Feb 17, 2012 - 
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Uncategorized 2 Comments An Old Abandoned House
You can see a fireplace,
beneath weeds entangled up the walls.
They slither through rocks.
The squatters grow tall
With a half collapsed roof,
it’s more of a courtyard
then a house, but imagine
nights beneath it, the rain barred.
Glass still crusts the window
frames. Rust coats their handles.
Forgotten faces and names once
peered out watching town scandals.
Cinders still lay at the hearth and,
Soot still glazes the stone walls.
Did they leave suddenly?
Did they even leave the house at all?
-Diana Dias Section 4
The imagery in this poem is really nice and descriptive. “Half collapsed roof” and “the squatters grow tall” are great lines. I think that some of the punctuation needs to be changed for it to flow more successfully. In the first stanza, the comma at the end of the first line is unnecessary. A comma after rocks in the same stanza may sound better. “half collapsed” needs a hyphen. In the same stanza, “it’s more of a courtyard then a house” needs to be “than” instead of “then”. “Cinders still lie at the hearth” needs to be “lie”. Those are just nit-picky grammar things, I really like the feeling generated through the language of your poem.
Your poem has a lot of good imagery but I wish you had used more enjambment. It looks like you did a good job with it in the second stanza but the rest you end-stopped the second lines. Also, I had a hard time figuring out the meter you used, you may want to make that more clear.