{revision & chatter}

I want to write about the process of creating this poem because I think it's so interesting the way ideas fall together, tumbling into poem. like I said, I was for no good reason actively opposed to writing about Laci Peterson. then the nightmares one night. then I was thinking about how I could possibly approach writing a poem about her or in her voice and not have it be awful. so I stopped thinking about it.

Sunday on the way to open T&W for Rachel's workshop, I was reading an essay in William Heyen's book "Pig Notes & Dumb Music: prose on poetry" (which, by the way, is an interesting read -- I paid only a dollar for it at the Strand, but it's a worthwhile purchase regardless, though a bit uneven.) In any case, the essay is called "Fish" and it's a short (not quite half a page) bit on the old fish, the one who has evaded capture for so long, and how the people in hunt of it don't really want to catch it -- the line that caught me was:

Those who go after it do not want to land it, even as they do -- supper would be a mess of shadows.

and I started thinking about that, about wanting simultaneously to catch and not to catch, how often we want to be found but don't, how often we seek something knowing full well that we will have no idea what to do with it should it land in our lap, or that supper will indeed be a mess of shadows should we bring this home.

and I remembered, vaguely, that Laci Peterson's body had taken a long time to be found. so I wrote as a starting title, "Laci Peterson's body evades detection." and I found the first line, perhaps I am a fish. thinking maybe she hadn't wanted to be found, had clung to the bottom, some rock, until... when? what would make her change her mind, allow the bodies to be found?

so that's how the poem progressed. I found more details about her and the case online (would I write anything without the Internet?) and sieved them until facts fell out that seemed to matter: Connor, the weights, the plastic, going missing on Christmas and not being found until April. and I thought, she's going deeper. giving up not just human form, but senses: hearing, sight. moving away from what's happened, taking the boy, manifesting a transformation that will let her release the bodies to be physical evidence.

I wondered, what would it take for her to let go the bodies? a full transformation, yes, but also to see the boy growing, away from the likeness of the father. for him to be fully hers, fully fish, fully forgetting. I thought that would be the thing she would most wish for him: to not remember.

I worried about that last line, tried with and then without and then with and without and with the "you know." I wondered if it was enough, or too much. but it moved me, the you know. it seemed human somehow, seemed to indicate that she could not forget, but would give this to him. and also it acknowledges a reader, for the first time in the poem. and it seemed right for her to know someone was reading this, to have a moment to say with pride, he gets that from me, you know. after all that was taken, to take that back. I picture her smiling when she says it.

***

Laci Peterson's body, late March

perhaps I am a fish. the old
uncatchable whiskered, bloated, too
far down for hooks. do not
roll the stone away, I will not
be gone. I am here, deflated, a shelf
of rock the birth
and death-bed, I have grown
scales. gills for nipples, fins
to carry to carry to swim
this blue baby home.

2

I am a fish. mute and slippery, the weights
slide off, I move. my fish mouth gapes,
Connor sleeps, I have no ears now
to not hear him cry

3

a blind fish. deeper where the light
does not hit or filter, deeper we swim
close our wide fish eyes for good no good
in seeing the gone world, the man / we are fish.
not of him, not mouths that knew his

the water is a kiss, the gills thrill with it,
warm milk / we let the tides
rock us, a lullaby toward forgetting

4

plastic blanket, the surface, let the bodies
to shore, physical evidence only. we stay here.
the wide-rock cave, a stone bowl

breathing. the boy growing a strong
spiny dorsal, my only, the soft
caudal fin the grey-green of amnesia

– he gets that from me, you know.