Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal Review - Breakfast
Breakfast
by Sarah
I sit here with my cereal
and swear it's water into wine.
Salt swims with milk,
changing the flavor from Honeycombs to you.
See, it spins me
to know how we once were,
to revisit mornings dreaming blue and traveling through Tokyo.
Meanwhile I dip my pen; you
tip your hat to him, the old man on the stoop.
We walked by these windows--remember?
I watched women wring their lives down to the sidewalk below,
and I wrote to will you away.
They say we're into summer now, but my season's been delayed.
I'm still watching winter windows,
and the trees are only just leafing out.
It's summer, but not here--
summer in someone else's city.
Did he break up with her? Did she break up with him? Are they still together but drifting apart? Why am I reading this? And does the Honeycombs robot have any significance? I have so many questions. Not the least of which is how does the saltiness of her tears change the flavor of her sugar-infused milk to the flavor of her erstwhile boyfri-... Oh dear god. Excuse me, I need to find myself a fresh brain. This one has gone bad on me. Imagine a plum that's been dropped behind a industrial-sized washing machine six months ago and you will start to have an idea of the badness.
I am almost positive that Sarah did not mean this line to be interpreted in a dirty way at all. For one thing, the rest of the poem lacks anything definitively ribald ... unless you count "mornings dreaming blue" which may or may not be a reference to having sex while sleepwalking or having sex while the other person is in REM sleep. This review has taken a dark turn.
Before the Honeycombs line, she says that it's water into wine, when it isn't either of these things. It's a water-into-wine-type of a situation, I'll grant her. But given neither a prophet or a miracle was involved, I charge Sarah with the crime of adding a dumb clichéd metaphor on top of a bizarre metaphor. Even if you deny the possible but unlikely dirtiness of the line, the line is still utterly, painfully absurd.
Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: B-
by Sarah
I sit here with my cereal
and swear it's water into wine.
Salt swims with milk,
changing the flavor from Honeycombs to you.
See, it spins me
to know how we once were,
to revisit mornings dreaming blue and traveling through Tokyo.
Meanwhile I dip my pen; you
tip your hat to him, the old man on the stoop.
We walked by these windows--remember?
I watched women wring their lives down to the sidewalk below,
and I wrote to will you away.
They say we're into summer now, but my season's been delayed.
I'm still watching winter windows,
and the trees are only just leafing out.
It's summer, but not here--
summer in someone else's city.
Did he break up with her? Did she break up with him? Are they still together but drifting apart? Why am I reading this? And does the Honeycombs robot have any significance? I have so many questions. Not the least of which is how does the saltiness of her tears change the flavor of her sugar-infused milk to the flavor of her erstwhile boyfri-... Oh dear god. Excuse me, I need to find myself a fresh brain. This one has gone bad on me. Imagine a plum that's been dropped behind a industrial-sized washing machine six months ago and you will start to have an idea of the badness.
I am almost positive that Sarah did not mean this line to be interpreted in a dirty way at all. For one thing, the rest of the poem lacks anything definitively ribald ... unless you count "mornings dreaming blue" which may or may not be a reference to having sex while sleepwalking or having sex while the other person is in REM sleep. This review has taken a dark turn.
Before the Honeycombs line, she says that it's water into wine, when it isn't either of these things. It's a water-into-wine-type of a situation, I'll grant her. But given neither a prophet or a miracle was involved, I charge Sarah with the crime of adding a dumb clichéd metaphor on top of a bizarre metaphor. Even if you deny the possible but unlikely dirtiness of the line, the line is still utterly, painfully absurd.
Bad Poetry Grade [F = your standard bad poem; A+ = worst poem imaginable]: B-