The bitter loneliness you must have felt comes through clearly in this poem. There is also a dual sense of frustration and fear, but simultaneously a determination that shows a strong personality behind the uncertainty.
I have found myself in situations over the years where I have had similar feelings, and while it is not always comfortable, it seems that one has two choices...to either lie down and let it do you in or get back up and try to do something to make yourself feel better. It sounds like you and I are alike in that we strive to get back up rather than stay down!
Overall, I felt this poem was a very good release of tension piece. I can see that it helped to build your strength to go on and live again.
Keep right on writing and using poetry as a tool for keeping yourself on track with life.
So true! So true!! Your depiction of cats is right on the money. You clearly show how they wait silently, stalking, stealthily stalking...and then pounce on their unsuspecting prey. Great job!!
I also like the moral you present at the end about the relationship between reincarnated humans and cats! Very funny, and very true!!
Hee-hee! What a comical little poem about a funeral for an ant!! It starts out so serious and then rapidly rolls along into gales of hysterical giggles!! I love this poem! You have a great sense of humor
Isn't it amazing what we writers will find to write poems and stories about??!!?? Hee! Keep right on writing!!
Your description of this poem caught my eye and I just had to open it and see what it was all about. And, I must say that I am very glad that I did!! I saw what nursing homes are like when my grandmother and then my mother were in them for various reasons. I thought they were cold, lonely places where isolation and death hung in the air. I still shiver to think about them.
Your little poem about two people and a little teddybear brought a fresh ray of hopeful light into the stark emptiness of the nursing home world for me, and it actually made me smile
Thank you for brightening my day Keep right on writing!!
Oh, if only such a place could really exist! Wouldn't it be wonderful? Talk about the best place to go to escape the dulldrums of reality!
I like the way you show that your mystic meadows would be a place where you could let your imagination soar, but also it is a place where others wouldn't want to be because they would fail to see it in quite the same light that you do!
This little poem almost seems to create a round sensation...sort of like the way kids sing "Row, row, row your boat" one after another. As I read it, the words seemed to echo back on themselves, and I liked the sensation that created.
I also like the way you have worked in that being alone is okay and that a woman can honestly feel that she doesn't need a man to make her feel whole.
Sounds like this should have been the motto of the Haunted Mansion in Long Branch, NJ or Brigantine Castle in Brigantine, NJ when "live" -- so to speak -- haunted houses were all the rage back in the 1980s.
You have definitely created another great halloween poem here! This one is more scary and less playful than the other one, so I would assume that the acrostic was written with younger children in mind while this one is geared more toward pre-teens who can take a good scare better than little kids can.
This is a very cute Halloween acrostic! I read it to my little girl, and she loved it. In fact, she wanted to go out and do some trick-or-treating right now
Your flow and rhythm throughout this poem are very good. I didn't feel compelled to stop or hesitate anywhere to wonder what you meant or why the rhythm was off.
What a powerful story! The children in the story are loveable little boys who are caught up in a horror which they did not cause, and they bravely face the danger together. Their parents are totally useless to them...maybe a commentary on how children have to be prepared for the worst and not rely always on their parents for protection??
Here are a few things that I noticed while reading your story:
"She's not coming home." Ben whispered, looking out to the driveway where he saw his mother's car wasparked there. Change the period after "home" to a comma.
A cat ran across the porch, jumping off of the railing on landed onto the pickedpicket fence.
I kept wanting to know, along with Mike, what it was that was coming to get them and why. You repeated that Ben knew what was coming, but he never admits to this, and it is apparent that since he is closer to adulthood than Mike that he has a stronger insight into the fact that they cannot rely on their parents for help, nor can they escape the devastation that is to come. However, I still found myself wanting to know where the fire came from and why. Did someone set off a nuclear bomb that started a chain reaction of fires? Were their parents responsible for the blaze in any way?
Very cute little poem! I love the monster picture you put at the top The descriptions in this poem seem very realistic; that is, as if they came from the imagination of a child who was really frightened of the monster, but then when you threw in the twist at the end that the monster has been heard by the speaker even more as he/she aged, I had to giggle! And, the shrink he/she went to sounds like he/she isn't worth the powder it would take to blow him/her up! After all, the person already figured that he/she had a head problem before going to the shrink!!
Very comical Keep right on writing and surprising your readers!
Very nicely written poem! I'm not sure I expected this poem when I read the title, though. hee!
It sounds like the girl really thought the night went well, but the boy either didn't feel the same way or just plain didn't care. In either case, the girl ends up hurt in the end...which makes sense since we are "traditionally" the more emotional sex...while the boy drifts off into the sunset never to be seen darkening the girl's door again. I wonder if he even has a clue as to what he has done to this girl's heart?? Might be interesting to write a poem about it, huh??
Overall, I really liked this poem and think you should give up anything that prevents you from writing more and more and more... you know like work, housework, company coming over, etc.
This is a truly touching piece of writing! The characters are all well-thought out and convincing, and there is a gentle quality to the storytelling that makes the piece work very well.
Here is something that I noticed while reading your story:
The world needs the rain, and the man must return to the earth where he was born.
Overall, this is a great story, and it is told very well, too! Keep right on writing!!
Wonderfully chilling story!! I like the way you describe the mist and build suspense as you go along. Your facts all jigsaw into one another well and at a good pace throughout the piece. Very nice writing
Here are a few things that I noticed while reading your piece:
"Coming" rang out the voice as the door opened. Dr. Mathews ushered him into the office. A quick look around revealed the usual office furnishings. Although this paragraph is longer, I didn't want to post too much here, so I'll just tell you what you need to do, okay? The first two sentences are fine together, but the third sentence and the rest of the paragraph are not about Dr. Mathews; rather they are about Jacobs' actions and observations. So, you need to start a new paragraph with sentence #3 and keep the rest of the paragraph intact with it.
I've always felt thethat murder was the same as suicide in many ways.
Overall, I thought this was a great story! Keep up the great work and keep right on writing!!
This is a very interesting pantoum about birth by C-section! I had one, too, and I would never have thought of describing it as a magician's magic act, but the metaphor fits perfectly!
With the doctor as magician and his scalpel the magic wand, he does indeed pull an "infant rabbit" out of your "hat." Great job of creating an image here!
You know, when I had my C-section, I too understood that I was giving birth to a baby, but didn't comprehend just exactly what that doctor was doing to me just beyond that green drape. Then, when I heard Kara cry, it was truly a magical moment
Wow, winklett, this is a powerful poem. Its minimalistic style brings the bare bones of this suicide and its painful aftermath for the victim's best friend home clearly and concisely.
I really think it is beautiful the way you have created a slow motion vision of the last moments of your friend's life, ending with the blooming of a bouquet, albeit a rather macabre one.
The sense of loneliness that you feel as her best friend dealing with her loss is powerfully expressed in the single line with which you close the poem. If Gina could read this poem, she would know how much she meant to you and just how much you have lost without her here.
Keep on writing about those emotions that seem to not want to go away. It can be a very cathartic experience, and you might continue to get more beautiful poetry out of it.
Good story! By adding in more details about how you felt and reacted at the time that each incident happened, you could turn this into a truly comic piece of writing! Instead, though, you tell what physically happen and stop there to switch to another event. This sort of short changes the reader because all that you are allowing is for the reader to glimpse, rather than share in, the experience. It is the sensory details that make the story come alive. How did it feel to get sprayed with all that gas? Was it a hot day when the wetness felt great, but the smell was enough to kill you? Did you choke on the smell? What were you thinking as it happened? Did you check to see that there were no lit cigarettes in the area? Did you start to sweat? Begin to cry? What? See what I mean?
Overall, this is a good story that can be made a lot better through addition of sensory details as well as your own personal actions and reactions as the event occurred.
Wow, Sarah-Rae, you know how to get at your reader's heart-strings, don't you! The tension you build with the repetition of the first two words of each line is incredibly palpable. I could feel the child's anguish as she was forced to keep a deep dark secret that was way too big for her to keep.
The emotional pain of the child reverberates throughout this piece and makes me want to reach out and wrap the child up warm and close with my love. At the same time, I want to slap the father's face and toss him to the devil to do with what he will.
Keep right on writing and expressing yourself through poetry and words! You paint wonderfully clear word pictures!
Well, Cappucine, you have done the impossible! You have made discarding old clothes an interesting and very telling task! In your poem, I can easily see myself hunting through my clothing for items that I no longer want or that no longer fit, for one reason or another, to set out on a table at my next garage sale. My discarded skins, personae of the past, and in some cases crushed hopes will lie exposed in the harsh sunlight as the grubby hands of anonymous potential buyers paw through them not seeing any of the meaning that they still hold for me. A quarter for this memory...fifty cents for that -- is this what our lives really boil down to? A sifting through by others as they search for things that might fit with their own current hopes and dreams while anything that remains on the table at the end of the day will either end up in the trash or in the Salvation Army's Good Will box behind the old library?
This is a good story! I had a feeling that Bones was in some way related to the demise of the firm when you said that Ditch was paying him out of his own pocket. However, I'd really like to know what it was that Brian saw that made him go to the annual accounting pages and beyond. Just where did he find that $10,000 a month leak?
Here is a single point that I noticed while reading your story:
I'm not absolutely certain, but if I'm reading these numbers correctly, your favorite accountant has been working with his father-in-law to rip off the firm to the tune of almost $10,000 a month, and it's been going on for the last eight months, maybe longer.
This is a highly contemplative poem, and I really like it. For someone new to writing poetry, this poem comes across just fine. Its image of a person looking into a mirror and not liking what he/she sees is an easy one to conjure up. The idea that there is a duality to human nature comes across clearly to the reader.
Here are a couple of things that I noticed while reading your poem:
but, it is just beyond your reach. Delete the comma and the phrase "it is" to condense this line.
your face cringesyou cringe in disgust. Again, condense!
One thing you might want to try is to re-read your poems and see if you can get the same ideas across in fewer words. (PS: I have a major problem with this myself when I write poetry!) The more you can condense and consolidate the words that you use, the richer the poem and its images will be. They will pop off the page...um, computer screen...for your reader. This is a great poem, and it can be made better by economizing on the number of words that you use...see my two comments above about the two lines I condensed.
These guys are picking up and killing folks for the fun of killing, aren't they? Their matter-of-fact attitude toward the killing of George set my nerves on edge a bit to think that they could be so cavallier about putting someone to death like that. But then, I guess there are any number of people out there who could turn out to be like these two, given the right circumstances.
I'd really like to know more about these two characters and why they have chosen to go off on this killing spree that not only includes other men, but children as well. What set them off? Is the law onto them? What do they get out of the killings?
I enjoyed reading your story and would like to see more of it. Keep right on writing and revising, and good luck in the contest!
I really like this story a lot! You've got the hand-off of a valuable clue, a mysterious bus terminal locker that doesn't seem to exist, a letter from God knows where, and a curious individual who carries out instructions. I'm just not sure that you really have a dead body here. I'd like to see the woman go to Rufus' funeral and stand in the background to see who might be lurking there looking for her, or some such thing. Otherwise, it is very nicely written and compact!
Here are a few things that I noticed while reading your story:
I laughed to myself, thinking about how much everyone in this town lovesloved new news, especially if it iswas news about any loud, attention grabbing, very public conflict between elected city officials and anyone else. Try to keep all verbs in the same tense...in this case, past tense.
“Why it's a locker key for the bus terminal.” Here you need an apostrophe to show that you are using the contraction of "it is."
I hadn’t realized until I walked in how long it had been since I had been inside thisthe building. The word "this" puts the reader inside the building. By using "the" instead, you distance the reader from participation in the events.
I would have no reasonable excuse for being there. Again, you don't want the reader to be a participant in the story, so use "there" instead of "here."
The writing was barely readable but I could only make out parts of the letter. With the word "but," you don't want to use "only." Rather, you could change "but" to "and" and then leave the word "only" in place.
Millions and millions of dollars worthof oil was being stolen. missing word
Now, I had to decide what to do with all this information, and not to end up dead,too. The wording of this ending sounds awkward. See if you can reword it to make it stronger and make the threat against her life seem more real and potent.
Overall, I liked this poem a lot! The rhythm really caught my attention, and I noticed in the first stanza, breaks in the rhythm when the speaker was talking about being eaten and choked. Very nicely done, since those things tend to break the routine of everyday, normal living.
I felt as if I had fallen into a film noir when I read this poem. The feeling I got as a reader told me to keep watching the shadows for any movement I might sense.
Here is one thing that I noticed while reading your poem:
Wow! What an ordeal Charmian has gotten herself engulfed in in this chapter! First being sent off on an journey by herself, and then fending off a black bear and passing out just as it is about to attack. What could possibly go wrong for her next??
I can hardly wait for you to finish another chapter or two so that I can keep up with Charmian and her activities!
Your writing style is definitely designed to captivate the reader, and reading your novels has taught me quite a lot about ending chapters with a cliffhanger that keeps the reader turning pages and thirsting for more!
Thank you for sharing your work with us here at writing.com
I like the way Marten located the entrance to the Sky Tree and the portal that is opened at the end for Charmian. The interplay between your characters is incredibly realistic and flowing.
It would be interesting to find out what happened long ago to make Manabozho's brothers leave as they did, but what will Charmian have to sacrifice to learn this information?
Here is something that I noticed while I read this chapter:
Then just as the doorway vanished for good he jumped at it, and with a small pop, disappeared.
Very good writing!! Keep right on writing and revising
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