PHAYVANH LUEKHAMHAN

About Workshop Poems: These are drafts I’m revising. One a month. Please feel free to comment. And check back in throughout the month to see how I’ve progressed with it.

February 2010 draft:

And then it rains

The birds do not sing into closed windows nor do they
They part the air in flight when it rains

If everything stopped what it was doing just to listen,
Would you hear the sun drawing to a close?

But when it rains, all day, drumming
Into the ground as if to right it

Nothing fights back nor shirks away, just me
In my house, looking out

Working revision copy:

And then it rains

The birds do not sing, but instead gulp air the wind,
as if hungry into closed windows nor do they
They part the air in flight when it rains

If everything stopped what it was doing just to and listened,
Would Could you hear the sun drawing to a close?

But when it It rains, all day, drumming slapping
Into the The ground as if to right it

Nothing fights back nor shirks away, just me
In my house, looking out

Next draft:

[check back later]

About Workshop Poems: These are drafts I’m revising. One a month. Please feel free to comment. And check back in throughout the month to see how I’ve progressed with it.

January 2010 original:

Brother(s)

We had our separate twin beds, sharing the room
with purple plush bears and the thundering monsters
we named from under our covers at night.
With satisfied stomachs of rice, my voice carried the both of us
into scarlet, clovered dreaming.

( I did not know)

Through our window, the dual aroma of lilac and mint slippered in
as firebugs fall down, petite stars
gilding the dusk of our game, between blue pine
and heaven, between
(I give up) and ollie oxen.

(what have we got to get her?)(we got a name.)

Yet I knew. The cinema’s flickering told it this way:
hearts will cleave in half (or thirds),
portions of which are no longer ours to hold.
I knew it this way: teddy bears grow up, fall apart.
The tales you asked from me ended like this: Together.

(we determine the inkblot’s fold)

Namesharing, our last halves equal (beginning the same).
I hurled my books at you and still you broke no ribs.
I abandoned you to the streets, yet homeward still.
Still. Homeward still. Still, my heart
is cleaving.

Working revision copy:

Brother(s)

We had our separate twin beds, sharing the room
with purple plush bears and the thundering monsters
we named from under our covers at night.
With satisfied stomachs of rice, my voice carried the both of us
into scarlet, clovered dreaming.

( I did not know)

Through our window, the dual aroma of lilac and mint slippered in
as firebugs fall fell down, petite stars
gildinggilded the dusk of our game, between blue pine
and heaven, between
(I give up) and ollie oxen.

(what have we got to get her?)(we got a name.)

Yet I knew. The cinema’s flickering told it this way:
hearts will cleave in half (or thirds),
portions of which are no longer ours to hold.
I knew it this way: teddy bears grow up, fall apart.
The tales you asked from me ended like this: Together.

(we determine the inkblot’s fold)

Namesharing, our last halves equal (beginning the same).
I hurled my books at you and still you broke no ribs.
I abandoned you to the streets, yet homeward still.
Still. Homeward still. Still, my heart
is cleaving.

New Version:

[check back later]