I once threatened to display my revision process in broad daylight so that everyone could recoil in horror. When I looked at how this ku was stacking up I knew it was now or never. It was starting to look like one of those sandwiches Dagwood Bumstead likes to make, and if you don’t know who that is you are too young to be reading this, so go away.
Believe it or not, this all makes sense to me. Unfortunately it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere. I don’t like any of these versions and I’m not even sure this subject will work for a haiku — there might be too much stuffed into it. It’s definitely a little heavy, not that that’s ever stopped me before.
Not all my ku revisions look like this — this is a particularly appalling example. But I frequently have a list of ten or twelve versions of a ku sitting around waiting for me to choose one or reject them all or write yet another one. What’s amazing is that I’m still constantly posting ku that make me shake my head afterwards and go, “What the heck was I thinking? Why didn’t I revise that?” Then (sometimes) I do. And sometimes I don’t.
If you can make any sense of this or construct a plausible version out of the scattered parts, feel free to let me know.
*
first lines:
[the] missed phone call
[again] [he doesn’t call/answer]
[the phone doesn’t ring]
second/third lines:
I clean [sweep] [pick] up the [head and tail] [parts]
of the mouse
[the mouse’s head and tail
on {from} {off} the carpet]
[the cats have abandoned
the mouse’s head {parts}]
lines 1, 2, 3:
after the [pregnancy] test
[I wait] [waiting] for him to call
the cats kill [toy with] a mouse
[the first thing I see
in the empty apartment {house}
a mouse’s head]
lines 1 and 2:
the phone rings:
[phone conversation:]
the cats have killed a mouse
[the head and tail
dismembered on the carpet]
line 3:
[and] the test was positive
Red Dragonfly 