mm, perhaps arbitrarily, i feel more standardized/academic versions of poetry do not outstrip grammatical integrity.
she hung, a scythe of skin, until he dragged her to the sand, that makeshift hallowed flag.
replacing "this" with "that". and "hallowed"/"holy". because 'hallowed flag' sounds better than 'holy flag' to me, but this isn't my piece. of course, i have no idea where else you're going with this piece, and i'm merely functioning on an all-over out-of-context basis. i just tend to think "scythe" in kind of an "upright piece of thing on which you can hang stuff once you're done slicing up the figurative shizdiggy" basis.
I'm not a poet myself [unless forced into it by academics,] but I think you've got all the poetic license in the world. Poetry has never uniformly stuck to grammatical principles.
If it's important to you to keep it perfectly within grammar laws, then you might have to rework it. But otherwise, use the words that sound good to you. You're writing a poem, not a paper.
I appreciate your sentiment. As I said, I'd crossposted this, and in another community two separate commenters noted that they'd misread the word the exact same way. Also, it took them out of the poem. That gave me enough reason to make a decision.
I edited a friend's book of sonnets. I would have told him to keep it--in poetry, getting the image across is more important than nitpicking past tenses or conforming to standard dialects. If anything, it gives your poetry more flavor as a southerner, and that can be a good thing.
P.S. I'm a child of Texans who was born and raised in New York, and every so often I find myself slipping into their usages. I'm rather fond of it, but then it's usually harmless stuff. I've been known to say "drug".
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she hung, a scythe of skin, until he dragged
her to the sand, that makeshift hallowed flag.
replacing "this" with "that".
and "hallowed"/"holy". because 'hallowed flag' sounds better than 'holy flag' to me, but this isn't my piece.
of course, i have no idea where else you're going with this piece, and i'm merely functioning on an all-over out-of-context basis.
i just tend to think "scythe" in kind of an "upright piece of thing on which you can hang stuff once you're done slicing up the figurative shizdiggy" basis.
buuuuut,
what do i know.
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If it's important to you to keep it perfectly within grammar laws, then you might have to rework it. But otherwise, use the words that sound good to you. You're writing a poem, not a paper.
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P.S. I'm a child of Texans who was born and raised in New York, and every so often I find myself slipping into their usages. I'm rather fond of it, but then it's usually harmless stuff. I've been known to say "drug".
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