Editing + Recalibrating

Toward the end of last week I got sick with a 24 hour thing that left me pretty beat up and dehydrated and I am sort of getting back to myself (I didn’t drink coffee for TWO DAYS). My sister brought me all kinds of things to eat and drink and I got back into popsicles big time–you guys should revisit them, honestly. I’m grateful to be back and also (though it was miserable) grateful for that reminder of my body, of how fragile it is, how central it is to all of the ‘brainy’ work I do. I rallied and got myself to Philadelphia (a day later than I’d planned) for the Happy Sad Tour, which was great, but also really exhausting because at that point I was still powered exclusively by popsicles, ginger ale and saltines.

Anyway, I’m back at my desk this morning, with a cup of coffee and very warm socks. There’s a fog over everything beyond the window I am always trying not to stare out of (I moved my desk in a corner that mostly faces a wall a few weeks ago, in an attempt to get more done at home). Below is a poem for you, which borrows a line from another poem to start it off. My prompt for you is to borrow a line from this poem (any line) to start off your own poem. Kind of keep some symmetry off of that line in terms of length of your following lines, maybe keep to these couplets (two line stanzas) or make up another rule for each line: syllables, number of words. Write for about twenty minutes (if you’re looking for new writing music, I’ve posted something I’ve been listening to a little bit at the bottom). And THEN, read this article on editing poems which IS SO USEFUL AND WILL CHANGE YOUR WORK.

Fire Country by Rebecca Aronson
        Beginning with a line from Tarfia Faizullah’s “West Texas Nocturne”

Because the sky burned, I had to unhinge
my sooty eyes from their lingering.

In the season of undoing, the tender heart-leaves
of the new are shredded

as soon as they arrive. Wind eats the view
and scalds a wrecked swath like a medieval dragon

as it moves across this land I’ve made
a home of. This is the land of the living,

despite what is buried here and the sand
with its urge toward erasure.

Everything is germinating,
and the horizon flares

with fires, distant and close, smoke
the color of sunglasses. I see

but my vision is skewed. Listen. I don’t want
to sound such yearning but the wind howls too

and means nothing by it. The hills are on fire
and the desert is on fire and the air is thick

with other people’s fires. And my own burning
is so small as to go unnoticed.

I am calling but the wind is busy
taking everything away.