Twenty-Seven Club
(erasure poem)
1.
music I know you have felt it the nights not aromatic coyotes getting restless the frogs their choral arrangements giving way to spring
2.
music years ago when I first heard the tone disintegration was but a gentle annoyance I had just joined I was learning the songs I was learning I honestly don’t know what I honestly don’t remember I am doing my best not to know that I often lose my voice my body wants to sleep the days enjoy this conflict I don’t know what you’ll make of this
3.
This great music In feeble effort to stop a war had denied myself and countless others the revolution a daydream all of a sudden I started asking questions pulled out a video camera said, “For my own protection.” What a show I say to an audience
4.
music turned into Hell a lot of television a large jar of formaldehyde I have yet to hear something to lose
5.
we have been released into nothing more than mere ritual shorter days warmer months new discoveries year after year this truth starts firing
6.
I might be, within minutes, historic the slightest amount of music considered a dance or at least a laugh
Excerpts from a Storm Unraveling
(cento poem)
I.
i’ve already tasted the merciless weather billowing like a dress if i open my mouth, i might drown
II.
the radiator’s screaming a hurricane, a disaster – america, fading out, a flicker at first i’ve been unrolling to a thin flat line, reaching
III.
for fear of trial, we lose the fight lord drag us back to the gutter where all things weak break free—
IV.
and the radiator’s sizzling up through a brooding blue delirium, in the fetid shadow of rain, which hung around, rosary-like, a kind of divine sweat that enters the maelstrom against the wind as the wind sets off the mind’s tripwires
V.
then, the great machinery begins
VI.
probably mild, probably a storm, probably
Detroit Beach
(erasure poem)
Stinging nostrils the wind
A beach with lies and unexpected hours
\\
The taste of salt metal
spitting teeth and sawdust
and always the lies:
Blue exhalations glittering infinitesimally
A promise barefoot in the snow
\\
The ashcan and the flames
A red sea in which black coals embed everything
wasteful wrong
\\
Flakes fall slow and steady
The waves growl
\\
Ashore, your feet in boots
Naked needles tarnish the thought
Pains wind dowel-shaped eclipsing you
\\
Thunder coats the spoon—
the answer unloved
Not so likeable
\\
You found you could live altogether blank
Blue
Definite
\\
Megabytes
The rest of you is lost to blanched reels of recollection, missing footage, damaged frames that cut in and out. Similar exploits are draped across the centuries— captive inside the canvas Ophelia forever drowns.
By Olivia Pierce Graham