[noun] /ˌmɑː.dʒɪˈneɪ.li.ə/Notes made in the margins of a document or book.
I’ve always had a thing for older men
Tyler LemleyTyler Lemley’s “I’ve always had a thing for older men” sets out to understand the dynamic between young queer people and older men: “What does the speaker get out of it?” Tyler asks. “What do the older men? In what ways is the exchange animalistic and hungry? Is being consumed by ravenous hands, as opposed to no hands at all, worth the price?”
For our Marginalia series, we ask poets to take us behind the scenes into their revision process. Tyler shares their first and final drafts, with their own annotations on what they changed over a period of two and a half years before the poem was published in The Tusculum Review in 2025. In a Q&A at the end, they give advice based on their own experiences of drafting and revising.
Tap a highlighted line to read the annotation.
First draft
Final draft
In conversation with Tyler
How much time passed between writing your first and final draft?
There was about two and a half years between the first draft and the final draft that was published. In that time, I continued writing and reading about these ideas of dominance, exchange, guilt, greed, and hunger through the lens of rural, queer sexuality, giving me a more rounded sense of the subject and my relationship to it upon further drafts.
What changed most between the first and final drafts?
Many of the broader changes appear in specific word choices and cutting down of excess narration. Leaning into sound and alliteration helped guide the energy deeper into the poem while forcing specific word choices that furthered the purging of unneeded asides.
The choice of where to break the lines also changed across the poem. The choices on where to break lines came down to a couple of factors. First, when would a forced pause have the greatest impact. Like in the first line break of the second stanza: “Older men have always wanted / me.” To separate “me” from the rest of the line almost alludes to the speaker’s guilt and forces an extension of this admission.
Secondly, when could line breaks create lines that offered powerful images/moments that stood alone. For instance, the line “my first time: his hands.” In the wider context of the stanza, it sets up the speaker’s first sexual encounter with an older man. But when isolated, it gives us as readers the idea of the hands being the first thing to touch the speaker, leading to another image.
What advice would you give someone sitting down to write a first draft?
Spill it all onto the page! The condensing and streamlining can come later. What’s important in the first draft is that you get all of your ideas about the subject on the page. Then, as you revisit the draft in later revisions, you can assess what motifs and images continued through, and which ones can be cut away.
What advice would you give someone trying to turn a first draft into a final poem?
The biggest piece of advice that I’ve always utilized is to leave the draft alone for a time. Think of it like a cake cooling in the fridge before you can ice it. It can be a week, a month, a year, but you need some emotional distance from that first draft before you can start picking it apart, cutting it to pieces, then putting it back together. It’s too precious when it’s fresh out of the oven.
About the poet
Tyler Lemley is a queer, Texan poet who received their Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Arts and English from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, TX. They have been published in Fourteen Hills, The Tusculum Review, Does It Have Pockets, Black Fox Literary, and elsewhere.
