Hi there stranger! Your imagery fills the mind. The table is set so to speak. I do not like your ending, because its blunt anticlimax does not do justice to the French memories nor, really, to the principle activity of the poem, the repaint. I resort to Yeats as a pep talk: "all things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay, gaity tranfiguring all that dread." I think you have more to work with here. The potential metaphor of repainting is just waiting, as is the ev...

You already anticipate a lot of readers not understanding it's meant to be a parody. Right now, it's fun. The line beats click along well. The rhymes are fun enough. I would profer that your reader does not know enough yet about the "great one" to really glimpse your parody. We don't know your subject, so we don't know if you are talking about God or some schoolyard bully. As a consequence, we don't know your theme either: if the poem were religious in nature then it would be strictly serious...

I like your sentiment, particularly given that some stooge just requested (and got!) a refund for a detailed review I wrote about one of his poems. However, I am not sure why you don't have this on your home page rather than in the que as a poem.

The beginnng, right through to the end of the funny syllogism, starts the piece off so well. It's quirky enough to be interesting, yet still decipherable enough to get the reader quickly engaged. My only objection regards the reinforcement in your "drunk, alcoholic, wino, lush" moment. It's not that funny. It's not artful. More importantly, you loose your chance to elaborate on your character's other new focus, "pasta." Otherwise, I love the way you lead the reader into this world emotionally...

ok, my second try. Urbis somehow erased the first one, so this might be mildly more perfunctory given that it feels like I am now talking to you twice. The pacing of the lines, the softness of the observations, evoke for me Keats's "ode to autumn" and the opening lines that run so magically with rhythm and rhyme, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness...round the thatch eaves run." A major achievement, considering especially that you encorporate no prominent full rhymes. Your personificatio...

First, I am too old to know what "flash fiction" is supposed to bring to the table, so I am going to review your piece as if it were a prose poem, partly because that's the way I think of it, partly because it is too amazing to be associated with something as quick and perhaps easy as a flash. I must say, this is so beautiful. I am superficially surprised, because your emails are so intentionally dense and difficult. This, in contrast, well, is a heartbeat at times reminiscent of the way Dyla...

In this critique, I want to focus first on your screachingly vibrant combinations like "a house in its gluest silence." Unbelievable!!! I wanted to cry when I read, "love a train mislaid broken" for its beats and hardly knew what to do when you finished by saying "love she intends to travel railwise to reclaim someday." Then I will swivel to a few weaker moments that I will mention, perhaps only because they do not rise to the general level of your work as its typical patterns of sounds and c...

This is strong, bracing itself as it is in raw, gutteral allusions and heartbreaking metaphors like "my skin snapped.something oozed out," and "they cxrawled toward you on their knees," the second of which making me want to cry aloud. The pacing is strong too: the poem's speaker knows what she wants to say and plots out her logic in short forceful phrases. The reader is drawn in by the story, however horrifying. We feel for the speaker and the poem evokes on par for me with Sylvia Plath's lin...

The final four lines combine so many riviting elements--the cacaphony of noises in your word sounds, the touching line beats occuring around the phrase "but still you," and the horrifying image of "empty hallow of hardened skin." That final flourish will send a shiver up every reader's spine. It comprises easily the strongest part of the poem, not just for its density, but also for its newness compared to other, less surprising moments earlier on such as the allusion to a game/struggle in the...