Crit thread?

are there any active crit threads? I wanna get some critique but i can't find any active ones rn

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docs.google.com/document/d/1T-RIWuEWUumgX76vVsRsLdBI0l9R9239f-fPFjn747o/edit?usp=sharing
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I'll read your garbage.

sweet. here's my garbage short story:

He brooded about that relationship the same way he ruminated over the Third Reich. The questions were the same: Was it good? (it was obviously brilliant.) What was it? Could it ever, possibly, ever have ended any other way than it did?

Both had a fast and inherently unstable flight. One was reminded of Icarus, wobbling too close to the source of the brilliance that illuminated his path. The angles look, in retrospect, so severe that you can’t imagine it continuing longer than it did, that you can’t imagine a steadier, more deferred, ending.

But he was still tempted to try and imagine such an ending, or any possible other ending than a crash, no matter how vague. The participants in these events can’t possibly have predicted the endings, or they wouldn’t have participated in them. However, the difference between predicting an event and feeling a vague foreshadowing is important here. How can one possibly not have seen that particular wheel turning back around, or this line following the curvature of fate? The participants may have and in fact probably did feel tugs that indicated the direction of their fate. But these tugs aren’t the same as a prediction, they didn’t outline the horrible particulars of events, they simply urge one in a certain direction, spur a certain reflex. In the first case, in the relationship, he did look back and realize that his and X’s fear indicated a likelihood of crashing, a possibility that he could only have dealt with by embracing and leaning into it. In the case of the Reich, he could imagine the participants in this horrible theatre realizing the reality of it in glimpses (realizing that it was more than an aesthetic game, rather that it was enacted on flesh and blood) that felt like eerie winds, but not able to look back, or down, for fear of realizing their tenuous grasp on an icy, protruding bluff miles over the ground.
At the very peak of the curve, he and X had embraced as if leaning together into a strong wind. If they had stayed like this they could have ridden it out. But he had flinched, perhaps she had too, and they had submitted to that uncertainty and half-turned away, then been flung apart.

>He brooded about that relationship the same way he ruminated over the Third Reich. The questions were the same: Was it good? (it was obviously brilliant.) What was it? Could it ever, possibly, ever have ended any other way than it did?

Being 14 and a dropout and having no parents and living on the streets, you'd probably think my life was pretty shitty, but it was actually real cool. On Fridays, I'd usually find myself hanging out and chilling outside of Burger joints, doing shit like knocking over trash cans and spitting on people's faces as they walked out the door. Though, it really pissed people off and I admit I kinda got roughed up a couple times, it was a pretty cool way to hang out in between doses. See, I didn't always have the cash for my Uppers. I was into, like, high-quality shit, none of that low-class shit those fucking faggots and niggers did all the time. I needed good quality high-as-a-kite shit, but it was pretty expensive shit, see, so it took me a while to gather up the money to pay for it. Usually I'd scrape up the cash by like, pretendin' to bum a light or asking the time off of some walker-by (usually one of those smug-ass business dudes, since those fags can't fight for shit).

Once I got all my money and shit, I'd take it to Greg, my dealer. He was 17 and also a dropout, and I always thought he was real handsome and blond and hot, but not in a faggy way or nothing. He's just, like, the kinda good-looking guy that you can tell chicks are all over him and he's probably swimming in pussy, sorta like me. I get so much fucking pussy man, you don't even know. Greg had this real bad slur though and pretty much sounded like a retard. Chicks apparently dig tards though, 'cause whenever I see a guy acting all tarded, he's always got bitches swooning over him and shit. Fucking chicks, man. I really hate them, but I love goin' in on their pussies. I love pussy man, it's so fucking good on my dick and shit. Can't stand the chicks, but the pussy is good. That's why I hate fags so much. You have to be some sort of a fucking tard to wanna turn down that sorta shit, y'know? I've never gotten that shit. What a bunch of faggots.

Here's the first few paragraphs of a bildungsroman portal fantasy I'm working on.


Do you remember when two hundred dead horses washed up on the shore? It happened before we were born. Alongside them, half buried in the sand, was a single man. The horses had drowned and they could not be saved. But the man, he could be—in every way a man can be saved. I went down and visited the water once. Just to see it. I was drawn to it, I guess. The sand was still speckled with horse bones not yet stolen away by the tide. I had hoped to be saved, too. And maybe—I was.

Mother had taken another spill and she needed stitches. I don’t see her anymore. I see her face, and I see her leave the house once a week to cash her checks. But when I look into her eyes it’s like forecasting the weather on the moon. As distant as it is absent.

I knew something was wrong when I began to notice things out of place. Sheets hung from the ceiling fan, books inserted into the toaster, and Orion’s stuffed dinosaur deposited unceremoniously in the oven. Even my school lunch once contained a shoe in place of a sandwich. I knew it was her. When you died, Rose, some of her must’ve died too. I don’t know if it was father abandoning us, but if your death caused her to bend, then it was him leaving soon after that made her break.

After mother received five and a half stitches across her brow they ushered us into a tiny doctor’s office. Time seemed to crawl as we sat beneath the quiet hum of fluorescent lights. Mother and I didn’t speak.

The man that entered wasn’t the operating doctor. He was a specialist. He smelled like the rest of the hospital, sterile, like disinfectant.

>Do you remember when two hundred dead horses washed up on the shore? It happened before we were born.

Why would you start a story with a logical contradiction? If the event happened before either the narrator or whomever the narrator is speaking to were ever born, s/he wouldn't bother to ask if they remembered it, because that would be impossible. Change your phrasing. "Do you remember _the story of_ two hundred horses," etc. Imply that it's a folktale, then build off of that.

I'm afraid this doesn't mean anything to me. It's words, but they have no purpose. This entire metaphor should be condensed to, at most, a paragraph.

There is no conflict or resolution established, but the character is adequately defined. I've met people that speak like this. It's extravagant, but not disingenuous.
I want to read more.

I'm really struggling with that. I want it to sound very matter of fact and I don't want to overload the sentence. But, yeah, it is kind of odd.

Have you ever used the catalog before?

You don't have to make it sound fictional. It really does come down to phrasing. "Do you remember how two-hundred horses once washed up on the shore? It happened before we were born, but it's something our parents still talk about." etc. As long as it logically flows, you can do whatever you want with it. It's just weird to ask someone if they remember something that happened before they were born.

I am a worm in
winter. Inside--sickly-
sweet sap for blood. It’s
embalming fluid, it shuts me
down.
My voice is brittle, my
hair is brittle, I am
prone to cracking.
Fragility is damned and
beautiful. I speak my
brittle voice as if
from behind a layer of
glassine, or glass.
My heart pumps
slow and heavily,
driving the winter
sap through my body.
Something
heavy lies resigned in
my veins.
On the window-
panes, chrystals waltz
slowly, accumulating
stasis. I am the inside of a
cell in a whale’s blubber. I am
someplace so deep in the
ocean that light has to
work to get there.

I shiver, ice is in my bones, slowing
time for me. I can see through the
amber on my coffin, and I am fighting the
encroaching chill.

There are songs that
come from within ice,
there are long seasons
that sing to the body, that
wrap it tight, like pagan
gods.


My new residence is
Chronos’ coffin,
wrapped in capillaries
of frost.

Ice gods have
no mercy, their fragility
is an infection, diffusing
outward from the axis mundi.
More brittle than angry,
their Midas touch turns
flesh to glass and
tin, turns irises purple-
grey. The silver in
me reacts to light,
needs to be washed and
affixed, angrily begging to be
burned in acid.

Freezing a thing preserves it, at the
cost of life. A photograph needs a
victim. A taxidermied bear loses its
grandeur, becomes harmless. I lose
my energy, one electron at a time. Memories
calcify.

Enduring is a
function of metabolism.
An infant or a humming-
bird thrum a spring
music with their
hearts and wings.
I sing like icebergs
creaking, my vision
fogged like frosted
glass.

t. William Shatner.

Teenie boppers in love, it was the most wholesome, cringe inducing thing I could imagine. She had to make me happy, I had to do everything right, neither of us knew what the fuck was what, and we still made it work. We ran out of things to do, or at least we stopped looking for them, or never did in the first place. It all just fell into place like it never did or ever would again. The nervous heart thumping, knowing exactly what the other was thinking, hiding from it all just because I didn't need anything else anymore, none of it feels the same without you. It won't ever matter as much to anyone else as it did to you or I, and you wouldn't even tell me goodbye.

This is really good

Spectacular.

Are you in a MFA program? Have you submitted any poems for publishing?

Fucking kek I can't stop reading it in his voice

i haven't finished undergrad, got very ill and had to drop out, one semester away from finishing

as for publishing, lately i submitted some poems and photos for publishing, and only the photos got accepted. i do think my photography is at a higher level, my poems need work

thanks. it's about illness actually. i was reading all this nerdy science stuff and tried to write a poem about it to integrate the knowledge via metaphor so that I wouldn't just think of it as boring nerd stuff

At first glance it seemed like it might be too grandiose, but everything fit so well when I read it.

If I was my
father's son
I'd grow up
strong, pure,
fleet
Silent in
a dark wood
disappearing into
the snow, my
identity
a lack of
tone, contrast
A mirror,
a canvas
A piercing brilliance
from the
sun's glare
on snow,
the color
someone's hair
turns when
they experience
a
great loss

This color
was a zero
degree
a negation
a mirror recognizing
itself
in a
mirror, the
color of ghosts
ghosts of conquistadors
ghosts of
masters

We came from
the North
relished the
austerity,
juxtapositions
were clear,
contrasty
we ate dark
bread, we
worked, we
were silent often,
like the blankets
of crystals that
dampened the
green wood
What was
there to say?
that hadn't already
been posited
by the terrible
turning of
the planet,
of time

But I am
tainted,
impure, tortured
by my
impurity
I have sinned
I have been
not so strong
I have been
weak
Worst of all,
I have relished
it, relished
my pain, lived
in my stink
and my
weakness

Focalin Rose
was a symbol
for us that
year
a stained-glass
picture of a
flower that
we crushed
up focalin
extended-release
beads on to
snort, usually
crossing the
lines like an
ex
Focalin Rose
was a fast,
clean woman
more brilliant
than the sun,
hair lighter than
blonde, orphan
but not
a
mutt

Two years later
I marveled at
what I'd managed
to achieve in
conjunction with
my psychiatrist
The meds I was
on, when taken
together, were
the closest to
zero-degree I
could get
A perfect clearness
like empty
glass, was all i
felt, and a
corresponding
fragility
I truly felt
nothing, smooth
and in HD, just
a reflection of
my surroundings

docs.google.com/document/d/1T-RIWuEWUumgX76vVsRsLdBI0l9R9239f-fPFjn747o/edit?usp=sharing

are those boobs?!

Please read it. This is an intro of my story.

Rats

Public Transport System in the capital


Another Abduction in the valley.

A girl was abducted by a group of people, allegedly for forceful conversion.

People are angry. Protests outside the governor's office.

"Another one. This is third such case in this month".

"Yeah. Its getting worse with each day" .

"Its not only about the valley. The whole country has gone to gutters. And with the enemy movement at the borders. They will attack soon. You mark my words."

"There isn't going to be any fighting and these minor law and order problems are there in every state. Media is just hyping it up these days"


This great nation of ours is surrounded by enemies , filled with enemies.
Why shouldn't the old order die? Its only natural.

No, No. The traditions and culture won't die in isolation. They will take the people along with them.

No one is killing the people. Wake up and observe. Learn. Tide is against this idea of nation which you hold very dear. Let them die.

Night would bring the end of the day, like always. Its time to rest, to giveup.

Let them break the gates. We have nothing.

>It happened before we were born. 200 dead horses washed up in the shore.
literally that easy

>It happened before we were born.

But now your first sentence isn't cool.

before the dialogue make it clear who is talking and make a point about it too. Something like "Complacent salary only look at such things as fodder for banal conversation"

*salary men

I intentionally kept it this way. I have no characters in the story. I actually don't know if I would be able to tell the story without characters.