Revision ~ "Everything Loosens in the Kitchen"

Everything Loosens in the Kitchen

Broccoli florettes drain to yellow, jaundiced
by their long separation from the earth.
The refrigerator kicks out a new batch of ice
with a single percussive interjection.
We stopped talking back when we discarded all the lettuces.
I ask how long this is going to last. You don't reply.
We cinch off what's beyond ripe.

*

Winged ants emerge from under
the shoe molding, move in unison along
the grain of floorboards before smearing
like ink. They shadow a presence we'll never see.
This is no way to manage an infestation.
What finds its way in never makes it back out,
not without poisons and glue pads.

*

We set up a kiddie pool in the middle of the room.
We wade, you in flippers, me in goulashes.
We barter: no for yes, yes for maybe.
We roll maybes in our mouths like grapes.
I tell you I threw out my wedding dress.
You tell me you didn't really lose your ring.
The water grows colder and colder.
Light shoulders its way through the window.
We forget why we hauled in the pool in the first place.
We wonder what's for dinner.

*

The kitchen table flaunts its bare legs,
lustrous as the skin of an eggplant.
My hands were once smooth.
Your face is harder than wood.
We ladle polysyllabic words into the air:
respectable, insoluble, unexchangeable.
You tell me you thought we had a deal.
You've always been a bargain shopper.

*

We paint the walls with stale arguments.
Designer fixtures wash us in light,
diminish imperfections. We agree
to rise tomorrow like bread, to nourish.
We high five. We smack each other on the ass
and move back into far corners to where
we belong, our distance between us
thick and hard as an overgrown stalk.

from Guest Poet #2: Dana Guthrie Martin
Click here to read the first draft of "Everything Loosens in the Kitchen."

Revision ~ "The Instruction Aubade" ~ Charles

Begin to Live Alone

Wake slowly—bedroom window light shines slant with vertigo,
your arm half-bared touches its
                square pool of sun.

Pull a shirt and trousers like the closet’s
loose teeth, its savage, dark maw—
                Put them on.

Bathe—prepare breakfast—breathe air
stale with your own sterile scent—
                descend the stairway like a cloud—

Attend your job. Stroll from door to door,
form words. White noise like a fan’s
                rushing whirr says

everything you might imply. The day looms with its pendulum sun
swung slow back toward night. The hours
                mete out as ground glass—

At sunset, draw blinds. Your body
streaked with night takes on more weight—
                Sensible meal: choose salad;

skip dessert. Be strong. Be strong.
There’s no harm in looking good even when
                no one’s looking



Click here to read Charles's first draft.


From the fingertips of Charles Jensen:

My strategy for revision was to cull a form from the original piece, was was irregular. I also wanted to work toward more word economy and take out needless conjunctions and prepositions as I could. This poem needs more silence--more caesura--and it needed to be "harder." That said, I worked toward iambic meter but allowed some abrupt disruptions of it. I wanted the images to be more stark.

I don't know. I think it's still not done.

Normally I would not revise a poem this quickly. In my process work generally sits around a few months before I take a knife to it. I need to grow apart from it. But perhaps the austerity of this poem, its narrative distance ("you") makes it easier to work with.

Revision! ~ "Drinking Song"

Drinking Song

bits of gin label salamander in
a Chinese screen minding their British sides.
I shouldn’t exist, or be alive. I fight

humor in my shot glass, my bitter pail.
I’m half corpse, complaint-filled, divorcing
emptiness shaped by a chilled rasp.

I make a living in alcoholic
forgetting. Body poured in pale swigs,
inescapable, but not whimpering.

from Guest Poet #1: Andrew Demcak
Click here to read Andrew's first draft.

Time Again for "John McCain's Dementia" by Kate

At first, I wasn't thrilled when Kate gave the news you're about to read because I'm often a stickler for the rules; however, I do find it often makes for a good show when the rules are broken.



From the fingertips of Kate:

I'm already breaking the rules and not revising my poem. I'm not claiming it's perfect, but it is pretty tight. Sometimes poems come out that way (rarely for me because I'm usually a huge reviser). That can be a gift, or in the case of this poem, maybe that's a problem. It feels tight partly because it's written in rhymed couplets--and partly because it's a political poem. It's already dated since the election is over. I guess that means in a way it's a stagnant poem, and perhaps you can only revise a poem that's in motion.

The best thing I got out of writing this poem is "Change one letter and womb is bomb." It's the best way for me to express that my vagina disagrees with Palin's vagina. I just hope 4 years from now I won't have to have another vagina fight with her.

If anyone out there strongly disagrees with me and thinks the poem needs some work in a particular area, please comment, and I certainly will take your ideas into consideration.

I hope you are all thrilling on the Obama win. Perhaps my next poem will be about that.

Revision! ~ "Autopsy" by Christopher

AUTOPSY

My slippery virgin heart is ripe,
ta-tumming in the circular gape
I carve. Up to elbow in tripe,

I grip my guts’ tentacles, bare-
handed, wrestle them from a mire
of the living, wavy hairs

that stick to my sides. In tears, I plumb
deeper, desperate to thumb
out the bleating organ (that damn

ta-tumming!), set it on a platter
surrounded by the seeds of cancer
a burlesque of eggs, boiled and bitter.

As the white of the worm
that eats through my sternum.
How empty the body’s become.

How hollowed by a flame.
I worship the flicker that lights the shame.
Hallowed be your name.

There is no heart in a pumpkin-
shaped boy who eats out his in-
sides only to suck on his sin.



Click here to read Christopher's first draft of "Autopsy"