Editing the Prairie

Well, it’s too long for one thing

and very repetitive.

Remove half the fields.

Then there are far too many fences

interrupting the narrative flow.

Get some cattlemen to cut down those fences.

There’s not enough incident either,

the story is very flat.

Can’t you write in a mountain

or at least a decent-sized hill?

And why set it in winter

as if the prairie can grow nothing

but snow? I like the pubic bush

but there’s too much even of that,

and the empty sky filling all the silences

between paragraphs is really boring.

I think on due consideration

we’ll have to return your prairie.

Try us again in a year

with a mountain or a sea or a city.