Last Picture

[Wex]

A photo of us taken on a Saturday morning
beside the raised bonnet of your red sports car.

That blue shop rag spilling out of your pocket, rusty wrench
clutched close to your chest, oil in the creases 

of your pallid face like grey laced capillaries tracing your smile.
Looming in the background I notice for the first time 

veins and arteries of the Rowan tree against the sky.
                                         Berries bleed the horizon.

[Leanne]

This is a beautifully vivid picture. The blatantly-stated colour is something I would normally dislike, but you have a fine touch and the bookending of the red sports car/ rowan berries is perfect. I really enjoy the little stitches that hold this together: car bonnet to oily mechanic's rag, oily "capillaries" to "veins and arteries" of the tree's branches.

I wonder if there shouldn't be a hyphen in grey-laced?

Very much enjoyed this, thanks!

[billy]

i was enthralled till the last line, it just felt too glib. it was an absolutely magical piece. sorry for not giving more feedback

A photo of us taken on a Saturday morning
beside the raised bonnet of your red sports car.

That blue shop rag spilling out of your pocket, rusty wrench
clutched close to your chest, oil in the creases 

of your pallid face like grey laced capillaries tracing your smile.
Looming in the background I notice for the first time 

veins and arteries of the Rowan tree against the sky.
                                         Berries bleed the horizon.

[Wex]

Thanks guys for taking the time to read and comment.

[ellajam]

So vivid. I like the afterthought, the way we looking so closely for details we may have missed. Some notes below.

A photo of us taken on a Saturday morning
beside the raised bonnet of your red sports car.

That blue shop rag spilling out of your pocket, rusty wrench
clutched close to your chest, oil in the creases
I like the way blue kicks back to bonnet, and how the red/blue pop off the photo. I love wrench as a break here and for me crease works exceptionally well as enjambment.

of your pallid face like grey laced capillaries tracing your smile. Beautiful line.
Looming in the background I notice for the first time

veins and arteries of the Rowan tree against the sky
.....................................Berries bleed the horizon.
For me this was an effective use of white space, the line puts an emphatic period on the situation with a burst of emotion.

So, I like it as is, sorry about not having any suggestions but hopefully you can consider the comments if you decide to edit. Welcome to the Pen.

[Achebe]

I loved the verisimilitude of

rusty wrench
clutched close to your chest, oil in the creases
of your pallid face

The whole build up to this is beautiful.
The subsequent image of 'gray laced capillaries' I find hard to picture. 'Capillary' comes from the Latin for 'hair' (capelli in Italian = hair!), and that implies a solid 3-D object, like a strand of hair, not a 2-D network of facial lines. I suspect that you may have left it in as anticipating 'veins and arteries' in the last two lines, but I didn't find it an effective set up.
I think the last two lines are more effective if you don't 'notice for the first time' - as it tends to shift focus to your surprise, instead of the subsequent image of a bleeding tree.
You might also reconsider 'veins and arteries' - it's not rhythmic, and 'arteries' following 'veins' comes across as lazy thought association.
Eg.

...Looming in the background, a rowan tree
its branches like veins against the sky,
berries bleeding the horizon.

[laura_ann]

Though I've workshopped poems in college, this is my first time in the Pig Pen so please give me grace if I do not use the site's best practices in my suggestions - I'm learning . Overall, I found your imagistic poem enthralling. The image you paint for us with your words is both familiar to an average reader and distinct to the specific speaker. I'm not a fan of your title; "Last Picture" is rather trite and does not capture the uniqueness of this specific experience of "looking at a picture and remembering." I love the verisimilitude of this piece: a poem about a picture; it might be worthwhile to create another layer of artistic reflection in order to really capture this thread in the piece.
I respectfully disagree with the comments of @Achebe in the previous post. I think your "notice for the first time" coupled with the veins and arteries suggests that the speaker is only later recognizing the life-giving, heart-living relationship between the speaker and the one with the sports car. The image of grey laced capillaries coupled with the veins and arteries and "bleed"ing in the last line seem to thread together as a way of emphasizing perhaps the elderliness/poor health of the other person in the poem. If this is what you were looking for, I would suggest that you add maybe a little bit more about wrinkles or other attributes of aging to solidify this hint for the reader. In the last line, I think it might be more effective to connect the berries with the Rowan tree from the previous line. As it stands now, the last line is too disconnected from the rest of the poem. You are creating enough emphasis with the shorter line and the white space before it. It somehow needs to be connected to the rest of the poem - I've offered my edit suggestion in the poem below. Also the grammar in the last sentence was a little off: looming in the background does not refer to "I" the speaker. I added some hyphens to help make the speaker's comment and the looming rowan tree separate in the sentence structure.

Finally, below, I've added some different enjambment and spacing that you might be interested in. But again, Kudos! I really enjoyed this and felt like I was sucked into wrestling with the macro social anxiety of memory and relationship - how we navigate between the discrepancies in our lived experiences/how they shape us presently and the experiences as they are documented - how we let the future imperfect tense inform the way we live with ourselves, our tasks, and one another (Check out Mark Currie's "The Unexpected: Narrative Temporality and the Philosophy of Surprise"). I can't wait to read more from you! Thanks for sharing.


A photo of us taken on a Saturday morning
beside the raised bonnet of your red sports car.

That blue shop rag spilling out of your pocket, rusty
wrench clutched close to your chest, oil in the creases

of your pallid face like grey laced capillaries tracing
your smile. Looming in the background - I notice for the first time -

veins and arteries of the Rowan tree against the sky,
its berries bleed the horizon.

[Wex]

Thanks all! Lots to think about now when it comes to revising. Appreciate your thoughts and input.