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Letter from Palermo (Free verse) by Caducus

Rivers of cataracts were hospice aisles, where canteen zombies raped etiquette bludgeoning my youth as I waited for Grandmas high when she'd call me her husbands name until the drugs wore off and she called me 'Giuseppe' rubbing herself till I cried. Syringe maidens and skin pinchers Came to keep her 'comfortable' As Nan asked for Tea To be made in her Ming China cup. I made her a tea with silver In a plastic cup by plastic sheets She whispered 'Giuseppe'. On her eighty eighth birthday Nan crawled by herself to a window Watched the sun fall like memories, Whispering I was told an Italian name Before paling on the golden lino Clasping a letter sent from Palermo. I buried her with Grand Papa but kept her ashes for the South Wind to take her back to Giuseppe.

zodiac 23-Nov-05/11:31 PM
No. I'm a special education teacher in the middle of the Jordanian desert. But I did study poetry for about 7 years of college.

1) What you're lacking most is consistency to your metaphors. You often pick one aspect of an image that relates to the thing you're describing, but ignore the other aspects of it that don't relate at all. For instance, in a recent poem you called child prostitutes "painted masterpieces" when the only thing about masterpieces that resembles child prostitutes is something like "painted up to please the viewer"; all other aspects of masterpieces, like "product of hard work and creative genius, appealing on dozens of sublime and intellectual levels, painted by respectable people" totally work against what you're trying to get across about prostitutes.
A corollary of this, though not as necessary, is consistency between metaphors. For example, in this poem you have things compared to rivers and zombies like, two lines apart. It's not such a crime, but ideally there'd be some kind of logic or connection between them.

That's all I can do right now. I'll get back on the rest.




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