http://mulberryfairy9 Nov 2003

The oven isn't quite unused if you just made TV dinners, is it? I would allude to the smell of the TV dinners in the oven, "the mixed stink of Hungry Man meatloaf/potatoes/corn/brownie" to show that your narrator is serious enough to open the oven. I wouldn't toy around with train suicide stuff, see my poem "body image" for a fictionalized example of a true story. You know, it throws me off a little that there is no reason given for the suicide ideation, but maybe the reasons for suicide don't work for poetry because they seem too cliche. If this narrator is actually you, as a clinical social worker, I would recommend that you try to find someone to talk to about this stuff. It is usually difficult to get away from that kind of thinking alone, but it seems like you want to, or you wouldn't have told the poemranker audience about "your" (if it is your) suicidal thinking.