Radix
Let's workshop this poem where, given society's demand for simplified content, the narrator empathizes with editors who cut depth and richness from art to honor prevailing norms (and the bottom line)
Radix
Since the people need
their pop (pre-masticated
nursery-rhyme pablum
strained of nuance), hard
it is to blame an editor—
just a soldier following
orders—for slashing
language and concepts
too formidable and, yes,
even the very radix
of the work’s light:
unbuttoned digressions
calling us to linger
in their honesty.