Love, After

[matsunosuperfan]

Love, After

Thirty years of clutching
the wheel through blizzards not convinced by the edgy line break here, feels tryhard and pushy
and black ice skids.  these sound like natural disasters unrelated to any human frailty, interesting

Twenty years of habitual don't understand how to read this adverb as anything but superfluous
designated driving,
hand over glass.    i guess "hand over glass" is a gesture meaning "no more, thanks" - but shouldn't the DD simply not drink?

Upon further reflection I think S2 really hurts the poem, it pigeonholes my reading and really doesn't do anything more than say, "this is all about alcoholism"

Today, yesterday, tomorrow  mmmm idk- kinda melodramatic, feels amateurish
I automatically aim
for the passenger door,   have tried but can't parse this - what are you gonna do, jump out a moving car?
sink into music I haven’t chosen
and read.  it feels vaguely "resigned to this" vibes, not sure what else to make of it

Impulse/occasion is worthy 
conceit (30 years/20/today) holds up well enough
a pretty good draft

I think the final gesture is too opaque as written. And there is some narrative confusion sapping the impact throughout. The title is distastefully summative and directive; I think this happens because the poem kinda knows itself to be a bit vague, so compensates by asking its title to hold up the world. There is a good "tell it slant" ethos at work here, but the work in the individual stanzas could be more precisely evocative to support that project.

Most importantly I feel I am playing poem riddle. The plot is too vague; somehow the poem seems very linear but also unclear in frustrating ways. The final gesture feels pregnant but also just kinda unclear.