Temptation has a Beautiful Face and Scrubbing a Hardwood Floor

Temptation has a Beautiful Face: The vivid imagery in this poem is presented in such a way that it affects many of the senses. The references to color throughout the poem really brought life to it and made it tangible to visualize the setting. In addition to the references to color, music was also a reoccuring theme. Each musical element is given a persona, (my favorite line "her brown eyes sang the blues") by pairing normal with atypical ("melodies from an out of tune piano, rock n' roll with a harpsichord, jazz accompanied by screaming violins"). The way in which these objects clash or disagree only strengthens the integrity of the scenery and enables me to understand the passion that exists between the two people in this poem. At one point you said "she smelled like the Appalachian air of home" and this helped me to understand why the female character is so tempting, she offers comfort and a sense of familiarity. The phrase you repeated "just like home" executes those feelings perfectly. I feel that a good poet is someone who presents an idea or situation to the reader that completely engulfs them and that is what you did here. There are few things I would change about it, maybe some punctuation issues like adding periods where commas are to execute your ideas more concisely, but overall I thought this poem was vivid and compelling.

Scrubbing a Hardwood Floor: In this poem, you perfectly captured the feeling of what it is like to let someone go. The images were beautiful in which you described how you sacrificed yourself for her happiness "bled the ground, given enough tears, broken my bones". You probably could not have captured the feeling of completely giving yourself to another person. I have this wonderful image of a couple in my head, that despite the intense love they once shared, are tragically departing from one another. The only part of this poem that I did not quite grasp was the part about alpha's and gamma's, but upon reading Sarah's review and understanding that it was a reference to Brave New World it finally made complete sense to me. You have a gift for creating the realistic through dream-like imagery and I can't wait for you to share more of your work with us!