Korean Job Discussion Forums

[hongdae2]

this is an excerpt from a poem in the Chicken Soup book series. can someone explain what the bold section means? thanks in advance for any genuine help


Twins

My mother's stretch fabric belly
protected us like a T-shirt
on a albino body at the beach.
During our bonding months,
Mom's blue eyes got fixed into our sockets,
and her eczema was etched into our skin.

Our birth left her scarless,
except for stretch marks that I will take back one day.
My sister's scar and mine
is not a broken tree branch; it is our ears.
She hates that our folds don't separate
like atoms in mitosis.

When she leaves for city dirt and a new roommate,
I won't have someone with identical crooked toe and oval face
in the same position as mine.

We'll move through different states
spinning on different axes and time zones.
She'll think of me when she coughs up pollution
and the gunk from streamrollers.
I will think of her when I scratch
my eczema and refuse the stretch marks
that have grown on my swinging hips.

[Mint]

Very obtuse.
Is there more past that part?

I feel like I was just chastised by a zen master.

[nicam]

That's vague. At first I thought the sisters were conjoined, then separated. The ears as the scar could just refer to an unattractive feature their mother has brought to their attention.

[Cerriowen]

Sounds to me like conjoined twins, probably at the head.

[billybrobby]

That is a truly sh*t poem.

[Mint]

Crooked toe, messed up ears, mitosis.
Conjoined twins.

This poem brought Walt Whitman back to life only to kill him again.

[angel of bob]

Conjoined twins would make this poem a lot better. There's a confusion because of the lame enjambment and semi-colon usage and some belabored metaphors.

The "scar" a really confused metaphor/allusion that tries to combine twin-ness, scars of the mother and the earlobes of the twins, and then there's another simlie right afterward about mitosis and earshape which is just a bit too much.

The highlighted lines combine too many metaphors and the language is indistinct so you can't be sure exactly what's being got at. You, as a reader, aren't making a mistake. There is something wrong with the internal logic of the poem. But, as the title would indicate and the poem's about being a twin. I think that's really the only thing it's about.

[shapeshifter]

[Adjumas Cheekbones]

[DorkothyParker]

Really? You read Chicken Soup books?

Are you a 45 year old female time traveler from 1995?