Does it hurt to be this good? I've heard rumors...

This is my most favorite in a long while... The whole thing just rolls off the tongue and comes quick at you. It's darling and witty... Adding this to my favorites... Love the title...

hilarious...my hometown is Lima, Ohio. this poem is deep...you and your new style...this whole thin column flavor...i like it. to be able to write this well about such a particular thing...a distant concept to most of us, is a talent and beauty in its own right.

The obvious: this is measured, weighty, point-blank, knowing and kicking ass. Also obvious: many poetic elements are in use and on fire, from the coagulated use of consonance and rhyming in just the right places, to the form and use of space. This is the whole shebang, and not lacking in insight, knowledge, or wisdom. I know I'm biased, but I also think that one added element to the language used here is that there is even a sense of restraint, like there's one last chance. I hope somebody else votes this POTD worthy also...

Brilliant as per usual. Haunting, dark, deep and cutting. I love the allusion to the Lima Syndrome as well and how much depth there is in this. You certainly know how to give words an edge.

I like this style too...but I also like the variety of style you demonstrate in your other works as well. I just like what you write!I think I am attracted to this style especially because of the way it emphasizes words that stresses the concepts by breaking up regular sentences into units.

You surely must know how immense and sturdy your writing is. I will shout it from the rooftops!
This whole scene is jake.
And this:

The only thing of value
left to me
is the strength of my
convictions
and I won't negotiate
the terms
of your emotional 
manslaughter.

OMgosh, what everyone else said and then some!!! Kudos Therese!!!

I can't even believe someone who can write like this exists during our time... fantastic write! I bow to the excellence of this piece in that it should be awarded high honors among the students of psychology who try to write pages and pages on a thesis of the subject that can't even touch this! ~N

I can't wait for you to take on the 'Singapore Syndrome'...I have no idea what that is, but I can't imagine it would be any less appealing in your more than capable hands...

The repetition of “This is a hostage situation” is what makes this poem – that flip (which constitutes a hypertextual link) mirrors the flip which occurs in the syndrome: there's a moment when the “victim” becomes something else, in Stockholm, a dependent, in Lima, the usurper: which is exactly what the last stanza does (usurp). I love many of these lines and images (I am very and freshly familiar with this), but “I think I'll/go mad/under the steady/drip/of your defensiveness” is perversely good: not just the Chinese water torture metaphor (which, while potentially cliché, is perfectly deployed here), but the way you made the word “drip” actually drip... Yeah. You nailed this one.

Absolutely brilliant- so much here to think about. Excellent job to say the least!

I can feel the emotional and interpersonal knot the subject is in. You pose a very interesting idea about how we can be taken hostage by the feelings of others, even SEEMINGLY

... oops hit the wrong key.. I continue: ...SEEMINGLY helpful things like apologies. Much to think about in your poem. Thanks, Therese.

I just love the way this flows. You are very talented.

This is panic room meets my every fantasy. haa. Good work.

My god this sounds like a marriage. Mutual imprisonment with guilt gags and blame blankets. With your permission, I will make you do everything I want --if that's okay. Fall with me into the sanity of the insane as I read this poem over again with a subtitle of the "the marriage game". Great read!

It's a shame that you felt the need to define Lima Syndrome for your readers. Or, rather, perhaps it is more depressing that I feel it should be a well-known phenomenon in these warring times of ours. This poem, out of the many I've read today of yours (thank you for the comment on mine, which led me here), caught me immediately, because I'm familiar with Lima Syndrome. Also, as I read it, I felt and thought about how it feels to linger in a relationship after your love has shifted for the person you're with, but they still love you very much, and their desperation to pull from you what they need becomes so overwhelming, so heavy that you are reduced to "cell-block contemplations". Of course, by the end, the emotional abuse in this piece is larger than the discordance of love taking separate paths in the disintegration of an otherwise healthy relationship. It's a powerful piece. Thank you for posting it. (An aside: have you read "Bel Canto" by Ann Patchett? It's supposedly loosely based on the Lima incident. There are some beautiful--heartbreakingly beautiful--passages in that novel, but I loathed the ending.) Anyway. Yes. I hope you're having a good day, whatever that means to you. -Angie.

This expresses pure talent...complex and sad due to the subject matter, but nicely conveyed. The psychology major in me was drawn to this by the title and I was not disappointed.

Most excellent in its forthright delivery and extended metaphor. A fine POTD!

delighted to see your name on the front page for POTD :)

Excellent POTD!!