6. She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

As me free entry this week, I'm going to post the poem I submitted for the first round of work shopping. Of course, I've already gotten everyone's comments and I've read over them several times. We all can't get orally-workshopped every week, though, and I ended up actually kind of liking this one, the problem is...I apparently didn't get across what I intended to. For anyone that is willing to, I'd really like for you guys to read over it one more time, then read my explanation of what it was SUPPOSED to be about, reread the poem, and help me out on what to add or remove to make that more apparent.

(Ignore the "___", indenting doesn't take on the blog, so I needed to get a bit inventive.)

______________________________________________________
She Wore Only Long Sleeved Shirts

Every morning she put on a long sleeved shirt
and always took a pen.
___Because Dave was still talking to her
___about his wife; Because Renee, the adrenaline-obsessed
___secretary could do something unexpected.

Every afternoon she hid from nonfiction dialogue
and prayed for fictional pain.
___Tales of desperation and death
___with life and loss and truth scratched
___their places into her wrists and then held on like 4-D tourniquets.

Every day she missed someone calling her attention
until she had no name.
___But--potential exotic names slashed
___vertically up her wrists, vaguely attached to lovely notions:
___loneliness, betrayal, envy.

Every night she scrubbed those arms no one saw until they bled,
raw and clean and smooth.
___She started over
___in a world where spring air
___got to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea.

But she'd never had kiwi pear chamomile tea
Or connected notion to product.
Fictional pain became too 4-D
And Dave and Renee were too selfish to care.

And when she died the only writing she was commemorated by
was a reminder that she should rest in peace.

______________________________________________________
Alright. So, I think this is a perfect example for how a writer can totally, completely understand one of their ideas and THINK they present it clearly, but the connection ends up only existing in their head. That's apparently what happened here, because I still understand this poem as what I meant for it to be, though I can certainly understand all of the connections everyone made in workshop.

It's supposed to be about a writer. She writes ideas for stories (plot lines, character names, etc.) on her arms, but wears a long sleeved shirt so no one can see--so she can try to still fit in with "normal" people (of course all of this was also supposed to be an obvious connection to suicide, also).

• Dave and Renee are characters.

• She's too obsessed with fictional things (fake characters, big themes like desperation and loss and life, obscure but beautiful descriptions, like a spring air that gets to taste like kiwi pear chamomile tea) to really live in the real world (which relates to "Every day she missed someone calling her attention/until she had no name.")

• Despite this, she washes her arms off every night and starts over and when she dies, she's produced nothing.

Yes, of course there is a connection to cutting and suicide (I was feeling particularly frustrated with writing that night), but it's meant to ask the question "Is what we do worth it? Why do we slave over something insubstantial? Does it even matter?"

Honestly, I was worried the suicide aspect wouldn't play up enough (although upon rereading it is more apparent than I realized), and was expecting everyone to understand that it was about a writer, but I don't think anyone really did. Very much the fault of myself and not the reader, of course!

So, basically, my question is: What should I add or detract, what images should I play up or details should I put in to make this more obvious, to make my point actually come across?

And I encourage everyone to do this, if you have a poem you want more feedback on that you weren't able to get on your off-week of workshopping!