[kate peachtea]

I like this alot. Re the last 2 lines: I like the standing dead definition from MW - these are dead branches, not referring to the people in the city at all. The speaker is a neighboring branch, a dead twig! speaking for the bunch of them. I do agree that 'this desperate april morn' needs to be in future tense.
What I love: interesting use of (tactile, violent) nouns as verbs throughout: cocks, gall, drip, grease & spread in same line. And verb as adjective 'whipped'. Also 'shorn-/off' (with great line-break thrown in). 'festooned with deli-bags', 'cuchifrito', great image/language. in the sonnet tradition, the phrase 'anguished pair', refers to the trees almost as lovers, who face an onslaught of adversaries over the course of a year. We know just what & who these adveraires are (hence the list), because lovers throughout history must undergo these same trials. So - a comment and a wink toward the traditional love sonnet. It's all great fun!

[Tim Murphy]

That's a fine appreciation, Kate. I too like the verbs and muscularity of this sonnet. Welcome to the Sphere.

[Mary McLean]

Clever. This takes an awfully old-fashioned conceit, addressing and personifying an inanimate object, and gives it a modern citified SNAG gloss. (I know that meaning of snag is unlikely to be the one intended, but it's perfect). Even the message is Romantic, but the point is made with wonderfully unromantic modern language. It achieves what it sets out to do better than most.

On the down side, Blake et al perhaps said it well enough already. The language sometimes slips away from modernity, as others have commented (morn, etc). And the exclamation point is unnecessary.

But overall I like it.

[Susan McLean]

I like the idea of this one and it started out well, but L6 sounds a beat short to me, with a very awkward rhythm, and the ending falls apart, with lack of clarity and mixed diction. I do like the turn from telling the trees to give up to hoping they won't.

Susan

[Jean L. Kreiling]

This one ranks high in my estimation, except for that very last phrase, which I find both confusing and tonally off. But otherwise, I much admire this poem's very fluent and assured tone, its well-crafted momentum, its well-chosen details, and the shift of attitude that Susan mentioned.

[R.A. Briggs]

Oh, I love it! Finally, a funny one that makes me laugh. The humiliations are vividly pictured. I particularly like the aliteration of "corner cuchifrito place", which somehow sounds fried. "Burning road-salt I.V. drip" is the sort of phrase I usually denounce as modifier pile-up, but it works here, and has momentum. Rhyming "cur" with "car" is inspired. I feel that last three lines should pack a stronger punch, after all that amazing trash--"desperate April morn" feels out-of-date and not quite convincing.

Still, awesome. I'm going to have a tough time choosing between this and "Childhood". Different poems, each wonderful in its own way.

[Birthe Myers]

This reminds me of a Danish poem in translation, 'I love the trees in the city' (or close to that), but this sonnet is strong and realistic and not at all sentimental - till the very end. I think it is quite brilliant.

[Maryann Corbett]

Originally Posted by Martin Rocek

... not sure
that "snags" works--using Maryann's definition, it makes "the standing dead" redundant

Martin, I know this is minor, but here I disagree slightly. The phrase "the standing dead" was the reminder that I needed in order to recall that technical meaning of "snag." Now that we've seen how many people were unaware of the "standing dead tree" definition, I think the poet included it in full knowledge that many readers would need to have the meaning made overt. For them, it's a clue rather than a redundancy.

[marly youmans]

Lindens are quite the poetic choice--there's Coleridge's "This Lime-tree Bower My Prison," and Proust's madeleine dipped in tilia tea--so there's a nice contrast in the subject and treatment.

[Michael Cantor]

I like this one very much. I takes me back to New York, it's a sonnet structure with an utterly contemporary and hard-edge vocabulary, the references and visuals are a delight, it sings!

I had no real problem with the last line - I took "pale green flags" to be new shoots.