Coiled

[Todd]

Hi Aish,

It's nice to read you again. Let me give you some comments below. Hopefully, they will be helpful.

I read this through a few times, and I must admit that I'm not sure I'm connecting with it properly. I'll try to give you enough feedback so you can see if you accomplished what you intended to. Here goes:

Starting with the title, I think of first a snake (reinforced by sibilant in L1). When I take the last two lines into account I think of a snake perhaps swallowing itself. In the context of a relationship (which the poem lends itself to), this could be one of those images stating where do I end and you begin. So while I could have thought of coiled like a python and its prey, the images seemed to speak to two people being interwoven together.

In the twilight of a sibilant heart--I do like this first line. I like that twilight is called out. I take this to mean that we are at a point of decision as twilight is a demarcation between night and day. It also could imply that something is about to end. Sibilant ties in nicely with the title and reinforces the image. I take this to be a way of stressing that the heart is deceptive while also introducing sound into the line. I am a bit concerned with many of your prepositional phrases throughout the poem (not this one)--more on those later
spinning mouths
embroider silk embraces--These next two lines make me think of spiders more than serpents. Spinning mouths would make me think of entrapping another with our words like a web. The embroider silk embraces though sounds sort of genteel. It doesn't have a trapping sense to it. I wasn't sure how to take these lines as a whole because they seemed to be removed from your title so I wasn't connecting them together.
from the sky of impersonated longing.--Here's one of those prepositional phrase constructions I was mentioning. This may just be me, but I'm wondering if you can find an image that could take the place of that construction. It feels a bit too manufacturered to me (if that makes the slightest bit of sense). I'm also having a hard to time piecing the correct meaning together.
Eggshell gestures--This is pretty nice because you get the sense of a coiled snake putting pressure on an egg. The couple is concerned that at any point they could break the tenuous balance they've established
barter cankered covenants--now I'm getting a garden of eden image from you cankers from an apple tree, the exchange that comes from it, and the covenant of (I guess it would be "works"). You always seem to blend a level of mysticism under your narrative--that is if I'm on the right track with that line.
and the snarling flint of skin--I keep wanting to replace and with as. There is a part of me Aish that wonders if you need snarling. You have a lot of modifiers in this and the next line and it feels a bit weighty.
grinds against the whetstone of lustful danger.--Here's the third prepositional phrase that stood out to me. I wonder if there's a way the very action of the whetstone could imply lustful danger. The idea of grinding in common vernacular could imply the lust. I'd just like to see the image to carry more of the weight.
When pain becomes a broken hunger
who is the lover, and who is the knife?--I very much like these final lines. They tie back to the circular sense of coiling. I especially like the idea of a broken hunger. The one downside to this ending for me is that it seems so much stronger than a lot of what's leading up to it. I would almost consider reworking the poem into a repetition of these types of circular statements. In short, It would be interesting if the poem would coil more. That said again, I really like the ending.

I enjoyed the read. You could take this in a lot of interesting directions. I hope some of that ramble was helpful.

Best,

Todd