Source
r/OCPoetry•
NigelTMooseballs

The Narrowboat

Workshop

I want to send this town off
along it's own dark veins
in a narrowboat,
bundled in a white sheet,
corners trailing in the peat muck,
stained tobacco sunburst.
Let burnt out scooters
and joyridden shopping carts
be witness to the dregging up

of copper pennies,
which when our hands
were small, we sent hot
and hissing, fresh
off the railway line
to the oil slicked rainbow water,
and I place them, cold now like silver dollars
on the eyes of our sleeping house,

piled in the rubble on the barge;
red bricks and slate tiles,
the rolled sod of the garden,
the homebrew, the bailifs,
smashed Jim-Beam bottles,
electric meters, cold winters
and that empty New Year's Eve
feeling, scraped off the nicotine walls
and daubed over everything like pitch.
Let me loose an arrow,
soaked in whisky, and lit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/tghrzt/the_long_edge_of_sleep/i1gp25v

https://www.reddit.com/r/OCPoetry/comments/tirrnn/through_the_fog/i1gqyg9

Posted Mar 20, 2022, 11:26 PM UTC

2310
UncleFatty_•

I really like the vibe of the poetry, but the wall text like format really takes a lot from the appreciation for me. A few adjustments in the form, and it will be a banger!

2
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Hi, I often worry I've messed the formatting up. Do you see a wall of text with no line breaks at all?

1
UncleFatty_•

````Not sure if it`s just my phone, but yeah, it```````````'s a wall of text for me

1
vs-ghost•

The imagery of a place receiving a Viking funeral is fresh and vivid; the speaker seems to hold a deep nostalgia for the place despite the griminess of the description (and the implication that they want to set it on fire...). I love the opening lines; the town as a living thing, streets as rivers, and, simultaneously, a goodbye.

I agree with the other commenter that giving the text some more white space to breathe could be beneficial.

"stained tobacco sunburst" - this line seemed like a non-sequitur to me, but that might just be me not understanding it.

"cold winters / and that empty New Year's Eve / feeling" - the feeling was palpable. Nice.

"Let me loose an arrow, / soaked in whisky, and lit." - it took me a while to realize that "lit" was an adjective describing the arrow instead of some unusual contraction of "light it," but then I realized you're supposed to set fire to the arrow before shooting.

Typos:

"along it's own dark veins" - "along its own dark veins"?

"bailifs" - "bailiffs" ?

2
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Thanks for your feedback - the white sheet trailing was meant to be in water, as my intention was for the 'dark veins' to be the canals and waterways. I'll re think this part, although the streets as dark veins is a nice idea.

2
Avragemoron•

what if you made it vanes like window vanes

1
Avragemoron•

I like it as is. I feel like this is a place Ive been. It gives an old timey like dickens feel to something clearly modern

2
VernonnonreV•

great imagery, and grit. i feel like bukowski would read this poem and not hate it. good work, the sub needs more like this. the only critique.... lot of these read like stream of conscious words. a good edit would be to find common words you can swap out .....

examples:

"empty new years eve" ... replace empty with something like hollow
"smashed" - maybe shattered or splintered

love the penny on the train tracks reference in the second stanza....

its a good poem.... hard to find any better critiques...

2
NigelTMooseballsOP•

Thank you - that hollow new year's eve feeling sounds great actually!

1
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1