Poetry180+Poeams

// Julie Sheehan // I like this poem because it’s just so far out there. How much she hates this man is crazy! She goes through and lists crazy things like lint in her socks, and how it “hates you”. Just things like that remind her of hate it’s odd to me. “I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one.” I like this because it shows that she hates each and every little piece of whomever she is talking about. It’s a beautiful poem
 * Hate Poem **
 * I hate you truly. Truly I do. Everything about me hates everything about you. The flick of my wrist hates you. The way I hold my pencil hates you. The sound made by my tiniest bones were they trapped   in the jaws of a moray eel hates you. Each corpuscle singing in its capillary hates you. **
 * Look out! Fore! I hate you. **
 * The blue-green jewel of sock lint I’m digging  from under by third toenail, left foot, hates you. The history of this keychain hates you. My sigh in the background as you explain relational databases  hates you. The goldfish of my genius hates you. My aorta hates you. Also my ancestors. **
 * A closed window is both a closed window and an obvious  symbol of how I hate you. **
 * My voice curt as a hairshirt: hate. My hesitation when you invite me for a drive: hate. My pleasant “good morning”: hate. You know how when I’m sleepy I nuzzle my head  under your arm? Hate. The whites of my target-eyes articulate hate. My wit  practices it. My breasts relaxing in their holster from morning  to night hate you. Layers of hate, a parfait. Hours after our latest row, brandishing the sharp glee of hate, I dissect you cell by cell, so that I might hate each one  individually and at leisure. My lungs, duplicitous twins, expand with the utter validity  of my hate, which can never have enough of you, Breathlessly, like two idealists in a broken submarine. **

// Richard Jones // This poem just has a crazy ending. It’s very… descriptive and that aspect is kind of too much. It doesn’t really need to go into that much detail but it lets you feel the emotion that her husband feels. He loves her so much. But then at the end you find out that she goes and does the same thing with Ming Pao! This poem is messed up.
 * Wan Chu's Wife In Bed **
 * Wan Chu, my adoring husband, has returned from another trip selling trinkets in the provinces. He pulls off his lavender shirt as I lie naked in our bed, waiting for him. He tells me I am the only woman he'll ever love. He may wander from one side of China to the other, but his heart will always stay with me. His face glows in the lamplight  with the sincerity of a boy when I lower the satin sheet to let him see my breasts. Outside, it begins to rain on the cherry trees he planted with our son, and when he enters me with a sigh, the storm begins in earnest, shaking our little house. Afterwards, I stroke his back until he falls asleep. I'd love to stay awake all night listening to the rain, but I should sleep, too. Tomorrow Wan Chu will be a hundred miles away and I will be awake all night in the arms of Wang Chen, the tailor from Ming Pao, the tiny village down the river. **

// Jane Yolen // This poem has a good meaning I think. It’s trying to get the point across that all the princess’ in our stories, are always perfect. Not one of them is fat or ugly in any way. So society thinks that they have to look like that for any of them to like them. That’s not true. Also I think it’s clever the way the writer thinks of names like “sleeping Tubby’ and “Snow Weight”.
 * Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale **
 * I am thinking of a fairy tale, Cinder Elephant, Sleeping Tubby, Snow Weight, where the princess is not anorexic, wasp-waisted, flinging herself down the stairs. **
 * I am thinking of a fairy tale, Hansel and Great, Repoundsel, Bounty and the Beast, where the beauty has a pillowed breast, and fingers plump as sausage. **
 * I am thinking of a fairy tale that is not yet written, for a teller not yet born, for a listener not yet conceived, for a world not yet won, where everything round is good: the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess. **

// Charles Webb // This is an experience we all have to go through as kids. The death of Santa Claus. When you find out he’s not real it is just tragic! This poem is a good example of it. It makes you think that he is actually dying, but it’s just a metaphor for someone finding out he doesn’t exist.
 * The Death of Santa Claus **
 * He's had the chest pains for weeks, but doctors don't make house calls to the North Pole, **
 * he's let his Blue Cross lapse, blood tests make him faint, hospital gown always flap **
 * open, waiting rooms upset his stomach, and it's only indigestion anyway, he thinks, **
 * until, feeding the reindeer, he feels as if a monster fist has grabbed his heart and won't **
 * stop squeezing. He can't breathe, and the beautiful white world he loves goes black, **
 * and he drops on his jelly belly in the snow and Mrs. Claus tears out of the toy factory **
 * wailing, and the elves wring their little hands, and Rudolph's nose blinks like a sad ambulance **
 * light, and in a tract house in Houston, Texas, I'm 8, telling my mom that stupid **
 * kids at school say Santa's a big fake, and she sits with me on our purple-flowered couch, **
 * and takes my hand, tears in her throat, the terrible news rising in her eyes. **

// Donald Justice // I don’t know exactly what this poem means but I think it’s trying to say something about how fast our birthdays seem to go past. You wait all year for it and then just like that the sun goes down and it’s over. Just as quickly as you blow out your candles.
 * A Birthday Candle **
 * Thirty today, I saw The trees flare briefly like The candles on a cake, As the sun went down the sky, A momentary flash, Yet there was time to wish **