Application

[d_flores5150]

A Dollar Three Eighty

My Grandpa’s hands calloused the steel
of Chevy engine parts,
resounded in the chime of metal
beneath a rusting ’76 hood.

His truck was skin, darker than his own.
Oil and grit became flesh stretched over bones
and the 8 cylinders rumbled louder than the machine
in the brickyard of Utility Block Co.
vicious as the boss who signed my

Comments

Yes

[printers_devil]

.

No

[pluginthejebus]

I want more ethnic authenticity, gimme a poem about Mexicans working in Taco Bell plz.

For realz, the first two were stupidly overwritten and overextendedlylong. I like playing The Sims, I don't like reading The Sims in poetry. The third wasn't bad, the rhetorical forcefulness was above average, but the content's done to death, or at least you don't push it further to anywhere interesting.

NO

[patient_0]

Long-winded, predictable, ultimately forgettable. Your third annoys the shit out of me, and the first two, while ok in places, are both too long and too...bucolic. If they were collected into an anthology, that anthology would have to be printed in Century Gothic and end up titled An Unassuming Approach Toward a Pastoral Poetics, or something.

These were like the bit of sleep one gets in the morning between the fifth and the sixth ramming of the snooze button.

[somerled]

the bit of sleep between the fifth and the sixth ramming of the snooze

I like that.

No

[arriterre]

Self-conscious.

fourth

[denydenydeny]

leaning towards a no, can you post a really short one? thanks.

Re: fourth

[d_flores5150]

Flaco Mondragon Uno

no

[denydenydeny]

no, sorry, i mean

a) that's not what i meant by short
b) i respect what you're trying to do with your work, but i don't think it's healthy to be a one-trick pony. i don't get any sense of variety in the poems you've submitted. it's not just the themes you're selecting, there's no appearance of stylistic play. i like this poem all right, but it's not what i was hoping for.
c) do you write prose? i think you might be a strong prose writer.
d) who do you read?
e) if you have a fifth, that is something completely different, i'd be interested in seeing it.

Re: no

[d_flores5150]

To the Cali Girl Showing Too Much Cleavage on the First Day of College

I wrecked my bike at first glance
Gracefully crashed into the rack
Knocked over rows of bicycles.
And you just laughed
but for a moment
your smile broke
and stretched like a slow sunrise over the coast
and no one but me noticed
Your skin gleamed bronze
as a tan idol of some ancient deity
And you were still laughing
as the neckline of your shirt
reached for miles of sandy beaches
and I was parasailing on your currents
And you were still laughing
like the ocean
as though it had just swallowed California.