Sweet liquid orange in flecks of glitter on my fingers
Tip back, lean back, drain the metal down to the final drop
Close eyes in a moment of candied bliss
Quenching the thirst for sugared touch
A kind of mellifluous zing upon the sloshing chimes
I'm enjoying this moment far too much.
Thrown forward in a swallow, revealing the scene to my iris
Spinning, a pandemonium of color reveling in my eye
Can't focus on a single object, twirling in my recovery
The taste has faded so silently from my tongue
But the memory resides, such sweet incandescent flavour
Succulent to the very last drop pooling upon my fingers
A contest entry
- Oranges and/or Lemons by Vera Rich.
590 points, ended January 30, 15 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please tell me what you think
Comments
-
I looked at the setter's comments first, then I went up to the poem again for a second read. Hmmm... "final drop... candied bliss... sugared touch... sloshing chimes..." Now, sometimes that really works, when it is a deliberate device - almost like an epistrophe, or the rhythmic equivalent of it. If it isn't deliberate, it can be distracting. Another thing which could distract the reader is mixing punctuation with lack of the same - I notice that the only punctuation in the poem is a handful of commas in the middle of some lines. Luckily the end of lines provide a kind of built-in punctuation, but it's still something I'm wary of.
What I like about this poem - and I like it very much - is how the sensation of quenching a hard thirst overwelms the other senses totally.
-
Interesting ... but do be careful of your use of adjective + noun phrases. At the end of three successive lines (3 - 5) you have a disyllabic adjective followed by a monosyllabic noun. This, to my ear, makes the music of the verse a little - shall we say - "unsubtle". I have noticed in a great many Allpoetry members a tendency to overdo the use of disyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun. There is nothing wrong with such a construction, of course, providing you vary it sufficiently with other combinations (e.g. monosyllabic adjective + monosyllabic noun, monosyllabic adjecive + disyllabic noun etc). Certainly in the middle of line five you have a tetrasyllabic adjective + disyllabic noun - but, at least to my ear, this does not offset the effect of the three successive "2 + 1" line-endings.
Do keep an eye out for this in future!
-
i like how descriptive this is---but wow i didn't think it was orange soda
good work
good luck
Adding your comment:
