JILL FREIDBERG
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Redaction Poetry

I have been crossing out pages and pages of text from Nancy Drew books and Moby Dick. Here's what's left over. There, I fixed it. 
Picture
Dick #1
A new
a few
and nothing interesting.
There were sailors sitting around.
So cold,
wet, rusted.
No empty beds.
All I could think about was
the night,
waiting to see
his face and body
a knot
in the corner of the room.
Remember that a man who is ugly on the outside
can still be good on the inside,
the dark shouted.
I watched.
There was a man,
a little fire burning
forehead to mine.
I woke early.
I peeked.
More questions hard and dangerous.
I thought about this strange evening
the whole day.
I argued
without saying a word.
Then,
quietly pulling,
glad to hear,
my heart was beating.

Dick #4
We shouted but
with the shadows of night spread over us.
I was the last,
the strange one,
the first to catch this ghost.
I wasn’t sure whether
any of us
wandered and dreamed
of things far away.
Like a swarm of bees
all pulling toward
the boiling water
silently.
It was almost like
peeling an orange.

Suddenly, a bursting
like a mirror
awake
familiar,
darkness came
and made jokes.
The one last job
a single giant word.
Dick #2
It was a cold ocean.
Glittering carpet of blue and silver.
A freezing spray wrapped us in
good-byes.
Old sailors slowly
flew
over us.
Lonely shipmates,
hard as nails,
also very careful,
ready for a fight,
but when the time came
brothers.
More like ghosts than men.
I cannot see
how to take
a breath.
A strange sound
asking for our lives.
The hardest thing to kill.

Picture
Dick #3
The days and wind
filled
my eyes open.
Most interested in the things
that must have been true.
For instance,
he was an angry, strange
beauty
so calm that we were
all at once
ready in all directions
leaping
still trying to understand
the other mysterious men,
carefree devils who
curled and licked
the clouds
swimming toward the storm.

Picture

Picture
Nancy Drew: The Shadow #1
As usual, tomboyish.
The wind had risen
but eluded capture
sharp
sorry
a brown swirling cloud
an agonizing wait
a mystery
too dangerous for a girl to delay
her departure.
The far side of the man’s affection
followed, dodged,
disappeared.
One thing we learned without speaking.
The way you held the empty
desert
for awhile
among all the handsome cowboys.
Nancy Drew The Shadow #2
As soon as the men finished,
abruptly
hurried
without saying a word,
the girls appeared
but could not rid their minds
of his shoes.

Nancy Drew: The Shadow #3
The engine started at once
she confessed and
drove without lights,
boiling, looking.
Quietly the men arose
and led the girls
wide-eyed
just after midnight
clinging.
We came a long way before
trouble started.
Afraid to move I listened.
It was the far end of confusion.

Picture

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