Poetry Forum

Skirting

A resumption of the quilted innuendos
filled with your tender yearning
is wholly symptomatic, I note your terms
and wonder just how many times
you considered taking off that shoe
to discard one tiny pebble hidden in the hide
tendering its presence in the tracks you made.

I could parade a line or two, press my palm
to make a heel and knead
between each stubborn bone, expel
talcum from a pillow where your resting lies.

Your eyes are glass then clay then glass,
I revolve as each question is asked
though I'll park my vehicle just shy of the lawn
a few feet back from where I got stuck,
the differential whined for lack of purchasing.

You didn't fill the troughs, I can understand
how it might seem wise to know those parasitic flies
reside until morphed beyond a larval form
where they can be contained and poisoned if you please.

It all leads somewhere, every thought I've enacted
played out to factuality, drawing each gaze
to one side of a fractured outcome although
the dampened cotton can again be ironed flat.
If not that, wrapped around the need to hide acknowledgment.


.

Shoes! Oh, yes, nice to have you drop in, Dalena.

Enjoyed this it feels like a mystery, like part of something bigger... A trailer for a movie or something.
There is a strong storytelling tone and it seems as the N is speaking directly to the reader. I always like that feel of intimacy.

The title is interesting in that you use it in two different ways. Skirting an issue and cotton fabric.
Also skirting as in circling an object as you consider you distance from it.

The whole has a gentleness to it. Pleasant.
The ending was somehow both a surprise and clever.

Come around more often. Give that sonnet workshop a whirl, Girl.
Suzanne

Nicely played out. The danger would be vagueness/obscurity or forced obliqueness. 'quilted innuendos' was a phrasing I liked, conveying a stitching/patching together as well as soft bedding. The scented pillow of lies was another.

It all leads somewhere, every thought I've enacted
played out

I don't really buy into that kind of universality.

look forward to more postings

cheers

mac

Enjoyed this very much.

"A resumption of the quilted innuendos"

Nice turn of phrase.

A good story well told.

Hello Dalena, this poem did not work for me, I did not know what was going on and therefore it left no impression.

A resumption of the quilted innuendos
filled with your tender yearning
is wholly symptomatic

made me think symptomatic of what.?

I

note your terms
and wonder just how many times
you considered taking off that shoe
to discard one tiny pebble hidden in the hide
tendering its presence in the tracks you made

. The meaning of this section eludes me.

the differential whined for lack of purchasing

should be "lack of purchase"

All the best ...D

Thank you Suzanne for taking time to read and reply, I appreciate it.

Mac, I thank you for reading and offering your thoughts. The universality is not intended, I may have been clumsy there as it was solely a singular view possessed by the character in the poem and not meant to assume it as a widely held perspective. I'll ponder it, thank you.

Thanks KevJ, for taking time to read, glad you enjoyed it, I'll hopefully get some more written soon and read what's here more thoroughly and maybe get some inspiration.

David, I would like to thank you for your honest opinion, I'll try harder to resist the temptation to use a word sound I want which perhaps strays from the norm and hopefully conforms to a form of grammatical swarm that you're more accustomed to for sure.

Thanx

Dalena

Yes, I rather like that innuendo line, too. Imaginative. For me, though, it's easily topped by:

Your eyes are glass then clay then glass,

where you combine rhythm, sonic momentum and simplicity to make an expressive, dramatic and clear line, full of meaning and originality. Very good indeed. The essence of good poetry.

The poem really needs more of that kind of thing, I'd say. To this reader, much of the rest of it - though well-intentioned - is perhaps a trifle self-conscious; trying a little too hard to be 'poetic'. This, combined with some punctuation errors and grammatical mix-ups, makes the narrative obscure and the emotional impact over-driven. Unauthentic. My advice would be to relax a bit, in terms of expression. Don't force it so much. You've clearly got ability, you just need to let it see the light of day.

Cheers
peter

Dalena, from the title, I'm thinking "you" are feeling frustrated at having no more than pieces of evidence, bits of edging, from which to understand what has happened, and are aware that it evades the real issue that brought about this death.

This section shines for me:

press my palm
to make a heel and knead
between each stubborn bone, expel
talcum from a pillow where your resting lies.

Your eyes are glass then clay then glass,
I revolve as each question is asked

However, other parts of the poem feel heavy, weighed down by nominalizations. Could you eliminate a few?

Thank you for posting this! I enjoyed the read.

Jackie