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7/11/2017 12:51:29 AM

Benjamin Varenikovich
Posts: 2

I’m kind of having trouble breathing
It could be the binder or
The knives I threw at the wall.
I know I didn’t throw them with my lungs
But the thought of the holes in the plaster
Grips my chest in the grip of disaster
And I can’t breathe.

In the caverns of my air sacs
there’s something starting to grow:
my mother’s roses.
They’re pretty, I know
but you can’t put
coils of thorns in my throat
and ask me to humor you.

Every rose I will cough up
Will be like a punch in the gut;
if you squint
you will be able to see a constellation
in the blue by my diaphragm.

Yes, for your eyes I can grow roses
Out of the tissues of my lungs
But I’m having trouble breathing
And it isn’t the binder
I can’t help that I’m finding outlines of
Faces in the plaster.
You’ve taught your rose bush to grow knives
And when I see the holes of your eyes in the wall
I can’t breathe.

I will appreciate any critiques, I really want to learn from the other writers on this site and become better. A few things that I've been thinking about or am unsure of are:
Does it work to combine the knife image with the roses?
Is the poem difficult to understand?
Is the rhythm ok?
Is the rhyme in the beginning of the 3rd stanza too forced?
Are there any work choice suggestions?

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