Shayla Lawson
I started writing "The Kentuckyist" as a way to explore the rhetoric around "-ists" and "isms"—racism in particular—as viewed through the lens of growing up in Kentucky, and the way white supremacy operates as a lineage that is part of the fabric of our national experiences. I work a lot with visual poetry, and wanted to connect the IST as a physical thread throughout the poem by making it large, obvious, undeniable and also an obstruction to making the poem easy to read. Although using this visual cue as an extension of the poem's metaphor was my original project, I felt the poem's narrative worked well to tie together a specific part of a manuscript I was finishing, I Think I'm Ready to See Frank Ocean (Saturnalia, 2018), whose chief conceit was tying this racialized history of America to the music of singer/ songwriter Frank Ocean, a project that was aural but not visual. "Time Machine" is both the title of the revised poem and of a song by Frank Ocean. The song contains the lines "I saw memories on both sides of the road / I pointed them out as I went along", which is essentially the work I sought to do with the visual. Even without this knowledge of the Ocean recording, the title "Time Machine" starts to tie the language of the poem to memory and a rehashing of things the speaker wishes could change. I changed the bold, foreboding, "ist" of the first version of the poem into the all-caps "IST" of the traditionally lineated free-verse poem to highlight this as the poems refrain without losing its music to a complex visual field.
< draft >
< draft >
the acceptance
Dad’s house stands again
four years after being demolished.
I walk in. Dad lies in bed
licking his rolling paper.
I say, Are you back?
He says, What are you talking about?
We buried you four years ago.
I know I know!I lean into his smoke, panting, I went back
to Jamaica, I met your brothers.
Losing you made me need them.He says something I don’t hear.
What?I cry, then wake in the hotel room,
heart pumping.
I get up slowly. The floor is wet.
I wade into the bathroom.
My father stands by the sink––
all the taps running. He laughs.
Are you back?He takes my hand, squeezes,
his ring digs into my flesh.
I open my eyes. I’m by a river,
a shimmering sheet of green marble.
Red ants crawl up an oak tree’s flaking bark.
My hands are cold mud. I follow the tall grass
by the riverbank,
Oshun, in gold bracelets and earrings,
scrubs her yellow dress in the river. I wave.
She keeps singing.
The dress turns the river gold.
My father emerges
holds a white and green drum.
I watch him climb out
dripping towards the Orisha.
They embrace. My father beats the drum.
With shining hands, she signs, Welcome.
< REVISION >
the acceptance
His house stands again
four years after being demolished.
I walk in. He lies in bed
licking his rolling paper.
I say, Are you back?
We buried you four years ago.I lean into his smoke, panting, I went back
to Jamaica, I met your brothers.
Losing you made me need them.
What?I cry, then wake in the hotel room,
heart pumping.
I get up slowly. The floor is wet.
I wade into the bathroom.
He stands by the sink––
all the taps running. He laughs.
Are you back?He takes my hand, squeezes,
his ring digs into my flesh.
I open my eyes. I’m by a river,
a shimmering sheet of green marble.
Red ants crawl up an oak tree’s flaking bark.
My hands are cold mud. I follow the tall grass
by the riverbank.
Oshun, in gold bracelets and earrings,
scrubs her yellow dress in the river. I wave.
She keeps singing.
The dress turns the river gold.
I see him emerge
holding a white and green drum.
I see my father climb out
dripping towards the Orisha.
They embrace. He beats the drum.
With shining hands, she signs, Welcome.
< final version >
time machine
Sammy Davis Jr. Jr.
is the name of my dog. Yes
this comes from another book. Yes
I call him this because he
reminds me of a spry black Jew.
Yes, this is still racist. Even
as I say it to you the IST
wags out from both of us like a feist
turned loose. It wears the low-slung
onomatopoetic operatic
of tire swing hung from my neighbor’s
tree—IST—a red cable fashioned
as a noose. The revisionist.
The southern transcendentalist.
They will use the same knot come
Halloween (the death man bringeth)
clinging to effigies of
tissue ghosts & come spring, garbage
bags clad in suits of papier mâche.
The satirist—(the ice man
taketh away)—a basketball
coach strung lilted & impeached.
The arborist: what front
yard isn’t missing something large
& black & fearful hanging from
a beech? An IST in each as the
sonic historicist: the sound
wearing wind in its teeth. Gap-toothed
warden, sneer-sucking tongue
—and that was just the Disney version.
Even now, I may only hear
Kin-TUCK-ah, but I will still see
Emmet Till & nimble Sammy
Davis Jr. [Sr.] in the
golden Cadillac to Kim
Novak’s hiding in the backseat.
They file by the Volvo
window, parked at the Winn-Dixie.
My adolescent panegyrist
smudges the film, scans the white sheet
—the conic iconic—a
family of four in rain-spit grit.
I say, “Mom, it’s the Klan.” She looks
through the rear view, sucks Maybelline
off her teeth before scrounging her
purse for bills. “Well, you better
hurry on in there, then. You
better get on. Those eggs won’t
buy themselves.”
Raymond antrobus
I have periods of intense and vivid dreams, but I rarely write them down. So this poem is unusual in that it is based on an actual dream I had. The first draft of a poem for me is all about energy. Something comes to me, an idea, an image, a twisty bit of language, anything that makes me want to break it open and discover what’s inside it or where it can take it. It is a kind of adventure. Not every adventure starts or ends at the same place.
The first draft here was in my notebook (now stored somewhere in my mother’s house), but I typed the second draft into a Google document. All the poems I was writing at that point I had given simple titles: “The Offering,” “On Sympathy”, “On Noticing,” etc., and all of those titles changed except this one, “The Acceptance.” I had different drafts, each with different tenses and pronouns: the “he” version and the “dad” version.
I wondered if I could get away with using “Dad” and “father” in the same poem. Each has a different feel despite both having the same meaning. Father, of course, feels heavier with its religious associations. “Father” also feels like a distant word, one that implies an intense power imbalance. I had a draft that only uses “father” and one that only uses “Dad” and, for some reason, it felt right to begin with “Dad.” And as the poem unfolds into different worlds/genres (realism to surrealism to magic-realism) the weight of “father” felt appropriately ethereal and lent it a lyric weight, as did the pronoun “he.”
Over the two years of its making this poem felt like it was missing some kind of movement, a feeling. Something about the energy that pulled me down to write the poem hadn’t yet been served. There were numerous “acceptances” that needed to be resolved in the poem, one of them being that in life my Dad had never accepted that I was deaf/hard of hearing and only used the term “limited.” Also, a little discussed element to the story of Oshun is that although she was the Goddess of music, she too was also hard of hearing.
It wasn’t until two years after the first draft, while I was working on a completely different poem that something brought me back to “The Acceptance.” I was taught to think of each line of a poem as a “unit” and each syllable as a “beat” and I had realised the final unit of this poem had to be a literal beat, the drum. The most far-reaching sound of all instruments. The drum talks because it vibrates.
The energy lifted me when I brought in the beat of the drum on the way out of this poem, as did changing a few verbs along the way.
The final version of the poem is published in the May 2020 issue of Poetry Magazine.
< final >
the acceptance
Dad’s house stands again, four years
after being demolished. I walk in.
He lies in bed, licks his rolling paper,
and when I ask Where have you been?
We buried you, he says I know,
I know. I lean into his smoke, tell him
I went back to Jamaica. I met your brothers,
losing you made me need them. He says
something I don’t hear. What? Moving lips,
no sound. I shake my head. He frowns.
Disappears. I wake in the hotel room,
heart drumming. I get up slowly, the floor
is wet. I wade into the bathroom,
my father stands by the sink, all the taps
running. He laughs and takes
my hand, squeezes.
His ring digs into my flesh. I open my eyes.
I’m by a river, a shimmering sheet
of green marble. Red ants crawl up
an oak tree’s flaking bark. My hands
are cold mud. I follow the tall grass
by the riverbank, the song. My Orisha,
Oshun in gold bracelets and earrings, scrubs
her yellow dress in the river. I wave, Hey! She keeps singing. The dress turns the river
gold and there’s my father surfacing.
He holds a white and green drum. I watch him
climb out of the water, drip toward Oshun.
They embrace. My father beats his drum.
With shining hands, she signs: Welcome.
My father beats his drum.
Aricka Foreman
This poem came during an especially hot summer of a depressive episode. The “needle jitter” of its static seemed to linger behind the hum of a book. I have tons of drafts that slowly announce themselves as poems. I can’t think about a book until that hum turns up, closer to chorus than disparate utterances that flitter at the edges of the mundane.
Revision began with my slight irritation with the first line. And then realizing the lines that followed were enacting the same strained, syncopated listing effect. “Here the illness,” felt too fixed of a location, and disabused me of the possibility to grapple with the subject matter as part of the I’s ecosystem. The language wanted to be actualized. I’d disassociated her from the world she inhabited. There’s so little power in that kind of repressed language tbqh.
The final form took several months to change in slight increments. I’d walk away for days (weeks) at a time, removing a comma, a word or phrase to the preceding line, then again to the line that followed. Leaning on the syntax allowed the language to tell me how it wanted to root, grow. Removing “finite” punctuation seemed key in allowing an aliveness: in.
What I found fascinating was this aliveness swelled and began to make room for all the things that were alive: autumn trees, couples walking down the block, the rich landscape of dreams against the brief soundtrack of passing cars. A duality emerged, present in the witness’ observations: what she witnesses in the world around her while simultaneously witnessing her own mercurial mind. What began as a catalogue later became seed. I traveled with that corporeality into other poems, especially in the last section of the book.
Music plays a key factor in how I shape my poems, and where I follow them. If I’m listening clearly, a poem more interested in sense-making than making sense allows me to play with form, disjoint a linear narrative in service of valiance. But I do have to be careful not to be so seduced by music—even chopped and screwed—that I lose resonance or urgency.
I play with prepositional locations, torque the music. It’s amazing how that shift drives the momentum of a poem depending on if they’re at the beginning or end vs the middle of a line in the poem. Shifting the grammar opens a door. Sheds some light.
< DRAFT >
Failed Reincarnation Before Olanzapine
Here the honeycombed
illness seemed ecstacy,
sticky warm spittle
from bees buzzing bright
in the brain, spread over
reel days, technicolor
slow-dripped from trees’
autumnal gold, latched
as take me with youon the shoulders of lovers
take me across the thresh
of whichever door Do you
hear this station on repeat,
needle jitter between suffer
and c’est la vie or yolo
Who in a body such as this
can afford to believe in rein-
carnation, though, once
there was a river
of mercurial silt and gold
bangles bridging over
opened wrists, there:
sun’s radial rippling
despite rising brown
water Here libido in limbo,
language of leverage
one evening for a hush
if you can manage
A hadal hunch whispers
taut or torch or touch can
bind you to a fever
if unchecked, let Wound
then bruise renders blues
inevitable From the green
porch I swing Cars dissolve
into whir and whip Panic
pitters a baseline of a house
track Begs dance dance dance
dance dance dance until
you believe in a God who
demands to witness what
worship abandon becomes
< revision >
Failed Reincarnation Before Olanzapine
My honeycomb illness of bees buzzing
bright in the brain, their sticky spittle
turning hours in caleidoscope
that slow-drip, the trees’ autumnal gold. . .
How it latches to the shoulders of pedestrians,
like the take me with you of lovers
Take me across the thresh of whichever door
might amp this song up, good needle jitter
When the station’s stuck between suffer
and c’est la vie, who in a body like this
can afford to believe in reincarnation, though,
once I dreamed a river of mercurial silt and gold
bangles bridging over my opened wrists
And the sun’s radial rippling despite
rising brown water Here language in limbo,
of leveraging one evening for a hush
if you can manage A whisper taut or torch
or touch can bind you to a fever if unchecked, let
Wound then bruise renders blues inevitable
From the green porch I swing between the whir
of dissolving cars that whip and exhale Panic
pitters its baseline like a house track Begs:
dance dance dance dance Asks if you believe
in a God who demands to witness
what worship wild abandon becomes
Naoko Fujimoto
The first draft was saved in my file in 2016, and the revision was published in my chapbook, Mother Said, “I Want Your Pain” (Backbone Press, 2018). The graphic poetry version of this poem is on POETRY Foundation’s website here.
It depends on the poem; however, my editing process takes one of two extreme paths—either I revise head to toe, or I do a minor, targeted changes, like changing the grammar or comma placement (since English is my second language, there are ample opportunities to do this).
The first draft branched into both the graphic version and written revision. In the graphic version, I focused on my theme, “Trans. Sensory” (Trans. has two meaning: translate & transport). I translate my writing in English to graphic poems, and I want my viewers to transport their senses from the flat paper and bridge the gap between words and images that will connect with their physical counterparts. Therefore, in the graphic version of “Lake Michigan,” there are parts that may take time to read (certain efforts to understand and connect words and images), which would tie with the main theme—time is necessary to process everything, and that develops the emotions around healing.
Growing up in Japan, I spent a lot of summers by a fisherman’s port because of my health issues. There, my grandfather used to own a small house, which had a long, narrow path by broken stone steps down to a pebble beach (not beautiful white sand) with millions of crickets. So, my sister and I captured these insects and put them on our handmade boats. We also saw the sky, stars, and collected seashells, drifted branches, and the occasional dead thing.
This poem (maybe all my poems) is a mix of my dream-like memories. Now, I am not sure how accurate I recall these experiences, but some parts around Lake Michigan, where I now live, trigger vivid flashbacks of everything around my childhood port being rusted. Of course, the lake is filled with fresh water, not salty like the Pacific Ocean, but the realization was shocking. I re-realize that I am far away from the ocean, my home. After spending all day at the beach, Lake Michigan does not stain my nostrils with iron particles.
This poem contains the theme of miscarriage; therefore, I wanted to make it as personal as possible. Mixing up with my childhood memories and experiences may excite poetic chemical reactions. I also changed the structure and line-breaks hoping that some simplicity may support more emotional outputs. Despite the beauty of Lake Michigan, this poem represents a void—uncomfortable, pale images. The space-dent preceding the phrase “Clouds stretch” represents time, of unpleasant thoughts.
Though, I am so lucky to be able to meditate on poems by both Lake Michigan and the Pacific Ocean throughout the seasons. It is fantastic to see fireworks by the lake and watch the ocean after the long flight to my city. Like revising poems, time is crucial to identify one little thing that may be needed to wrap a poem up. I used to not appreciate the aging process; however, time makes more visible something I may not currently see. Clearly, everything that these waves bring me keeps fueling new poems and the potential healing they may provide.
< draft >
lake michigan
No clam’s bubbles to step on the lake beach.
Waves just come and go—no seaweed,
no fisherman’s nets.
Plastic caps tumble,
but no bead coral.
Lifeguard’s freckled shoulders. Nobody screams, “Jellyfish!”
Wind tosses my hair across my mouth. I taste
nothing like standing by the seashore near your house.
You were pregnant and wanted to name the baby, “Yume.”
I said, “Dream?” and I did not like it. Too ephemeral white.
You smiled and sweated.
Maybe you knew—first breath almost.
< REVISION >
LAKE MICHIGAN
No clam’s bubbles to step on the lake beach.
Waves just come and go—no seaweed, no fisherman’s nets.
Plastic caps tumble, but no bead coral.
Lifeguard’s freckled shoulders. Nobody screams, “Jellyfish!”
Wind tosses my hair across my mouth.
I taste nothing like standing by the seashore near a beach house—rusted roofs.
You sweated and wanted to name the baby, “Yume.”
I said, “Dream?” and I did not like it. Too ephemeral white.
Clouds stretch.
Maybe you knew—first breath, almost.
Hoa Nguyen
My current manuscript directs poetry toward history, hauntings, and diasporic Vietnamese experiences as the poems draw upon and rankle with myth, musicality, documents, memory, biography, and the archive. There’s a relationship to pre-elegy in its diasporic echo—and with reference to the death of my mother in June 2019.
The early draft here considers a literal photograph, rendering image through description and visual detail. The title came first; I had passed around cookies to a group of poets for a writing improvisation; mine arrived without a slip of paper inside (no fortune). In the first draft the poem moves with some predictability. I see some of my common poetry tendencies showing: description featuring details of women’s fashion and colour; a moment in which I “break the fourth wall” and refer to the act of writing; and the paratactic inclusion of a fact. I also saw, upon a second look, that the poem proposes something, points to it, but does not go beyond surface riffing, doesn’t go far from the description of the photograph.
So I had to get to what the poem was proposing and what I was backing off of, to think of the photograph and set of references as moveable emblem or portal into a complexity. Returning to the poem, I put pressure on the themes of convulsive change, of fitting in despite invisibility and hypervisibility, of culture divides, trauma, and loss. In the final version, these themes are more directly addressed to evoke an experience or presence of isolation, longing, and survival.
< REVISION >
fortune cookie no fortune
not quite meandering chi luck
more like vermillion songbirds than orange
figure
maybe nine months postpartum
a Kodachrome print
in a ‘standard’ square-ish size
a size no longer a size
a floating island
She learned English from “The Young
and the Restless” a basement waterfall
lights up leaning
clay-colored flower pots we grew in
the way she sewed
language silent months
back then in Vietnam
“a mixed child was as good as dead”
remember the small wrapped cakes?
they open to see a flower
‘wet eyelashes’
< draft >
fortune cookie no fortune
Fate’s discolored photograph of her
in the orange sleeveless plunge neckline gown
silver rhinestone medallion pinned at the breastbone
Have to wait to know the fact about meandering
Not regretting repetition not forgetting it
Vermillion song birds I guessed nine months
post-partum and there is the suggestion
of drastic haircut before birth the kind of cut the stylist
gives you automatically before you give birth
(I wrote bird again) in the frame the print in a standard
squarish size a size no longer a standard size
In Can Tho the river’s name means “river of poems”
but I knew that and the clay-colored flower pot
the subdued top she sewed fierce piercing