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[blp]

That day Anna tactfully went out
I spent the morning thinking about tension,
who my parents were and who I was -
really – reluctant me

rooms as empty as I’d always known them

Her plane was late
She showed at 2 or 3
Her black-lashed eyes
closed into downward curving crescents

from smiling, face like a pale Eskimo
round cheeks, teeth very there
My happiness filled the stairwell
Like coloured streamers

Shooting from my back

[Xamonas Chegwe]

blp, you really have a talent. This is so touching. I feel like I've intruded on a very personal and private moment. Don't tell me if it's about a real event - it's best unknown - it just feels real. "round cheeks, teeth very there" is a lovely phrase - it captures a smile beautifully.

Is there a deliberate hint of Plath in there? Or is it just that I've been reading a lot of her lately and am seeing things? Do tell?

Thanks for posting.

[blp]

And thanks for responding. Good to know it works for you in about the same way it works for me. Happy to keep mum on where it came from.

No, I wasn't thinking of Plath, much as I like her.

[Virgil]

That day Anna tactfully went out
I spent the morning thinking about tension,
who my parents were and who I was -
really – reluctant me

rooms as empty as I’d always known them

Her plane was late
She showed at 2 or 3
Her black-lashed eyes
closed into downward curving crescents

from smiling, face like a pale Eskimo
round cheeks, teeth very there
My happiness filled the stairwell
Like coloured streamers

It does feel very

Shooting from my back

It's a good poem, but I can't help feel there should be more to it. Yes it's a nice moment captured. But you introduce this element:


I spent the morning thinking about tension,
who my parents were and who I was -
really – reluctant me
a note of tension and it never never gets resolved. It's like in music when a composer ends on an open cadence. Ultimately you have to concude it. Development is required.

Also, I don't care for this phrase: "teeth very there." I don't think it means anything. The slang of the line helps the immediancy of the moment, but in such a short poem, every phrase has to go beyond that. Just my opinion. I hope you don't mind the criticism. It's a poem with potential.

[blp]

Thanks, Virgil. I don't mind, no. To be honest, your view of the 'teeth very there' phrase is more to my way of thinking than Xamonas' - though when someone likes something I had doubts about, I can be won 'round terribly easily.

There are a lot of loose ends. I'm not sure the tension part needs resolving (not sure). My reading of it is that this is to do with a question about relationships - subject/object relations, the difficulty of disentangling them. Happiness shooting from my shoulders is decidedly not tense - but did I do this or my visitor? But there are other things I don't like, notably the fourth line.

There was originally going to be a lot more, but I got to where I got to and stopping where it did seemed to work, so decided to leave it alone, at least for a while. Now I keep thinking of these lines of Lorinne Neidecker: 'What would they think if they knew / I sit for two months over six lines of poetry?' and I think, yeah, maybe fourteen lines deserve a bit more than an afternoon.

[Virgil]

Ok. In case I wasn't clear, the tension that needs resolvng is the introduction of the parents into a poem about a girl the narrator loves. It seems a little a field that needs something to tie back to the girl or narrator's psyche.

[blp]

It might need more, yes. I thought maybe the vagueness of the connection was right - thinking about parents, tension etc. then engaging in a relationship of my own.