a suicide attempt than some form of physical abuse (and if the speaker is telegraphing that the mental illness that caused such as an attempt was because of the household, I refer to the earlier part of this sentence). And everything else isn't as packed as the first two stanzas, with "Am I pretty?" not saying anything to me because of the aforementioned nebulous nature of the addressed. Ultimately, because the addressed isn't well defined, or the real nature of the old household's darkness is never made entirely clear, this introduction to a new character and situation in the poem fails to say what it wants to say, and thus feels superfluous.

Each year, the farther we got from her the harder 
We had to bite down. When we died, our teeth, 
Dulled and soft, were put into a museum built out Another wee point: "...were put in a museum..." sounds more natural, I think...
Of clay. That winter it was burnt down. Our teeth ...as well as "That winter it burned down."...
remained - pearls in ashes. ...and, instead of an em dash that adds an unnecessary breath, just a comma.
And, though this stanza I think is about as good as the first two, none of this solves any of the problems I had with the third, unlike when the second stanza clarified a few bits of the first. Again, it's the lack of specificity -- even if you don't make it clear whether the addressed is a sibling or not, at least make it clear what sort of relationship he or she has with the speaker, whether, for example, their lying together to sleep is something supposed to be rooted in the speaker's nightmares or in the speaker's physical world. Otherwise, the work's already quite strong, and yes, I know this is Basic, but most of my words are for only one big point anyway.