Drunken Grace

There's a lot in this piece that can be worked on, I think the issue is that you're forcing a certain atmosphere and mood:

1. The passage of time: This poem describes a sequence of events that occurs in such a small passage of time it fails to be either identifiable as poetry or prose if one removed the line breaks. I think either removing the passage of time would make the poem stronger, by turning actions into descriptions and making one action, the kissing and vomiting. the center of your poem.

2. The final imagery of graceful crying after vomiting isn't working for me. Not only does the last line really not make any sense from either a practical or surrealist point of view, but the idea of crying with this context being graceful really corrupts the imagery of the rest of the piece.

3. I am not sure how I feel about you manipulating the cliche in the beginning. I like it, but I feel the line immediately after is useless, the length of the knife is irrelevant.

Firstly let's start with the grammar Line 4 "It's about as dull as our wits tonight" and Line 5 "You smell like Newports, perfume and strawberry-limeade vodka"...bad grammar would make the reader lose some respect to the poem and therefore prevents that impact you would want the poem to have Secondly the brand of the cigarettes and how long the knife is does not really matter to the reader...well from my point of view...you could just use cigarettes for the people who are not familiar with cigarette brands Thirdly, now a few words do not really give the poem the value it deserves such as "nice" Fourthly, i like how you took a unique approach relating drunk actions to graceful actions as they are opposites of each other and i like the piece...but in the end the actions you are outlining are just too errm...okay you showed a poetic sense of the knife but the actions that transpired were briefly stated...i believe you have to revise that...focus more on the actions. I would say read a few pieces and watch some poet competitions but overall the poem was okay

Is the 4th line on purpose? If so, clever clever. I suggest doing the whole poem like them, making the reader read through as if they actually were drunk. That seems like a fun take on it, just my advice. If that wasn't what you were going for, that line kinda breaks the flow I have going when I read it.

My criticism here is a bit vague, but bear with me. What is the actual content of this poem? There is atmosphere and imagery, but what is it you're actually trying to say? I feel like you're right on the verge of a statement of some sort, but you haven't quite gotten there.

The other thing I would say is work on the rhythm a little more. You don't have to write in metre or anything, but think hard about where your line breaks are, which words you use, and how many of them.

I'm guilty of this too, but enjambment shouldn't be used in place of punctuation like it is in line three. Poetry is, in its most basic form, supposed to be heard - punctuation is the way an author can influence his reader to hear the poem the same way he would speak it. I think you're working with interesting subject matter here, but the progression of the story feels a bit rushed. 'You turn the color of the vodka, We stumble towards each other, We kiss' is both rushed and bland - I'm sure that you can make areas of the poem flow better. I think my closing feedback would be that the connection between vomit and grace is peculiar, and when dealing with peculiar imagery and ideas, you have to convince your reader of the connection - I'm not convinced that there is a substantial connection between puking as a result of strawberry-limeade vodka and grace.