Post-Dated Checks

[Acolyte]

Oh that spacing! Made me swallow nervously, suddenly dry of throat and laughing in that nervous, looking-over-my-shoulder way. Well done.

Offal is sharply painful, of course, with the jarring tone shifts to and (worse) within the quoted dialogue. "not the real one" is a good line, and the dolphins swim out of the poem like psychopomps.

[drumpf]

offal - Well, not the best thing to read before I go to bed in an hour. The poem itself is contemporary, from the line breaks, to the violent juxtapose with a transition that mimics the behavior of the subconscious drift. Moreover, the N itself is very interested in the superficial, but is disposed to reverie, which, in this case, slips to something N learned recently. Thus, the piece highlights a complicated narrator. While the content is matter-of-factly, it's this complex N that makes the poem...poetic?

[Scrow]

Steve - the last is very good, I think - it works in juxtaposition and it raises awareness of a terrible act. You are doing something with these, I hope, not just writing them for poetry boards but putting them out there?

Sarah

[Cameron Clark]

Offal is disturbingly good. Or goodly disturbing. It has invention, a brilliance to it that heightens the act, portrays the crime more searingly than just a straightforward account would.

[JFN]

Not an article I needed to read just before bed Steve! It really is quite frightening. I think the opening is great, and especially enjoyed 'cool as a gold tooth' for its double meaning, the literal coldness of gold as well as the perceived fashion of a gold tooth. The idyllic Californian sections offer a fascinating counterpoint. Chilling.

John

[scraps]

Thank you to everyone that commented! Sorry if I disrupted any sleep patterns! Sarah, as you might have suspected, I have done absolutely nothing with any of them. But I plan to, I do. Thanks for the encouragement.

Steven

[scraps]

dysmorphosis

I dream of anorexia, new york city

and Mormon boys on bicycles.

A very skinny man can go anywhere,

wear anything. The body reaches

like a cathedral spire as it thins,

sharpened shoulder blades unfurl,

clavicles announce themselves to offer

recesses for hiding things. Is it true

that the color of a person’s upper lip

is the exact tone of their nipples? I only ask

because as I grow thinner and thinner,

mine are starting to radiate like a smile.

[drumpf]

dysmorphosis - Teach me your irregular view of things. I too, want to write disturbingly fascinating detail and psychology. Clearly, N has been to the motherland, which is Salt Lake City, and wish to replicate that imagery of stereotypical Mormon boys, but to at an extreme distortion. All I think of is how beautiful this would be as a painting. The best part were the nipples. It suggests that a Mormon's vanity, which I never knew they had one, could be their libido, or at least to N. Staying with the nipples, I am glad that the ending is unexpected, and more so than the rest, because I would have never compared a red lipped smile to nipples. Great connection.

[Acolyte]

I shuddered, I admit. This is powerful, painful. This has been on my mind recently, albeit in a very different way, yet still somehow nipples figure prominently! "go anywhere" is so sharp (true? untrue yet true to N?), that I wonder if it would be stronger following "wear anything". So accurate to weave religion into this twice early; I wanted (well, maybe not the right word, given my discomfort) to see it pop up again near the close.

[scraps]

Thanks drumpf and Acolyte for the comments!

drumpf: If you look at the first line of this last one, I think you'll see I lifted your themes of religion, NYC and fashion (which became anorexia) from you second poem. So, I am thanking you for the inspiration!

Acolyte: Thanks for the comments - I find myself writing about nipples a lot, lol. They are like portals, I think.

This next one is NSFW so feel free to skip ahead if that's not your thing.

Thanks again!

Steven

[scraps]

Blown

He was much younger and the car was packed
with friends. They had driven through the night
and were almost there when they pulled off
for gas. The car lurched to a stop and all four
doors flung open at once.

The lazy semen bubbled down his cock like a long
white tear.

[Sorella]

So I am back after some prodding, starting with your latest, which is pretty effective, especially when I look back at the title!
I wonder what else is waiting in this thread.
Will be back!

[Donner]

Hi, Steven,

"Blown" does a lot of work in this one and "much younger" is the driver of the piece.

Those were the days. : )

Donna

[Cameron Clark]

Steve, this poem unseats me, and so I return to read it again, and that is a successful poem! "white tear of joy" indeed.


Hope this helps.

[Scrow]

Hi,

dysmorophosis is very good, I think. It reminds me of a postcard I have of a spiky Cathedral - the image in L5 made me dig it out - I also like the focus on colour, on body, reminiscent (here) of the body becoming atrophied, a martyr, semi-religious and transformed. Vulnerable in seeming invulnerability.


Blown is funny and quietly sad - all that closed up excitement of the car flung open. I had to google ‘NSFW’. Lol. Jee’s thread once caused my server to ban absolutely loads of site access at work (none of them remotely inappropriate). I now internally name unintended institutional consequences from reading/watching contemporary art/literature as ‘The Jee Effect’


Sarah