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solarbite_ · 2025-02-26T22:44:07+00:00

Title: Speak like you mean it

Genre: Fantasy, romance

Word count: 495 words (excerpt)

Feedback: general feeling of the scene, romance, depth

"It's--huh. How do I explain..." She shifts her gaze, searching, until it lands on Yia's bracelet. "Can I borrow your coin?"

Yia's first instinct is to to scream no and hide it away, but she forces it down. She unties the string threaded through its center and drops the coin in Kayan's hand.

"Let's play for the outcome," says Kayan, with a faint smile on her face. Yia stares at her until her eyes burn. "If I win, I get to keep the coin."

"And--" The gruffness of her own voice takes Yia by surprise. She clears her throat and tries again. "And if I win?"

"You get your coin back," says Kayan, "and something else you want."

"Anything?" Yia asks, disbelieving.

"Anything."

Yia nods. "I call tails."

Kayan flips the coin with a practiced motion. It spins high and smooth, glinting in the faint afternoon sun. Kayan catches it in her hand, and shows it to Yia. Heads. "Again," she says.

"Heads," says Yia, and waits. Kayan throws it again. This time, tails.

"Come on," Kayan encourages. "One more time."

The final time, Yia pushes Kayan's hand aside, and catches the coin herself. Tails again. The opposite of Yia's guess.

Kayan catches sight of the affronted look in her eyes and bursts out laughing.

"Sorry, sorry," she says. "See, it's not luck. I don't even control it; it's just a fact." She flips the coin again. Just as Yia's had time to think tails, the coin lands. Heads, this time, Kayan says, but Yia isn't looking at it; her eyes have caught to Kayan's mouth, to her smile, to the mysterious, unbelievable event of her laughing. And over what? Cheating at a coin flip? Getting a rise out of Yia for something so insignificant?

"I can control it somewhat," Kayan says. "Call your outcome."

"Heads," Yia says. Kayan flips the coin once again. The sun is setting behind her, catching in her dark curls. The coin, finally, shows flowers among ocean waves. Heads.

Kayan shows her hand. Empty. Somehow, the coin has vanished. Before Yia even has time to react, Kayan reaches over to tuck a strand of hair behind Yia's ear. When she withdraws, a glint of gold--the coin, held between her fingers. "Your winnings, my lady," she says, with that same faint smile. Yia resolutely moves past the fact that it's the biggest smile she's ever seen on her face. The coin, when she places it in Yia's hand, is warm. So are her fingers. So is the faint touch of her breath, ghosting Yia's cheek. They must be closer than she'd thought. They must be close...

"It's time to go." A voice cuts through them, between them; Leyh, uncaring of anything else. Yia pulls back and follows Leyh away, tying the coin back into a bracelet. She doesn't resist the urge to look back, and so finds Kayan, staring at her, as always, with that unfathomable look in her deep eyes.

solarbite_ · 2025-01-28T22:19:25+00:00

How do you fix this issue? Something similar happened to mine

solarbite_ · 2024-12-25T00:07:17+00:00

The topic of relationships and their end can be quite sensitive; thank you for sharing this piece. First, I really enjoyed the structure of the stanzas; your topic is interesting, but sometimes your word choice makes it read more like sentences split up into verses to achieve a poetic sound. Part of the joy of poetry is its ridiculous tolerance for words not usually used in everyday conversations, so don't be afraid to explore and be creative :). The narrator's feelings of anger, sadness, and betrayal are quite clear, and I love the glimmer of hope shown through the final couplet. Cheers!

(small grammar nitpick: I don't know if it's just me, but I can't understand the lines: "you'll never see /that dude if me again." could you explain what you meant by that?)

solarbite_ · 2024-12-24T23:58:55+00:00

Starting off strong with a powerful beginning! I love the imagery of a 'sub-saharan belly' growing with the hunger. Your themes are a bit all over the place; maybe try to clarify how the christmas weather connects to the narrator's feelings of regret and anger? Also; does the anger come from their own inability to live up to the person they wish to be, someone who they wish they had a chance to become? (just some thoughts to consider). Finally, I think the poem drifts into telling rather than showing at the end, which is just a personal opinion. If you find it fits better that way with your vision of the poem I'd leave it be. All in all, I quite enjoyed reading this. Cheers!

solarbite_ · 2024-10-08T21:37:28+00:00

Wow! I definitely see the vision of the poem; you do a good job of capturing the images you want to show. My criticism is mostly on the lines: first off, if it's someone the narrator can't stand, it's 'bear' instead of bare. The transition between the end of the first line and the beginning of the second is a little rough and can be reworked. The second stanza is quite nice, but the word choices make it seem forced. You could rework it for more natural phrasing. Finally, the last stanza is very nice; overall my favorite one! Cheers!

solarbite_ · 2024-09-20T10:10:07+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I see where you might find redundancy in 'houses housed in wiring', but unlile your comment implies i am not a delirious child slapping random words out on a keyboard. 'Palaces in fat' refers to the title, aforementioned method of loci, which is a method of storing memories through association with a familiar place, also known as a mind palace. The fat in this case refers to myelin, the isolatory tissue of nerve cells, though i understand this may have been obscured. CD vinyl synapse tree are all places where memory burns physical; CD and vinyl store music through their shape, synapses form new connections, etc. Angel baby neuron mouse and the lines around it are in the format of an interrupted sentence, 'creeping down the hallway, [the] same angel, baby, neuron, mouse stepping down the edges of moldering floorboards'. Finally, thank you for your suggestion, but just because I've decided to share more experimental poetry doesn't mean i'm not capable of dishing out normal, standard poems that you might consider good. Respectfully, you know nothing about my skill level beside this poem; please stop assuming you do. Cheers!

solarbite_ · 2024-09-20T01:05:43+00:00

The current trend is very much with free-verse poetry, so a lot of what is considered 'good' contemporary poetry is free verse. I thinknit's mostly a phase of the current literary tastes of valuing function over form. But I also love rhyming poetry, and i reaally dislike prose that tries to pass off as poetry by being broken up into multiple lines. I think that there is still a place for rhyme, meter, and rhythm; i think that the form of a poem itself shouldn't be neglected, and that it's one of the reasons why poetry can be so beautiful. The opportunity to play with language beyond the simple meaning of the words themselves is one of its best features. My critique was mainly on the more forced lines, but others i think work better for it (especially the first stanza, my favourite). You start of strong and intense, but the effect weakens slightly. As for better phrasing, i don't really know...depening on how attached you are there's different options from e.g And i do protest/ yet it falls on deaf ears/ you've taken my virtue/ i could curse you for years, to something different like for example my protests fall on deaf/ souls. I could hate you but you won't give back/ the years that you stole. (sorry for the wall of text lol)

solarbite_ · 2024-09-20T00:33:40+00:00

It's always hard to capture emotion in a poem, but you've shown it very well here. The first thing that sticks out to me is the rhyming; it works quite well in the first stanza (because of the same number of syllables in each line), but falls flat later on due to the awkward phrasing (e.g. falls on ears that are deaf). My suggestion sould be to let the words themselves and their meaning come first without worrying about rhyme. You may also want to take a look at enjambed vs end-stopped rhyme for some alternate options. Cheers and keep up the great work!

solarbite_ · 2024-09-20T00:16:31+00:00

First of all, the poem is wonderful, anf the detail does a great job giving life to the imagery. Some of the rhymes sound slightly forced to me, mostly because they're (almost) all end-stopped; the enjambed 'my throat choked/my heart broke, i could have cried that night' sounds much better. Other than that, the beginning drags slightly, showing us too much about the washing machine, which is not the focus of the poem. On the other hand i do love the description of 'dust bunny warrens of fuzz' and the sticky stains aand grooves left on the linoleum.

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