12-14-2025, 01:36 AM
My wife and I raise meat rabbits. semi-colon instead of period?
Someone on a TV show
said, “Bunnies. They just want to die.” this and the previous line read great when first read, but i now feel the cadence could be improved -- "Someone on a TV show / once said"? "I once heard someone / on a TV show say"? i am very bad at line breaks but you get the idea
It’s true.
We haven’t gotten to the meat
part yet. contra the other commenter, i like the jarring breaking of the fourth wall; that said, do we ever get to the meat part in this poem? as in rabbit-meat? or do you mean "the meat of the poem"?
13 live births, 2 still
1 eaten by its mother
(they do it when they’re poorly) nobody else commented on this so i may just have a personal comprehension problem, but poorly what? i don't understand the word on its own -- also agree "this" would work better than "it"
then 1 could not nurse
2 dead in the night
3 when they were weaned.
Each body gets a shroud
of paper towel
and I think how death
can tell a story.
Like how at 27 I worked
a summer in hospice
and heard a man cry
I’m dying as if warning might want to place "I'm dying" in quotation marks, and possible with the rest of the next line
the living to get out
of his way.
Or how my friend died
at 13 in a house fire
shielding her little sister’s
bones.
Or how last Tuesday
the MRI sang for me
again one half
of a waulking song a while i am bad at line breaks/enjambment, i strongly feel the "a" should be on the next line
call-and-response
clouds painted on
the ceiling for the
claustrophobics
the weeping
range of the sky. in general but especially in this stanza the lack of commas, dashes, or semi-colons make comprehension take more attention than is perhaps ideal
Now the rabbits are both if there are two rabbits left both works here, if not i feel it should be on the next line
living and dying with eyes
like coal I hold them
until they’re wrapped
in paper and nothing
can come undone. these last lines would work better "in paper / and nothing / can come / undone."
Someone on a TV show
said, “Bunnies. They just want to die.” this and the previous line read great when first read, but i now feel the cadence could be improved -- "Someone on a TV show / once said"? "I once heard someone / on a TV show say"? i am very bad at line breaks but you get the idea
It’s true.
We haven’t gotten to the meat
part yet. contra the other commenter, i like the jarring breaking of the fourth wall; that said, do we ever get to the meat part in this poem? as in rabbit-meat? or do you mean "the meat of the poem"?
13 live births, 2 still
1 eaten by its mother
(they do it when they’re poorly) nobody else commented on this so i may just have a personal comprehension problem, but poorly what? i don't understand the word on its own -- also agree "this" would work better than "it"
then 1 could not nurse
2 dead in the night
3 when they were weaned.
Each body gets a shroud
of paper towel
and I think how death
can tell a story.
Like how at 27 I worked
a summer in hospice
and heard a man cry
I’m dying as if warning might want to place "I'm dying" in quotation marks, and possible with the rest of the next line
the living to get out
of his way.
Or how my friend died
at 13 in a house fire
shielding her little sister’s
bones.
Or how last Tuesday
the MRI sang for me
again one half
of a waulking song a while i am bad at line breaks/enjambment, i strongly feel the "a" should be on the next line
call-and-response
clouds painted on
the ceiling for the
claustrophobics
the weeping
range of the sky. in general but especially in this stanza the lack of commas, dashes, or semi-colons make comprehension take more attention than is perhaps ideal
Now the rabbits are both if there are two rabbits left both works here, if not i feel it should be on the next line
living and dying with eyes
like coal I hold them
until they’re wrapped
in paper and nothing
can come undone. these last lines would work better "in paper / and nothing / can come / undone."