Fossils, Rednecks by Martin Espada, Emily Dickinson, Haunting Houses, and Over-Revision

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Christopher Locke crafts fossilized versions of techno-artifacts.
Asportatio acroamatis
(commonly referred to as the Cassette Tape)

Deferovoculae circumdactylos-
(commonly referred to as the Rotary dial telephone, or rotary phone)
Dominaludus supernintendicus
(commonly referred to as the Supernintendo Controller or "SNES")

My favorite parts of this project are:

1. He gives them snazzy names: isn't that the best part of the dino-discovery process?
2. You can buy this shiz if you have the moohla. That Playstation controller goes for just over fifty bucks.
via Make

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I read this poem when stopped at a Days Inn. I haven't stopped thinking about it since. There's something about the turn & the images. It's a messy poem, and I like that. I do. I'm tired of these over-revised or too-cute or self-knowing pieces popping up everywhere. I'm tired of that in my OWN work. But this, this is something.

Rednecks by Martin Espada
Gaithersburg, Maryland

At Scot Gas, Darnestown Road,
the high school boys
pumping gas
would snicker at the rednecks.
Every Saturday night there was Earl,
puckering his liquor-smashed face
to announce that he was driving
across the bridge, a bridge spanning
only the whisky river
that bubbled in his stomach.
Earl's car, one side crumpled like his nose,
would circle closely around the pumps,
turn signal winking relentlessly.

Another pickup truck morning,
and rednecks. Loitering
in our red uniforms, we watched
as a pickup rumbled through.
We expected: "Fill it with no-lead, boy,
and gimme a cash ticket."
We expected the farmer with sideburns
and a pompadour.
We, with new diplomas framed
at home, never expected the woman.
Her face was a purple rubber mask
melting off her head, scars rippling down
where the fire seared her freak face,
leaving her a carnival where high school boys
paid a quarter to look, and look away.

No one took the pump. The farmer saw us standing
in our red uniforms, a regiment of illiterate conscripts.
Still watching us, he leaned across the seat of the truck
and kissed her. He kissed her
all over her happy ruined face, kissed her
as I pumped the gas and scraped the windshield
and measured the oil, he kept kissing her.

found in the best american poetry 1996

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“Nature is a haunted house - but Art - is a house that tries to be haunted”
- - Emily Dickinson

This is what my focus is. Now that I've sort of nailed down meter and forms and line breaks and just read myself into a stupor so I can keep up with pretentious kids at readings, I want to rediscover how to haunt my poems, prose, etc. The reckless energy of my earlier poems + knowing a bit more about cadence = pushing msyelf out of my comfort zones. Over-revision is a scary virus. Learning to revise, to experience and udnerstand work from all possible sides rather than cutting at the expected sections, is integral & important.

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