Recession of Faith

They say that Eve is a bank teller
In midtown Manhattan, watching
Soaps in the back room on her lunch hour.
They say that Eve is a bank. Tellers
Withdraw from her vault of Faith whether
Or not the bank is broken and crumbling.
They say that Eve is a bank teller.
She is in midtown Manhattan – watching.

Festival of the Mourning Dead

Dancing unabashed and childish, like
moths entranced by lamppost light,
the ghosts rise up and fall

upon the earth, and talk
of all the friends they left to walk
that earth which they cannot begin to mourn.

Listening to Highway 61 Revisited for the first time

There are fragmented
keys at play
when falling in love.

Oncology Inpatient Facility, West Wing

We listened to the silent collapse
Of our ice cubes as we sat in the sun,
And in the heat we lowered our caps.
We listened to the silent collapse
Of the bones and organs in our laps,
And with sad envy we watched the children run.
We listened to the silent collapse
Of our ice cubes in the sun.

Critical Response to Whitney Moore’s “Migraine”

I really did enjoy this poem. What is very characteristic of Whitney’s work, much like Christina Arganda’s, is her great use of images. This is an outlier on Whitney’s usual subject matter (Argentina), but it is quite good in its conveyance of pain and of sight. What is also quite effective in the poem is the frequent appearance of personification of inanimate objects and aspects of the world as seen through the migraine-victim’s perspective. “teasing my pulsating nerves,/ frayed with each watery look” are two lines which really drew me in and kept me reading along with the “swelling of my sanity” – just great strangeness. I would say, however, that towards the end, the imagery and the strangeness seems to overpower some of what Whitney is trying to do with the scene and the character within the poem, but it isn’t by much. I would say that we are being taken too far into the mind and feelings of the character, and I would like to see what the other senses are like in that moment of searing pain.

Critical Response to Celina’s “After-Thought (Ghost Life)”

While the poem is short, pretty amusing, and fairly complete for its brevity, I feel like it has a lot of room for expansion. The idea of being a disembodied spirit missing your armpits (of all things) the most, is particularly fantastic. This sort of idea has been worked with before, but I think that Celina is taking it in a nice direction. The language is both mournful and sarcastic, which I don’t know if I like, even though I laughed at it the first read through. If she were to expand on this, I would like to see more of the little details like the act of trimming pubic hair or burping or the feeling of a rose petal between the fingers. From there, I would suggest going off into the world and describing the little things about the people the ghost once knew, the things that it misses. It would be interesting to also see how the ghost character’s thoughts reflect on its enemies that it had while it was still a living being. What Celina has in her poem, as I see it, is an amazing beginning to a much longer poem that could be both funny and powerful. Cheers to her.

Critical Response to Kelsey Buck’s “Recognition”

Another eerie poem. Much like Xan’s “Rinds in the Loam,” I found myself getting wrapped up in the overall mood of the poem and the great, but strange, images. The real strength of the poem, I feel, is that it has created a world within itself and it is one which I am able to believe in. Lines like “As I emerge from bracken walls” and “Racing between dark silhouettes” are just plain good and create this creepy dream world which draws the reader in and allows the reader to be chased and claimed by the “something sinister.” This all being said, there are a couple of things which I think could really help the poem. The first would be to strike the line “Nowhere to hide, nowhere to go” from the last stanza and move the last line, “My shadow finds me. It claims me”, to the top of the stanza. It maintains the quick resolution of the poem, but it leaves the reader hanging with the image of the “bleak, faintly breathing world.” The other suggestion which I had was to expand on the sinister something which chases down and claims the character in the story. The elaboration does not have to be a big, long thing but it would help to just have a better idea of maybe how the sinister thing moves or how it smells – something to personify it without describing what it looks like (since that seems to be the point). Also, the line “fleeing superfluous freedom” really confused me. I don’t know if it is really important to the poem, but I would probably suggest, again, expanding it if she wants to keep it or cutting it. Overall, however, I really enjoyed it and I would love to see what she does with it later.