Rough Draft: Prose Poem – Neruda’s Flag

I’m starting something with this post that I want to continue with most if not all of my work: I’m posting the rough draft and will post all revised versions and the eventual final draft. I’ve never done revision in such a way that I kept my drafts. I’ve always simply revised one document until I was satisfied. I think, for myself, it may be useful to track what works and I believe it would be even more interesting to hear from any of you what you think is or isn’t working in these drafts. I love having criticism to read; constructive criticism, that is. If you hate it, thats perfectly fine, just tell me why. 

As for this piece itself, I am not a poet. I studied it some and read plenty of it while in college, but I am no natural poet. More than likely, any poems I post here will be prose poems. The breaks I put in are more for signaling the change of idea to idea than they are to build a particular rhythm, even though, sometimes, I try that as well. This idea came to me from reading Pablo Neruda’s poem “The Flag.” If you’d like to read his poem, you can read it here. And so, here is the first rough, and actually unfinished, draft of my prose poem.

Neruda’s Flag

Out of soil
you toiled upward
kneeling out of roots
to stand and face the sun.

You spread and swayed
and grew with wind.
You acted upon the world
then it acted upon you.

Pulled and kneaded, 
worked with hands,
you relented to purpose
far from that wild birth.

Your only symbol was yourself,
your only measure,
your height.
But with dyes from other lands
plans were made to change you,
to darken you to meaning.

You were filled and laid
among others, cut to size
and shape, pulled again
by hands.

Gotta be original

This blog will not be a journal. I want to talk about myself as little as possible. Not saying I never will, but not often. I am making it a rule for myself that every post I make will be some original piece of mine. Whether it is a short story, flash fiction, prose poem, essay: it has to include a piece, not just some ramble. And that is why, even though so far I am just rambling on this first post, I am also including a flash fiction piece of mine on this introductory post. I hope you enjoy.

The Dead Dog

     None of us noticed when the first dog was actually hit and killed. Whoever had hit him had just kept going. It was at least a couple days before anyone noticed the second dog. He was just there, standing sentry by the dead dog. He stood over him, he did not sniff the corpse, he did not lay down by it; he stood over him. He watched the cars go by and the people go by and the kids on their way to school and the mothers on their way to stores.

People began to talk after they noticed the second dog, menacingly staring, wearing its black coat like some kind of harbinger. We realized we never noticed the dead dog, that we should have cleaned it off the street. How did we let it sit there so long? But we don’t have animal control. Most of our policemen and all of our firemen are two towns over helping with the fires there. We have no one whose job it is to do this grizzly work. Besides, when it is spoken of, no one wants to be anywhere near that black dog. Some of us start to have trouble sleeping. We know he still sits there, his eyes black as oil and burning at us through our walls.

We had some of our men approach the corpse and its guard. The black dog would rise up onto all fours, and give us its rumbling, guttural growl. No one would get any closer. Eventually, someone wasn’t paying attention. Their little boy walked right over to the black dog. He said he was sorry, for all of us. He said we were very mean to ignore the poor dog on the road, we should have been better, we are all so very sorry. The black dog snapped at the boy and sunk its teeth into his arm. The boy’s screams brought his mother; her screams beckoned others to running, applying pressure, picking the boy up. In all the commotion, no one noticed the black dog leave.