Bloody Wednesday
Bloody Wednesday
By Rina Shamilov
Papa’s eyes squinted on the sides of his face like crooked clock arrows
displaced like the stretching of the streets into deep March:
it was freezing
I don’t remember the street we were on,
but Papa’s eyes shuddered
reflecting in the rearview mirror
under the tumult of his father’s lost love:
bending beyond the shape of human
with tracing glimpses of the afternoon
latching onto his teeth
his fingers tickled the hem of my shirt
as he sobbed away the summertime
and froze up like the winter solstice trembling in his welting
eyes,
letting themselves flow into the stoplight
“ne’h platch, dedatchka,”
don’t cry, child
somewhere I saw the shadows of Dedushka’s blood,
quiet in the sheets of snow
& I was slinking into the evening,
melting away with the ghost of his face
I really enjoyed this poem. This poem reminds me of Kafka, specifically when it reads: "Under the tumult of his father’s lost love: bending beyond the shape of human." The voice and emotion are present. This is a very well written poem.
ReplyDeleteI have a lot of thoughts about this poem. Let me try to swiftly share some of the most important: First, I admire the candor and emotional honesty of the poem. I admire the willingness to go into difficult subject matter and to treat powerful emotions with strong lyricism. I like some of the lines quite a bit, such as the "tumult" line we already discussed. I like the compassion in the poem.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I feel like the knob on this poem is constantly turned to 11 out of 10, so to speak, and I think the emotions will be even more powerful if you rely more confidently on description and omit the grand abstractions, such as "displaced & hopeless" and "opulent & glorious." I do not understand how we got from the extreme negative of the former to the intensely positive and affirmative emotions of the latter. All that goes between seems dark and negative--lost love and tears--so I am baffled as to what led to the transition.
I like knowing where I am in the poem, so I like the line about the rearview mirror. For a moment, I know where the poem is taking place and how the two characters are physically situated. I wonder if it might work better to locate the poem in a sense of place from the beginning.
Also, there is an untold backstory about parental neglect lingering here. Something we can only guess at led to the father in this poem feeling estranged from the grandfather.
The images toward the end confuse me a lot. How can blood cast a shadow? Also. blood certainly cannot dry in snow. It melts snow, like any other warm liquid. I really find that whole part totally confusing, since the poem doesn't seem to want to be a surrealist or dada poem. It seems more like a family memory poem. Why is the face melting but not the snow? How did blood get in the snow and why? And how does blood cast a shadow?
I really liked this poem and all of the imagery that it conveyed. I LOVED the use of Russian in it, as I think it really gives a personal insight to the life of the speaker. The use of another language tells a whole other story, not in words but in context - the fact that the speaker is comfortable in another language in conversation teaches the reader something new about the speaker that would not have been known otherwise. That new information could be a number of things, but for me it was that the speakers family is Russian, and that in of itself has a lot of implications. The last stanza is powerful, but all of the different images is a bit overwhelming. I found it hard to focus on one and really be able to see it.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this poem a lot. As someone who has lost someone dear to me as well, I know all the emotions too well. I like the line that says you don't remember what street you were on and "he sobbed away the summertime". They add a melancholy tone to the poem which accurately resembles the mood I would say. I like how you changed the last line, because I remember it was something else about hearing Death I think and I can visualize the face of a ghost melting away. It left me with a little bit of a scary image, so it was definitely impactful in a good way. Weirdly enough, I think you could come up with a better title for this poem, but that is just me. I like your writing a lot!
ReplyDeleteI loved this poem, I thought it was so well written. There was so much imagery and I was able to really feel the emotions you felt and feel. I think at some points I get lost in your words, like they flow too well together.
ReplyDelete