All Comments on 'After the Flood'

.......there are no comments? This is hugely descriptive and atmospheric. You can smell the hot stink post-flood and see the detritus it left behind. "the cestrum and murraya, sing their scents into the void " is the comma needed here?

Love this and give it five!

Tess

may I query spurts in line 2 which is too much like squirting in line 3. It feels odd that the poles blossom at their bases and I think you could lose blooming at the start of line 5. Did I say I loved it? x

i read it this morning but was eating. It doesn't go good with Honey Nut Cheerios, which is probably a good thing, because I don't think you wanted it to go good with Honey Nut Cheerios, It gave me an uncomfortable memory of the time when our house flooded, or New Orleans after the hurricane when people, trapped for days, finally escaped to drink an ice cold Bud. Good visual.

i'd suggest abbreviating 'squirting' to 'squirts' and make that line 'squirts tepid mud up my legs'. maybe even break this into 3 parts - sun/wet mud, electric poles/debris/stink, lightning/termites/scents, unless you feel it would suffer from doing so and lose some of its 'clumped together wet muddiness'?

agree with friday about losing 'blooming', and also 'at their bases'

this morning, the sun blisters my neck

the lawn spurts with every step

squirts tepid mud all up my legs

the electric poles blossom

coke cans, chip packets, sticks

glued together with stinking mud

and everything reeks of methane

but tonight it will be sultry; lightning is likely

winged termites will look like fairies circling the streetlights

the cestrum and murraya, sing their scents into the void

so I will sit outside and drink in the now.

last part is my favourite, filled with atmosphere - any way to reword 'will look like', v? and even lose the 'will' (groan) and 'and' in your final line to make 'so I sit outside. drink in the now'

the best best bit, for me, is 'sing their scents into the void'. i love love love that phrase!

I can feel it, hear it and smell it. That's how you sell it. Good job.