Before & after...or almost*

1
We the Blind Need Pushing
Good-Cooking Kitchen
Under This Umbrella Is Another Umbrella
Cherry
Post-Texas Expressive Heat
Li'l Little Undergraduate Disaster
Just Flew Back
Will That Be All, Mrs. Kickboxer?
Contrast Girls
I Am Not Related to Any of You Yet
Contraposto
Scholars of the Twang
Dear Volunteers,
Tumble in November
Hooey Subverted Again
Slashy Speakers, Nervy Endings
Puzzle
Crossword
Clues Across
Clues Down [no new title presenting itself as of yet]
2
Last Paragraph
Map of the City
Thank Y'all for Appreciating My Animals
It's the Humidity
Laundry [possibly moving up in order]
Guided Tour of the South
Ruby'd Never
Sweet Tater Pie
A White House
Non-Ultra Joy
The Migrants
Murmur
Fusion Lingo
Self-Help
Weird Cure
The Woman from the Public
Avalanche [most readers want to keep. waffling.]
3
Mouth Made Out of Trees
My Huge Napoleon
I only smile at girls I like.
Elegy for a Fictional Strongman
Thick As, Um, Thieves Big Thicket [same poem, new title]
Those Days of Pomp & Vigor
A Latin Atlas
Asterisk Because
Voluntary Cinderella
Erasmus Subscribes to the Fortean Times
Miss Epistolary
Homeslice The Local [same poem, new title]
4
Knowing & Saying Are Two Different Things
Terroir
Unlikely Dogtown Francis
Scrimmage
Ecstasy for Guy Lombardo
Stay Seated, Buckled & Safe
High Bluffing
Hooray for the Differently Sane
Uberdesigned Happy Juice
Even a Zoo
In half-asleep love
I Declare a Rose
Fortieth
Subjects [considering reversing the order of these final three]

That's 49 poems, down from 62. So I've cut a lucky 13. There are two is one still teetering, not indicated here. And a couple of line edits (more resistant to those--are they more intimate?). Interesting to note that the second numbered section (well, originally it was numbered, I've cut the section breaks and numbers now too) survived the best. They're the oldest poems in the book, so I guess that just means this sifting process has already mostly naturally happened with those.

Admitting the puzzle is my clever badge. Hi. I'm clever. Agree with my super advisors that "Clues Down" can stand alone, but feel the numbers and special formatting also have to go. Otherwise it just seems gimmicky to me. So that's now straight prose. No new title presenting itself, better stick with current root-ripped one than slap on one I'll regret, I think. (Happily, I note that all the prose bucked the cutting instincts. Bodes well for the next project, I think?)

Still have a few bestest readers left to weigh in. Greatly helped by all the input--this is impossible for me to do by myself. Go ahead and make this your mantra: "I am not my own best reader. I am not my own best editor." Not a new lesson, but still bears frequent repeating. There are all kinds of messy connective tissues, scaffolding, ghost poems--the poems I want these to be vs. the poems they are. With these cuts Down Spooky is a better book. But this final shuffle and shave is the hardest part. (I'm with Harry. The writing itself is the party. The rest is like a lingering hangover--you remember what came before fondly and will probably do it again, but wish you could sleep through the aftereffects.)

I'm putting all this up here, because I think it might be interesting to people who are not me. People who will be doing the same thing soon, later, someday.

*Evolving post.