[Julie Steiner]

Ah, yes, Airbnb in residential neighborhoods...complaints about which are frequent topics of San Diego Nextdoor postings.

My main nit with the sonnet is that although it clearly has a turn, the poem doesn't really end. It just sort of stops. I'm left unconvinced that the curmudgeonly narrator has a change of heart from an Apollo-like sense of law and order to a more Dionysian anything-goes vibe. Perhaps there could be a confession of the "I once sowed wild oats as well" variety. (The list in L14 might be that, but if so I feel I need a little more permission to connect those dots.)

Perhaps you could repurpose one of the existing lines to build a stronger sense of trajectory. I nominate this awkward, tell-y line for cutting:
     “People are asleep!” I’d say, “You jerks.”
Why can't the narrator just say he was about to give them hell?

To answer my own question, I suspect it is because you are rhyming "fireworks" with both "works" and "fireworks," and feel a little desperate to mix things up rhyme-wise with "jerks." Personally, I'd much rather see a nonce rhyme form (as in "Ozymandias") than rhyming for rhyming's sake.

Maybe one of the "fireworks" could actually be a type of firework that sets up another rhyme possibility.

I'm having trouble picturing the logistics of the lawn and the beach. Why does the lawn need to come into it? Does the narrator have to cross his own lawn, and maybe the neighbors', in order to ring the bell, which might not be answered anyway if everyone's out on the beach? I guess the narrator's house is not on the beach, but the neighbor's is...in which case there's probably a street separating the two houses? In that case, maybe the road should be mentioned instead of the lawn.

The position of the apostrophe in "The Rocket's Red Glare" suggests that there was only one rocket, which doesn't seem to be the case. But I think you can do better with the title than quoting the national anthem, anyway.

Interested in where you might take this.