[Matt Q]

.
Bordering

The first time she gets lost,
truly lost,
drives into the warren

of streets on the north side of town,
is gone all night,
loses her car,

wanders,
rabbit-in-the-headlights eyes,
through the night’s rain,

tries the doors of houses,
tries the doors of cars,
takes up residence

in a plastic garden chair
in someone’s car port,
claims it

as her home, claims
it is her home,
a border has been crossed,

and though you will become familiar
with the badlands beyond,
that first time

there are headlights shining
in your eyes too,
and you are also shivering,

frozen to a dark road
as a monstrous truck
hurtles towards you,

horns blaring,
out of the depths of the night.
.

----

Changed poem from two sentences to a single sentence: S7L3 changed full stop to em-dash, S8L1 removed capital letter.
S6L2, italicised "is"

[Barbara Lee]

Hello Matt,

I feel like the first part of the poem up to “claims it as home” works better than everything that follows. The first part uses images like a home in a garden chair which makes the reader feel the condition. The last part reads like one of those adverts on TV as an appeal for help for the disenfranchised.

Even in the first part I would exercise a lot of restraint on the modifying phrases in order to distance the poem from a social appeal and ground it in — well the craft of poetry.

An example of perhaps cut some modifiers are here:
drives into the warren

of streets on the north side of town,

— do you need Warren and “North side of town”?

Here also:

wanders,
rabbit-in-the-headlights eyes,
through the night’s rain,

Can she just wander in the night?

With this kind of content, any whiff of sentiment can undercut the poem—the most heartfelt situation I think needs the most restraint and should stay away from common representation.

I have read other work of yours elsewhere I think and this does not read like other efforts. Maybe here the content was taking over?

Anyway good luck. I hope you come back to the woman in the garden chair.

Cheers
Barbara

[Matt Q]

Thanks Barbara,

Good to know who you (also) are, elsewhere!

I'll respond properly when I've got some more crits. But in the meantime, can I just ask what you think the poem is about -- what the situation is as you see it? It would help me to better understand your critique better, I think.

Many thanks,

Matt

[Max Goodman]

I'm drawn to this. I like the way it makes me feel lost along with the characters: waiting, hoping for the first sentence to become a sentence, to make sense, and then ending with a sentence that never does.

If not for the title, the border crossing would not have particularly struck me. And it seems an odd, abstract thing to bring my attention to. It makes me feel that the poem is a puzzle and the title an important clue. I suppose from that that the experiences in the poem stand for something--the onset of dementia is my guess. I'm more strongly engaged by the experience than by interpreting the poem. (The title suggests, disappointingly, that the poem wants me to interpret it.)

FWIW.

[Glenn Wright]

Hi, Matt—

On my first pass, I thought the woman was homeless and schizophrenic, but after a couple more read-throughs, I noticed that she only very recently and suddenly went from not being lost to being lost, and she owns a car, so she is likely not homeless. I concluded that she had either a bad drug reaction, perhaps having been roofied and raped, or was the victim of a mugging, which explains her desperation in seeking shelter by trying strangers’ doors. Alternatively, she could have had a drug-induced breakdown caused by addiction and overdose.

The shift from she/her to you/your in S7 is rather shocking. It seems at first that the N is addressing the reader, predicting an emotional breakdown, but it is more likely that the N is addressing a third character—perhaps a young person who has engaged in some risky behavior, who has skirted the border—and is using the woman as an object lesson. The “monstrous truck” could be addiction or insanity.

I’m not very confident about my reading of the piece, but it has a haunted, cautionary quality caused by the narrator’s emotional restraint and my ignorance of his relationship to the woman. Why is he following her? Who is the “you?” Does “loses her car” mean that she misplaced it, or that it was impounded when she was arrested for a DUI?

Hope this is useful.

Glenn

[James Midgley]

Hi Matt,

My overall feeling is that there isn't enough to go on here for me. My thought was that maybe 'she' is suffering from dementia or some other kind of disorientation.

There seems to be something important in the narrative turn/switch of sympathies from 'she' to 'you'. But I can't work out what that might be.

Coupled with the title 'Bordering' I think of the possibilities of bordering consciousnesses -- the potential for another's point of view to, all of a sudden, become yours. And perhaps along with that, the idea of the accoutrements of one's life -- possessions, car, home, keys -- to suddenly lose their place, for one to lose one's place among them, the provisionality of all these.

But these are vague intimations -- I feel as if I'm projecting them at present.

On a line level -- the rabbit-in-head-lights feels too worn even though it is doing important set-up work for the perspective shift. Monstrous truck is too close to monster truck for comfort. Phrases like 'truly lost', 'badlands' and 'depths of night' are lacking in substance as I can't work out the poem's overall arc -- they may work better/take on more meaning when that's clearer.

Cheers.

[Richard G]

Hi Matt.

Another one of the Alzheimer's/dementia opinion.
I too wasn't keen on 'north side of town' or indeed 'badlands' (kept on hearing Springsteen after that) but liked 'warren' (leading to rabbit and to the repeat of headlights.) So, do you need line 4?
Parenthetically, 'wanders' felt a little sedate given the line which follows it.
I also heard 'monster truck' and wondered if as something monstrous / hurtles ... might serve? (A bit of useful ambiguity?)

Regards,
RG.