AKA Sandra

[PrinceMyshkin]

This is very recent and I feel still raw. I invite you to be as rigorous as you like in commenting on it.

A specific concern that I have is: Do you have any intuition as to who or what "Sandra" is? That isn't a test as indeed I have nothing but an inarticulable notion myself!



Sandra goes by many names,
not the least of which
are Death and desire.
She wears your slinky, basic-black
outfit at times; at other times
a Hugo Boss three-piece suit
that practically stands alone
without her.

Sandra is never more sly
than when she’s bold or more bold
than when she’s half-turned away from you.
The more of herself she shows,
the less you seem to know her.

Craving to know her better
you shed pieces of what you believe
to be your most authentic self
like planks of skin
falling away from a badly-burned body.

[blp]

I dunno. I assumed she was just your latest flame.

I'd change 'stands alone' since that has connotations other than just standing up on its own, which I assume is all you meant.

Not mad about the first three lines, to put it mildly. A lot of S2, similarly, feels a little trash novel femme fatale, to be, admittedly, brutal.

The last strophe's good in terms of its meaning, though I'm not sure about 'planks', though I guess it kind of works as a play on 'opinion', though maybe that's not what you meant.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I dunno. I assumed she was just your latest flame.

I'd change 'stands alone' since that has connotations other than just standing up on its own, which I assume is all you meant.

Not mad about the first three lines, to put it mildly. A lot of S2, similarly, feels a little trash novel femme fatale, to be, admittedly, brutal.

The last strophe's good in terms of its meaning, though I'm not sure about 'planks', though I guess it kind of works as a play on 'opinion', though maybe that's not what you meant.

No, not my latest flame nor any actual woman and certainly not one I've known. More, as I think of it, a representation of fate or Fate.

Did not consider anything you wrote to be "brutal." Thank you for it.

[thegitksan]

From the way the lines are written, I'd gained the impression Sandra is a kind of alter ego, perhaps a public persona, that, given sufficient energy, begins to take on a life of her own.

The thing about personae (mine anyway) is that they often DO tend to act in clichéd ways. So for me, the trash novel femme fatale descriptions are apt.