19 Comments
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Drew Chancey's avatar

You did a great job, especially in the last few lines, of capturing the same rural spirit the picture of the tractor conveys. I liked the connection you made between manual labor and the expulsion from Paradise.

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Derek Petty's avatar

Humbled. Thank you very much Drew. Looking forward to Friday's poem!

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Scoot's avatar

Enmity of Eden, or: Sympathy for Snakes

I remember when you posted that image--it's still in my head! Love this poem, it's a good thinker for the morning!

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Derek Petty's avatar

Thanks Scoot! Sympathy for Snakes is a goooood title. I'll chalk that up to a missed opportunity haha..

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Scoot's avatar

Rolling Stones would be knocking on your door for cutting it too close!

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Derek Petty's avatar

Hahaha.. I will admit I thought of "that song" while writing this.

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Scoot's avatar

Copyright infringement: "Please allow me to introduce myself!"

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Derek Petty's avatar

Sir, will you post a screen shot of how this story appears when you read it on Narrowtives? If you don't mind. I just opened it and on my desktop the formatting is all off. But when I go to the draft the formatting is how I intended it to be.

When you get s chance, of course.

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Scoot's avatar

You looking for desktop or mobile or both?

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Derek Petty's avatar

Both if you don't mind. Each appears to be "wrong" on the published side when I look.

The intent is three stanzas but they are appearing as one strange "paragraph" to me instead of how they were meant to appear in the poetry block. Again, they appear fine in the draft version for me.

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Drew Chancey's avatar

This is how it is appearing for me, as one paragraph. I've encountered this when pasting into a poetry block from outside of Substack. I usually delete the block, paste the text outside of the block and then recreate the block with the text from within the draft. There could certainly be a faster way to fix it though.

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Scoot's avatar

uno momento!

I am aware poetry block is a thing but yeah formatting is a bear. I don't know how some people do it but I will tag someone who seems knowledgable

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Samantha Gluck's avatar

Beautiful!

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Derek Petty's avatar

Thank you!

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Samantha Gluck's avatar

You’re welcome! I plan to read more of your stack as time allows!

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Derek Petty's avatar

Thank you kindly. Feel free to offer any feedback, good or bad. This publication is my first venture into fiction and I need all the help I can get.

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Samantha Gluck's avatar

Will do!

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