…poets pretend they don’t know anything about their own writing
processes and get arty and mysterious when asked about it…
—Kenny Williams, Rattle
I was raised in Abilene. More chickens than humans
down there. Worked construction, captured moments,
created stories. It was solitary work. Below the Blue
Ridge Mountains loved a man with a gnarly beard.
I’m pathologically nice. My brother has perfect pitch.
I write to one-up him. I use an assumed voice, am
learning the names of things, and can’t stop—I have
obsessive-compulsive disorder. Once threatened
in a beer joint in Arkansas. Spent hours among tall bolts
of fabric, tins of loose buttons, and leftover notions. My
words are knotted twine. Call it a reinvention. Walked
a peach orchard alone at night and saw the Milky Way,
felt freighted with a sense of mortality. Sleep sounds
like a pleasant dream. Cut my musical teeth in the jungle.
This is my singing, my attempt to insulate the violence,
to euphemize the shooting. Misery is universal. The only
math I know is balance. This is my way of preserving
memory. I make beautiful the moments of terror.
