Since Friday, I've written two small poems . . . and when I say small I mean nearly nonexistent. One is six lines long, the other nine, and internally the lines are spare, sometimes only a word or two long. Neither poem includes end punctuation, and both are mostly lowercase. All this is to say: They're not like most of my writing.

At first I thought maybe I was imitating Clifton's poems, which I have been copying out off and on since the beginning of December. I do know Clifton has offered guidance in ways to approach the structure of spareness, but our syntax and word choice are entirely individual.

What happens when the poet who is me strips out the Miltonic, the Romantic, the Shakespearean; strips out the Dickens and the Woolf and the Carruth?

What I am seeing are the bones.