Poemranker [Replying] Sun Apr 28 06:35:46 PDT 2024

Replying to a comment on:

Woman in the purple cotton jacket(repaired) (Free verse) by INTRANSIT

She talks quietly with the elderly couple, seeming healthy except for her rubberized hands: Small bendable fingers, look alikes, no fancy prosthetics, stainless hooks, or muscle triggers. It took both of her hands to manuever the fork just to pick a single beet slice. I watched her a moment more, paid the bill, and went outside to watch a father showing his son how to hold a stone for skipping.

zodiac

6-Mar-04/9:21 AM

I think you should have paid the bill, walked out into the street, and been hit by a bus. Waking up in the hospital with two prosthetic legs would have actually been a less heavy-handed and predictable 'ironic' ending than the one you have here.

Really, I'd cut everything after beet slice, which is good, and (yes, seriously) add an ending where you walk out of the restaurant, NOT OBVIOUSLY THINKING OF ANYTHING - just description. At the very end the narrator a) passes under trees which reach up into the dark like hands, b) boards a subway/trolley/whatever where bored commuters loop their hands through those hand-loopy-thingies, or c) some less cheesy image of your own. DO NOT MORALIZE!!!1! DO NOT RECEIVE ANY OBVIOUS LIFE-CHANGING EPIPHANY ABOUT ANYTHING!! Just keep up the naturalistic description, and have a hand-image show up somewhere unexpected before the end. That's all and this poem will be great. If you understand, blink twice. Good.

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