Clock Watching edit1

[addy]

I think you have something really interesting here. I like the idea of it, and love that you're taking it on. However, as the others have stated it's a bit crammed (weighted with too many adjectives, perhaps) and the rhythm has lots of stop-starts. Perhaps this is intentional, given the theme, but maybe do it in moderation so it'll still be reasonably readable

Just some thoughts:

Clock watching

I watched her walk; dragged and halting,
broken backed and bone-bare shinned. I get that this line is purposefully stilted to mimic her walk, but I don't get much of an image when I think "bone-bare shinned"? Not sure what I'm imagining
Her eyes were not aligned to see the sun. Did a double-take, because at first I thought she was perhaps cross-eyed. My mistake of course. With "alignment", i guess you are just trying to recall older methods of timekeeping, such as sundials, but maybe there's a way to clarify this line
Too bright for life why "for life"?, she shunned its glare
as if the truth of light was just too sure for her.
She, in her shaken world, uncertainty a daily constancy;
tick-tock, the clock times out from need to need
so time becomes a useless, child-play toy. I like the image, and it's specificity intrigues me. "Toy" implies that it is useless, but cherished in its naivety; not simply trash. Is it somehow a prelude to your later reference to children? If so, maybe the lines should be closer together
Her rhythm, hunger synchronised, precision guaranteed, I don't like the phrase "precision guaranteed", sounds too unnatural?
counts down to certainty. She lives for one but dies for two.
See, in her wake, a gift to many; a child too many,
a binding umbilical and reminder of her best forgotten days.
The child is pale and drawn, sexless by the lack of clues
which clothes by trait bestow upon the infant frame
but more by the androgeny of pre-pubescent, famine present years. Agree with Jack, these two lines in particular kind of collapse under their own weight
The woman stops and turns, a gesture
meant to indicate that love, somewhere, is there IMO, I think "love is there somewhere" reads more naturally
but wasted on the wasted.
The night is coming to their day. Tick-tock.


tectak
2011