Two Poems from E. Kristin Anderson

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Subaudible

Please, not poison—               small, trashy, the hanging
leaves mother knew,       these toy hundreds       floating
yellow school buses,   the party           in the destination,
windows       opened out.         If you hear—      shadows
joined hands         and tumbled down               breathing,
out all night,       out all night,       panic       trying to grab
her mouth,      hemmed in,          no name,          the glow
from the window      following      the fear-taste.     Pray—
without vocabulary her hands brought on this cloudy idea,
some deep, future-seeing need                     to remember.

.

All right, though

……………………..Thunder continued—
unpleasant     like legs aching.        Guys
with bloodhounds      maybe save myself,
find a window,      see some previous fall.

The dust dream:   a trace of empty hands.
I know where I am,      but I’m a small day
turning in a foamy rush,             unreliable,
one of those people above broken ground.
.
.

.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Prince fan, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me and her next anthology, Hysteria: Writing the female body, is forthcoming from Sable Books. She is currently working on Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture. Kristin is the author of seven chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), She Witnesses (dancing girl press), and We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press). Kristin is an editor and designer at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on twitter at @ek_anderson.

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These are erasure poems.

Source Material for “Subaudible”: King, Stephen. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. New York: Pocket, 1999. 53-54. Print.

Source Material for “All right, though”: King, Stephen. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. New York: Pocket, 1999. 66-69. Print.