World War Two Rooming House

[Erthona]

Well this is suppose to be a mild critique, but I don't know how to do that so...

Rooming house rooms are cheap, (maybe "boarding house rooms are cheap.)
and there are front porches (They always have large front porches with swings to sit on)
and swings to sit in, (on?)
smoke and drink beer-- (I've never smoked a beer, or "men in undershirts" for that matter)
men in undershirts,
women braless sitting back. (Interesting syntactical choice)
Bodies air out in quiet (are they cadavers?)
neighborhood air, elm trees branches (tree's)
rustle making shadows in leafwork. (leafwork...new word?)

No rat race for sex here-- (I get it, just not sure it works as intended)
most are all loved-out,
given to a kind of malaise
that occupies the minds of old
stallions standing in a field
watching mares unload from a trailer
and then eye-following
their twitching tails (I'm not completely sure this metaphor is consistent with what you want to say)

But sex is not lost to the mind, (period)
for Janeen lives here in dresses (new sentence)
always Five and Dime-- Janeen (use em dash for parenthetical —always "Five and dime"—)
molding and molting inside, slip-sliding
in such wondrous ways when she
leaves the swing and goes inside,
her swish warning eyes away
from setting too close. (from looking to closely?)

Janeen's rooms on the third floor. ("room's' a contraction?)
Old man Batholdi's a door down (cannot signify possession and an "is" contraction at the same time)
toward the circled third-floor veranda.
These third-floor rooms open
temperate for their purpose-- (equivalent of: these doors open moderate for their purpose)
every gashed wallpaper tear and (tear is redundant)
times painted chest-of-drawers. )I have no idea)

Cracker Jack romanced Janeen up here
in her one-bed bedroom, Batholdi fell
asleep with a racing form
in his lap. Cracker's lips fastened (I'd use his whole name again, "fastened" doesn't seem to work very well)
on Janeen's cheek and smacked.
They held hands and listened to the
radio. Batholdi won $200 in the third
at Belmont two years ago
and still remembers the girl cashier
was beautiful and had long fingers.

(still remembers the pretty girl cashier
with long lovely fingers)

Janeen, "Goodnight Cracker."

Cracker came to town in an railcar, (colon)
a papyrus ark, dirty hat pulled low
across his face-- Alma's Rooms
on English Street seemed just the ticket,
a block south of Douglas,

(Alma's Rooms, a block south of Douglas, one house west of Patti
on English Street seemed just the ticket)

. A King's X
hamburger stand and Ceros Ice Cream Parlour
on the corner of Patti and Douglas.

Within a short walk,
And the river a mile away.

"Goodnight Janeen-- sleep tight."

The cadence of life here at Alma's
so carefully controlled, so happily mild,
reeking its way along
with the best of all possible reeks.
Nothing self-conscious, a little Puritan,
but lots of the weary sensuality
and fleshy aromas of one-bath-a-week
allowed in the four-legged tub.

Kansan and Nebraskan and Oklahomian. (the form "Oklahoman" is more consistant with the other two)

These third-floor rooms--
transfuse into English Street's bloodstream,
into the wistful lewdness of Janeen's (awkward)
telling a bawdy story of the most consummate
nasty boy ever to touch her leg past her knee.

Rooms

Out on the porch sitters (Out on the porch, sitters...)
watch glow bugs light the night,
hear locusts sing.

Janeen's light goes dim.

The Gemini are out. Discouroi. (Discouroi?)
One called the Morning Star
and one the Evening Star-- listen
'slish, slish'-- the sound of a dress.
Janeen's coming down the stairs.

"Anyone object if I take my bath tonight?"

Lannie Lou gets up from a chair.
"Let's take it together.
My turn, but I'll share."

rh

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Roy,

This seems more like a prose short story that you have excised parts of the sentence structure in order to make it appear to be poetry, but on the whole, it reads as simply grammatically truncated prose. It delves too much into the personal to be merely a sketch of a boarding house, and by inference a social commentary, yet does not give enough information about the character's for the reader to make a connection to them, and care about them. In other words, in both form and substance this is neither fish nor fowl. Thus, as it is neither here nor there, it appears to be no place at all, which is where I was left at the end of reading it.

Dale