Lion-Boy
Original:
Squinting through the grass, my weak nose inhaling the mustiness of the close packed dirt. The sinewy legs press in closer. Canines bared quick. Acacia leaves pouncing around me. Yellow eyes tucked into the overgrown mane traces the jerky movements I cannot control. The sweat passes down from heart to crotch. As I stand with a branch gripped tight, he assumes a position. Claws sunk deep into bark, muscles quivering, anticipating that moment of sweet release. Stretched out, he’s five times bigger flying towards me out of the tree. No uncertainty in his eyes as he drops from thirty feet up. The mouth gapes wide, teeth bared, dead. Slit-open my eyes. Younger brother laying atop me, with this hair wild and laughter uproarious. Revision One: Eyelashes meshed, showing slats through thatching grass, nostrils inflating to accommodate the dirt drifting in. Sinews stretch, rubber bands in thick legs, crouching, I fear the stance. Canines bared not for show, biting leaves. Green drifts around me, tickling my face, landing in the crease between shoulder and neck. Yellowing eyes sunk into mane deeper than claws sunk into bark. Sweat drains from heart to crotch. Fingers rough on the branch rapping against the ground, lip quiver. He's five times longer spread out above me, Ribs tight against the inside skin, backing on fur. Sweat pools in the dirt below my feet. Weight on, only fifty pounds grinning down, with square teeth fitting in his mouth straight, his humid curled hair, pupils erasing the color, laughing. Revision Two: Shaking fingers off-center my weight and I fall towards the dirt housing centipedes and fire ants nibbling at the webbing between my toes. The young cub flashes yellow eyes at me a warning, with his claws dug deep into the flaking bark, his stance lowers on joints squeezed tight, his sinews stretch, rubber bands to be released. Mane barely grown straight three inches, the hairstyle of Africa. Sweat drips through my pants into my shoes, leaking into the ground to grow weeds. Fur creases at the lip and his canines, stalactites grown thicker than the tree of the trunk he's crouching in. Spit seeps from his mouth to hit the ground and he bounds from the tree with his length growing above me, stretching, erasing the sky. I count his ribs and the seconds drop around me, but he's just a boy. Revision Three: Claws shape in nails digging deep into the bark of the dog confused by the flying child. Ribs reach to the sky and skin hugs around them. Favorite toys are brought. Little Bunny with one eye and a tail hanging by the thread. Amber eyes dried of the dirt floating in, teasing tear glands, until yellow fills the white. Tongue soft on the roof of the mouth, clicking gently makes the spit stick to the lips coated in ant carcass and centipede legs. Breath scoots under the tongue, into the air leaving before the body coughs the liquid from the lungs. Revision Four: Rubbing claws, ribbing ants. Licking and splitting the insects in the mouth until their is life no more. Dropping into the weeds, pricking skin, no more than a scratch. Beetles climb through the audience of the boy turned lion turned boy again when he fell from the tree on the lip of his back, breaking spine, ribs poking from the skin hugging close, leaving the oxygen inside, scrambling out, trapped behind teeth clamped shut. Revision Five: Toe nails used as claws, fall out of the tree. Ribs poking out of the tube of the body of the boy playing lion. Pupils erase the color of the sky, using dog-sight that won't sap his strength. Failing leaves of breath catch on his teeth and they try and scamper out. The branch guilty of murder punished by a stomp. Lips caked by centipede flakes of dirt pull in sun used to heal the sick by the voodoo queens and covens of stealth. Ringlets raked to mane stay tangled in the tree, hanging from snaps of bark too stubborn to fall. Sweat drips in the young boy's wounds to clean them out with saline and alcohol drank the night before. |
Process Memo:
Lion-Boy was the poem I wrote for the animal assignment we were to do in the middle of the semester. I noticed in the original, I have a lot of adjectives that are the describing words and the poem's images are based mostly on those blocky phrases I have in there such as, "weak nose," "sinewy legs," and "jerky movements." I notice with a lot of my first drafts, I want to give this image, but I weigh it down with so many description words that don't even give it the correct, or the strongest image. As I wrote revision 1, I was aware of the use of adjectives and the images weighed down by them. In a couple of the lines, I used them with "thatching grass" and "thick legs." When I read through after I wrote, I really liked thatching grass maybe because of the a's, but also because thatching sounds like a word used to show the space in between thin objects. Revision 1, I focused more of my senses, not on images, but on touch. I wanted that full body experience with the quickness of the language, and with the feelings of the leaves tickling the neck and sweat on the body. I didn't realize what I had been doing with the form until after it was done, but I noticed my image was of grass and it possibly took shape because of that. Revision 1 follows the content pretty well from the original, but Revision 2 started moving away from the content that I had began in the original poem, or maybe just the feeling of the content. The tone of the piece. I added in ants and centipedes and left out the grass, I also thought adding more of the teeth compared to the tree would make the lion real in a way that even though he was a cub, you see things differently when you're frightened and then it happens and everything comes back into focus. Revision 2, I used a more easily understood narrative then the original and then Revision 1 because they both had short, choppy sentences creating those flashes of image, but I thought stringing it together a little more may help create the image and make it more fluid, like in real life. Revision 3 is where everything changed and my content flipped on me and had me seeing the after effects of the boy falling. I have this gnawing feeling that after a certain number of drafts I become bored with the poem and I want to move it forward. Revision 3 is the backing of that thought. I have no idea where the thought to hurt the little boy came from and I've noticed with this website, I've gotten violent towards the end drafts and that makes me nervous. Revision 3, I used minimal lion imagery and focused more on the wounds and deterioration of the little boy, but I wanted to keep some of the human responses that the narrator in the first poem had towards the little boy, lion. Revision 4, I gave some of the same content a quicker, shorter form, giving the poem that feeling of time slipping away, like the little boy's life. I used a lot of -ing verbs that seemed to hold the reader away from the action a little more than if I had used -ed verbs, or in the present. Revision 5 of the poem was a conglomeration of revision two, three and four since those three revisions were what took me to the end. I gave it a little more body, instead of leaving it bare because I felt like the images could support themselves in a longer line, and I thought that the reader would appreciate more time given to the boy. |