{Lizzie Borden's thumb & letters to the president}

for a little more than a month, I've been trying to write about Lizzie Borden. don't know why. so technically, this is draft seven or so. but what it required was six bad versions that had not more than three words in common with this one. what it required was getting totally frustrated and leaving the poem alone for two weeks. was editing Lynne's poem from Belfast and realizing I hadn't written anything for a week or so because I've been so pulled into sweet Edna's biographical life and it is still true that I cannot write poetry while I'm reading prose. which is not ideal but it's the only brain and rhythm-spring I have so I'll have to deal.

what's funny is that after making comments on Lynne's poem and sending it to her I was sitting on the train going home and thinking about how I hadn't written in a while and needed to re-set my rhythms and being glad I'd brought Komunyakaa's "Talking Dirty to the Gods" to work with me although Edna's just about to get addicted to painkillers and I'm in that place where I really want to finish the book but I know I'll miss it when it's done, as if somebody had gone away...

so I start thinking about the Borden piece after reading some TDttG poems and thinking I should do more poems that don't try to shed any particular new light or twist on what happened but simply speak from the interior of a character as some of his do with myths... and thinking about how I'd wanted to do another poem from a body part to couple with Ophelia's throat...

so I started writing from the perspective of Lizzie Borden's thumb. got two lines down on the train, two more on the bench in the station where I had to get off, and by the time I got home decided there was no good reason for it to be her thumb and I'm not down with random cleverness so I had it as her ring finger, but then that made it too much about her being unmarried and felt too obvious so it became her index finger, th e one that points. I'd love to hear what folks think about that choice.

In any case, I forced myself to hand-write on actual paper a whole draft, rather than jumping to the computer immediately where the edits are invisible and sometimes come too quickly. and here we are -- new poem! exciting.

I'm supposed to teach a workshop on "writing and activism" at NYU tonight, though I just got a call that because of the impending snowstorm and windstorm warnings it might be cancelled. figure I should prep anyway. not a bad workshop to have in one's pocket. different to prepare for a writing workshop so vaguely focused and not poetry-centric. definitely going to play part of Jerry Quickley's last track off "Beats for Baghdad" where he describes leaving Iraq during the bombings. figure I'll focus on (a) the necessity for overt and covert writings in this political climate and (b) the benefits and necessity of studying many kinds of writing (poetry informing journalism, grantwriting informing songwriting, etc.)

anyway, here's the poem. comments welcome as always:

Lizzie Borden’s index finger

none of the rest wanted to do it. I won.
the axe sang in the basement all night long
-- sharp, enough off-key for us to know
she was waiting, too.

some loves come in apron
and a thimble’s-worth of remember / some
in shirtwaist and whispers to make you wish
you’d never heard your own name

it was the bed that hated that woman, not me.
it was him I wanted, but the sheets
kept screaming beneath the flatiron
and tucked tight enough to bleed

I did laugh after, at the thought of it.
how they’d find her there in pieces,
how they’d have to burn those sheets.

and him? that was me. the first blow
from behind because I couldn’t
have borne it if he looked surprised.

on the second, back wanted to stop.
but arms were all in, blow after blow
the walls so gorgeous the ceiling
grew jealous so drink ceiling red

/ how much have you heard /

when the eye split the handle snapped
and that was it. I checked to see he couldn’t
look peaceful. took off mother’s smock
and fed it to the stove

/ she was never your proxy, Mama
and he never her husband and as long
as I sit here quietly folded, engaged
in no mischief

red will do the pointing / for us.