SUBJECT>Re: The Chopping Shop --- Revised POSTER>Jack M EMAIL> DATE>1111338737 IP_ADDRESS>1Cust4175.an4.den10.da.uu.net PASSWORD>aa3rfqIypCINk PREVIOUS>85032 NEXT> IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

Christopher,

This holds together. But I think if it's going to blow down the readers doors, get an "ah" kind of reaction, it needs to feel more specific. Right now the evidence it gives feels general.

I guess I mean that I don't get a picture of the life (lives) that are being chopped. Instead, I get a picture of the clean table where it happens. Can these two come together?

Of course, I may be asking for something that the poem doesn't want to offer, but these are the thoughts that went through my mind as I read this.

Yours,
Jack

: The Chopping Shop

: I warn myself: a woman can sense things,
: a casual word, a certain set of the mouth,
: a new distance sensed not present earlier.
: The disintegration of a relationship,

: the end before the finish, my destiny
: a void, parent to a nervous future.
: Is it too late to hope? One last chance?
: Would flowers help? Her favorite red roses?

: My little lies and my big ones, pinned down,
: accumulated, catalogued in a lawyer's
: interrogatories, spelled out in a dry room,
: around a polished table: a space in hell

: where relationships are disassembled
: by uncaring but efficient hands.

: Christopher T. George