Stars (revision)

[matsunosuperfan]

I quite like this poem. However, the title being "Stars" doesn't quite make sense to me, since it doesn't really feel like it revolves around it in any capacity. That's just me though.

Thanks for reading! Yeah sometimes when I can't decide on a title, I just use the first word of the first line.

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Old:

Tucked behind the fountain
where the birds no longer come to drink,
a whisper-fingered hustler

palms another six of hearts.
I catch the look they give each other
—sly, almost reluctant

New:

...Tucked behind the fountain where the birds

no longer come to drink, a whisper-fingered hustler
palms another six of hearts. The shorter boy
holds out a dollar—shy, almost reluctant,



The new version reads like prose. The line breaks in the original were at the right pauses. The 'I catch the look...' was the right amount of lengthening.
You've cut out too much

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I reverse what I had said earlier about slow, mindless, irreversible. In a shorter poem, I think the atmospherics work.
And I can live with 'rotten milk' in the shoter poem.
I don't think you need to edit much up to the breadcrumbs line. Maybe a bit. But don't rip the lyrical, dreamlike quality out and replace it with a CNN talk show on women's rights in Eritrea.

Thanks for the continued engagement, Busker. I think claiming this sounds like prose is flat-out objectively wrong. But always appreciate your feedback. Actually I found this feedback quite useless, as it's dismissive in a way that doesn't match the craft. I certainly haven't changed enough for you to suddenly be comparing the language to "a CNN talk show." But again, thanks for taking the time to share how the work hit you, even if I will be ignoring pretty much everything you wrote.