Hello, fellow collapsitarians. I can’t think of a better way to spend my time than making art—whether in the garden, at the easel, or at the desk—as we prepare to dance on the graves of our oppressors. I’ve been revisiting my earlier poems and rewriting them, now that I’ve learned to abide by these primary rules:

1. Rhyme must feel inevitable, not forced.
2. Every line must earn its place.
3. Verbs do the work; adjectives are guests.
4. Specificity beats abstraction.
5. The ear is the final judge.

Here is one of my earlier poems, “Ark of the Soil-Stained,” that Nan reblogged on his site. I’ve since rewritten it completely. The original had problems I couldn’t see at the time: the title was overwrought, reaching for importance instead of earning it. Rhymes were forced or abandoned mid-stanza. I told the reader what to feel instead of showing them a woman bending between the stalks. I wrote “produce” when I should have written “peppers.” I wrote “provisions” when I should have written “garlic, carrots, winter rye.”

The new version is called “Her Hands Already Knew.” Same woman, same garden, same collapse. But now the poem trusts its images. The verbs do the work. The rhymes land where they should. And the title comes from inside the poem, not above it.

The city dims behind its wall of sound.
She’s planting what she hopes will not be found—
A cache of garlic, carrots, winter rye,
Seeded for the day the city dies.

The blackberries don’t ask about the grid.
The beans climb their poles as they always did.
She walks the rows, pulls weeds, forgets the news—
The world can end. Her hands already knew.

The power died in April. Then the phones.
She heard the highways empty, songbirds flown.
By June the silence was the only news.
She kept the rows. The peppers came in twos.

The fence is where the world stops making sense.
Inside, the rows are thick, the green is dense.
She bends between the stalks like someone praying,
Her breath a hymn she doesn’t know she’s saying.

No manifesto. Just the turning year.
She plants by moon, by frost, by what’s still here.
She reads the leaves, the roots, the morning light.
She weighs the harvest. Eats alone tonight.

They said the end was coming. Maybe so.
She planted beans. She watched the peppers grow.
The soil doesn’t know the world is through.
It only knows her hands. Her hands already knew.