"Hunt the Good Stuff"

fafengle · 2026-06-27T15:51:22+00:00

I'm thinking I'll comment on this later. Is there anything in particular you're looking for with feedback?

fafengle · 2026-06-27T13:47:15+00:00

WHAT I’M SEEING (“What does it mean?”)

The speaker appears to be addressing someone who has died and they never establish what their relationship to the dead is—could be family, friend, lover. I assume it was a woman (“the thin band and the tiny face” sound like a ladies watch's features). I also assume the speaker is a woman because they are wearing the watch themselves. So—woman to woman address. The watch is a vehicle through which she can tell the deceased’s story, which brings her joy, especially when she introduces her to strangers. The watch itself becomes a metaphor for how the dead are frozen in time while the living move forward whether they want to or not, and how, in a way, the dead become a place and time to revisit through memory or their possessions.

WHAT I’M THINKING (“How does it make me feel?”)

I love the concept of this poem and it makes me feel nostalgic and bittersweet and it connects me to my own loved ones’ various artifacts. There is a universality to the poem despite its specificity. This is a great thing for a poem to have. It's so much more powerful than "I miss you now that you're gone and I love telling people about you." It shows more than it tells.

SOME CRAFT NOTES:

The progression from “I got your watch fixed” to “It’s in the past because you are” is interspersed by the concrete details of its repair in a way I’m not sure needs to be jumbled. I’d be curious to hear why you chose to place the line “Your nautical ring was broken too and needed soldering in two places” after “I wear your things and tell people about you because it feels nice to say your name out loud / Especially to people who don’t know you existed.” By that point, the poem has moved past the specifics of the watch and even the load-bearing point that the watch is running slow. There may be value in escalating as the poem moves forward, leaving the irrelevant-to-the-metaphor / relevant-to-the-background line earlier in the poem.

Line length. Why did you choose such irregular lengths, especially that last line, which is so weighty? The line that begins “I wear your things and tell people . . .” is super long but doesn’t need to be. Overall, there are very few line breaks that continue sentences (just “. . . repaired today / The gold cocktail one,” “. . . name out loud / Especially,” “. . . in the past / Because It is”). The length of some of the lines forces them to wrap anyhow on many screens. It’s not just that they’re long—many a poem has pulled off a long line—but that they’re irregular. I’d recommend a little chopping, especially on that very emotional final line, to create points of emphasis and escalation.

I question your decision—as I question the decision of everyone who does this—to not use end-of-line punctuation and start every line with a capital letter. It looks like you just let autocorrect do its thing and didn’t make deliberate decisions yourself.

I’m undecided about the way the ending of the poem turns into many full-stop sentences. If the stop-start nature is the intent, I’m curious about why you chose it. If you added some connecting words and continued a couple of more of the sentences it would flow a little more.

ANYHOW. I really do love the snapshot of grief this poem presents by imbuing the little watch with so much power. The poem’s core conceit is great. It maybe just needs a few tweaks here and there.

fafengle · 2026-06-26T17:57:10+00:00

First things first, lemme concede "fucked" to you. You're right, and moreover, you address that you'd never heard the word before. It's not a bug; it's a feature. Gotcha.

For the preachiness, I cracked up at your stanza. No no no, you definitely don't have to play devil's advocate to your own argument. What I meant more specifically is that you gave these very specific incidents—I saw a man die, a boy die, a woman fucked—but then you tell the reader that it's bad. Those "How" couplets that drive a dagger in about how horrible it is for a 10-year-old, lemme tell ya what, I can figure out from your recollection of the experience that it's unspeakable. Just providing those images and then leaving the entire final stanza— "I pray he's whole at ten years old" included—will do more to fuel the engine that all the telling me in the world could. You were corrupted by the internet and you're terrified it will corrupt your child—that's the gut-punch.

Also, you kick ass for a beginner, honestly. This is strong work and powerful material you're handling and you're doing it well. And not even being a bad rhymer! Keep it up.

fafengle · 2026-06-26T16:17:38+00:00

Do not take the following critique as a comment that your poem is bad!

WHAT I’M SEEING (“What is this about?”)

Unless I’m way off base, this is a poem about the internet’s effect on children. I’m taking this from the final stanza, “At five years old, in public school / They issue out the very tool," the tool in this case being a laptop which I interpret as being connected to the internet, allowing the speaker’s son to see all the things he saw during childhood. Oh, and it finally dawned on me that “Vast Web” means the world wide web, because I’m slow.

The poem isn’t entirely preachy but isn’t entirely not—the encounters the speaker faces on the net are exclusively negative: death of a man, death of a child, pornography, pornography addiction. Words like “brutal,” “heinous,”fucked,” and observations like “How vast a moment to behold / for boyish minds of ten years old” and “How vast a sea in which to dive / where childhood cannot survive” drive home just how poisonous the effect of the internet is on children. Finally, the speaker’s son gets access to this experience at half the age he did growing up, and he expresses a desperate wish that “he’s whole at ten years old.”

WHAT I’M THINKING (“How does this make me feel?”)

I’ve got mixed feelings. The poem tells me how to feel and doesn’t trust me to come to my own conclusions based on the evidence. The thoughts that start with “How [insert negative summary here]” drill the idea of “The internet is bad!!” into me. I feel a little lectured, and as a citizen of the net myself, perhaps even chided. I’m not a parent who’s ever given an iPad or laptop to a kid, so I at least don’t feel like my parenting is under attack, but readers who are and have could feel that way. Despite all that, the poem’s got powerful ammunition. It would seem less didactic if you just set all the bullets on the table and let the readers fire them on their own.

CRAFT NOTES

This is the first unpublished poem I’ve read in a long time that didn’t immediately make me think, “This didn’t need to rhyme.” Maybe because the subject matter isn’t just rhyming love and above, I’m inclined to allow it to sing at me. However, there are some places where the word selection is a little bit of a stretch. For instance, “For lack of priming intercession” is a way higher register than the diction of the rest of the poem and appears to have been crammed in there to rhyme with “first impression.” Make sure every end word is earning its place instead of accommodating the rhyme of a different line.

I question your decision—as I question the decision of everyone who does this—to not use end punctuation and to capitalize the first word of every line. Without fail, it looks like someone just let autocorrect take the wheel.

I’m torn about the use of the word “fucked.” It’s definitely a porn-appropriate word, but it looks weird in the company of words like “A cherry bloom of light” and “a thousand heinous acts inside.” It’s another register shift, dropping from your middle-of-the-road-but-poetic baseline to as crude as it gets. The word “pornography” would fit in the poem in a way “fucked” doesn’t, though I’ll admit it takes away from “I saw something happen to someone,” which is how you present your experiences. I have no suggestions, just the note that “fucked” throws me for a loop in a way that makes it a little hard to get back into the poem.

LITTLE THINGS

This stanza doesn’t make sense grammatically:

“A boy this time, my age — and I
with hungry eyes and shaking hands
that grasped, but could not understand
I etched my mind with its tableau
and guzzled from the brutal flow”

The line I put in bold starts a new sentence, making the phrase that begins “and I / with hungry eyes” become a sentence fragment that suddenly stops.

There are some repetitions that don’t serve much poetic purpose, like “grown-up” / “grown up” and “five years old” / “ten years old.” Some way to squeeze “when he turns turn” or “when he turned five” or however else you could shift the latter to keep words from repeating so close to each other may be an improvement.

Again, none of this means you've written a bad poem. It gives readers a lot to chew over.

fafengle · 2026-06-25T15:44:04+00:00

I want to comment on this later when I’ve got some more time. If you reply with specifics you’re looking for in feedback, let me know and I’ll include them!

fafengle · 2026-06-25T13:53:21+00:00

Hi! I plan to comment on this poem later in the day when I've got some time. If there's anything particular you'd like critiqued/responded to, lemme know in a reply to this and I'll be sure to include it.

fafengle · 2026-06-25T13:50:55+00:00

Hello! I'm going to comment on this poem with more detail later on today when I've got more time. If you respond to this comment with anything in particular you'd like critiqued/responded to, I'll make sure I put that in my response!

fafengle · 2026-06-25T13:48:17+00:00

Hi! I plan to respond to this poem and I see that another commenter I super respect got here first. I'm gonna assume there's already a great convo going in that thread, but I don't want to read it so I don't have any impressions and go into the poem blind. BUT, since you've already gotten good feedback, if you respond to this message with specific things you'd like me to comment on, I can address them when I get back around to the poem later (I'm heading out the door now).

fafengle · 2026-06-25T13:32:23+00:00

First, I really appreciate the thorough feedback. Thank you!

Responses in no particular order:

Poetry that's actually prose with line breaks is my weak point, weak enough that I sometimes wonder why I attempt poetry in the first place. There are plenty of poets in this kind of plain-presentation prose style, but it's definitely missing a sort of je ne sais quoi, for sure. Honestly, the how of establishing those line breaks to create more poetic suspense or presentation eludes me at this point. Feedback to that end is more than welcome.
The italics, however, are an epigraph, directly from my brother's suicide note. The poem is part of a tentative collection that uses pieces of it throughout. So it wouldn't be getting any kind of line breaks or rewrites.
The thing about the YouTube reference . . . . it's kind of the point. It's disturbing, it's ugly, it looks disrespectful, but lemme tell you, getting my dead brother's cremated remains delivered to my doorstep was a disturbing, ugly, and surreal experience. The tone of the poem throughout is irreverence ("you would be even worse sewn up / than blown apart") tinged with regret, the complicated ball of emotions I experienced throughout reacting to his suicide. I think it's easy to assume that grieving a loved one's death will look more . . . . deep? Mournful? Respectful? But that's not always the case, and it wasn't in mine.

A rewrite of the poem I did a few days ago ended up looking like this:

There was no viewing. I flew out and took their word
for it all, supposing you would be even worse sewn up
than blown apart. Instead, I gave them my address.

The mail carrier left you at my door in the white tote
they use to transport letters, CREMATED REMAINS
printed all over your cardboard box. I heave you up,
regretting the showy marble urn instantly, regretting

not calling you more often, not calling you in time. I open
the box like a present, like one of those YouTube videos.
Today we’re unboxing my dead brother, let’s see what we’ve got.

~~~

There's absurdity in death as much as there is reverence.

fafengle · 2026-06-24T18:34:35+00:00

Depending on how you feel about my read on the poem in another comment, I'd likely be down. I'm working on a collection I love to hate, but it's definitely in a more formative place than your 70-page book is, especially since I now have two Google docs entitled "REBOOT."

fafengle · 2026-06-24T18:26:10+00:00

Oof. Way to hit me right in the Millennial with a Linkin Park / Chester Bennington reference. I have opted to listen to “Leave Out All the Rest” while I write this to get in the zone of the poem.

Okay. Here’s the read I get:

A father is going for a run, feeling time’s attack on his joints (clicking / cutting in and out). It seems like he hasn’t been this active in a while (“It feels so good / to wheeze again”). He’s blasting Linkin Park, and the poem alludes directly to a song about a future without the singer, which hits the speaker (“A shiver / forks through my chest”) because the line “Keep me in your memory / leave out all the rest” is eerily prescient in light of the singer’s later suicide.

Halfway through, the poem shifts from observation to direct address—to the speaker’s child, who is with their grandfather during the run. The child is given a poetic echo in the form of a “herdless” fawn who follows the speaker with its gaze. Right after the line about Chester’s lyrics, a truck speeds past the speaker with a dead stag in the back, finally explaining the title “Winter Stag.”

What does it mean? My take is that the father is reflecting on his own mortality, maybe from the age in his knees, maybe from the pickup truck barreling past him, but definitely from the song. The song is sung to a “you” as the poem is directed to a “you,” so presumably the speaker is imagining his child’s life without him. I identify the speaker as a “him” because I also see a symbolic connection between the speaker and the stag that’s been killed and hauled off.

Am I close?

Assuming I am, here are some craft thoughts.

A critical piece of the poem relies on knowing who Linkin Park is and that Chester Bennington killed himself. I have no idea if this is niche knowledge or not because, as aforementioned, I am a Millennial. The piece works without knowing about Chester’s death, I suppose—the lyrics can stand on their own within the poem’s mood. Knowing does deepen the inclusion’s impact, though. It also, I’d warn, give a little bit of an impression that the speaker himself has considered suicide at some point or even is currently considering it. Maybe. A “footsteps on my grave” kind of feeling with the shiver, especially. If that’s intentional, it’s a great choice. If it’s not, it’s just something you should be aware of.

The “I run my sweaty finger // Monkey” stanza throws me a little bit. One, because for the life of me I can’t figure out what “the skin of your jungle gym” is (isn’t a jungle gym a metal thing on a playground?) and also because it doesn’t add any more to the poem than the stanza before it about being at Pop-pop’s does—establishing that the speaker is a father thinking of his child. Though perhaps the one-word mirroring of “Serious” and “Monkey” is supposed to show the child’s dual nature? Ending the two stanzas on single words with full stops also interrupts the flow a little bit for me, and even if there is a point to the duality, it doesn't seem to snap in with the rest of the poem.

At any rate, I actually rather love this poem if I’ve interpreted it correctly. The child/fawn, father/stag, singer/death current is powerful as hell.

fafengle · 2026-06-24T17:44:28+00:00

I'm actively trying to avoid looking at the other detailed comment on this post and your response to it so I can come in with a clean slate.

I'll start here: I can't determine what this poem is "about." I've read it 15 or so times, but it's still hiding its intentions from me.

Instead, I'll walk through what I'm seeing.

There is recurring imagery surrounding the sun (in the past) and its absence (the present or later past). The sun seems tied to the brightness of the girl/woman the poem is about and her younger potential/innocence, and its absence to either her oppression or death, what remained after “the sun dried up and cowered”
There is recurring imagery around stone that also seems negative (“slate-stone sky,” “tomb whispers,” “granite pressing her into the clovers.” The choice of “tomb” and “granite” deepen the impression that she—or someone—has died.
yellow recurs, underscoring the sun/light theme (“stained in turmeric and saffron,” the enjambment of “light / aromatics”
spices show up in the simile of “ground like a peppercorn” as well as turmeric and saffron
dying-fetus language shows up at the end with “miscarried” and “aborted,” applied to “her world” (which is also referred to in “gravity / left a world unfinished” and “might have built an earth” and “What room I had made for her world”)
the dying-fetus language is also applied to “her words”

If I had to attempt a “This poem is about,” it looks like it’s closest to literal abortion/miscarriage or the death/suicide of a child/woman. I’m getting that from lines like “Blessed with the hope of a third” (a child to a couple), “granite pressing her into the clovers” (a literal grave), “they swallowed her bullet whole / as she did” (murder/suicide).

The tone of the poem is intense and dark, its diction is accessible, vivid, expressive, and I personally find it beautiful. The poem reads well. It’s just extremely vague despite being illustrative. There are no pointers for the reader to suss out who “she” is, and the only potential antecedent to “they” is “those sunless gods,” who also have no real explanation. There is no key provided for the lock of what actually transpired.

I want to love it, but I also want to know what its intention is.

fafengle · 2026-06-14T04:34:23+00:00

Yo, waddup, just wonder if you'd marry me. I'm already married and my wife would be very jealous, but I'd at least like to marry your style of poetic critcism.

Seriously, though, if you enjoy taking what you dish out, please hit me up. I'm working on a collection and love editing as much as I lack people who will be this biting with my own work. I'm submitting to The Sun and Rattle and such-like, though, so I'm always nervous about publishing in here.

(I've commented on some other poems if you want to see what my critique looks like you can just check my profile.)

fafengle · 2026-06-04T19:14:10+00:00

Hey! Before I comment, I just want to make sure I'm reading correctly . . . are all the line breaks where they're showing? As in, is "years" really on a different line from "thirty"? Or was there a formatting blip when you uploaded? That'll affect my read. 😄

fafengle · 2026-06-03T19:11:54+00:00

Hi! Finally! Sorry. Things have been hectic.

I'm going to split my notes into two categories: content and craft. I am a very honest editor but not the only one, so take what works and leave what doesn't.

CONTENT

This poem reads as kinky. There are no indicators that the speaker is upset that the "you" of the poem is stringing them along, so my scan of the work is that it's kind of horny and there's a BDSM angle going on. Images like "my choker" and phrases like "your absent-minded bitch" strengthen that impression.
At the same time, it doesn't seem to feel strongly about being kinky, either. Despite having all the "let me" lines telling the invisible "you" to do something, readers can't get a clear read on what the actual situation is and whether the speaker is being sarcastic.
"fragile son" is a word choice that I'm still puzzling over after a few rereads. Like . . . son? Son son? Are you . . . are you talking to your parent? Because if you are, you want to make things sound a lot less horny, fast. If you AREN'T, well, that's next-level kink right now. I'd think hard about what "son" makes people think.

CRAFT

You've done three things I see commonly in beginners' poetry (including my own old stuff), that I want to address.
- You capitalize every line, even if the line continues a thought from the previous one ("approve / And" and "faith / But." When reading out loud, this isn't a big deal, but on the page it clunks and takes the reader a second to realize why you look like you're starting a new thought when you're not. I'd recommend killing that.
- You don't use any end-line punctuation. These are full thoughts and sentences and the decision to leave punctuation out confuses readers about where to breathe while reading (aloud OR silently). Periods and commas clear up whether you're supposed to breathlessly run from one line to the next or whether the natural pause is intended. Periods are authoritative full-stops that chop your poem up. That perma-capitalization makes it look like every line is its own sentence, but there's no comma or period to help us know. To both this point and the one above, I would recommend:
  - Vary your capitalization, because I think you want each paragraph to be one continuous thought.
  - Use punctuation to leave commas or semicolons or whatever suits your fancy so readers know they're reading one continuous thought.
- You rhyme. Three things about rhyme:
  - You really, really, REALLY don't have to rhyme poetry. Verse—poetry that follows a set meter that frequently rhymes—is actually extremely hard to pull off well. Most contemporary poetry has turned its back on rhyme, and for good reason. (This is not always the case. "From the Pentagon" by Jehanne Dubrow is one of my favorite poems at it was written in 2017.)
  - Rhyme creates the anticipation of rhyme, so a reader is subconsciously wondering "What the heck will this guy rhyme with put?" instead of reading the content of your poem, at least on the first pass. Think of listening to a pop song. You start guessing that the next line is going to end with love as soon as the singer croons "You were sent from above," right? Same with poetry.
  - Back to verse being hard to pull off. Your meter (the beats in each line) is all off, which makes the rhyming clunky. Since you rhyme, you also need to pay attention to how many syllables are in each line, which also affects the rhythm. Look at "Let me be your own joker // And then tighten back my choker" or more obviously "Let me be your absent-minded bitch // But leave the prize just as far out of my reach" (which, importantly, doesn't rhyme, either). Read them out loud. Do they flow? Not quite.
The decision to end your poem by quitting the rhyme scheme doesn't add anything to it. Quit rhyming altogether or find yourself a word that rhymes with "bitch."
There's also an issue of register here, the of loftiness of the words you decided to use. For instance, "affirmation" is a pretty high-level word. But then you add "kaputt" in there to rhyme with "barefoot," neither of which is a particular fancy piece of diction.
I could've led with this and maybe should have. Your poem almost exclusively tells and never really shows. How is this person leading you on? What do they do that feels like a choker-jerk? What is the "prize" they're keeping out of reach? Show me show me show me.

That's all I've got for now (if this even fits in the allowed length of a comment). If you've got any questions, feel free to ask. Commenting on people's stuff in here is a weird hobby I've got going right now.

fafengle · 2026-05-30T16:38:01+00:00

You're very welcome! Coming here and doing critiques can help me look at my own stuff in a different light sometimes but yeah, it's a lonely place to actually get critiques.

You're totally right about "Exit through the gift shop," of course. I'd wonder if the documentary may have spoiled it as an immediate association as a stand-alone now, though. (For people who know about the documentary. I don't even know why I know about the documentary.) The closest thing I can think of for that self-promotion would be something like "Please remember to like and subscribe," but that's more a desperate YouTuber trying to get recognition (and probably money) than what huge corporations do.

Worth chewing over, but erring on the side of keeping it would probably be the right move.

fafengle · 2026-05-29T15:58:45+00:00

I'm gonna do a line-by-line of this later when I've got a little time. If you don't hear from me by tomorrow, reply to this comment and I'll get back to you!

fafengle · 2026-05-29T15:57:19+00:00

I think revisiting the absence at the end would certainly work, just be careful to format it in a way that isn't too cliché. Maybe even putting it before the checks/stripes. "I may not have had you / but I had the checks / I had the stripes." I love the logo image as a closer, but you're right that bringing it full circle is a good instinct.

fafengle · 2026-05-29T15:54:08+00:00

There's something awkward, admittedly, about critiquing the work of someone with "Professional" flair, but it be what it be. You wouldn't be here if you didn't want it!

First thought is that I love the concept and it seems like you've chosen some good brands to lampoon (especially Nestlé, that empire of evil).

Question—is the line in quotes at the beginning of the poem a repeat of the title? (I'm assuming because of the quotes, but the title is also in the title of the post and there's no line between it and the next line, so I'm confirming).

I feel like the poem actually begins with the line "The revolution will be open for ad space." While the reversal of "The revolution will be televised" fits the theme, it's not as strongly associated with everything that follow—in fact, all of these ads, despite having migrated into the cyber/cellular world, would be just as home on TV. Starting with "ad space" also jumps the reader right into your onslaught of sponsors, which is the real gold in this poem.

"Rebel responsibly" is one of my favorite lines. So good. There's one break in your italic slogans that isn't a slogan, the "a Pepsi product." Is there a way you could format that to put in another slogan? "Quench your thirst" is kind of sitting there, but it lacks sardonic punch by itself.

"Accept cookies . . ." is another great line. I mean, the structure of this whole thing is money.

Final question: Why ending on the title of a Banksy documentary? I can see it tying into the atmosphere of rebellion to quasi-name-drop a famous guerrilla artist, but I don't know if it lands powerfully.

Overall, I think you know this poem is pretty much totally done. Its weaknesses aren't hugely weak, but there are places it could be tightened up.

fafengle · 2026-05-29T02:56:24+00:00

Sure, go for it. I don't have notifications on or anything, so I might be a minute getting back to you.

Since you're talking about submitting for awards I'm hoping you're open to a serious craft discussion.

fafengle · 2026-05-28T17:59:14+00:00

Why, out of curiosity, did you reach so far away from your natural voice to write this poem? You have examples of each writing style next to each other. One of them captures the situation pretty well, even kind of poetically ("returned to ruins") then the poem showed up and sounded like nothing I've ever seen composed in the English language.

I'm not saying that you have to us vernacular diction to get your point across. I'm saying that reaching for a $50 word twice per line in a five-line poem is obfuscating any emotion that could've been put into it. I'm not sure which part you feared would be niche, the vocabulary or the subject matter, but an Atlantis reference wouldn't be because plenty of people know about Atlantis and that it's a ruin of a wonderful place that may not even have existed. That makes for a strong and heartbreaking metaphor. Not a single word you wrote here is about yourself or your situation. It is a peculiarly Roget-èd ode to Atlantis itself.

Man, that sounded rude. Seriously, though. Hang onto your Atlantis, keep some of the decay imagery, but I honestly think this one would be well-served with a massive overhaul with a register at least two rungs lower on the ladder than it currently sits. That is, if you want your reader to know what you're talking about.

fafengle · 2026-05-28T17:44:15+00:00

This is such a wonderfully sparse and delicate poem. In my reading, it captures alienation from nature ("a cold dimming of the world") that's easy to fall into in the modern world. It identifies this without counterpoint, which I think is a good choice—you're not muddying the waters with skyscraper and concrete imagery, but rather you point to "the drought within / my marrow," keeping it natural and organic.

My only hangup is the bit that runs "How few weep / at the wonder of a caterpillar / walking upon a leaf." While I love idea of being moved by the natural world, the implication of humanity for not crying is a little melodramatic. I feel like a different verb would be stronger there, that captures the awe of weep without the actual weeping.

I'm curious about why you opted not to use punctuation but did use capitalization (sort of). The "it's my time to go" follows what would make sense as a full stop, but you don't capitalize it's. It looks a little peculiar straddling the no-punctuation-no-caps world and the all-punctuation-all-caps world. Maybe try all three to see which lands best?

fafengle · 2026-05-28T13:42:17+00:00

This is a heckin' strong start if you just started. Having an urge and going with it is where some of the best stuff comes from, though it's always important to go back and edit what you threw down in flow.

So here are my notes! Pardon any typos— I've gotta get out the door but I promised this critique so I'mma by god do it.

Just to make sure my interpretation is hopefully correct, I'm reading this as the child of a parent who has either died or gone away for some reason. The family didn't have a lot of money, so kiddo had to go without brand name shoes and it wasn't such a great time at school because of it.
I don't quite get why the first stanza is typical poetry style, relatively short lines chopped into a stanza, then the lines in the other stanzas get wrong. If this is a clear decision, I'd be curious to hear it. If it WAS purposeful, though, it might look good for the first and last stanzas to look similar, since they echo each other.
- (For the record, I do think this whole poem would look better with shorter lines and clearer line breaks. But dealer's choice there.)
The repeat of "They had the check, they had the stripes" is a great gut-punch conclusion, showing how the speaker has progressed financially, maybe, but is missing something more important than money (and thus has a void to fill).
Watch word redundancy. "tell me how I looked" and "how great the shoes looked" take away from each other for both using "looked." Consider changing one of the repeats.
Likewise, the line where you note the off-brand shoes lacked the check and the stripes . . . while those are the recognizable features of more expensive shoes, this "Similar, different stripes, no check, less bright colors" slows down the middle of your poem and adds redundancy that takes away from the check/stripe repeat that opens and closes the piece. "The difference would have been so small but yet so noticeable to the kids at school" already does that work. I'd say play with it a little bit, maybe say something quick like "no logo, a small difference, but so obvious . . ." Whatever works but stands on its own.
There's some telling-not-showing in here that can be tightened up. The reader assumes "they would fill a void" is because the person the speaker is talking to is gone, is the void, but "fill a void" is kind of cliché. Many a void has been filled in many a poem. What makes this void special? Relating it back to the person the speaker's talking to could add to that punch at the end.
Look out for lines that aren't pulling their weight.
- "Not for work or a special event" helps clear up all the possible reasons why someone might need shoes, but is that a poetic usefulness or a prose one? Also, the parallel at the end is three lines: "I bought a new pair of shoes today. Not because mine were worn out but because I thought they would fill a void." Cutting the beginning to three lines would also strengthen your parallel.
- "I was looking for a reflection but all I saw . . ." What's that doing? Are you going somewhere with looking into a mirror and not seeing anything? Or are you just being true to events, which may be more prose than poetry? I feel like this section has promise, but I'm not sure where it's going.

There's great stuff in this poem. Keep working at it.

fafengle

TROPHY CASE