Litter

Yance Wyatt:

I consider myself a fiction writer more so than a poet. Accordingly, most of my poems are prose poems, and most of my prose poems are salvage. Like a mechanic stripping a car of scrap metal when he can’t rebuild the engine, I’ll wrench a passage from an unpublished short story only to repurpose it as a poem. Once I’ve got the part, it doesn’t take much labor, just a little tinkering with the enjambment and internal rhyme. The real challenge is to find the right part—something still of value shining amidst the rust. Ideally that part will bear some trace of the whole, thereby hinting at the original story’s gestalt. “Litter” is from a story about a couple coping with a miscarriage on an otherwise fruitful farm. I hope that comes through in the poem, even if it’s only felt. Especially if it’s only felt. Thanks for reading.