Tiny Homeless Sestina

[PoetryAndPhysics]

Vile acts happened on me, but I can’t remember.
It burns spooning with concrete corners.
I’ll not wash love stains off this sweatshirt.

That’s no beer-belly, but a bag under my sweatshirt
full of long cored apples, fresh as newborns to remember.
Heaven’s joy is dozing warm coffee shop corners.

Words wriggle like fish over my mouth’s corners.
My gait’s marvelous like a dependable old sweatshirt:
I’ve been struttin’ my stuff before even god can remember.

I use sweatshirt food to feed birds on the corner, praying they’ll remember.



*Not a sestina, but a trestina (or, half a sestina, in terms of repeating end words, though with about 1/4th as many lines).

[tectak]

Vile acts happened on me, but I can’t remember.
It burns spooning with concrete corners.
I’ll not wash love stains off this sweatshirt.

That’s no beer-belly, but a bag under my sweatshirt
full of long cored apples, fresh as newborns to remember.
Heaven’s joy is dozing warm coffee shop corners.

Words wriggle like fish over my mouth’s corners.
My gait’s marvelous like a dependable old sweatshirt:
I’ve been struttin’ my stuff before even god can remember.

I use sweatshirt food to feed birds on the corner, praying they’ll remember.



*Not a sestina, but a trestina (or, half a sestina, in terms of repeating end words, though with about 1/4th as many lines).

Hi Pand P,
I am not a fan, at all, of "sestinas", or indeed any of the contrived and vexacious forms which exist for no good purpose. There, that's me ostracised
OK. Poetic crit from me,then, is biassed. So take that in to account, please. It is hard enough finding end-line words out of the million-plus available to choose from (if some of the rhyming poetry posted is anything to judge on) so restricting choice to three is bound to mangle the sense of the piece...and so it appears here.
S1 is in danger of reading like something from Stanley Unwin's pen. "It burns spooning with concrete corners"...unable to determine what this means is a problem for me, but also for "it". What it?
S2 continues in similar vein.."full of long cored apples, fresh as newborns to remember". Sorry, but marbling of the girded sling is slithered to the pail, remember. (?)
S3, "My gait’s marvelous like a dependable old sweatshirt:" is a metaphor too far for me...but hell, it ended in "sweatshirt" so kudos to you.
Not for me. Sorry, but you started it.
Best,
tectak

[PoetryAndPhysics]

Gracias tectak. This is nothing, wait till I get out a couple of pantoums, one or two villanelles. Well, first I’d have to write them... Perhaps S2L2 would be clearer with “full of once ripe apples” (but that makes it more trite)? By long cored apples I was trying to say long since cored, apples that she ate long ago but kept the cores of. I tried comparing her memory of what the apples were (fresh) to newborns…doing that in one line wasn’t so easy. I’ll plead the 5th on S3L2; I liked “marvelous” in that position, and “dependable old sweatshirt”, and it was better than what was there before, so went for it. Kk, that’s enough explaining out of me

Thanks,
Gary

[btrudo]

Remember, corners, sweatshirt seem like decent end word choices.

Though I do think the shortened version doesn't do much good here. A good ole' fashioned sestina, all 39 lines, would do this more justice.

Sestinas are difficult to write well, but I think the literal and psychological territory of being homeless would be accessible in the form.

a thought or two,
Bill

[ChristopherSea]

I don't mind using poetry forms as an excercise to construct a piece under constraint of rhyme, meter and stanza structure. However, they should suit the poem and visa-versa. Herein, they clash somewhat for me. The language is a bit awkward too, for example, 'acts happened on me', 'burns spooning', 'long cored apples', 'sweatshirt food', don't sing well to me. 'Words wriggle like fish over my mouth’s corners' is my favorite line! Perhaps, it's better to write the poem first and then see if it fits into a form or ask whether it would benefit from one.

[PoetryAndPhysics]

Thanks Chris and Bill. I agree that this should receive the full sestina treatment. Of course the reason I didn't at the time was simple mathematics: 10 lines < 39 lines. But it's a topic I've written about and will probably continue to, and will give the full 39 lines a go in the next iteration.

Gary

[YazH]

Vile acts happened on me, but I can’t remember.
It burns spooning with concrete corners.
I’ll not wash love stains off this sweatshirt.

That’s no beer-belly, but a bag under my sweatshirt
full of long cored apples, fresh as newborns to remember.
Heaven’s joy is dozing warm coffee shop corners.

Words wriggle like fish over my mouth’s corners.
My gait’s marvelous like a dependable old sweatshirt:
I’ve been struttin’ my stuff before even god can remember.

I use sweatshirt food to feed birds on the corner, praying they’ll remember.



*Not a sestina, but a trestina (or, half a sestina, in terms of repeating end words, though with about 1/4th as many lines).

I like the idea, but I'm confused on what I'm supposed to feel. The first stanza is really good. I'm curious about what happened and I can already sense loneliness in it.

The second stanza confuses me
That’s no beer-belly, but a bag under my sweatshirt
Is it an example of simple judgment? Are people judging you because of how it appears or is it the person is afraid of being obvious on carrying the bag of apples?

And then it turns refreshing(whenever I think of apples and newborns I think of new) right before the uncomfortable feelings return in the last stanza.

But, I absolutely love the attitude of the voice. It sounds very no-nonsense and accepting of circumstances although displeased with some of it.

[jdeirmend]

There are some awesome images here, and the thrust of the whole thing, the little snippet of the life-world of this imagined homeless person is generally compelling. The sensual details bear the marks of great promise. I simply want to learn more about this person's world. One cool thing about forms that feature this sort of lexical repetition is the way in which you can craft a story with them. You begin to do that with this, but you don't complete the story. That is my suggestion for revision: write more.

Vile acts happened on me, but I can’t remember.
It burns spooning with concrete corners.
I’ll not wash love stains off this sweatshirt.

That’s no beer-belly, but a bag under my sweatshirt
full of long cored apples, fresh as newborns to remember.
Heaven’s joy is dozing warm coffee shop corners.

Words wriggle like fish over my mouth’s corners.
My gait’s marvelous like a dependable old sweatshirt:
I’ve been struttin’ my stuff before even god can remember.

I use sweatshirt food to feed birds on the corner, praying they’ll remember.



*Not a sestina, but a trestina (or, half a sestina, in terms of repeating end words, though with about 1/4th as many lines).