Poetry Forum

I hung my tea towel

on the washing line

blue and white check

(with a small label)

and one peg.

A knock at the door

a man; flushed, panting

said he'd seen my towel

flapping from afar

and wanted to give me

twenty five million

pounds!

He said it was;

"The best example of a

contemporary, abstract, conceptual

post modern, minimalist, piece of work"

He'd seen in a long time

He said that;

"It typified woman's struggle

through the ages"

and it made him cry.

I was stunned, of course

and said;

"Don't you realise if you

take it out of it's environment

it ceases to have any meaning!?"

shaking my head

I closed the door.



© Justine Tennant 2004

Ha! Liked this...my question is does the double spacing help it?

And replacing the ;'s with :'s...but that's just nitpicking

- Caleb

no, no, pick away my punctuation isn't good, never has been. I'll try not to double space next time Glad you liked it, thank you.

Ah no sir, I meant on this specific poem. I have nothing against the double-spacing in general. It's just that all the breaks make the dialog slightly (slightly) harder to follow than it should be.

I too liked the poem very much. I disagree on the double spacing though. I think it helps the poem because it takes a while for the relevance of the title and the political theme to come into play and the double spacing seems to help in that buid-up.

thanks Matt, you both have valid points. Just goes to show that everyone can have a different perspective on the same piece of work.

What of a compromise? There's no saying some stanzas can't be double-spaced while others not. Just another thought. This is really trivial stuff the poem's content and choice of words is pretty solid.