Rough Draft with Sydney Lea

Sydney Lea, Pulitzer Prize finalist in Poetry, has agreed to share one of his poems with us and its earlier draft in rare glimpse into how a poem comes to be. The first draft is titled "Rink Rat" and the final version is "The 1950s." "Rink Rat" was originally published in an intermediate form in The Southern Review. Here, you can compare the early draft with the final from 2005 to 2008 and see a side of the poet that few can; what he was thinking about at the time and how he chose the right words that finally appear before your eyes. The other poem, "The Host In My Dentures," published in IMAGE magazine, is accompanied by its rough draft; the difference is subtle yet worth the search. With luck, this will be the first installment of a popular series. Enjoy.

Rat Rink

The boys stood always between a welcoming 

and a shunning of the girl. She came to practice 

and every game, her elbows propped on the boards 

as their comely frames flew past, wall-block and ceiling 

rebounding grunts, the claps of stick and puck. 

Awful, what that gang of players called her, 

and before their showers, unlacing on the bench, 

how they bickered over which of them would have her, 

bragging on what they’d make her do -- or had. 

Some one of them must have known her name back then 

but none  ever used it. She was only and always  Rink Rat. 

They didn’t  seem to know where she went to school. 

Who cared? Who wondered why on earth her family, 

if  family there was, felt willing to let her free 

to be with the boys at their play, and briefly after? 

A path of  mud and cinders behind the arena 

led out past propane tanks and garbage bins 

to a flattened knoll, which was grassy -- more or less. 

An improbable bower, but ambience wasn’t the issue. 

In nasty weather, quick things got even quicker. 

Later, while driving past some cul de sac 

that resembles, however obliquely, the trysting place, 

can make a boy -- now father perhaps to daughters -- 

wince and summon a time. And a blurry figure, 

its glasses, thumb-thick, smeared and battered, riding 

a birth-marked face. It’s more than anything else 

the mark that lingers. It started under an ear, 

as they could see when her lank hair fell in plaits. 

How many different looks she tried! They joked, 

Each one’s a failure, but as one of the team once put it, 

The chassis’s not half bad. Which induced more laughter, 

as though, if she weren’t rodent, she was machine. 

What manner of frantic longing, if that’s how to name it, 

could have kept the poor child coming, coming, coming? 

Oh, they joked on that as well, their double-entendre

as lame as it was, no doubt, inaccurate. 

The moans of the rink rat-machine were surely a feigning 

the boys  didn’t have the grace to reciprocate. 

The birthmark found the cruelest path it could: 

up from that ear to the scalp, and then straight down, 

transforming the outsized, acne-fretted nose

to a lump of berry and pallid, melted chocolate. 

Her chin the same. And so they played two games: 

the one with nets and goalies, the other with her. 

After their sweat cooled down, it was back to recalling 

bodies in contest, violent moves and clamor, 

back to the age-old witless bragaddoccio 

of men like them. 

                                           I go on saying them, 

of course, because I long to hide a shame 

that after all has taken these years to name.

The 1950s

The boys went back and forth between scamming and snubbing 

the girl who showed up late afternoons to watch 

each practice and game,  her elbows propped on the boards 

as their bodies flew by. Cinder-block and I-beam 

echoed with grunts and the claps of sticks on pucks. 

Before they showered, unlacing skates  on the bench, 

they threw fingers to see who’d be the one to go find her. 

They bragged about what they’d make her do, or had. 

Some of them must have known her actual name, 

so there’s no excuse what those young punks called her: 

among themselves, the girl was always  Rink-Rat. 

Where was the school where Rink-Rat took her classes? 

Nobody cared, or wondered how her family  -- 

if she had a family in fact -- would set her free 

to hang around with boys at play, and after. 

Behind the building, a path of  mud and cinders 

snaked past propane tanks and garbage cans 

up a squat little hill that was more or less out of sight. 

Not exactly a bower, but then atmosphere wasn’t the issue 

in the dead of winter, when it all had to be quick fun. 

Much later, driving past some bleak-looking scene 

that sketchily resembles that meeting place, 

one of the boys, who now has a couple of daughters, 

shivers as he thinks of a blurry figure 

with bottle-thick glasses lopsided on her face -- 

her savagely birth-marked face. The mark is what lingers 

more than anything.  It started under an ear, 

as they saw when she wore her limp hair up or in braids. 

She tried out other styles too but none of them cared. 

Her body was all that mattered. As one of them sneered, 

The chassis’s not  half bad.  When she wasn’t a rodent, 

she could be a machine.  What sort of desperate longing, 

if that’s what you’d call it, made the girl so easy a mark? 

What on earth could make her come and come? 

Oh they had fun with that word, their double-meanings

as lame as each of them no doubt was mistaken. 

The rink-rat-machine would thrash and sigh and moan, 

a pretense the graceless boys didn’t bother with. 

Her birth-splotch took the nastiest possible path: 

from that ear to the edge of her scalp and straight back down, 

turning her oversized nose, with its acne and blackheads, 

to a blob of berry and paste and melting chocolate, 

her chin the same.  The boys were playing two games, 

one with nets and goalies, the other with Rink-Rat. 

After their sweat cooled down, they talked about hockey: 

they praised their teamwork, deception, brotherhood, speed. 

In short they swapped the mindless swaggerer’s claims 

that men have always shared. 

                                              I’m saying  they, 

you’ll understand, as I try to skate over shame 

it seems to have taken me fifty years to name.

The Host In My Dentures (2006)

It struck me first much more as sound than pain: 

rimshot-loud, the puck that found my mouth: 

 Plock!  Four decades passing, it has me wearing 

this partial bridge. My mother wouldn’t let me 

go to the dentist; she imagined me tough as she was. 

I’m not, I wasn’t.  Things  pass, she said. They didn’t. 

Of course the fault lay partly with me at sixteen. 

I didn’t wear helmet or mask, because we all thought 

-- using the verb “to think” a bit too loosely -- 

we’d skate right over a wounding, even a dying. 

I should have been hurt in a game at least, not practice! 

The shot burst off Bill Chapman’s stick and caught me 

where I’d knelt on the rink to block it. Kneeling this morning, 

I took the cup and the bread, and this much later, 

feel scraps of the Host in my dentures, which start me thinking. 

Not sacrilege, this, and yet it’s dreary enough: 

In mind my girlfriend Constance sits in the bleachers -- 

watching mere  practice -- probably bored stiff. 

I’ve been glancing her way and grinning since taking the ice. 

Her classic features, her even smile, the frost 

that powders the neck of the letter sweater I gave her.

In less than a month, I’ll have the sweater back. 

She’s far too flawless to keep. I’ll keep the teeth, 

but only till age catches up and that ancient disaster 

blooms in my roots. The dreariness that fell 

upon me today goes back perhaps to the girl, 

to how she quit me.  And now who’ll love a geezer, 

a dark-mouthed geezer? I know what I ought to answer: 

God. It sticks in the maw, though it should come easy 

after communion, which is meant after all to change 

our view of the world, of ourselves and our fellow humans. 

So I call back that plock, and something like thought supervenes: 

These are the teeth of  my body, broken for Thee,

and not for Connie or Peg or Patty or Bea, 

not for any other heartbreak crush of young manhood. 

These orts that lodge in the wire-and-plastic contraption: 

having no choice, I’ll choose a satisfaction 

(I wasn’t worthy, I was, I’m not, I am) 

in bearing them through a day. O saving remnants.

The Host In My Dentures (2009)

It struck me first much more as sound than pain: 

rimshot-loud, the puck that found my mouth: 

 Plock!  Four decades passing, it has me wearing 

this partial bridge. My mother wouldn’t let me 

go to the dentist; she imagined me tough as she was. 

I’m not, I wasn’t.  Things  pass, she said. They didn’t. 

Of course the fault lay partly with me at sixteen. 

I didn’t wear helmet or mask, because we all thought 

-- using the verb “to think” a bit too loosely -- 

we’d skate right over a wounding, even a dying. 

I should have been hurt in a game at least, not practice! 

The shot burst off Bill Chapman’s stick and caught me 

where I’d knelt on the rink to block it. Kneeling this morning, 

I took the cup and the bread, and this much later, 

feel scraps of the Host in my dentures, which start me thinking. 

Not sacrilege, this, and yet it’s dreary enough: 

In mind my girlfriend Constance sits in the bleachers -- 

watching mere  practice -- probably bored stiff. 

I’ve been glancing her way and grinning since taking the ice. 

Her classic features, her even smile, the frost 

that powders the neck of the letter sweater I gave her.

In less than a month, I’ll have the sweater back. 

She’s far too flawless to keep. I’ll keep the teeth, 

but only till age catches up and that ancient disaster 

blooms in my roots. The dreariness that fell 

upon me today goes back perhaps to the girl, 

to how she quit me.  And now who’ll love a geezer, 

a dark-mouthed geezer? I know what I ought to answer: 

God. It sticks in the maw, though it should come easy 

after communion, which is meant after all to change 

our view of the world, of ourselves and our fellow humans. 

So I call back that plock, and something like thought supervenes: 

These are the teeth of  my body, broken for Thee,

and not for Connie or Peg or Patty or Bea, 

not for any other heartbreak love of young manhood. 

These orts that lodge in the wire-and-plastic contraption: 

having no choice, I’ll choose a satisfaction 

(I wasn’t worthy, I was, I’m not, I am) 

in bearing them through a day. O saving remnants.