I honestly love this poem enough to nominate without giving a fuller comment...forgive me..I'm tired and coming down with the flu I believe but..I promise I will get back with a fuller comment...just don't want this poem to go unnoticed...

Holy. Crap.

I love everything there is to this poem. I love that you separated it. This is what's wrong with mother, father, how I see my family, what they do to each other, and how I cope with it. You laid out a beautiful and tragic story... I absolutely love that this entire poem seems like a person coping.

"My father knows where to find those
broken bones, but doesn't like
being a grave digger. "

This is definitely my favorite part, it stuck out to me most for whatever reason. It's like this perosn favors their father -- Dad knows how to push the buttons and knows he could easily destroy someone, but he doesn't like to. That's not the kind of man he is. He was walked all over, stepped on and stepped out on but he is determined to keep his integrity.

I also really like the part about drawing yourself earless -- keep yourself deaf to your surroundings so you don't have to deal with it. Using art within art as an outlet, what a brilliant thought.

The end really made a lot of sense for me, because I'm a fixer. I feel like I can change people and things and make it "all better", regardless of past hurts and hangups. This whole poem spoke to me in a way I don't think you'll ever really understand. I feel like overall you were writing about my life, my childhood. My mother was.. well everything this mother is.. and my Dad was a humble, honest, amazing man and still is in my opinion. Of course I'm sure he wasn't a saint, but he was there, and that's important.

This is going into my favorites, for sure. What a gorgeous piece of poetry.

Ok...back now with a comment :)

This is a fairly long poem but...this did not put me off in the slightest. This is just my interpretation and, regardless if it's wrong, still my thoughts...

My mother is a rickety house
amidst a city of skyscrapers -
had to throw herself against
the wind without resistance
of walls that grew
all around her.

Comparing your mother to a rickety house? Well my thoughts are perhaps she grew up in a small village and..as time progressed development came with it and maybe she didn't deal with it too well...longing for the old days when a neighbour was just that...one neighbour, not many unknown faces with no names as in high rise flats?

There are secrets in her corners,
family treasures that snuggled deep
into her chest, pulled
by mice and ghosts.

I don't know when the rain
started to blanket it all, or whether
any screams were muffled
in those murky waters.

All I know is that even headstones
drowned, dragged skeletons with them
into the piteous pit none of us
ever dared to gaze at.

The next stanzas lead me to think your mother immigrated at some point...thinking this way because I did so myself...really not sure

---

My father knows where to find those
broken bones, but doesn't like
being a grave digger.

Could've looked for diamond rings
or dimes between rotten grins,
but there was no reason engraved
even though grandma could've told him
if he put his ear to the ground
and felt my mother's footsteps
turning their back against him.

I'm puzzled by this...maybe a mixed marriage? Perhaps he wanted to help your mother find her past and put it to rest but it didn't work out quite right?

---

So I learnt to draw myself earless
whenever clouds swallowed the sky,
and I learnt to stab at the eyes
of my canvas-brother, whenever
he looked daggers at me,
but even when I hid peepholes
with family portraits, our walls
wouldn't stop wailing.

Loved the image of you drawing yourself without ears...what a creative way of saying you don't want to listen...the canvas brother is also very creative...a picture maybe of a brother who is no longer in your families life but is in a promanent place so that he's remembered?

---

Sometimes I wished that screams
could carve themselves upon headstones.
Let them echo into the ground, become
sprouts or household flowers or
bridal bouquets.

If I beheaded them
and stole their pigments,
then maybe our family could become
brighter than a thunderstorm.

Yes, there are problems in your family and you use your words very wisely in describing them...beautiful poem and...I feel, if my interpretation is close in any way, I've only just scratched the surface here...

WOW, I am glad this won, because my gosh, it's powerful, deep, and just so moving, plus penned so exquisitely, with great emotion and thought.

It is truly an honour to share the front page with such a talent, and such a poem that is as brilliant a write as this.

I love how it was broken into the different parts, explaining the values and lives, and emotions of each of the family members, drawing on how they affect you, and what you'd do to change it, if you felt you could.

This piece was just so powerful, and truly touched me.

Again, congratulations on the win...
:) x

The way you expressed your family and also the role you played, reminding me of the peacemaker in the family, was incredibly moving. Each image and metaphor struck deep- right away I see the mother as the soft-spoken one trying to keep her family together in love, but sometimes struggles can tear that wish out of anyone's grasp....and you're left, wondering what you can build back or fix. Such a beautiful, breathtaking piece.... I definitely feel like you crafted your emotions so well and said tons more between the lines as well!

Congrats on the win, so well-deserved!!!

Nice....love it

Brilliant piece. Lovely voice as well!

Judging comment:

"This poem is so heartbreakingly beautiful. It drips with sadness, emotion, vulnerability, yet surprising strength. Huntress explains her coping mechanism, which the entire piece of poetry feels like a therapy experiment (in a good way of course!). I really can't such much about this poem, as it leaves me wandering in my thoughts. So many questions as to why all this pain, why can't it be fixed? Will it ever get better? I think this poem is something so many people can easily relate to, the emotion is stark but the sequence is vague enough that it opens for so much interpretation."

Judging Comment for weekly contest: June 24, 2013

I had a hard time this week. There were real good poems, poems that I wanted to give a 10, sadly I couldn't, but this one was one of them. I love how this poem immediately hits me with imagery and how the metaphor of "my mother is a rickety house" was striking.
The comparison and the ideas flowed smoothly. I can only say that Huntress your poetry amazes me specially when it comes to extended metaphors. You are able to focus on details and by details I mean connecting the thoughts to the images with ease.
As far as my interpretation, I feel the reader can just read it and they will get the gist from the poem. Well done

P.s. I like your accent and the music you picked for this poem.

[Judging comment from week of 6/24/13]:

I found this poem to be such an expressive poem about the author's family and her view on them over the years. It was personal yet I feel like the author chose her words wisely to portray this "portrait" and sketch of who we imagine her family to be like.

Definitely an eloquent piece, I liked the ease of the stanzas, and how each stanza had a lot to offer between the lines as well, so this could be a very interpreted piece.

The opening metaphor is strong- immediately I pictured the mother's strength, keeping her family afloat and raising her children right even with lifes' storms. I liked that the author mentioned secrets and almost this invisible burden that haunts the mother. Whether it's because she feels powerless to help her own self, or that she can't renew her relationship with her husband, it leaves a lot of questions open.

"My father knows where to find those
broken bones, but doesn't like
being a grave digger."

- This line threw me, I feel like you made this very distinct to show the truth that the father knew of the mother's feelings of hopelessness, but never found repose for them.
Very interesting image, a bit chilling!

The sadness in this poem reminds me of not just communication being lost among family members, but that clarity of understanding. The reason is staring straight at him but the father is still lost as to why there is such an unease between them. The more the author goes on with this write, the more I think and can relate to the author being the "peacemaker", trying to cover up things to move ahead and hide away the hurts...but sometimes they still remain.

A deep, delving write. Gorgeous!

My favorite part was "If I beheaded them
and stole their pigments,
then maybe our family could become
brighter than a thunderstorm." It gave me the image that you were in the eye of the hurricane and it wasn't only raining on you but on everything. I loved the matter of factness that your words carried, things could have been okay, but they just weren't. And it's sad but it's beautiful too.