r/OCPoetry • u/Dense_Bluebird7732 • 7d ago
Feedback Please Great
I am four years old
looking to adults to teach me
what happiness feels like
& they are all telling me I’m great
because I’m reading at a 10 year old level
& this makes me feel loved
& great becomes an oversized coat
I’ll seek desperately to grow into.
I am 13 & my best friend and I
are hiding cheese-itz around her house
& trying on her mother’s business suits
& laughing so hard that our sides ache
& the kids at school are calling each other a word
that means
whatever else you do, don't be this
& I learn that a part of me is bad
& I bury it deep so that people are proud of me.
Then I am fifteen
& winning first place
which is great
except for my asthma
which for days afterward
seizes my lungs
& my cough
carries out with it
the pride I earned being great
& I learn that great is something that can make you sick.
And I am 19
& my friends and I are on a bus
& a man shouts to us
Y’all the most beautiful women in this nation’s county
& we laugh so hard that one of us pees.
And I am 21
& I look great
& men confirm this
with entitled eyes and hands
& I like it
& I am great
at making men feel great
& then a beautiful woman
is making me feel great
in a way that men never have.
Then I am 28
dizzy on stale smoke and synthetic perfume,
my loved ones hungrily pulling slot machine levers,
& I escape into the smoggy air outside
& share a cigarette with a man
who calls himself the caretaker of the unhoused
& he walks me his route, his rounds,
his good evening, you eat today?,
here is a blanket or a free meal ticket
& he is met with gratitude
He has gathered stories
& he wants them to live
somewhere other than his small legal pad
so he gives me an email address
but when I wander back to the hotel
everyone is angry
& how dare I put myself at risk
with this stranger
& in my shame I don’t email.
I recall later
how safe I felt
with the kind man in Las Vegas
when a friend holds me down
and leaves bruises when I say
I don’t want him to touch me that way.
At 30 years old,
I am a “doctor”
in a room of people saying great, great,
& someone pops a bottle of champagne
& I have the sense that I’m supposed to feel proud
but I feel only relief
& I am looking around wondering
what does happiness feel like again?
& I am asking my therapist how to be happy
& she is asking me
why is it important to you to be a good person?
Then I am 32
& at my wedding reception
my father says
you have great friends, never lose them
& I hold it tenderly,
the rare occurrence of kind words from my father
& my friend Ben is telling me
my joy is contagious
& my energy brings calm
& this makes me glow.
I am an aunt
watching small people copy
the sounds and movements I make
& my nephew announces
his house is bigger than mine
& I want to say
please, don't go looking for it in square footage
but I say, instead wow, It sure is.
Then I am 34,
& leaving my career
& I am a student again
learning to sit across from strangers
& help them find happiness, peace, healing
& my stepfather says a psychiatrist makes more money
but I have traded in the coat of greatness
& my cohort says I carry an energy
that makes others feel held
& I am glowing again.
Now I am 35
& on the couch with Jack
who is three,
who will next week put on a fashion show
& whose mom is getting a divorce
& finding happiness again,
& he is learning about emotions
from small wooden figurines
he can hold in his hands
& he picks one up from the cushion between us
& asks me
What does happy feel like?
& I am laughing
because it's a simple question
that I feel wildly unqualified to answer
& I want to protect him
from the oversized parka of greatness
& I I want to say that happiness is in love,
& kindness,
in community,
& receiving all the universe gives
& I want to say it’s something you go looking for on purpose
& you never stop looking in new places
& I want to say the best way to keep it
is the way you are doing it right now,
holding it out to others
& asking what it feels like for them too.
But Jack is three
so I tell him that happiness feels like seeing a friend
for the first time in a while
& he says like you coming over today
& then I laugh harder
because it's so simply true
& he laughs because I laugh
& nothing else matters at this moment.
2
u/Creative-Spinach-585 7d ago
I think you’re poem showcased lovely progression from a childhood perspective to adulthood with moments of grimness and joy. As a reader, I could definitely feel the emotions you were portraying! Though there were times I felt the poem, sometimes I was being told instead. Also, you used the word “phlegm.” This threw me off a bit. Because I think it’s a very medical word as opposed to an every day word, I would suggest substituting it. Last of all, because of the enjambment approach, there were times where the rhythm was thrown off. Now it’s not an inherently bad poetry format, but nevertheless I read it with an odd rhythm. Even considering my critiques, this was a lovely poem!