A NEW POEM: This is only up for the weekend. It's a prose poem and looks okay on my screen, but may be funky on some other, smaller monitors. Comments welcome. 

Thanks for the comments both here and back channel. :)

Comments

Kate Evans said…
Poignant, sad, eerie...haunting.

Reverse sleeping beauty is great--maybe do more with that idead--more images from that fairy tale?

grammar alert: "for WHOM I have inexplicable feelings."

I like the surreal dreamlike quality of this never explained explicitly as a dream.

"Only then do I realize we both smell like smoke" is good--and I think more could be done with it; a simile to help us smell/experience the smoke?

GREAT last line.
Kate Evans said…
idead = idea

weird Freudian typo
Collin Kelley said…
Thanks for the grammar catch. I've fixed that.

Yes, I have an idea to expand on the line about how we both smell like smoke, I just want to go too far. This is the second draft of the poem, but I figure there will be two or three more before it's anywhere near what I want.
Anonymous said…
I like that its almost a little short story. It's not sad but it makes you feel that way.

GAV
Bookfraud said…
gav nailed it -- it's like a short story, with a plot, arc and resolution. and i mean that as a compliment.

i've read plenty of short stories (some that i've written) that say a whole lot less with a whole lot more words. do you write much fiction? i could see a margaret atwood-like crossover from poetry to fiction, with similar stellar results...
These lines I love, love, love:
"a girl I've never met named Michelle..."
and "...curly hair, splayed like a halo, on the pillow..."
Both lines are very alliterative--they sound beautiful, when whispered aloud(And I keep hearing them "whispered"--as if the dream here is a "secret")
It feels like the narrator is "bound" to play this out--these scenes, this destiny.

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