Poetry Forum

Prawns

The white table cloth is lit
by two slender candles, turquoise blue.
One flickers brighter, the near one crackles.

Between them, the silver platter
boasts a pink hill of prawns,
shelled- black marbles peeking.

Their string legs bend cold
to touch. Smooth cases
crack, pale bellies glisten.

Stockpiled craniums entangle.
The graveyard drips on mango
peels, on black olive stones.

A sharp wooden screetch.
Their bellies are left
abused with goosepimples.

----------------------

I'd appreciate any suggestions - thanks.

i like the words

i just don't know what to feel

what do you want us to FEEL when we read this? a good question for every poem

Loving your descriptive ability Ashley. "A sharp wooden screech" - Ouch, I almost heard and felt it! Nothing I'd change here. We'll see what the others say.
Keep em comin.
Mick.

Ashley,

Welcome, if I hadn't said it before.

I'd echo Ty's comment; not sure what you want me to feel, here. Is it sympathy for the prawns or am I to be hungry. No idea.

Your word choices, or more particularly, your word placements leave much to be desired. I think if you moved things around a bit, subbed out a few words perhaps, you'd have a much crisper poem.

Ex: You have:

Between them, the silver platter
boasts a pink hill of prawns,
shelled- black marbles peeking.

How about something like:

The silver platter between them boasts
a hill of pink prawns;
shelled-black, blinking marbles. (or maybe "myopic", just not peeking)

Just suggestions.

Keep posting.

Cheers,

A.S.

Hi all,

Thankyou all for your comments and suggestions. Looking back on it, I can see that the message in this one isn't at all clear. I think I started with an idea, but ran out of steam. I'm gonna take it back to the drawing board for now. Thankyou for all your efforts,

Cheers,
Ashley.

Ashley,
Just my opinion - I think it is OK to leave your intentions equivocal
as long as the possibilities are clear.
It may be that you actually feel sorry for the prawns and hungry at
the same time.

I have only one quibble -
are you trying to use "peels" as a verb?
I think it should be "mango peel" - others may disagree.

Plaudits
Geoff

i agree, i thought it captured well the ambivalence of eating animals - disgusting when viewed as corpses, delicious when viewed as sustenance. the one think i didn't like is

Smooth cases
crack, pale bellies glisten.

The combination of adjs. and nouns is too conventional given the striking imagery of the rest of the poem - also the sequence adj-n-v/adj-n-v makes this seem unnecessarily repetitive. Other than that i loved this.