Friday, June 5, 2009

Blind Review Friday

Blind Review Friday.

The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)

Those commenting are also welcome to remain anonymous if they wish.

Incendiary comments will be removed.

If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.



Last week's piece, Herb Garden is by Timothy Steele.

This week's offering is from a Clevelandpoetics - the Blog reader:

Schema

We are strongest where broken then mended
a weld will resist tearing surviving even the metal
that has been repaired
a stitched sail
the patch of bicycle tire tube
new soles on favorite shoes
a fractured bone
once set will knit
more resilient than before the injury

Of course
some sort of scar
a cicatrix of new connecting tissue
a slight misalignment
a stitch or a gouge
will document the lesson

The remnants of an arrowhead
in the shoulder blade
of a 5,300 year old body
of a shepherd found frozen
in the Italian Alps
the tiny white cuticle half moon divot
beneath the right eye
of the woman with whom you are having lunch
The sealed exit of your grandfather’s appendix
a mother’s broken heart

All recounting the story
of pain outlasted.




7 comments:

John B. Burroughs said...

Nicely done! If I had to attempt a constructive criticism, I might confess I'd prefer "recount" to "recounting" in the second to last line. But that's minor. I very much like this poem am looking forward to learning who wrote it.

John B. Burroughs said...

Where'd my "&" go?

Pressin On said...

i like this lots--
maybe the caps and scant punctuation
need to be edited for consistency?
but cool language and nice flow.

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

good poem.

I'd quibble about one word; a broken bone may be stronger at the broken place, but it's less resilient.

Shelley Chernin said...

Interesting list poem. Well done.

I would enjoy the opportunity to read the list and draw my own conclusion -- without being told at the beginning and at the end what I should draw from reading the list. So perhaps think about dropping the first line and/or the last stanza.

Maybe not relevant, but scars on skin are actually less functional than the original skin. Scars don't sweat and don't grow hair. Burn scars can grow wildly and can even look like large tumors because the body overproduces collagen in the healing process. This is why burn victims wear pressure garments while the skin heals, to try to keep the scar tissue flat and soft.

Knowing this, I saw irony in your title. Burn scars grow wildly, not according to any plan, in contrast with the growth of original skin.

Theresa Göttl Brightman said...

i agree with bree about the punctuation, but i love the use of words like "divot" and "cicatrix".

Mmmm...a lovely bit of tasty language.

Geoffrey A. Landis said...

"cicatrix" is definitely one of the highly underused words in the English language

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau