Poetic Shop Talk Presents: Unfinished, Dammit

On Jack McCarthy's CD, Breaking Down Outside A Gas Station, there's a track of him reading the confessional "Careful What You Ask For." Right after reading it, he explains it as being a poem where he had no idea how it was going to end when he began it.

I might be on the minority end of this confession, but I always seem to have some idea how most of my poems end--the general idea of the ending, if not the exact line. If anything, I go too far and usually have the ending wedged in halfway or two-thirds into an earlier draft, often having to delete stanzas to find it. A painful process, but one I'm starting to get used to. Form poems I can struggle with from time to time, but given that there are guidelines and road maps to the ending, it's not the same as totally not having a clue.

Jack's words stuck with me, and I became fascinated with the idea of discovery as you write, to start with the smallest of beginning thoughts and thrill at finding the ending.

I somehow deluded myself into thinking this process was going to be fluid. Right.

Like the title of Jack's poem says...

Shoutout to Tom Daley time: In the last class I took with him in May, he gave us an assignment to write something addressed to a deceased person. The week prior, he came out with an assignment I didn't have time to follow (they are optional), which was to write something to an ex (lover, husband, friend, etc.).

I decided to merge the two assignments as a challenge to myself to keep up with the assingments. I wasn't trying to be cute, though. Not with my choice of subject being an ex-girlfriend who passed away ten years ago from cancer.

Though her death came long after we broke up. There were unresolved issues (because of my actions, not hers), and I've tried to write about this for some time, as poetry and even as a short story. Failures.

The draft below is a good representation of what I was able to come up with the first try with Tom's assingment (my drafts usually have too much, and the very first draft has too much filler to expect a casual reader to trudge through). I revised it and even rewrote it as part of a "radical revision" assignment, making the girlfriend the speaker (but with the same words and with an almost identical voice as a result).

I never got past the last stanza in any of the drafts.

I honestly don't know what the conversation with the unreal pretense would begin with, let alone how it will end. Still, when I started to write about the ex, I had a long way to go towards achieving something akin to maturity. Now, in my early thirties and currently in an amazing relationship, I was finally able to write the following poem. Maybe in another ten years, I'll finish it.

Attempted Séance

It takes less time than I thought
to collect the items
for this self-created ritual.

The carnival heart balloon, still inflated.
Your own air maybe. Definitely enough of it
to pump up the lungs
you could only imagine having.

When you open what must be eyes,
there’s your step-mom’s ankle bracelet
from the man who took her out
while your father worked nights,
while I took advantage of us being alone.

This will give you motivation to speak—
no, howl in anger. We’ll need to give you pause
with more of the right home-made, attic-born sigils.

Folded kid’s jeans I never saw you grow out of
Even at 17, barely 98 pounds
between operations.

Card shop pendant
of gold I swore was real,
even to myself.

Poems I never wrote for you
that you kept anyway,
wedged in your notebook
between rewritten song lyrics
you had no music to.

The prom photo mocked by
my college friends,
three of whom I would later kiss.

Finally, the obituary worth five dollars
in stringer fees to write up.

First girlfriend, series of second hand stories,
I want to ask you
your lesson learned, hoping it can be mine,
afraid that it’s more
than this blatant, spiritual huckstering
that keeps you silent.