Equilibrium
At 15 I am chosen to speak in front of 300 people at my high school’s gala. I don’t eat anything the whole day. Everyone is looking at me. Me against them.
At 2 my sisters are born. Twins. I play with buttons that make Mommy’s hospital bed go up and down. She tells me she is enjoying the ride. Everyone buys me presents.
At 12 Mommy and Daddy tell the three of us that we’re moving. To Connecticut, they say. It’s the middle of seventh grade and my life is over.
At 21 I swallow my pride and swallow a pill. My mind finally stops racing. My heart finally finds a steady rhythm. Is this what it feels like to return to equilibrium?
At 10 we are idolizing bouncy balls and silly bandz on the playground. Popularity is having the skull-shaped ball and an arm stacked with bands. We argue and trade and negotiate. We all want to be popular.
At 18 I walk through the arches of the Old City of Jerusalem. In this place I learn Torah and pray. I find G-d and all I see is gold.
At 9 I wake up at 3 a.m. and can’t fall back asleep. It’s going to happen again, tonight, I tell myself. It does. What I call “sleepy medicine” is a loyal sidekick.
At 16 him and I are alone. This is what I’ve always wanted. But, he reminds me, just friends. Silly me. I’m brought back down to earth.
This poem is beautiful, emotive. The clear diction and simple sentences lend a sense of innocence to the piece, to the speaker herself. The only thing I'd recommend is changing some of the confessions/statements at the end of each memory. Instead of mentioning these things and describing the emotions which your speaker feels, try to express it in a way that shows the reader, rather than telling them. For example, "we all want to be popular"can be shown instead of being stated. I think this change would make the overall experiences which the speaker recounts more raw to the readers, as they'd be able to actually feel the emotions and sensations tied to each memory, instead of simply being told about them.
ReplyDeleteI thought this was an excellent comment, Sophia. Very helpful.
DeleteI love the way you formatted this—the way you went up in age and then went back down. I find it to be an incredibly powerful technique when narrating life in poetic form. I think it’s so clever especially when paired with an idea such as equilibrium. The one thing that I’m not sure about it is the lack of cohesiveness of the content. Meaning, I find it slightly difficult to connect each of the stanzas and because of the way it is formatted, I thought there would be some kind of connection. Then again, I could be misreading it or just I could just be not making the connection. If there was supposed to be a connection, maybe make it slightly obvious? I do find charm in ambiguity but too much could cause the reader to focus on the wrong thing. I also loved the way you structured your sentences and they way you played with sentence length to add contrast and meaning to your words. This poem was beautiful in its simplicity and realness.
ReplyDeleteThis is an evocative poem and a good start to our class. You followed the example in the book well and created a poem with several effective moments. My favorite stanzas are the ones with vivid imagery, such as the ones for ages 2 and 10.
ReplyDeleteIn other ones, I would very much like to be able to see and sense what is being portrayed. For example, the one about Jerusalem is very short and contains little detail. This strikes me as a missed opportunity, because of all of the potential beautiful and relevant images you could conjure to portray the scene. I would pick one site in Jerusalem emblematic of your visit and show it using descriptive imagery.
This kind of poem works best when fairly long and rich with images and details. For example, in the stanza set in age 2, how about mentioning some of the toys, and for age 21, how about describing the heart's rhythm so it can be heard?
I like that you avoided cliches in the romantic scene portrayed at the end. I'm looking forward to reading what you come up with in future poems.