Process Note: Elegy at the 7-Eleven

Tomorrow, my poem Elegy at the 7-Eleven will be published in ONE ART.

I tend to write haiku/senryu first and expand them.
While expanding, I think of stanzas as little haiku in themselves, standing in a narrow stream, each processing what the others have left. At the end, you have inheritance that flows through across time, and shining that inheritance to a glow is the editing process.

When it’s bright enough, you’re done.

This is how that poem began its life.

man at register
cheap flowers, 40 ounce beer
flowers back to shelf