Courtney Faye Taylor


I wrote this after reading Larry Levis’ “The Poet at Seventeen,” the first poem in his collection, Winter Stars. I loved the narrative meandering in that poem. It brought to mind an imagined life, a life I felt I could fit into Levis’ structure. So I began this imitation.

I’m amazed at how much of a complete spill of ideas the first draft was. I’m not sure I write this wildly or freely anymore. I think my editor brain is a little more involved from the beginning now, which at times bars the surprise or revokes permission to be wild and wrong. This is a good reminder to get back to the wildness. I like how, in this first draft, I let images take me wherever. The draft resembles a haphazard monologue or the rant of a speaker who’s trying to explain a world they don’t have precise sense of yet. But they know its feeling. They know its truth.

I forgot who told me this, but writing a poem is like forming an ice sculpture. The first draft—a plain, square ice block. Revision—the chiseling. And the final poem—the swan or whatever you’ve set out to sculpt (though really, the best poems don’t ever end up being what you’ve set out to sculpt. Their final form surprises you, as this poem did). This poem went through about eighty-four sessions of chiseling until I decided I had a sculpture. I say “a” sculpture because a draft has many possible poems. I’m even seeing here, in this draft, lines I deserted that I want to pick up and carry into life elsewhere.

< draft 1 >

after Larry Levis

< final version >

blooms exactly

after Larry Levis


My youth?      I spent it all between
the knees of hairbraiders, begging kanekalon
to name me a debutante or mistake me
foreign. Those knees I matured between

worked weeks at the Kween of Kinks

Braid Boutique, which was an old U.S. Cellular, behind
which my boyfriend’s Chevrolet vanished under sleet. And
southern magnolias in hibernation pulsed like sea channels, or
seemed to channel, a yearly seedy casualty all over. I cleaned

for the braiders on Fridays. They sprawled

their slippered feet on the shampoo bowls whenever I
brought the vacuum around and hummed my 2010 urbanite
tunes: Bedrock, Bottoms Up, No Hands—the sexist verses I saved
for the bathroom while lemon-scenting the shitter and

spritzing some Chanel No. down my bloomers, blooming
where you know it blooms exactly. Still even when
I smelled good, I smelled busy. And I hated high school.
Novembers I rode the 60 to Wauwatosa Mall just to sniff

the food court’s teriyaki and auntie sugar pretzels. Those
bus rides were so boring that I pretended to smoke candy
canes, clicking an inkpen in front of the sucked pointy end to
imitate igniting. Sometimes boys with flies undone

            jittered past me towards the Rosa seats
            without my noticing. And from my window

I watched trashcans of all purposes blow their hearts out
across crosswalks. I had a knack for telling city garbage
from residential garbage: Tampons, Crown Royal, tattered Crisis mags    
       or       playbills for Fences, gold minute hand of a wristwatch,

jaybird bones.      So why not admit it? I was petrified
then. I had the sort of shoulder chip this nation usually
only nicks into eugenicists who break news, who
arrive at megaphoned fame just to disrupt or
distrust it. I didn’t trust my boyfriend driving past

Decorah where the boy scouts camped. His Chevy
must’ve seemed Xzibit-pimped to the fist-
headed campers whose kickballs and cameraphones too
often sought the hood. Curiosity left no dent, but say

it had; no boy would pay. Our hood wasn’t their hood
to heal. Hella girls at my high school from hoods unhealed

aced parabolas, sailed me on by to ivies and housewifery.
All night they enthralled my jealousies with nothing on
but the height of their nipples.       Mine, Eiffel-tall
in my father’s chilly condo, which stayed chilly so that

my hardness gave a show as I lazed
towards the kitchen in a camisole for some Minute
Maid. Had I known what my upper half
was making this man do for temperature

            I would’ve laughed.       I was a damn good merry maid.

Bleach licks. Pocketed fro picks. Egregious tips. A life
like that?         It seemed to kill me forever.