Bad Hips

[Richard]

Hey ing4,
I like a lot of what you're doing here. I like how you experimented with the structure of the poem. I get the feeling it's presented in a disjointed pattern to mirror the idea of bad hips. I'll go into more detail below:

i come from a family of bad hips             we carry our weight in our walk -I keep wanting to combine the two lines on the left to read: "I come from a family of bad angles". I feel like if your title is going to be "bad hips," you don't need to say it again in the poem.

our legs at bad angles          my father simplified by his pain -This is where the lack of punctuation got to me. A colon here would have made me realize the next two lines expand on this. It took a few readings for me to realize this.

on the stairs his back hunches             he sleeps with deliberate motions -What would a deliberate motion look like here? I feel like you could go into more detail, or use a more specific image.

on the farm he used to dig the fastest             the shovel his whole self -I like the double meaning here. That this could mean he shoveled it all by himself or there was a oneness with the shovel.

it was a way to survive               like stealing blackberries in the heat it was a way

lips smeared purple his tongue showed            when it finally rained he caught it mouthfirst -I like how you describe the image here with the blackberries. The last line has a nice double meaning because it relates to the blackberries image and how rain probably aggravates bad hips. 

I think this is a nice first draft, and I look forward to seeing where you take this from here.

Thanks for the read,
Richard