Erasure Poetry

THE HOME OF ERASURE POETRY

It is time. Time for Erasure Poetry to be mainstreamed. Time for the power of lyrical presence vs. absence to be truly felt. Time for disenfranchised voices to be heard. Time for old shibboleths to topple. Time for the various -archies (olig, patri, etc.) to finally be met with a countergaze that does not blink.

Erasure Poetry is that dynamic praxis of meta-creativity where the craft is not about artificing into the new but rather engendering literary enfleshment from the pre-existing primal ooze, reducing its adipose tissue, and allowing it to speak, unencumbered by the weight of excess utterance. lt is mother earth without the detritus. It is God without the chaos. It is life without the poison.

THE ERASURE POEMS

an erasure from "Goodbye Christ"

by Langston Hughes

Listen, Christ ,

You did alright in your day, I reckon-

But that day’s gone now.

They ghosted you up a swell story, too,

Called it Bible-

But it’s dead now,

The popes and the preachers’ve

Made too much money from it.

They’ve sold you to too many

Kings, generals, robbers, and killers-

Even to the Tzar and the Cossacks,

Even to Rockefeller’s Church,

Even to THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.

You ain’t no good no more.

They’ve pawned you

Till you’ve done wore out.

Goodbye,

Christ Jesus Lord God Jehova,

Beat it on away from here now.

Make way for a new guy with no religion at all-

A real guy named

Marx Communist Lenin Peasant Stalin Worker ME-

I said, ME!

Go ahead on now,

You’re getting in the way of things, Lord.

And please take Saint Gandhi with you when you go,

And Saint Pope Pius,

And Saint Aimee McPherson,

And big black Saint Becton

Of the Consecrated Dime.

And step on the gas, Christ!

Move!

Don’t be so slow about movin?

The world is mine from now on-

And nobody’s gonna sell ME

To a king , or a general,

Or a millionaire.

an erasure from Daddy

by Sylvia Plath

You do not do, you do not do

Any more, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.

You died before I had time——

Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,

Ghastly statue with one gray toe

Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic

Where it pours bean green over blue

In the waters off beautiful Nauset.

I used to pray to recover you.

Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town

Scraped flat by the roller

Of wars, wars, wars.

But the name of the town is common.

My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.

So I never could tell where you

Put your foot, your root,

I never could talk to you.

The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.

Ich, ich, ich, ich,

I could hardly speak.

I thought every German was you.

And the language obscene

An engine, an engine

Chuffing me off like a Jew.

A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

I began to talk like a Jew.

I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna

Are not very pure or true.

With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck

And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack

I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,

With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.

And your neat mustache

And your Aryan eye, bright blue.

Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika

So black no sky could squeak through.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

The boot in the face, the brute

Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

In the picture I have of you,

A cleft in your chin instead of your foot

But no less a devil for that, no not

Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.

I was ten when they buried you.

At twenty I tried to die

And get back, back, back to you.

I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And they stuck me together with glue.

And then I knew what to do.

I made a model of you,

A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.

And I said I do, I do.

So daddy, I’m finally through.

The black telephone’s off at the root,

The voices just can’t worm through.

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——

The vampire who said he was you

And drank my blood for a year,

Seven years, if you want to know.

Daddy, you can lie back now.

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers never liked you.

They are dancing and stamping on you.

They always knew it was you.

Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

an erasure from dear white america

by danez smith

i’ve left Earth in search of darker planets,

a solar system revolving too near a black hole.

i’ve left in search of a new God.

i do not trust the God you have given us.

my grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear

she nurses every time the blood-fat summer

swallows another child who used to sing in the choir.

take your God back. though his songs are beautiful,

his miracles are inconsistent.

i want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha,

want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah

risen three days after their entombing,

their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood,

their flesh & blood re-gifted their children.

i’ve left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your

go back to Africa & i just don’t see race.

neither did the poplar tree.

i’ve left Earth in search of darker planets,

a solar system revolving too near a black hole.

i’ve left in search of a new God.

i do not trust the God you have given us.

my grandmother’s hallelujah is only outdone by the fear

she nurses every time the blood-fat summer

swallows another child who used to sing in the choir.

take your God back. though his songs are beautiful,

his miracles are inconsistent.

i want the fate of Lazarus for Renisha,

want Chucky, Bo, Meech, Trayvon, Sean & Jonylah

risen three days after their entombing,

their ghost re-gifted flesh & blood,

their flesh & blood re-gifted their children.

i’ve left Earth, i am equal parts sick of your

go back to Africa & i just don’t see race.

neither did the poplar tree. i can’t stand your ground. i’m sick of calling your

recklessness the law. each night, i count my brothers.

& in the morning, when some do not survive to be counted,

i count the holes they leave.

i reach for black folks & touch only air.

your master magic trick, America.

now he’s breathing, now he don’t.

abra-cadaver. white bread voodoo.

sorcery you claim not to practice,

hand my cousin a pistol to do your work.

i tried, white people. i tried to love you,

but you spent my brother’s funeral making plans for brunch,

talking too loud next to his bones.

you took one look at the river, plump with the body

of boy after girl after sweet boi & ask

why does it always have to be about race?

because you made it that way!

because you put an asterisk on my sister’s gorgeous face!

call her pretty (for a black girl)!

because black girls go missing without so much as a whisper of where?!

because there are no amber alerts for amber-skinned girls!

because Jordan boomed. because Emmett whistled.

because Huey P. spoke. because Martin preached.

because black boys can always be too loud to live.

because it’s taken my papa’s & my grandma’s time,

my father’s time, my mother’s time, my aunt’s time,

my uncle’s time, my brother’s & my sister’s time…

how much time do you want for your progress?

i’ve left Earth to find a place where my kin can be safe,

where black people ain’t but people

the same color as the good, wet earth,

until that means something, until then

i bid you well, i bid you war,

i bid you our lives to gamble with no more.

i’ve left Earth & i am touching everything

you beg your telescopes to show you.

i’m giving the stars their right names.

& this life, this new story & history

you cannot steal or sell or cast overboard

or hang or beat or drown or own

or redline or shackle or silence

or cheat or choke or cover up or jail or shoot

or jail or shoot or jail or shoot or ruin

this, if only this one, is ours.

an erasure from Church Going

by Philip Larkin

Once I am sure there’s nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence,

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new –

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don’t.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

‘Here endeth’ much more loudly than I’d meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for .

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort or other will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation – marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these – for which was built

This special shell? For, though I’ve no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognised, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

an erasure from Monster

by Robin Morgan

And you, men. Lovers, brothers, fathers, sons.

I have loved you and love you still, if for no other reason

than that you came wailing from the monster

while the monster hunched in pain to give you the power

to break her spell.

Well, we must break it ourselves, at last.

And I will speak less and less and less to you

and more and more in crazy gibberish you cannot understand...

an erasure from Stamped from the Beginning

Ibram X. Kendi

The principal function of racist ideas in American history has been the suppression of resistance to racial discrimination and its resulting racial disparities. The beneficiaries of slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have produced racist ideas of Black people being best suited for or deserving of the confines of slavery, segregation, or the jail cell. Consumers of these racist ideas have been led to believe there is something wrong with Black people, and not the policies that have enslaved, oppressed, and confined so many Black people.”

an erasure from Cross

by Langston Hughes

My old man’s a white old man

And my old mother’s black.

If ever I cursed my white old man

I take my curses back.

If ever I cursed my black old mother

And wished she were in hell,

I’m sorry for that evil wish

And now I wish her well.

My old man died in a fine big house.

My ma died in a shack.

I wonder where I’m gonna die,

Being neither white nor black?

an erasure from Kin

by Maya Angelou

FOR BAILEY

We were entwined in red rings

Of blood and loneliness before

The first snows fell

Before muddy rivers seeded clouds

Above a virgin forest, and

Men ran naked, blue and black

Skinned into the warm embraces

Of Sheba, Eve and Lilith.

I was your sister.

You left me to force strangers

Into brother molds, exacting

Taxations they never

Owed or could ever pay.

You fought to die, thinking

In destruction lies the seed

Of birth. You may be right.

I will remember silent walks in

Southern woods and long talks

In low voices

Shielding meaning from the big ears

Of overcurious adults.

You may be right.

Your slow return from

Regions of terror and bloody

Screams, races my heart.

I hear again the laughter

Of children and see fireflies

Bursting tiny explosions in

An Arkansas twilight.

an erasure from On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

by Renée Nicole Macklin aka Renee Good

i want back my rocking chairs,

solipsist sunsets,

& coastal jungle sounds that are tercets from cicadas and pentameter from the hairy legs of cockroaches.

i’ve donated bibles to thrift stores

(mashed them in plastic trash bags with an acidic himalayan salt lamp—

the post-baptism bibles, the ones plucked from street corners from the meaty hands of zealots, the dumbed-down, easy-to-read, parasitic kind):

remember more the slick rubber smell of high gloss biology textbook pictures; they burned the hairs inside my nostrils,

& salt & ink that rubbed off on my palms.

under clippings of the moon at two forty five AM I study&repeat

ribosome

endoplasmic—

lactic acid

stamen

at the IHOP on the corner of powers and stetson hills—

i repeated & scribbled until it picked its way & stagnated somewhere i can’t point to anymore, maybe my gut—

maybe there in-between my pancreas & large intestine is the piddly brook of my soul.

it’s the ruler by which i reduce all things now; hard-edged & splintering from knowledge that used to sit, a cloth against fevered forehead.

can i let them both be? this fickle faith and this college science that heckles from the back of the classroom

now i can’t believe—

that the bible and qur’an and bhagavad gita are sliding long hairs behind my ear like mom used to & exhaling from their mouths “make room for wonder”—

all my understanding dribbles down the chin onto the chest & is summarized as:

life is merely

to ovum and sperm

and where those two meet

and how often and how well

and what dies there.

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church

by Emily Dickinson

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –

I keep it, staying at Home –

With a Bobolink for a Chorister –

And an Orchard, for a Dome –

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –

I, just wear my Wings –

And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,

Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –

And the sermon is never long,

So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –

I’m going, all along.

an erasure from If Jesus Were Gay

by Emanuel Xavier*

If Jesus were gay,

would you tattoo him to your body?

hang him from your chest?

pray to him and worship the Son of Man?

Would you still praise him

after dying for your sins?

If it was revealed Jesus kissed another man,

but not on the cheek,

would you still beg him for forgiveness?

ask him for miracles?

hope your loved ones get to meet him

in heaven?

If Jesus were gay,

and still loved by God and Mary

because he was their child after all

hailed by all angels and feared by demons,

would you still long to be healed by him?

take him into your home and comfort him?

heal his wounds and break bread with him?

Would wars be waged over religion?

Would world leaders invoke his name

for votes?

Would churches everywhere rejoice

and celebrate his life?

Would rappers still thank him

in their acceptance speeches?

If the crown of thorns

were placed on his head

to mock him as the “Queen of the Jews”

If he was whipped

because fags are considered

sadomasochistic sodomites,

If he was crucified

for the brotherhood of man

would you still repent?

Would you pray to him

when you were dying?

If he didn’t ask for you to be just like him,

If he only wanted you to love yourself,

If he asked that you not judge others,

Would you still wait for him to come back and save your soul?

Would you deny him?

Would you believe in peace?

Would there still be hate?

Would there still be hell?

Would there be laws

based on the meaning of true love?

What would Jesus do?

What would you do?

*an erasure from "If Jesus Were Gay" by Emanuel Xavier

an erasure from Wade in the Water

by Tracy K. Smith

for the Geechee Gullah Ring Shouters

One of the women greeted me.

I love you, she said. She didn't

Know me, but I believed her,

And a terrible new ache

Rolled over in my chest,

Like in a room where the drapes

Have been swept back. I love you,

I love you, as she continued

Down the hall past other strangers,

Each feeling pierced suddenly

By pillars of heavy light.

I love you, throughout

The performance, in every

Handclap, every stomp.

I love you in the rusted iron

Chains someone was made

To drag until love let them be

Unclasped and left empty

In the center of the ring.

I love you in the water

Where they pretended to wade,

Singing that old blood-deep song

That dragged us to those banks

And cast us in. I love you,

The angles of it scraping at

Each throat, shouldering past

The swirling dust motes

In those beams of light

That whatever we now knew

We could let ourselves feel, knew

To climb. O Woods—O Dogs—

O Tree—O Gun—O Girl, run—

O Miraculous Many Gone—

O Lord—O Lord—O Lord—

Is this love the trouble you promised?

an erasure from What Kind of Times Are These

by Adrienne Rich

There's a place between two stands of trees where the grass grows uphill

and the old revolutionary road breaks off into shadows

near a meeting-house abandoned by the persecuted

who disappeared into those shadows.

I've walked there picking mushrooms at the edge of dread, but don't be fooled

this isn't a Russian poem, this is not somewhere else but here,

our country moving closer to its own truth and dread,

its own ways of making people disappear.

I won't tell you where the place is, the dark mesh of the woods

meeting the unmarked strip of light—

ghost-ridden crossroads, leafmold paradise:

I know already who wants to buy it, sell it, make it disappear.

And I won't tell you where it is, so why do I tell you

anything? Because you still listen, because in times like these

to have you listen at all, it's necessary

to talk about trees.

an erasure from The Tradition

by Jericho Brown

Aster. Nasturtium. Delphinium.

We thought

Fingers in dirt meant it was our dirt, learning

Names in heat, in elements classical

Philosophers said could change us. Star Gazer.

Foxglove. Summer seemed to bloom against the will

Of the sun, which news reports claimed flamed hotter

On this planet than when our dead fathers

Wiped sweat from their necks. Cosmos. Baby’s Breath.

Men like me and my brothers filmed what we

Planted for proof we existed before

Too late, before the end of the world, the flowers

In every color we could find or afford

To buy. Hydrangea. Lilac. Chrysanthemum.

We were gardeners, we thought, and our hands

Were good. We planted things and they grew.

We thought the earth would be grateful.

John Crawford. Eric Garner. Mike Brown.

"Invictus"

by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance

My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears

Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

an erasure from Clutch

by Trish Hopkinson

I’m a penguin, birthing outside myself, racing

down a glacier. My flippers behind the wheel

of a fastback Mustang in a rainstorm.

Sometimes I find comfort in the weather, shaped like a gourd and web-toed. I unname him,

my father who cursed us all. Instead, I name mud pies.

I mix the grit with melting snow and bake them

in the sun, the rich organic churn and worms rotting as they warm. I don’t regret the unsaid

or the disgrace I release. I wake unafraid

the morning after each of my children is born.

Penguins aren’t starfish; limbs gone never return. My nest becomes unclutched.

What I accomplished is tremendous.

The Mystic Trumpeter

by Walt Whitman

Hark! some wild trumpeter some strange musician,

Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.

I hear thee, trumpeter listening, alert, I catch thy notes,

Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,

Now low, subdued now in the distance lost.

Come nearer, bodiless one haply, in thee resounds

Some dead composer haply thy pensive life

Was fill'd with aspirations high unform'd ideals,

Waves, oceans musical, chaotically surging,

That now, ecstatic ghost, close to me bending, thy cornet echoing, pealing,

Gives out to no one's ears but mine but freely gives to mine,

That I may thee translate.

Blow, trumpeter, free and clear I follow thee,

While at thy liquid prelude, glad, serene,

The fretting world, the streets, the noisy hours of day, withdraw;

A holy calm descends, like dew, upon me,

I walk, in cool refreshing night, the walks of Paradise,

I scent the grass, the moist air, and the roses;

Thy song expands my numb'd imbonded spirit, thou freest, launchest me,

Floating and basking upon Heaven's lake.

Blow again, trumpeter! and for my sensuous eyes,

Bring the old pageants show the feudal world.

What charm thy music works! thou makest pass before me,

Ladies and cavaliers long dead barons are in their castle halls the troubadours are singing;

Arm'd knights go forth to redress wrongs some in quest of the Holy Grail:

I see the tournament I see the contestants, encased in heavy armor, seated on stately, champing horses;

I hear the shouts the sounds of blows and smiting steel:

I see the Crusaders' tumultuous armies Hark! how the cymbals clang!

Lo! where the monks walk in advance, bearing the cross on high!

Blow again, trumpeter! and for thy theme,

Take now the enclosing theme of all the solvent and the setting;

Love, that is pulse of all the sustenace and the pang;

The heart of man and woman all for love;

No other theme but love-knitting, enclosing, all-diffusing love.

O, how the immortal phantoms crowd around me!

I see the vast alembic ever working I see and know the flames that heat the world;

The glow, the blush, the beating hearts of lovers,

So blissful happy some and some so silent, dark, and nigh to death:

Love, that is all the earth to lovers Love, that mocks time and space;

Love, that is day and night Love, that is sun and moon and stars;

Love, that is crimson, sumptuous, sick with perfume;

No other words, but words of love no other thought but Love.

Blow again, trumpeter conjure war's Wild alarums.

Swift to thy spell, a shuddering hum like distant thunder rolls;

Lo! where the arm'd men hasten Lo! mid the clouds of dust, the glint of bayonets;

I see the grime-faced cannoniers I mark the rosy flash amid the smoke I hear the cracking of the guns:

Nor war alone thy fearful music-song, wild player, brings every sight of fear,

The deeds of ruthless brigands rapine, murder I hear the cries for help!

I see ships foundering at sea I behold on deck, and below deck, the terrible tableaux.

O trumpeter! methinks I am myself the instrument thou playest!

Thou melt'st my heart, my brain—thou movest, drawest, changest them, at will:

And now thy sullen notes send darkness through me;

Thou takest away all cheering light all hope:

I see the enslaved, the overthrown, the hurt, the opprest of the whole earth;

I feel the measureless shame and humiliation of my race it becomes all mine;

Mine too the revenges of humanity, the wrongs of ages, baffled feuds and hatreds;

Utter defeat upon me weighs all lost! the foe victorious!

(Yet 'mid the ruins Pride colossal stands, unshaken to the last;

Endurance, resolution, to the last.)

Now, trumpeter, for thy close,

Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet;

Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,

Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future;

Give me, for once, its prophecy and joy.

O glad, exulting, culminating song!

A vigor more than earth's is in thy notes!

Marches of victory man disenthrall'd the conqueror at last!

Hymns to the universal God, from universal Man all joy!

A reborn race appears a perfect World, all joy!

Women and Men, in wisdom, innocence and health all joy!

Riotous, laughing bacchanals, fill'd with joy!

War, sorrow, suffering gone—the rank earth purged—nothing but joy left!

The ocean fill'd with joy—the atmosphere all joy!

Joy! Joy! in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the ecstacy of life!

Enough to merely be! Enough to breathe!

Joy! Joy! all over Joy!