#mindy nettifee poetry

[apoemaday]

All I Had to Say for Myself

by Mindy Nettifee

I couldn’t touch you without ruining you, so I didn’t touch you at all.

It’s when you’re on the brink of something that you lose your balance. You told me that once. When I can’t bring myself to say what I need to, my heart plays Russian Roulette with my throat. I swear I fired that night, but, nothing.

Someday, I’ll show you the bullet I had for you, after time has done the wash. I’ll take it out of the jar of missed opportunities. We’ll hold it up to the light. You’ll roll it around your mouth like a fallen tooth. You won’t forgive me exactly, but we’ll laugh about how small it is. We’ll wonder how such a little thing could ever have meant so much.

[beguines]

Mindy Nettifee, from "All I Have to Say for Myself", Rise of the Trust Fall

[soracities]

Maybe no one ever told you, But the heart IS a metaphor. Yours is growing so strong You'll have your rhythm back any day now—

Mindy Nettifee, from “The First Time”

[asoftepiloguemylove]

"I couldn't touch you without ruining you,

so I didn't touch you at all."

Mindy Nettifee, All I Had To Say For Myself

[imaginemirage]

The truth is this: My love for you is the only empire I will ever build. When it falls, as all empires do, my career in empire building will be over.

Mindy Nettifee

[thedarkcaustic]

There is no clean way to enter  
the heavy machinery of the heart. Just jagged cutthroat questions.
 Just the glitter and blood production.

“This is the Nonsense of Love“ - Mindy Nettifee

[sweatermuppet]

hi! do you have any advice for editing your poetry? i always write one draft of a poem and never know how to go about improving it

some editing advice by mindy nettifee:

"we have some reservations about editing our poems to death. our intention is to edit them to life."

"the very first thing i do when i want to edit a poem is i read it out loud. if possible, also first put it in a format other than the original (written to typed or vice versa). the act itself of turning the poem into a new object helps you get some much needed objectivity. read out loud, slowly, repeatedly. make notes."

personally i also like to make copies to keep the first draft exactly as it was when first typed/written. that way if there are lines i want to take out, i can always remember what used to be there, & possibly keep that line for use in other application

knowing i will never truly lose a line helps me dive in & just delete what doesn't fit—sometimes it feels daunting to erase a whole line or verse but when you know it's preserved, it makes it easier to start digging around & plugging new stuff in

here's what lauren camp does with her lines:

"William Faulkner said, “Kill your darlings,” a directive almost every writer seems to know. But I want to make the case for holding your darlings. Over the last few decades, I have maintained a Word document—I call it my “Keeps” document—in which I collect phrases that weren’t right for whatever poem they first appeared in yet strike me as worth rescuing. Into this file I paste my “darlings,” margin to margin across the width and length of the page, smooshing them together with other beauties I couldn’t make work. When I’m drafting a new poem and looking for a remarkable verb or a fresh way to describe an action or emotion, I scan the hundreds of words jammed onto those pages of my “Keeps” document. There’s almost always something surprisingly ideal. And when I find that word or phrase that, by serendipity, suits the new poem I’m crafting, it’s exhilarating."

[fractalkiss]

fic commentary/notes for the year you thought you were dying.

trying this thing where i do fic commentaries here instead of on dreamwidth since most of my recent dw posts will be private now.

influences:

there was this BL titled "my 40-year-old prostitute" in english or something like that that a mutual from twt recommended. look, it was good. im so fucking serious. the yaoi art was beautiful and sexy and it started out so well with compelling characters. but the translators ceased uploading translations by just chapter 2 in 2020 on [redacted] site. which effectively meant the premise never left me for months and i was so sad.

joke's on me tho all of this really became serious after i wrote tumblr ficlets of 1418 hooker au in response to some fun ask prompts in the summer, which are in my fic tag somewhere.

some quotes from more influences:

"It’s obvious that the range of people who sought out sex for money would change dramatically in a kinder, gentler world. [...] Sex work would also attract stone butches of all genders and sexual orientations—people who want to run the fuck but are not interested in experiencing their own sexual vulnerability and pleasure. Often these people are the most adept at manipulating other people’s experiences. They are more objective about their partners’ fantasies and do not become distracted by their own desires, since their needs to remain remote and in control are already being fulfilled. - pat califa, 1994, 2000

"You. What will you let yourself become for me?" - dorothy allison, her thighs, 1992.

the essay "her thighs" is about lesbian power play and so influential to me. i think dorothy allison is a very powerful writer and i love her poetry.

this is an allison excerpt from jane ward's the tragedy of heterosexuality:

i kept this in mind too while i was writing manuela's short backstory.

the process:

i wanted crazy thangs with the structure. i wanted most of the sexual intimacy to be revealed much later to the reader, after we go through mostly the companionship aspect of the service -- which i realise now is not crazy but a boring approach and would really change the story so i didnt do it.

sex pollen fic done this way is my fave tho. helenish wrote this sga fic called This Gun for Hire with sex amnesia in it where everyone is in denial in the aftermath about the kind of sex that was repeatedly happening. there are other fic examples (can't quite remember or have bookmarked) where the denial and delusion is so completely off the charts with a character in trying to get through the aftermath of the event without a freaky sex trope involved.

so i wondered if i could pull off that kind of blurriness and denial in the structure for a character who KNOWS what is happening but thinks they're still straight and will die straight lmao. but fernando in this story is just jaded, retiring and isn't cripplingly repressive.

the notes from my word tracker doc that i had to do to be able to write long fic. i laugh at this every time:

my projected word count for this was 20k, which was so off lmfao.

i put off getting them to have sexy fun in italy at one point because i didn't know yet what emotional point they needed to get to and what grounds they'd be on then. i wrote a bit of a very different scene to lead up to it, but then scrapped it. and then i wrote the auction night and the morning-after scene. tension and conflict (without having to use miscommunication as the necessary crutch) is always one of my most favorite things to write about so i was so glad i got to this point LOL. the payoff of reaching a compromise and then an emotional release later is so rewarding to me! i love that shit

emotionally i just knew i needed it to be like the mindy nettifee poem i grabbed the fic title from.

figuring out how to write lance in this fic was really hard ngl since i went into the story almost blind. cofi made me realise this blind spot when i showed her an early wip and i was like hold awn.... if i wasn't sending @strulovic broken drafts and doing lanceology consultations with her, i wouldn't have gotten anywhere in the story.

alonso being a divorcee irl is so important to each and every one of my agendas thank god for the gay uncle. i did a lot of google searching to be able to write fernando's approach to sex and relationships outside of the job. i knew what i wanted to take away, like the difficulties with intimacy that former workers have had, and still have after the industry sometimes. fernando scrubbing his hands clean at lance's place after the auction despite not having sex with the auction client, his views on wanting the sex with his ex-wife and other exes to be "acceptable and proper" in contrast to whatever he's done for work, and how the internalised homophobia warps this for him while he tries to play the gentleman with lance in italy (and lance being able to read through him and understand that fernando DOES want to fuck him nasty ‼️ though lance doesn't understand the extent of fernando's issue with it). there are also accounts where sex work gave a worker the experience, space and autonomy they needed to slowly heal from prior traumatic and/or abusive experiences. the research was very interesting.

relied on music A LOT. an honorary ldr song [hears collective groaning] that didn't get included in the fic playlist was Love song. lance was in that passenger seat beside fernando in their sleek '67 restored fiat on the way to umbria wishing and wishing to get railed.

ALMOST FORGOT TO INCLUDE: ferrari to mclaren 2.0 fernando was the print here. he keeps the ferrari depression beard ofc.

truly not an overstatement, i think this fic was what made writing smth as long as this quite enjoyable and bearable for me. dare i say fun! haha

[almoststardust]

This is the Nonsense of Love by Mindy Nettifee

[theworldismadeofwords]

I want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet

Mindy Nettifee

[wingspan]

THIS IS THE NONSENSE OF LOVE

I.

Our kiss is a secret handshake, a password.

We love like spies, like bruised prize fighters,

Like children building tree houses.

Our love is serious business.

One look from you and my spine reincarnates as kite string.

When I hesitate to hold your hand,

it is because to know is to be responsible for knowing.

II.

There is no clean way to enter

the heavy machinery of the heart.

Just jagged cutthroat questions.

Just the glitter and blood production.

III.

The truth is this:

My love for you is the only empire

I will ever build.

When it falls,

as all empires do,

my career in empire building will be over.

I will retreat to an island.

I will dabble in the vacation-hut industry.

I will skulk about the private libraries and public parks.

I will fold the clean clothes.

I will wash the dishes.

I will never again dream of having the whole world.

—-MINDY NETTIFFEE

[apoemaday]

The Year You Thought You Were Dying

by Mindy Nettifee

The year you thought you were dying was a really great year.

You ate licorice on the beach in January, swam rum sauced in the icy Pacific wearing only blue rubber flippers and your grandfather’s dog tags and for the first time, it felt good to be cold, it felt good to be so cold it hurt.

You doted on pigeons and stray cats. You ate honey peanuts in the park and re-watched every movie that ever made you cry, including Steve Martin’s The Jerk. You tattooed your entire body in Pablo Neruda translations and cherry blossoms.

You blew all your money on comfortable shoes and one of those mattresses made from NASA space foam. You slept the sleep of assassins and kings—remorseless.

You bought chocolate bars from all the kids who came to your door and stock-piled them in your broom closet. You left them in your will to THE SECRETARIES, every last one of them.

You volunteered at the local senior center playing bingo. When you won you forced to whole room to take shots of Welch’s grape juice and sing the national anthem.

And you spent time with your favorite lover. You let him get close. Secret suicide note, nonsense alibi close. shampoo scent dissection close.

Close enough to memorize your tells, hand you your ass at pillow poker, make your defenses look like the silly decoupage of paper angels and Victorian roses that they were. Close enough that your laughter punched him with mint gum puffs. Close enough that his sighs drove circles in the parking lots of your sighs, close enough to measure your ribcage in wrists, your palms in lips.

So close, you didn’t even notice your heart speed up, then stop, when he kissed you so hard, when the New Year’s ball dropped down.

[beguines]

Mindy Nettifee, from "Multiculturalism", Rise of the Trust Fall

[soracities]

I couldn’t touch you without ruining you, so I didn’t touch you at all.

Mindy Nettifee, from “All I Had to Say For Myself”

[davidlavieri]

There is no clean way to enter the heavy machinery of the heart.

Just jagged cutthroat questions. Just the glitter and blood production.

Mindy Nettifee, “This is the Nonsense of Love”

[larmoyante]

I want to throw a party for the heartbreak that turned you into a poet.

Mindy Nettifee