AUTHOR'S NOTE:

This poem came out of a writing assignment to radically revise an older, failed poem. In the end, I
found that there was nothing to do but cut the old poem down, and this sliver remained. I love to
read tiny poems—to feel their lyrical intensity all at once—and yet I find that I never write them, so
this assignment of radical revision proved helpful in getting me to try something new and to trust a
few words to do big work.

BIO:

Corinna McClanahan Schroeder’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in such journals as Tampa Review, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and Blackbird. She is the recipient of a 2010 AWP Intro Journals Award in poetry and was named a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship in 2011. She holds an MFA from the University of Mississippi and is currently pursuing her PhD at the University of Southern California.