Pop quiz kisser

I never considered how utterly freeing it would be to have Notes taken off my hands. I should have! File under: obvious. I guess I'd begun to think it never would be, that I'd obsess for long, embittered decades with my one manuscript, never even able to think beyond it. Ask my poor, long-suffering friends. Well, I wasn't quite that bad.

Almost.

***

Spent the day revising poems in this improbable third manuscript, which I still cannot believe exists, though there it is to my right, all 60 pages. Many of the poems were written quickly, in between classes, back when I was, you know, a productive member of society, so there's a strange quality to them. I'm trying not to revise that out of them.

"Something Happy" is essentially a new poem now. So too "To Beth, whose Photo Reveals Snow and a Passing Train.

I tidied up the endings to "Against Science" and "On Learning the Luna Moth Has No Mouth," though I didn't quite nail "Against Science." I'll try again tomorrow.

Poems that yet require work (or outright banishment): "If Only You Could Give Me an Oracle to See How it All Ends," a poem I wrote for Ali Stine, and "Parts of the Body by Name," a poem written for another distant (though beloved) girl that needs an injection of ... sand. Grit. Something extra.

I'll attempt to knock those out tomorrow. Which is crazy but kind of fun, in the spirit of this.

***

Good night.