Ada Limón
The first version of the poem is almost there. But you can see that I am still focusing on the facts of the poem. The poem is based on a true story. My mother was a caretaker for a 40-acre horse ranch in Sonoma, California where she primarily cared for retired police horses. All of her stories of the horses were amazing. Their journeys. How they came to the ranch. Some young. Some old. In the first poem I am really trying to get the facts right, the narrative. In the second version, I've realized that it's not about this little kindness, it's about being released, it's about being forgiven. The horse accidentally killed a man. Still, he gets to live out his long years with his rider on a ranch in Montana. And shouldn't he? In the second and final version, I've teased out that truth for myself which strengthens the ending and really gives the whole poem a new backbone.
The other part of the revision process for me, is that in the second version, and really all my revisions, I am revising for sound, for lyricism, and musicality, rhythm. The first version was published very quickly after I had written it. I probably sent it off a little too soon after someone requested poems. But the second version has an ear to it; it has a strong rhythm. The first one is so much (too much) information quickly, while the second takes its time and lets the poem do the slow work of sound and beauty as well as a narrative. I am so much happier with the final version primarily because I believe that's how the poem should be, a poem about forgiveness, not simply about loving live things, not only about kindness. But also, I am just much happier with the sound and structure of the poem. It has a tension and friction and power that the first version doesn't quite have yet. Oh, what a gift time is. A clearer eye, a more attuned ear, all of these things come so much more easily after a little time has passed. But, like the poem insists, I will forgive my past selves and be only the good horse of the now.
*
Photo credit: Lucas Marquardt
THE STORY OF A HORSE
My ma’s in the wind-pushed double wide, waiting
for the retired police men to bring their retired police horses
to the ranch. She’s laughing about how they can’t figure
out which way the gate swings, the swinging shocks them.
She’s at the window now describing the rain, the two-horse
trailer, and also, how sometimes she and my stepdad
talk about death for a long time. How talking about death
makes it easier to live and I agree and say, “It’s called die,
before you die.” What is being delivered here is a horse
whose life has been difficult. A large quarter horse named
Seattle, a horse with a city name, who kept watch in a city,
who got spooked outside the baseball stadium when a bag
wrapped itself around its foot, a plastic thing versus
a big animal in a big crowd and a quick accident killed
a man. Then, what for the horse? Never to be ridden, stuck
in a stall, full of ramped up energy, lightning bugs in the blood.
He might have wanted to, “Die before he died.” But not
yet. What is being delivered here is a horse, a horse forgiven.
A horse loved by his rider, a horse loved is a difficult thing
not to ride. Today, the rider is retired, a badge on the dashboard,
and a fine plan to drive all the way to Montana, where the rider
has bought a ranch. The rider, and his loved horse,
are going all the way to Montana and they’re going to live
out their days together, out of the city life. The horse,
with his city-name, and his forgiven city-mistakes, are going
north for a long drive and it makes me and Ma happy.
How good it is to love live things, how forgiving
fills that impossible need, how some little love
can make a whole life worth living a little while longer.
THE LONG RIDE
Ma’s in the wind-pummeled double-wide
waiting for the retired policemen
to bring their retired police horses
to the ranch. She’s at the window now
describing the rain, the two-horse trailer,
and also, how sometimes she and my stepdad
talk about death for a long time.
How imagining death can make it easier
to live and I agree and say, It’s called die
before you die. What is being delivered
here is a horse who’s had a hard life.
A large quarter horse named Seattle --
a horse with a city name who protected a city,
who was spooked outside the baseball stadium
when a shopping bag wrapped around his leg,
a plastic thing versus a muscle-bound animal
in a busy crowd and a flash accident killed
a man. But then, I wonder, what for the horse?
Never to be ridden, stuck numb in a stall,
lightning bugs torturing the poor blood?
I bet that horse might have wanted to
die before he died. But not yet.
What is being delivered here is release.
Today, his officer-rider is finally retired, too,
with an old badge on the dashboard
and a fine plan to drive all the way to Montana,
where the rider has bought a ranch for his horse,
Seattle. The rider, and his horse, with his city-name,
and his forgiven city-mistakes, are charting
a clear new territory of absolution, and it makes
Ma and me happy. How good it is to love
live things, even when what they’ve done
is terrible, how much we each want to be
the pure exonerated creature, to be turned loose
into our own wide open without a single
harness of sin to stop us.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
On the eve of my 66th birthday when I first wrote the poem I was deeply despondent over the death of my son. The loss brought up sadness for his twin brother who left us at his birth almost forty-six years ago. The evening was cold and icy gray. I felt more alone than I had ever felt before. Walking down the steps to the F train I was focused on loneliness and aging.
As I revised the poem for submission, I realized that I had so much to be thankful for. The flowers that I loved so much, a new wife at home, loving friends and family, and a new collection of poems that I was really proud of. I recreated the poem to be one of thanks and gratitude. I realized that I could glorify the earth with my weeping, praise the day that I was born, and share my story in the hopes of connecting with someone else.
LAST DAY OF 66
SIXTY-SIXTH DECEMBER
Joseph O. Legaspi
I’d been trying to write this poem for years. My father passed away December 2003. We were so far from having a semblance of a relationship that I couldn’t even call it strained. Yet, a parent’s absence is as powerful as his presence. Or his presence is his absence, forever looming darkly. On the night I received the call from my mother in suburban Los Angeles, I first lamented not the news of my father’s death, but the date with a new boy that I’d be missing due to my sudden obligatory return home. So began the reckoning.
“The Kissing” was the first draft I transcribed into Word/my Mac laptop. It came after my initial heave and hurl with pen on paper, then some more scribbling, scratching and exorcism into my notebook. The year was 2015 on one of the Visayan islands of the Philippine archipelago. Unlike the motherland, I wanted the poem to be compact, wooden, claustrophobic. . . I wanted to emulate and imitate a coffin with my inert father in it; i wanted it to be buried and gone.
Months later, I realized as with any death—and foremost with a blood kin’s—it never goes away. I had failed to honor this death, this poem. The title had to go, vague and romantically suggestive. (Is this a love poem?) Then the form: too obvious, benign, clustered, hence, limiting. I’d buried everything. What I needed was to infuse breath into the poem. Free it up like the soul, spirit. Permit it to contemplate the larger picture: the Lazarus-mystery of my father, Catholicism, rituals, immigrants, cycles.
By breaking it up and varying its lines and stanzas, the poem travels at a better pace through space and time—the episode’s contemplative, funereal march into its momentous reckoning. By isolating the last line, the ending regained, for me, as when I first stumbled upon it, its shocking revelation. The refusal, I believe, can be read in many ways: the assertion of self, defiance of death, a turning away, but also as a headlong grasp, a critique of tradition, the optics of performance, an acceptance, a haunting, a letting go.
*
This poem previously appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day series.
Photo credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths
< REVISION >
KISSING MY FATHER
Three days into his wake my father has not risen.
He remains encased in pine, hollowed-
out, his body unsealed, organs
harvested, then zippered
shut like a purse.
How strange to see one’s face inside
a coffin. The son at my most peaceful.
The father at his most peaceful.
Not even the loud chorus
of wailing family members
can rid us of our sleep.
My mother sits front center.
Regal in black, her eyes sharpened
as Cleopatra’s. Her children, grown
and groaning, quietly moan beside a white
copse of trumpeting flowers.
The church is forested
with immigrants, spent after their long journey
to another country
to die.
Before the casket
is to be closed, we all rise
to bid our final farewells.
My mother lowers herself,
kisses the trinity of the forehead
and cheeks, then motions her obedient
children to follow. One by one my
siblings hover, perch, and peck.
I stand over my father
as I had done on occasions
of safe approach: in his sleep, or splayed
like a toad on the floor.
I study him, planetary,
distant presence both bodily
and otherwordly, a deceptive
kind of knowledge.
His beauty has waned
but not faded, face surface
of a moon, not ours, I turn pale,
shivering, I place my hand
on his, amphibious.
While my mother places her hand warm on the cradle
of my back, where I bend to fit into my body.
Her burning eyes speak, Do it for me, they
urge, Kiss your father goodbye.
I refuse.
< DRAFT >
THE KISSING
Three days into his wake and my father has not risen.
He remains in a box, wooden, hollowed-out, his body
opened up and closed like a zippered purse, organs
ripped out of him, all his life. How strange to see
your face inside a coffin. This is the most peaceful
you. This is you at your most peaceful. Not even
the loud chorus of wailing family members can rid
you of this sleep. My mother sits in her chair, front
row, the perpetual matriarch. She looks classic
in regal black, her eyes sharpened like Cleopatra’s.
Her children, grown and groaning, quietly moan,
befuddled beside a white circle of trumpeting
flowers. Under the church dome, respectful
immigrants huddle against the closing walls
cold as a mausoleum. They seem forested.
After such a long journey to another country
to die. Before the casket is closed, all rise to bid
their final farewell to the remains of my father.
My mother lowers herself and kisses the body
on the forehead and cheeks. She then motions
her children to follow as we’d always done. One
by one my siblings momentarily hover, perch
and peck. My turn. I stand over him as I’d done
seizing those safe occasions of approach, while
he slept or incapacitated crooked on dirt floors,
and I studied him, planetary, a deceptive kind
of knowledge, a distant presence both bodily
and imaginative. In his earth box, his beauty
has waned but not faded, softer pink of his lips,
it is just a body, surface of a moon, not ours, I
turn pale and shivering, all I could do is place
my hand on his, reptilian to the touch. And
my mother touch her hand warm on the cradle
of my back, where I bend to fit into my body.
Her burning eyes speak, Do it for me, they
urge, Kiss your father goodbye. I refuse.
Alison C. Rollins
The first draft of the poem “Water Lilies” was written in April 2018 after moving the month before to Chicago. It was created as part of the “Poem-A-Day Challenge” which many writers participate in as a celebration of National Poetry Month. When tasked with writing a new poem every day for thirty days the initial hurdle of just getting something on the page can be reduced by not feeling like you completely have to reinvent the wheel. I often find when trying to generate new work it can be helpful to use an existing poem as a springboard or as an architectural blueprint for writing a new piece of my own. To write “Water Lilies” I utilized Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Venus’-flytraps” from his collection Magic City.
Similarly to Komunyakaa, I wanted to use the name of a flower to title the work and to influence as well as complicate the narrative of the poem itself. If writing a poem is similar to cooking a culinary dish, I would say that my go-to seasoning or flavor profile is surrealism. I greatly enjoy the absurd. On the other hand, I realize that I can be heavy-handed with surreal language as a default safety mechanism to consciously and/or unconsciously avoid certain truths and traumas. Often I will move away from narrative or detailing particulars that have the potential to raise my own vulnerability. As a consequence, the poem can sometimes suffer from becoming frustratingly obscure for the reader. One of my favorite texts that speaks to this dynamic is Hélène Cixous’s Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Within it, Cixous argues, “Writing or saying the truth is equivalent to death.” Furthermore Cixous suggests, “We have to lie to live. . . we must try to un-lie.”
If each poem sits on a continuum of truth, I would say my later draft of “Water Lilies” has moved closer to expressing a greater transparency and honesty. I worked through the later draft of this poem in August of 2018 in Vermont at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. In the later draft I think I achieved greater concision with the imagery, and the reader is better situated to wade through the poem. I would also say that the later draft required a greater honesty and vulnerability of me despite its use of fewer words and less space on the page. With this particular poem I have needed breathing room to grapple with my own personal failures, childlessness, my divorce, the messiness of my sexuality and desire, inherited trauma, and the violence of being in the world as a black woman. I tried to push for greater brevity in this draft and to tell a story as economically as possible. I also tried to shift between the past and present tense as seamlessly as possible. An example of shifting in time and space that I strive for would be Terrance Hayes’s “At Pegasus” from his collection, Muscular Music.
“Water Lilies” has never been published and by no means does it feel “completed” to me. It is a poem that I have set aside to potentially revisit or use as a graveyard to extract lines from for another future work. At this point, “Water Lilies” is just as unfinished, in-process, and chaotic as my daily attempt to stay alive.
< REVISION >
WATER LILIES
I am thirty,
wading out into a deep
body of water.
My favorite form of
loss is to swallow.
What have I to lose
this time around? Last July
my legs were draped on either
side of my husband’s head.
My thighs hung like a scarf
about his neck, his hair
burrowed into my privates.
I’d always longed
to see a dolphin’s vagina.
As a child, I wanted to be a marine
biologist. At Sea World, I rode
on my father’s shoulders
held on to his ears for dear life.
I—upswept in his current,
his arms filled with his own blood.
Now they are gone, both the father
and the husband in this story,
their closets emptied save for
tins of shoe polish and handfuls
of naked wire hangers. I am Medea.
Euripides takes up my voice
like a pebble for safekeeping,
beads of water run off my face
like grief. Afloat, I rehearse
how to mourn like a stone.
My breasts skip atop the surface,
aqueducts of milk rooted
beneath the skin. The river
holds me in its mouth
like a song. I in turn
leave it, troubled.
< DRAFT >
WATER LILIES
I am thirty,
wading out into deep
bodies of water.
My favorite form of
loss is to swallow.
What have you to lose
this time around? To me, each
man is an ocean.
On my back, I glare
at their murky silence,
the edge of their end
almost invisible.
I watch their chests rise
and fall
as they sleep.
I view their movements
for the same amount of
time that most people study
objects with interest. Men’s bodies
are interchangeable
with any aquatic animal.
Beneath the waves, mammals move
toward sound and action.
What is a man without action?
My body is a wallflower.
Men do not like to wait,
their helpless hands and hoofs
beat like limp hearts. I spread
my curls across the surface of
the waterbed, train my desire
to not go on forever.
I’ve always longed
to see a dolphin’s vagina.
As a child, I wanted to be a marine
biologist. At Sea World, I rode
on my father’s shoulders
held on to his ears for dear life.
He was alive then, his arms
filled with a current. Now they are gone,
both the men and the father in this story.
How does anyone survive
any relationship? How do you love
a person to death without killing
them, or yourself?
Be still. Write alone in a blue velvet chair.
Float poems like paper boats
across damp lips.
I close my eyes and reach across
the wetness, towards the shape of
a man in the dark.
His hair bobs in the wind
like the fluff of a dandelion.
My fingers chant,
come home, swim home to me.
Raena Shirali
Women in India are still accused of being witches. Are shunned by their families and fellow villagers. Are tortured and murdered. I sit in an orange chair at a small table in my house in Philadelphia. The distance between author and subject is a preoccupation that I have been rendering visible in this manuscript, and is the thread I wanted to preserve, regardless of where this poem’s revision took it. The tension of articulation in this poem dictated its revision arc—I’m trying to implicate myself, interrogate gendered archaic constructs, allow the imagination to conjure image, and question that very conjuring. Overwriting, when dealing with these myriad goals, is a vital tool. This poem’s first draft was around the length of its most recent iteration; by expanding in revision, I arrived at an articulation of what was tonally and thematically missing from the original. Saying more is one way to find a poem’s pulse. I think the most successful poems beat without showing you their heart; it logically follows that you, as the poet, may have to spend a great deal of time learning the contours of the heart, hearing its subdued second thud, before trimming it—that visible muscle—out.
Bracketed and quoted text was sampled from Gender Relations in Forest Societies in Asia: Patriarchy at Odds.
*
This revision originally appeared in American Poetry Review.
< DRAFT >
“Why are women considered more antisocial than men, who are never or seldom identified as witches?”
ARCHETYPE : JHARKHAND :
conjure a culture predating plantations, the myths
that shape a woman accused. before
maligning, what did it mean to sit
alone, or in groups? imagine : they forage,
cloth slings bursting
with nuts & berries & wound
around a length of bamboo. this archetype
predates blame : here, daayani are
but women. they sit together, feet dangling
over a roadside ditch, sharing stories of men
who stand almost too tall, craning their necks
skyward, as if to project
a peacock’s air—male bird : all preen
& chosen. there are warnings. of villagers,
instead, who make shadows broad
as buildings’. or this is a landscape
where a woman sits alone, cheeks red with sweat
& the color red doesn’t signal.
there is no metaphor
for her joy. imagine : i’m digging
in the old-world soil, trying to find
an archetype ungendered. solitude i don’t have
to interpret. a woman lights a candle
& my imagination is a failure. women rustle the brush
together, & i theorize about the politics
of accusation like turning on or against
one’s kin is natural. & if i am aligned with anyone
as archetype, anyone
in Jharkhand, how can i say it’s not
with men : shaded safely at a distance. making
observations. o, the art of exaggeration.
taking note.
< REVISION >
[It is true that the dominant value of social life in the indigenous communities is collectivism, and anything that threatens it is branded as antisocial. But why are women considered more antisocial than men, who are never or seldom identified as witches?]
BEFORE PLANTATIONS, WOMEN RUSTLE THE BRUSH TOGETHER,
cloth slings bursting with nuts & berries, wound
around a length of bamboo. here, daayani forage, are
but women. they sit together,
feet dangling over roadside ditches, sharing stories of men
who stand almost too tall, craning their necks skyward
as if to project a peacock’s air—male bird : all preen
& chosen. there are warnings. of villagers
instead, who make shadows broad
as buildings’. what did it mean to sit alone
or in groups? a woman lights a candle
& my imagination is a failure.
or a woman sits alone, cheeks red with sweat
& the color red doesn’t signal, there
are solitudes i don’t have
to interpret : no metaphor
for her joy. & if i am
aligned with anyone, anyone
in Jharkhand, how can i say it’s not
with men : shaded safely at a distance
making observations. here : the art of taking
note.