Faylita Hicks
The title for this poem comes from the name used to identify the youth ministry of the International Church of Christ (ICOC). The ICOC, founded by Kip McKean in the mid-1980s, has a history of using manipulative gestures like “love bombing” to convert people to their cause—and I was raised in it from the age of five until I was seventeen years old. As an adult, it’s easy for me to look back and see how others could have been drawn into an organization that 20/20 once investigated as a cult. For people the world had hurt with domestic violence and homelessness and poverty, people like my mother, the church was a haven. Committing 20–30 hours a week to Bible studies, daily mentoring, retreats, and church services seemed like a better deal than letting me, her child, potentially experience the same hurt she had. This restrictive lifestyle profoundly impacted my sense of self, my understanding of liberation, the maturation of my sexuality, and the manifestation of my protest/art-making process. It also explains the development of the parabolic mode in my writing practice.
Almost every poem I’ve written in the last fifteen years is in some way related to lines I cut from other poems. “Kid’s Kingdom” is a poem that I’ve been feeding off of for the last fifteen years. You can find elements of it in HoodWitch (Acre Books, 2019) in poems like “Gawd,” “Abstractions,” and “Training Day.” This first draft is a solid freewrite that I return to again and again to mine, but finally publishing “Kid's Kingdom” with underbelly, now, feels serendipitous because the poem holds so many of my theories about how to go about the act of creation, define personal and artistic liberation, and incorporate elements of spirituality, queerness, storytelling, and advocacy into the work itself.
In the ICOC, the tool used most often to keep people in line was a notepad filled with their confessions of sin called, simply, The Sin List. These lists, filled with what everyone considered their most significant failures and biggest secrets, were shame-filled catalogs hidden away in evangelist's offices. As a writer, I take my most significant failures and biggest secrets and turn them into poems or essays. By publicly admitting all I wasn't allowed to do, I take my power back and liberate myself from that old false narrative of powerlessness. I can now begin the next phase of my life, destined to be quite different from the first--this is the beauty of revision. In revision, we look back to where we started, decide to try a new path, and come to new and expansive discoveries if we're lucky.
< draft 1 >
KID’S KINGDOM
My mama said
I ain’t allowed
to get upset and cry
if my face is in public & I ain’t allowed
to sit with boys or hang with boys or kiss on boys or pray with boys
& I ain’t allowed to curse or listen to cursing or mimic cursing & I ain’t allowed
to think about sex or talk about sex or watch sex or have sex
or pretend sex or sex myself or god is
going to get in that ass. If I think I want to
go to heaven, I better start confessing my sins
cause god knows what I been doing
when she ain’t around. I better start finding the right
examples to follow in the kingdom. Start finding me
a disciple in the church to learn from. If I want to
get baptized, ima have to write down every time I sex myself
or cry or curse so the church can pray about it later. They
don’t understand why I’m so angry. I am a
child. Who do I think I’m talking to? Who do I think
I am? I am not allowed to raise my voice
or put any base in my voice or Mama is
gonna slap the shit out me, actin’ a fool
in front of all these people. Ima have to change
my tone because no, god is not allowed to be on my side.
I am the child, she is my elder. Even if I think
my mama is wrong, even if I think my mama is sick,
even if she’s gone off her meds again, I better pray
about it. Even if she beats me till I can’t stand. Pray
about it. Even if I think this shit’s gotten out of hand. Pray
about it. No god, does not talk to me and I’m definitely
not allowed to feel bad or have bad days or say
anything about my feelings because there are people in Africa
who are hungry, who didn’t have Jesus in their life
and I was being real selfish right then, you know.
Be humble. Sit down. Show some honor. Share the word of god
with your friends. Be in the house by 4pm.
No, you cannot go outside. No, you cannot go to your friend’s house.
No, you cannot go to a freaking party. You are only sixteen.
Who the fuck do you think you are?
I need to pull up my goddamned shirt and cover my chest.
Cover my legs. Cover my face. Look down when she talking to
me.
She raised me, she don’t owe me shit. Disrespectful, ungrateful little heffer
if I don’t get my black ass back in this goddamned house.
Why I got to be so embarrassing? Not remembering things right.
Always arguing . Being ungodly. Following the ways of the world.
Not listening. Being liberal. God does not want women to reveal their bodies.
< final version >
KID’S KINGDOM
Quenton Baker
In music, I would compose line by line in my head, while listening to the beat I was working on, to find a rhythm or a rhyme structure that wasn’t too regular. When I left music and started writing poems, that trait followed me. So, mostly, by the time I get to the page, the poem has gone through a thousand iterations and false starts in my mind.
Revision is about making sure I’ve pushed the poem to its limit. In music, there was a sixteen-bar verse that I was trying to fill, so the endpoint was predetermined. Since I write in free verse, the poem itself dictates where its end should be. In revision I’m making sure I’ve reached that endpoint, for real, and not just because I’ve hit my own breaking point with endurance or focus or patience.
The poem’s limit, of course, doesn’t just apply to its length, but all of its corresponding parts; I’m trying to push the sonic weight of each line to its limit, push the form to its limit, push the precision in the language to its limit, push the efficacy of each image to its limit. And perhaps it’s not the poem’s limit at all, but rather my limit within the poem.
For me, poetry has always meant reframing what’s possible. Gwendolyn Brooks and Aimé Césaire changed my understanding of what’s achievable within a poem, so that’s the limit I’m trying to push up against. I want every poem I write to have been impossible for me before I wrote it. So that means I have to push to surprise myself, through images, through associative language, through sonic patterns, to arrive somewhere I couldn’t have conceived of before I began.
In the excerpt below (from ballast, a book-length work), the early draft is shorter, missing some polish and urgency in its language. For me, the poem is an immediate thing; the urgency comes from the precision in language and the energy of the line, as attended to by sound and sense. So, the first change I made was “this ship as” to “this ship is”—that slight increase in directness pushes the reader along a bit more forcefully, because it’s the present tense and because of the assonance between “this” and “is.” Similarly, “rough hewn shore” to “rough hewn bone,” and the cutting of the rest of the line, is in service to image consistency. The image of shore is at odds (and not in a tension-building way) with the rest of the poem, so during revision that choice revealed itself as a misstep. The big change of the added last stanza and the shift to the penultimate stanza were because I didn’t enjoy how the form was working. These poems are meant to/able to be read in any direction (from the bottom up, any stanza in any order, etc.), so my revisions for this project had to constantly keep that reality of the form front and center.
< draft >
< REVISION >
Malika Booker
My current project uses the King James version of the Bible as its stimulus, so I was thrilled BBC Radio 2 commissioned a composition responding to “Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane” for their Easter program. I began by re-reading the biblical verses, before picking up my notebook and pencil.
These poems started with pages of explorations scribbled with my sharp HB pencil. I gathered random words: limbo, crossroad, asylum, shrine, mosquitos, and Afro (the Jesus in my poem would be a black, Caribbean man) to spark ten to twelve lines of lyrical statements and questions. Of these, “What would the trees whisper that night?” remains in the poem, while lines like: “Your will was at the crossroad” and “the surface was potholes and stones” have been discarded.
These became prompts for several freewrites. The first explored the notion that Jesus wanted his own vigil, and I tried to imagine how his vigil in the garden would look and feel juxtaposed against his reality. During these explorations I addressed Jesus as you—for example: “you wanted your own vigil. . . , hmmm what would it look like?” As I explored, I captures sounds, scents, and explored Jesus’s psychological and emotional mindset. Then I responded to the following questions:
• What if Jesus wanted a Caribbean wake?
• How did Jesus feel about the actions of his fellow disciples that night?
• How did Jesus feel about his father and the prophesy?
• How do I the poet feel about the disciples?
• What could Jesus see in his future that scared him?
These questions generated lyrical lines and images, a grounded knowledge of both character and place, and a certainty about the psychological terrain I was navigating. Next, I looked for a quote from those gathered in my notebook to kick-start the poem. Kym Hyesoon’s: “The tomorrow that escape from your body turns around to look at. . .” felt apt.
Then I hunted for poetic leaps or unusual, quirky details. I researched the geographical location of the original garden and its fauna. It was a miracle to discover that Shamrock leaves close at night. The leaves simply fold in from the central vein. This gesture became an overarching symbolic detail in the final poem.
Lastly, I created the following brief: Read your freewrites and underline key lines. Use those to write a sixteen-line draft in couplets. I shaped these couplets into a single-stanza draft, and once it was satisfactory, I typed it into Scrivener to be edited. As you can see, the poem required minimal changes given the substantial exploratory work I had conducted beforehand in my notebook.
< draft 1 >
< draft 2 >
< FINAL VERSION >
GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE
I cannot tell you what the trees whispered to him that night
air ripe with the scent of living, fruits pungent, leaves
clapping, harmonising with the crickets rhythmic screech.
What could trees whisper to a Black man juggling sorrow
on the eve of his catastrophe, face tortured, back bent
from the weight of prophesy, kneeling in damp soil,
thoughts wrestling. Each worry a serrated knife gorging flesh.
Say he was weeping, beating his chest, murmuring big man
don’t cry, wanting to unshackle from his father’s heirloom
but what Papa does not force their son into a square box,
each corner reinforced with the black tar of hardening expectations.
And the garden was not a tonic. When he spoke to the leaves,
did they not turn their backs, curl into their spine to recede
into their own nourishment, leaving him to keep his own vigil
on this seemingly ordinary night, the eve of his prophesied death.
And those disciples! My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even
unto death, tarry ye here, and watch with me, he asked them.
Oh those fickle hard ears men, how their snores became bass
in the ripe music of this garden. How they will regret
not catching the tremor in his voice, the slight waver
each pause. Regret will sit heavy on their chests
whenever they remember this garden, and not reading
the nuances, his pathos, between each utterance of his asking.
Sit ye here while I go to pray. Meaning, sit so we can converse
in the language of grief. Meaning, it is my last night with you.
Let us partake in the language of wake, lick down dominos,
and make ole talk, come nah man. Meaning, be my brothers tonight.
Come lick down double six and rock the table, disturb the still
of the night. He wanted ole talk, lime and labrish.
My soul exceedingly sorrowful even unto death.
But his brother’s snores mingled with the owls hoot and the leaves
turned their backs, while his kinfolk sprawl out in sleep.
The nails, the nails
bones breaking, splintering
bearing timber on your back
like a donkey carrying load
Say he is weeping and beating his chest muttering
big man don’t cry, Mourning his lack of ordinaries.
Mourning his body will not rot, worm and decay.
Maggots will not feed on his flesh.
Now his palms dig into the soil, earth in fingernails
shifting the dirt, man’s flesh is moulded from, burying
this sorrowful weight, then standing as the stuttering
light of morning approaches.
Rachel Mennies
“July 10, 2016” is the second poem from The Naomi Letters. As its inciting event it takes a snippet from local news, specifically from the East Side Pittsburgh neighborhood I was living in at the time: On September 20, 2016, a man jumped from the Forbes Avenue bridge that covers Frick Park. He did not survive.
I first had the idea for this poem on September 21, 2016, while driving over this bridge—as I did to and from nearly everywhere I went. I pulled over and recorded a few snippets before continuing to work. This voice memo is a beautiful and rare artifact. Because the speaker had herself imagined taking the leap that the man made, the image that survived from draft to draft was of the poem’s speaker gauging the distance the man fell by dropping pebbles to the ground below.
By then, I had just begun working on the poems that would become The Naomi Letters, so I hadn’t yet settled on its governing framework as a series of epistles written from the speaker to Naomi, all titled by their dates. I transcribed the voice memo and grew it into a poem draft by establishing the poem’s who-what-where: the man, the leap, the speaker on the bridge, the address to Naomi. Next, how to evoke in the reader what the speaker felt on that bridge? This shift nearly always requires moving from the narrative to lyric mode. There, I was able to conjure the speaker’s sense of gravity tugging her to the pavement, or else to the green below the bridge, through the hundred small stones, the single foot always remaining stubbornly in the world.
The one narrative detail that eluded me until the end of the first full draft—I wish I could remember if this realization arrived on my actual first writing or later, I am not certain—was where the poem needed to end. Should we stay on the bridge? Eventually, I realized that, if this poem were to focus on survival, the poem’s narrative present needed to be an after to the scene on the bridge. That took me to the idea of the speaker viewing the bridge from a different, safer vantage: the window inside her apartment, closing with an appeal to Naomi that the disclosure of the memory marks not an ending, but a beginning.
The date-title also changed as the broader set of poems grew, becoming “[7/10/2016]”: I realized that I needed this inciting event to happen earlier in the summer for the speaker, for it to make sense in the story arc.
By February of 2017, I had enough drafts written to send to one of my most cherished readers, the poet Kimberly Quiogue Andrews—the changes between the two complete, non-final drafts are thanks to her thoughtful edits.
The final version of this poem didn’t arrive until 2018, when I was working on revising the entire rough manuscript draft. By then, I had committed to the date-titles as well as their format, so “[7/10/2016]” became “July 10, 2016” and I removed some of the “Naomi” direct-addresses in keeping with a rule I tried to follow across the collection, which was not to mention her name in a poem more than once.
“July 10, 2016” remains one of the most dear-to-me poems in the book, in part because it sparked the first long thread that the book follows: a deep study of the speaker’s survival of her mental illnesses—a study of my own survival.
< FIRST draft >
“LETTER TO THE JUMPER…
Yesterday, a man jumped from the bridge beside my house. Naomi, what does it mean that I once threw pebbles over this bridge into water I couldn’t even see? Last year I drove over this bridge, imagined the car going over the rails. I didn’t want to leave my body, but it had exhausted me.
…All right, you have… you can do more work on that later…”
< DRAFT >
First complete draft (sent to a friend on February 21, 2017)
[7/10/2016]
Yesterday, Naomi, a man jumped to his death from the bridge beside my house.
A runner found his body on the path fifty yards below, lying in a shape I cannot conjure for you.
Naomi, does it matter that I once threw pebbles over this bridge to see how fast they’d fall?
I imagined my body the size of a hundred small stones moving in unison, my hips pressing the rail.
How I longed for the rocks’ silence as they fell to the green park below.
What I wanted to kill, Naomi, was the question.
But I could never lift both of my body’s feet from the earth at once.
Today I press my face to the bridge-facing window, feel the sun’s heat gather at the border of the pane.
Today I watch the cut red tulips open towards the waning light.
Naomi, I have so much more to tell you about being alive.
< DRAFT >
First complete revision (sent to a friend on February 15, 2018)
JULY 10, 2016
Yesterday, Naomi, a man jumped to his death from the bridge beside my house.
A runner found his body on the path fifty yards below, lying in a shape I cannot conjure for you.
Does it matter that I once threw pebbles over this bridge to see how fast they’d fall?
I imagined my body the size of a hundred small stones moving in unison.
How I longed for the rocks’ silence as they fell to the green park below.
What I wanted to kill was the question.
But I could never lift both of my body’s feet from the earth at once.
Today I press my cheek to the bridge-facing window, feel the sun’s heat gather at the border of the pane.
Today I watch the cut red tulips open towards the waning light.
Naomi, I have so much more to tell you about being alive.
< final version >
Soham Patel
In June 2021 I visited my friend the poet Jenny Johnson in Pittsburgh and we played a version of a game Patrick Rosal introduced at a Kundiman workshop. When Jenny and I play (we call the game wordball) we make a list of some topics we’ve discussed recently then list words we associate with that topic. We also make a list of action verbs, for action. Once we have a healthy list of words one of us will pick up a book we are currently reading and read a sentence or line from it. Then we both write down that sentence or line. Then one of us will keep writing while the other throws the words out for the catching. The idea is the writer will incorporate whatever word’s thrown out into what they are currently writing. This, of course makes for lots of leaps. When I typed out the journal page today for Underbelly, I couldn’t read some of my writing. Once I started to revise, I wanted a steadier story for the reader so I tried to particularize one from the game exercise. You can win wordball if you happen to be writing the word being thrown out at the very moment it’s thrown. I did that once. For this game our topics were “things you can compost” and “religious words.” Pittsburgh has a lot of repurposed churches, some have become bars. I used to live there and am always very nostalgic when I return, and I notice this affect in this “Brunch Poem” draft.
< draft 1>
< LIVE DRAFTING PROCESS>
(video only, no audio)
< final verSION >
BRUNCH POEM
We ordered sweet bubbly drinks,
swallowed them slow with grace.
Our throats scratch under the herbs
our bartender put on top for garnish
before she lit them on fire. This story
holds no more room for me to pray.
This place used to be our temple.
Every Sunday we made sweet music
and danced together. If I dig further,
I can remember incense and flea bane,
their bursts of scent and color. My virgin
mouth forgives our sins. The sugar burns.
After finishing our drinks, we walk home
and fuck and it’s holy like blessings extended
each Sunday morning. We skin the oranges,
grind beans, lean into the afternoon. We offer
our meal remains to the compost. We meditate
and metabolize, then ploop! after more exercise,
before we burn the dryer lint, before we rest.