The dress she wore snaked
around her curvaceous legs.
She was a bright peony
catching eyes and scattering
greetings like coloured sweets.
But, she raced by shop windows,
as a storm grew hot and black
in her reflection.
The hat she wore sparkled
like the scales of a fish.
In drowned sunlight
the deep slit of her mouth
regurgitated rose petals.
Her warm voice skirted around
a scream that lay like a knife blade
at the bottom of her belly.
The coat she wore had
unfathomable pockets
where she kept the self
that nobody saw;
a wild and spirited waif
that ran with the wolves
and the devil and the night
and sang when the thunder roared.
I’m cheating here as I wrote this at Barmoor but I’ve changed it after feedback there and would appreciate any further comments.
Utterly fab last stanza and a lovely rhythm throughout the poem. I’m still not keen on ‘curvaceous’ – I think because it’s telling whereas ‘snaked around’ is showing so perhaps ‘curvaceous’ is redundant?
As an experiment how would it look if ‘wore’ ended each first line?
Super poem.
I love the whole concept of this poem – as Robbie says, the last stanza really takes off!
On reading it again, I wonder if the last few lines in the 1st stanza could be improved eg. “But as she raced by shop windows,/a storm grew hot and black/in her reflection.”
Images to drown in! Great last stanza.
Thanks for comments. The changes make so much sense – why couldn’t I see them?!!
doing art we were told to hold our picture up and look at it in a mirror – and hey presto – things jumped out that you hadn’t seen before – so this is like looking at your writing through a mirror/through somebody else’s eyes perhaps – just a thought
it is an exciting poem