Garage Sale (rewrite.. yay)

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Allysa

Senior Member

since 1999-11-09

Posts 1952
In an upside-down garden

0 posted 2003-07-15 01:43 PM

Stepping out of the car,
she tredged along with her purse
magnetically attached to her arm
and ventured into the world
where dreams are sold
on card tables for under twenty dollars.

In a window she found painted
some mangos and a peach
her life in two simple shapes
with her magnifying eyes she peers
and finds a crack in her
broken, endless life.

On a table by the back door
is a vaccum cleaner with a sign
"needs work", how familiar
she feels the same way sometimes
and she found a telephone
missing the same buttons
she'd lost sometime in life.

The soundtrack to her life was
skipping on the same boring
songs from Christmas time
they remind her of a time
in everyone else's life
where nothing ever went wrong
but she never felt the same way.

She reached down to find a
broken teddy bear, the stuffing
falling out of it's beady little body
and she decided that she knew
exactly how he felt,
someone had torn them both apart.

She's missing all the pieces so she
decided to sell herself to a lonely
person at the junk sale
and reaching into her purse
she pulled out a red clump of heart
with a tag that read "fifty cents"
never wondering if she was charging too little
only that she was asking for too much.

Local Parasite

Member Elite

since 2001-11-05

Posts 2527
Transylconia, Winnipeg

1 posted 2003-07-17 01:15 PM

The ending is a bit better now, I'd say.  It's still the same thing but at least this time it's a "clump" of heart which is a bit more graphic and sounds a bit less cliche.

I like the scenery you describe, but I think you could do with a bit more subtlety, you know?  Instead of blatantly stating "and she knows how he feels" or something, and blatantly going around describing the garage sale as a metaphor for her life, why not shroud it a bit more?  I would have liked this poem more if it were more subtle.

I still love it though, a very creative concept that I wish I'd come up with before you had.

Now I go back to my world of crazy uninspired verse.

Catch ya later, girlie--
Brian

Child of the Stars

Senior Member

since 2000-09-07

Posts 1658
Ann Arbor, MI

2 posted 2003-07-17 07:04 PM

Ooh, I want to know what the ending was before.

First of all, I love garage sales. I especially love those exercise tapes, the ones they hand out in a box because they've given up or found something better.

I think you might be able to spruce up the tone a bit using Brian's advice...the subtlety thing, I mean. It seems a bit "ho, hum. sigh," when there's potential for real poignant pain...I already see it here, especially with the teddy bear.

"someone had torn them both apart."

Beyond the surface assumption--the narrator is torn apart, the teddy bear is torn apart--there's something more...they've been torn from each -other-...childhood's been ripped from her, the teddy bear's been ripped from his hands of safety...and there's no mender in sight.

Brilliant ending. If it said 'chunk' before, I'm going to have a debate with The Parasite.

Thanks for posting this...I needed the reminder you've captured in your last stanza...or, at least, the one I sense. I won't try and recreate it.

I'm glad you did it first.

~Carly

empty arms
and half a soul to go
-el sol
--Zwan

Allysa

Senior Member

since 1999-11-09

Posts 1952
In an upside-down garden

3 posted 2003-07-17 10:53 PM

Parasite, I have now undergone the task of rewriting this just for you. (Wow, a third rewrite... that has to be a new record for me). It's only cuz I love you soooooo much.

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