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6/1/2019 1:14:08 PM Chloe Gilmour Posts: 1	Sharp, spikey, shark. Teeth, a line of keys Opening up your chest of purity. The eyes: soulless, Following every curve, Tainting the nail that drips from my fingertips. Their fins Caressing your sweet cheeks, removing the sugar. They splash Sea salt in our eyes To blind us from the foul night. Foul night, shoulders, breath Every stinking whisper rides Caressing every swollen goosebump. They create a ring of ripples Carelessly making waves In silence. And it’s the silence that hinders. For in the ignorance of night No-one hears, Sees A predator on the prowl. Does Nothing. It is their thoughts that disgust me most of all. Their fantasies Of princesses and fingers. I wear the crown of vulnerability Above my virgin face, That leaves every towel gleaming white. They smell blood, Reduced to desire, Their fins rising higher Along my dainty skirt, Snatching the material Like it’s theirs to take. Red plagues the water, But their hands are clean. And I? I’m done.
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9/5/2019 9:20:41 AM Jack Webster Posts: 255	Wonderful. Little is heavy handed here; the metaphor is delicately done, and the Riddle leaves room for the reader to engage the poem, yet the riddle does not tax the clarity of the writing. Favorite stanza is: Their fins Caressing your sweet cheeks Remove the sugar. It’s a perfect balance between the assault and the extended metaphor of the shark; the phrase ‘sweet cheeks’ is used smartly both thematically and poetically by setting up the last line; the last line takes the phrase ‘sweet cheeks’ and makes the idiom concrete by giving it a tangible treatment that not only invokes the kinestheic sense (not commonly achieved in poetry) but successfully captures the rough feeling of shark skin brushing against one’s skin. it is an intersection of theme, sense, and information. Outstanding stanza. I would borrow a bit of drama from Emily Dickinson’s very dark poem Wild Nights! For your fifth stanza by adding stronger punctuation: Foul night! Shoulders! Breath! Every stinking whisper rides! (Perhaps a more considered third line?) stanza 6 and 7 perhaps edit like this: They create a ring of ripples, careless, making waves in silence, and it is the silence that hinders in the ignorant night; no-one hears, In stanza 9 you brush against some semantic ambiguity; whose thoughts and fantasies of princesses and fingers disgust you? They and their have referred to the sharks until this point, but you’ve just finished talking about the people that do nothing out of ignorance, so it is difficult to tell if these fantasies of princess-ness and happy childhood are part of the ignorance that prevent people from understanding the wrong being done, or it is part of what drives the sharks to feed. Of course there is always the possibility it is valid either way, or both ways, but simply be aware the stanza doesn’t specify, simply in case you wish to be. Stanza 10 starts to slip into abstract; neither a crown, nor face can leave a towel white literally. Also ending stanza 10 with gleaming white towels and beginning stanza 11 with smelling blood is confusing both literally and abstractly as stanza 10 has just implied there is no “blood” with the white towels. The idiom ‘smelling blood’ only works as a double entendre here is blood is actually present somehow, otherwise ‘blood’ isn’t there until the shark attack. The crown ties into the fantasy of the princess, but perhaps the crown proves sharp, it’s ornaments like shark teeth, and the princess cuts herself removing it or putting it on or admiring it; THEN there is blood to smell and the theme is maintained. In stanza 13, I’m not a fan of the word ‘plagued’. Perhaps you could synthesize the image of blood by invoking the toxic red tide of an algal bloom: I bloom like algae; red tide poisons the sea, but their hands are clean. Great write! Great skill! Good luck with revisions; hope some suggestions prove useful.
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9/5/2019 9:24:28 AM Jack Webster Posts: 255	... or if you wanted to get very grisly in stanza 13, you could simply say: With a sharp kiss I am chum in the water. and omit stanz 14
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