The Not-So-Meandering Trajectory of "Tributary"

The usual lag time between finishing a poem and giving it a good home (if it's a poem that's home-worthy) is around a year, sometimes two.

The poem "Tributary," which appeared at The Awl on October 24, 2013, was an exception. Here's how it went: 

Date of first longhand draft: October 8, 2013, in a coffee shop with Kelli Russell Agodon (where many of my first drafts begin);

Date of first typed version: October 9, 2013; 

Which is worse:

too many walls, or not enough, the laciness

of curtains, or an endless hallway of bare

windows, a dead fly stuck behind each lone

sill? 

Several more revisions (at least ten?): October 10-18, 2013;

Either

everyone needs something, or we sit

in the lotus position six hours without

a twitch, while the twitching spider inventories

each of its dead fly’s compound eyes. Either

the fly is a mechanism for learning about

the brain, or else the fly is a fly that not only

tastes with its wings but uses those wings to fly.

revised to ...

Either

everything is happening or it’s quieter than a feeder

bereft of its pecking/twirling flicker. Either everyone

is needing something, a jump or a stroke, or else
it’s a mojito in the lotus position, cancer punching

its melanomic clock. Neuron for neuron, fly brains
outclass the ones loaded down with game change,

watershed moment, tipping point. Also, haven’t yet
figured out how to navigate by the stars.

Date sent to The Awl: October 18, 2013; 

Date accepted by The Awl: October 23, 2013; 

Date published on The Awl website: October 24, 2013.

A breakneck pace, wouldn't you agree? 

Did I make all the right moves with this poem? It's hard to say, but I am pretty sure that switching out the twitching nose/spider with the mojito in the lotus position makes things more interesting/less cliche (nose twitch = fumbled keys/ butterflies in stomach). It also felt like the original ending  (the fly is a fly ... uses those wings to fly) was moving too much in the direction of a rose is a rose is rose, a language-y/rhyme-y truism I not only wasn't quite ready to buy but didn't quite fit the rest of the poem.

As I was revising I would also glance occasionally at the October 8th issue of the New York Times' Science Times section, scanning an article about an immune-boosting cancer treatment, how it represented a watershed moment. I was thinking about the original meaning of words like watershed, versus these word fossils, dead metaphors bereft of their metaphoric zing, joining the likes of old as the hills and knee high to a grasshopper: tipping point and game change were two others that came to mind. 

I was also thinking about this scientist at the University of Washington who studies Drisophila holistically, who shared in a recent article that flies navigate using the stars (have we figured out how to do that yet? Hell, no!), and also how the fly brain, ounce for ounce, trumps a human brain by far ("I mean - they fly!"). 

Which all got me thinking about where my poem needed to go. The poem seemed to want to go in the direction of pointing out how lazy we can be when it comes to language - or if not lazy than limited. Unimaginative. Especially when the goal is conveying information rather than imbuing words with a memorable voice and style. But mostly, the fly had to have a brain more complex than a human brain. 

I am not sure what prompted me to send out a poem that was so new. Kelli assured me that I had "something to definitely work on" as we were leaving Edmonds - she to her ferry, and me to my car - a draft with a chance. I agreed with her, but I knew there was a lot more work to be done.  I usually let poems sit at least a month, then come back and figure out what I can improve on - stronger verbs, a more interesting way of saying something, more compression, a new title, etc. - but something prompted me to trust and send.

99 times out of a 100 this is a bad move, but this one time I got lucky.