“Once I Shared a Wall with God” was first published in The Threepenny Review. Copyright by Clint Margrave
Can you go through the step-by-step process of writing this poem from the moment the idea was first conceived in your brain until final form? Our old apartment had thin walls and we could hear everything our neighbors did. They seemed oblivious about the whole thing and one night the girl decided to vacuum at 12am. This was the impetus. Not sure when god came in the picture except that maybe they held this kind of power over our lives simply because we shared a wall.
“Once I Shared a Wall with God” October 2022. Copyright by Clint Margrave
Where were you when you started to actually write the poem? And please describe the place in great detail. Not sure if it was the morning after the night of the vacuuming or later, but one morning, during my daily writing routine, I wrote about it and some of that ended up in the final poem.
Were there any lines in any of your rough drafts of this poem that were not in the final version? And can you share them with us? Yes, there were a lot of clunky lines in the original free-written prose version. None of which I can find now.
What do you want readers of this poem to take from this poem? I’d like them to enjoy the experience of the poem rather than “take” a message from it, but if anything maybe laugh a little, and feel the awe I feel sometimes when trying to figure out what the hell I’m doing in this universe.
Which part of the poem was the most emotional for you to write and why? I think the end. I’m an atheist because I don’t see any good reason to believe in a god, but that doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes wish there was something on the other side of that wall.
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Most of the BACKSTORY OF THE POEM links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/02/will-justice-drakes-intercession-is-251.html