Palpable Absence

[miyako73]

I hide

Behind the painted fence,
The open wooden gate
Riddled with termite holes,

Beside the stairs
Where weeds grow
in the birds' droppings,

On the covered patio,
Overlooking the garden
Of mossed cobblestones.

I hide

Behind the unlatched window
Listening to women's gossip,
Watching the children play.

Around the dim-lit corner
Pretending to be a shadow
Of a swaying leafless tree,

Along the carpeted hallway
Among the potted plants
Already dry since Winter.

I hide

Under the glass table,
Behind its broken chair
Scared of the dead rose,

Inside the dark closet
Of socks and unworn shirts
Unfolded and not hung,

By the laundry basket
Blowing away the stench
Of cologne and Summer.

I hide

Under the squeaking bed
Chipping off sharp iron rust,
Pulling loose mattress threads,

Behind the red stucco wall
Near last year's calendar
Crossed out and torn,

Above the caving ceiling
In the cobwebs, in the dust,
Beside the flakes of paint,

But you don't seek.

[Hawkman]

Hi miyako. That's quite a list, but I think my favourite place is under the screeching bed, but in the place by the concrete stairs the weeds should grow in the bird droppings. you don't need to pluralise the birds or make them possessive with an apostrophe. Bird droppings is fine as a generalisation.

I find it difficult to imagine hiding in front of a door and the way the stanza is worded it reads as if it is the door that's hesitant and unable to knock, rather than the narrator. You dont need an "S" on gossip, you can say, Women's gossip, or even women gossip in this context. "Pretending as a shadow of a lifeless tree" doesn't actually make sense. You could pretend to be a shadow of a lifeless tree. I don't think you need "already" before "dried since winter." and dry might be better.

As for the wardrobe you should be aware that only people are hanged, as in, "hanged by the neck until you are dead." It's why I liked the image in your long poem of the dead things hanged from the crib, implying they'd been executed. Can't quite get the same frisson from a shirt, especially when it isn't. :D Hung would be appropriate here.

You always seem to manage to provide us with powerful, and sometimes intriguing, images, but you seem to get into the flow and then become reluctant to stop. Are you familiar with the concept of the Shaggy Dog Storey? It's a story, usually a joke, which goes on at some length, usually for comic effect, and then concludes with a non-sequitur. Your poem doesn't end with one, but the length of the list of places where the narrator hides, does go on a bit. This last, is, of course, a purely subjective response and I'm sure others will disagree, but I do feel that by reducing the number of places you hid, waiting vainly to be found, would tighten up the poem and give it a bit more punch.

Live and be well - H

[miyako73]

This was challenging for me, Hawk. I just couldn't control the flow of the images I imagined. It seems this is still a work in progress. By the way, traces or memories are in those hiding places.

This is how it started: while driving I thought of writing about a depressed man who just lost his partner. The entire hiding places are traces of the departed or memories left by her. For instance, the leafless tree is the dead tree outside that she planted, and he now abandons. Another is the droppings of the birds she used to feed. She would pick those droppings too. The entire house is unkempt and dilapidated because the guy is just too depressed. "You did not seek" has two meanings: seeking her memories and seeking help.

[MorpheusSandman]

I actually like this as it brings back memories of my childhood playing hide and seek or just my cousin or friends and I gathering in the nooks and crevices of our houses for their secluded privacy and to observe everything on the outside. But I also agree with Hawk that the piece feels too long to be built solely on the premise of "I hide A, I hide B" and on and on. Usually in such a poem there needs to be some logical progression of the images, and not just an arbitrary collection. And I can't help but feel like many of these stanzas could be mixed up and it wouldn't make a difference as to the affect.

[Hawkman]

yes, miyako, I picked up on all those nuances. I like that you've split the list up a bit by turning "I hide" into a refrain. It defiinitly helps. Something you might want to bear in mind: In pictorial representations of still life, uneven groups are bettr than even numbers. Three is better than two and five is better than four. It's something I try to apply to rhetorical devices and for this reason I can't help thinking that repeating "I Hide"
one last time before, "but you don't seek" might be a good idea.

I did toy with the idea of suggesting turning this into part of the refrain, but it would spoil the impact of that final line, whereas concluding with:

"I hide
but you don't seek"

draws much more emotion from the piece. Just a suggestion.

Live and be well - H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I too thought that a last reiteration of "I hide" ought to be counterpointed with that last line, but I have mixed feelings about that. Without it, it's somewhat as if the narrator has grown tired and discouraged at mentioning again that she is hiding - after all, we've come to understand that it was always a plea to the absent one: Yoo hoo, have you noticed that I'm not there? so I do think it could be omitted.

What I love as I do in all your poems is the sharp eye for very specific, concrete things.

[miyako73]

Thanks again for reading. This is, by far, my most difficult poetic undertaking. Usually, I just abandon a difficult literary idea even though vivid images, moving colors, deep words, poignant metaphors bombard my brain. It's also laborious to think in my language and write my foreign thoughts in English using idioms I don't normally use.

Prince, you got it right. She gets tired hiding in the end. I really try not to be literal in my work. Even an empty space or an absence of words has multiple meanings. The "calendar crossed out and torn" is just a calendar if literally read. In my mind when I wrote it, I thought of doctor visits, days to live, final errands and appointments, awaited last trips.

[cogs]

miyako, let me say nice job. the images are very appropriate, however, i have nothing to relate them to someone deceased, except the clue of someone not visible (of course i could surmise something from 'lifeless, dead, and last').

It's also laborious to think in my language and write my foreign thoughts in English using idioms I don't normally use.
congratulations on the idioms and skill you do use!

[aliengirl]

Vivid details, concrete images, and the refrain of "I hide" all combine to create a haunting effect. This must have been a challenge (just look at the length of your poem) as you've said, considering English is not your first language. It is really difficult to translate the idioms of one language into another especially if the cultural background is different. The part lost in the mental transformation is sometimes more than what appears on page.
Anyway, I like this one because I know how memories of someone gone can cling to the animate or inanimate objects of the house. Nice one. :)