My immediate reaction to August’s Poem 3 after my first read was how uncomfortable it made me feel, and that is meant to serve as a compliment as I can tell how uncomfortable she felt listening to her neighbors have sex as she was trying to write her poem 3. Her repeated aposiopesis “The weather is here, I wish -” was to be the first line of her poem, when suddenly she hears her neighbors begin to have obnoxiously loud intercourse. She dedicates her poem “To the Man Who Lives Just Behind my Bedroom Wall and Has Earsplitting Sex with his Repugnant, Yet Enchanting, Girlfriend”. The vivid language she uses along with her onomatopoeias “slap, slap, slap” made me uncomfortable only because it painted a vivid scene in my head of that August must have sat through as she tried gathering thoughts for her poem.
She has some very nice rhymes and uses tasteful alliteration. She is obviously not impressed by the girl that her neighbor is dating, and about a third of the way through, breaks the rhythm, saying “Still, it sounds pathetic. And I think maybe i can make it sound/ Alittle more poetic:” and goes on as if she clears her voice, and elegantly describes a pathetic scene of a girl who the speaker finds very much less than impressive. My absolute favorite part of the poem is her last five lines, specifically the first two of the last five: “And I am disgusted, thoroughly, because how does he see her as doable?/Still, I am delighted by her./ I write, “The weather is here, I wish you were beautiful.” Followed by a thank you to her neighbor.