Try to read your own work aloud before posting.
Try to review other people's work before posting.
Even shoddy written reviews can still help an writer understand what their piece does, but you shouldn't force it or think crit for crit is mandatory.
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“Which one are you? Wonder Woman?”
“Which superhero? I don't know. Superman I guess. I only know Superman and Batman and Batman is the rich one so I can't be him,”
“Do you like superheroes? There are a lot of superhero movies coming out now,”
Like wolves, men are, she thinks. Clever, singleminded, opportunistic.
“How old are you?” she asks.
“Superhero stuff is for older people now too. It's not just for kids,”
“I’m thirty six,” she says, “I think superheroes and Supermen and knights on white horses and all that stuff is just make believe. I'm not interested,”
“So what? I’m twenty five. I think superheroes are great. Think about all the real, actual villains in the world. Wouldn't it be great if someone could just swoop in and flush all those bastards down the drain?”
“It’s a good story,” she says, “but it's just make believe,”
“I think we need make believe no matter how old you get. Life is hard. I like the Hulk. You know the Hulk?”
“He's green right?”
“Yeah but he also gets stronger the madder he gets and I like that. I think it's pretty cool. When life is hard I get mad and I just want to be strong enough to make a change. Like smash a building or something, you know what I mean?”
“Why is it that men always need to blow something up when they get upset?”
“Stop. Come on, I was just trying to say I like that the Hulk can do something about being upset. Most of us, we just sit here and have to take it. Or drink,”
“Get out of here,” she says, dismisses him with a wave “I have a job to do,”
“It’s a hard job,” he answers, “I know all about it. I don’t know why I stay sometimes,”
“I don’t know why I stay at all,”
“You should check out some other bar. The place I used to work at, the girl bartenders would make money left and right. Old rich guys, young rich guys, all you have to do is pour them a drink and they’d slide you all kinds of bills. If you went, I would put in my word,”
“You can just walk up and ask?”
“Yeah. You just say you’ve worked in other places and you want a job,”
It’s always easy, isn’t it?
“Can you just get out? I have to do this,”
“Alright. Goddamn. You want me gone so bad, I’m gone. I’ll be back at five,”
She doesn’t thank him again. When she hears the door close she pours herself black coffee and takes the eggs from the carton. She cuts pork roll from the torpedo in the freezer with the bread knife and fries it on the flat top while she toasts bread in its fat.
When she cut the packaging, she held the knife tight. She fried up her sandwich and wiped the sweat off her forehead when she realized she was sweating.
It feels like all the blood in pooling in her feet, but she goes out to the front door, cuts some of the eyeshadow with the knuckle of her thumb, turns the latch and pulls till she sees the faces of the men beyond. She smiles and says,
“Good morning, boys. Don’t you all want to come in?"
>cuts some of the eyeshadow with the knuckle of her thumb
Clarify?
She uses the point of the kunckle of her thumb to make a thick line of eyeshadow a less-thick line of eyeshadow. I thought it would go down as a kind of cutting, quick motion of the hand. I also considered "thins" and "wipes" but I preferred "cuts" after some consideration.
Really good, but more context needed. It's pretty unclear what is going on beyond a woman and man chatting about superheroes, etc. Allegory and deeper meanings aside, it seems the woman is some kind of server (bartender?) and they guy is a customer/regular. But then why does he leave as she opens shop (is that what's happening here?)? Why do you switch from present to past when she cut the packaging? Can you explain to me exactly when and where we are and the relationships between the characters? Nice prose, clean.
Hey I would love context, but the forum has a word limit and this is the new part of the thing I was writing. "Clean" is all I need to hear, it means I'm doing what I should be doing. Thank you.
If you guys post material, just indicate it's yours and I'll critique in turn. Thanks again.
...
I eat the carrot, the orange tissue crushed under my great molars. Well the dentist says they are great at least. His name is Doctor Abdullah. He came from Qatar. As for the carrot, there is little hope left. Soon I will subject it to the acidic fire. The dissolution of a once formidable vegetable sort of turns me on to be honest. It is subject to the torturous chemical bath, a fate which all my meals suffer. I envisage the vile solvents transforming the carrot's flesh, renewing the orange tissue with redemptive fire and think to myself, "damn, I forgot to take my thorazine today." No matter, for evidently, I was fated not to! We men are not too dissimilar from carrots. We are born and grow and die and yet... we are not orange.
bugs. . .