By Janelle Taylor
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“I could write a poem about this” she says in her head so no one could hear in the dark so no one could see in a journal she keeps tucked away so no one can read
“I could write a poem about this” she says as tears carve streams in her cold-burned face covered in cocoa butter bathed in Shea butter coddled in the hands of her ancestors as she writes a manifesto
“I could write a poem about this” she says As love turns to heartache turns to heartbreak turns to unbridled love as her pen scorches the page with a newness as she greets oppression at the front door
“I could write a poem about this” she says as she refreshes her grades as she stands naked scrutinizing her curves for their exoticism while praising them for their ethnicity
“I could write a poem about this” she says As she works twice as hard only to get half as far as the men catcall her on the street as she checks all the boxes in the hope that the parts of her that she was told to hate can get her a quarter of the way further
“I could write a poem about this” she says as she looks at her bank account in the bar knowing the price of being social means a skipped meal in 3 months as she scours the thrift store out of necessity as she struggles to be gay while black as she struggles to be black while gay
“I could write a poem about this” she says as she’s not quite American but not quite Caribbean as she asks the nail tech to cut her nails short as she drinks a beer as she smokes out of boredom or necessity or maybe both
“I could write poem about this” she says as she stares at her hands and knows the dryness means progress as her anxiety keeps her awake wondering how she’s gonna take care of a mother who sacrificed so much for her
Critique
Thank you so much for submitting to our competition and for sharing with us a piece that is so personally meaningful. This poem carries a lot of political and personal weight that, if shifted and wielded in just the right way, could leave a lasting impression on the reader.
My primary suggestion would be that you select one specific aspect of your life experience and focus on extracting aesthetic and perceptual elements from it, for two reasons: 1) What (I personally believe) differentiates a poem from any other type of writing is a centering of some aesthetic (e.g. how the poem looks on the page, rhythm, etc.) and perceptual (e.g. getting at your experience from all angles) element. If you’re looking to write a poem (versus an essay or prose piece), focusing on those two aspects would be your fastest route of getting there. 2) I think one purpose of your poem might be sharing your life experiences (and their political/social/cultural dimensions) with others. With more visceral writing, you can effect your reader more directly.
Your experiences are clearly very rich and meaningful, which means that they are ripe for this kind of analysis and could very easily meet the two suggestions above with a recentering of your intention as a writer. In other words, you have a lot of themes (the many aspects of your intersectional experience as a gay, immigrant woman of color) packed into very little space, and neither theme seems to get the justice it deserves. Authors could get whole novels worth of material out of a single slice of the life experience that you cover. By zooming in on one of those slices and describing exactly how it felt (how it tasted, sounded, looked like, hurt, etc.), you would create a visceral reading experience that approximates your own real life one.
For example, the line "she stands naked scrutinizing her curves for their exoticism while praising them for their ethnicity” is potentially deserving of its own poem. Describe that (and by “that” I mean the whole experience laid out in the line/any aspect of it as well as the personal, literary, academic, etc. influences that have led into your making this statement) in greater detail: how do you feel when trying to make sense of your own body? How do larger institutional/political/cultural forces lead into the visceral nature of experiencing your body (emphasis on the “lead into")? When you tie the political and the personal together in this way, you write (what I think) is a more powerful poem that further fulfills suggestion #2 above.
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