An online magazine, community, and educational resource for the arts.

AmbushArts.com Forums Tuesday - September 7, 2010 - 1:53 pm *
Welcome, Guest. Please log in or register.
If you are logged in and you're seeing this, please return to the homepage and click on the Forum link in the menu bar to refresh the session.
News: SMF - Just Installed!
 
   Home   Help Search Members  
Pages: [1]
  Print  
Author Topic: House of Gold  (Read 589 times)
rrmeade
Newbie
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 4



View Profile WWW
« on: July 18, 2009, 12:41:54 pm »

House of Gold

Vanilla light ignites in the corner of her room
and she, awake now and poised at her bed’s edge,
studies the bold beacon that hails her
like one unnerved by the skewed beauty of a child
born with one blue eye, one green.

Far to the east,
the frankincense trees lift their gnarled limbs
in gestures of stoic repose.
Slashed, they shed resinous tears
that harden like scars over jagged wounds.
The fires are already stoked
whose steam will coax perfume
from milky white gum.

In her room, the girl gathers herself
for the onslaught of her affirmation.
The house begins to shrink around her
as she rises, crosses toward the bright eddies
streaming in the darkness, and kneels.
Earth labors to bring forth gifts
and the room swells with the scent
of lemon and vanilla and bitter smoke.

But the girl has no grandiloquent gestures,
only the openness of her face
still rapt by the overshadowing beacon
and the stillness of hands resting on her midriff
while she awaits the golden child within.
Logged
alchemiholic
Newbie
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 16



View Profile
« Reply #1 on: July 22, 2009, 05:40:48 pm »

Cool take on the Visitation.

I noticed that you use a whole lot of descriptors, which isn't a bad thing necessarily, but I worry that some of the (very potent!) actions might be lost among all those adjectives.

Also, you have a LOT of images going on here. They are awesome, but the poem might not be long enough to hold them all comfortably? (My favorites, the ones that felt the most important to me, were the fires being stoked for the frankincense trees and the shrinking house.) Maybe go back through and make sure that they all need to be there? Cohesiveness of image is a huge pain - and I should know, it's one of my biggest problems when I try to write! - but it can yield some really elegant poetry.
Logged
rrmeade
Newbie
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 4



View Profile WWW
« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2009, 01:50:26 pm »

Thank you.  Food for thought. 
I'll pare down the adjectives.
Logged
Pages: [1]
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by SMF 1.1.3 | SMF © 2006-2007, Simple Machines LLC
Powered by Drupal
Designed by John Thomas
Home   Forum   Calendar   Privacy   Terms   FAQ   Contact us  

All contents copyright © 2008 Ambush, Inc. and the individual artists. All rights reserved.