Experimental Prose Poem

[Todd]

Hi Jack,

You have some great stuff here. Here are some comments and suggestions for you to consider.

It is a paradox of life that gay men often have the most incestuous relationships with their mothers.--okay here's the controlling sentence (and from observation I think you're strangely correct for a lot of people) I don't know if you need "of life' what does it really add.

*

So now we ask ourselves how does the speaker contend with the truth he previously presented. We go internal. The rain are the thoughts that beat down not giving him peace or a way to recover. There's a sense of noice (rain, carpet beaters). I realize that not everything has to make coherent sense but I will point things out in case you want to work on them. Is there a better word than houses (i.e., shanties, shacks, lean-to) something that conveys more strongly the picture. Houses feels like a more vague choice than it has to be. Do they have shutters and porches? This feels more like a dilapitated southern manor that has lost its luster. I like carpet beaters and shriveled women of indeterminate age.

My mind is a Third World village. Rain pours on it ceaselessly. The houses weren't built to take such punishment. The shutters bang their frames like carpet beaters. Shriveled women of indeterminate age sit on the sagging porches saying, doing, thinking nothing, as their children hassle passing cars.

*

I don't expect many of the third world houses have rooms but that isn't distracting to me here because were moving closer into the internal life of the speaker. English decadence with a flower print rug and a roaring fire convey dealing with the relationship from the perspective of a gay man. Now the thoughts coalesce into pictures on the wall--the mother, the great dichotomy. This section has some wonderful specific concrete details. I like it a lot. One other thought because of what you are doing in the next section (focusing on one specific portrait) would it be stronger to go from street to house to room than in the next section portrait. It seems like this starts panning out when we really are panning in. [/b]

One room in one house on one street, however, contains an English decadence, with a flower print rug before a roaring fire, two deer hide armchairs standing guard, and on a small table between them a silver tea set. The walls are covered in portraits of my mother.

*

Now the camera pans in closer we have moved to focus on one portrait and the central one above the mantelpiece. Great description throughout. I love the pink bra strap, the sexy mortician, the "when my father still loved her". I also like that the second photo comes from a simpler poorer time and it was all the more genuine for it. This is all so good.

The one above the mantelpiece shows her leering just a bit, the shoulder of her dress pulled down slightly, revealing a pink bra strap. Her hair is coal black. She looks like a sexy mortician. Another shows her much younger, when my father still loved her; framed in cheap brown imitation leather, it once adorned the bedside table in my grandmother's guest room. I stole it when I was fifteen. Now it's here.

*

Wonderful. She doesn't get to choose how she is viewed or remembered. Stellar close.

The door of this room is locked. The woman whose house it belongs to isn't allowed in. None of the villagers are.

The finish really sells it. It was an excellent poem Jack.

Best,

Todd[/b]