Free verse № 129963
Letter from Palermo
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.
10 comments
Good morning? Good evening?
Would you consider dropping the air-quotes around comfortable? I think the irony is obvious enough without. Then adding a period and dropping "as" from the next line. Yes, I've a personal thing with "as", and it seems to me like if you're telling a story, like you are, then it's kind of understood that things are happening at the same or almost-same time.
That's about it. This is one of the best of yours I've read.
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.
I need to change without changing the good points.
Let me know with any future postings if you can.
I think I have the ideas and some are too big for my limited ability - I am not saying their i am crap but maybe my ideas are too vast for my talents.
Thats the gut reaction from your comment.
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