Eugenia Leigh — underbelly

Eugenia Leigh

I write to uncover. To excavate. Every draft begins without lineation, and I commit to freewriting to keep the brain faucet on, to flush out the murky thoughts until more drinkable thoughts run clear. This means a good portion of what I’ve written will be trash. Filler thoughts or, worse, lies. I lie to myself a lot. Possibly to protect myself from truer thoughts I’m not yet ready to face. My mind also hosts many other people’s lies.

I run an internal lie detector over every line throughout the revision process, but especially after that first freewrite. I evaluate the draft for inaccuracies and evasions, but I also ask: am I putting on a “poet’s voice” or somebody else’s voice? Which lines are my voice? I also attempt to catch when I’m trying too hard to “write a poem.” Lines such as “How to mute the wasps fruiting within me” or “Am I violent? Am I sugar?” set off my bullshit detector. Do these lines *reveal* something or are they simply lovely and poem-y?

When I unearth a surprising line with authentic emotional clarity—such as “But the thing I miss most about hell is prayer”—I start a new draft with that line as the anchor. But because I cut so much from each freewrite, one draft rarely contains enough scraps to make a poem. Conversely, because every freewrite comes from my same obsessive brain, sometimes thoughts along the same train appear in multiple documents. So when I have my anchor line, I often search through older, unresolved drafts for moments that resonate with this line. Once I located “I want answers from the maker of figs” in a months-old document, I saw the vague shape of a poem asking to be sculpted from these two blocks of text.

< DRAFT 1 >

The Wisdom of Our Twisted Earth

Sycamore figs ripen only when struck. The way a bruise may sweeten a child toward empathy. I want answers from the maker of figs. How to mute the wasps fruiting within me. How to soften with age. Studies say the desire to maim animals burgeons in those who’ve endured abuse. Also, the desire to save. Am I violent? Am I sugar? The news is foul with the fruitless, and we all love someone snared inside some hellish nebula. What I’m saying is, not all the marred are redeemed, and I demand to know why. Who seeded our ugly earth and missed them. Why, struck and struck, their bitterness remains.

Out of the Mud

We are either on the road or in the mud, a roommate once said—after all our roads had vanished, after we’d ravaged ourselves in search of crags to end from, after we’d filled plastic bottles with vodka to chug in the parking lot of a pancake house and cry, but before she patched up homeless patients, before I revised a single line, before we married men nothing like our fathers. We are, it seems, out of the mud. Go on and tell it to the mountain. But the thing I miss most about hell is prayer. We prayed like everyone we loved was on fire. We’d sit on the carpet she paid for in front of the red futon I slept on, and we’d scream. I would shut my eyes and watch my father’s face melt into something lovable. I would watch the planet shaking like a child stricken with joy. And the bright and sizzling blob I knew to be God injected itself into every locked closet I thought I’d endured alone. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. On the road, I am not wrecked enough to ask for a kingdom. I’ve cobbled together a passable existence. When my husband asks me to pray for our meal, I say no. I can’t stomach thanking the Maker of the Universe for the peas on my plate.

< final version >

what i miss most about hell

is prayer.
I’d pack a plastic bottle

with vodka, drive
to the crag of my life—

the parking lot of a pancake house—
and scream. I prayed

like everyone I loved was on fire.
The bright, violet blob

I called God
would forgive the atrocities

roared in ethanol
while I’d shake like a dog

demanding answers
from the maker of figs:

why the sycamore fruit
sweetens only when bruised,

the way a fist will
ripen a child.

_______