It Looked Like Dancing
You laugh
or go crazy.
I thank that horror,
nothing else.
Laugh or cry—
who could cry
after laughter swelling?
You put hands up.
Running. Laughing.
Holding out arms.
I was a red streak
on the floor, faded.
You burst into tears.
I was ice and God.
Hammering
In the rain
electric panic
had doors open,
the water washing it away.
More uncertain than ever
The clutter of consciousness, all the dirt,
opened heavy past the heartbeat.
Last night the radio said your prayers, called back,
playing lips between heart and milk.
My shadow was seventeen, myself the root of story.
I’m the tricks I can’t even remember, the bee in spring.
I cut clumsy, a kindness, more than
the doorway to a second.
Dignity, so natural, was a wing, the other way,
mistaken for ill-starred destruction.
Sleep until gone
In the air, snakes pulled violet
across the water, never aware
that noise dropped below.
Looking over a halo, the boatman
was dead, raging, trapped on route,
high, stripped of bodies.
Prom-goers took the keys and
flooded out of the stomach, moaning.
Behind, the hill was a rag doll,
eyes ripped skyward, fluttering.
Lit by ruin: warm subways
hellish onward, robes moving the man,
hand around monster mouth.
All wet, light danced on water,
a room over the pool, going down,
catching morning around sleep.
Gone fantastic:
always somebody out that window.
Distaste
Do you need a ride?
We bubble over, all right,
fresh air the slip, a receptacle
for the scream.
Listen:
I know the loveable ceremonies,
the crazy-ass day still nursing a spell
open and dark.
They laughed. Always.
Down the debris went pink,
paper traumatic,
mother forgotten.
Bleeding to death, sharply,
until half an hour ago,
you began to guess.
Funny
how things fall over.
E. Kristin Anderson is the author of seven chapbooks including A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks 2014) PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), 17 DAYS (ELJ Publications) ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE (ELJ 2016), FIRE IN THE SKY (Grey Book Press 2016), and SHE WITNESSES (dancing girl press, 2016). My nonfiction anthology, DEAR TEEN ME, based on the popular website, was published in October of 2012 by Zest Books (distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and my next anthologies, HYSTERIA: Writing the Female Body and COME AS YOU ARE (a 90s pop culture anthology) are forthcoming. I’ve worked at The New Yorker magazine, have a B.A. in Classics from Connecticut College and I’m currently a poetry editor for Found Poetry Review and I also recently took a position working on special projects at ELJ. I’ve published poetry in many magazines worldwide, including Juked, Hotel Amerika, [PANK], Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Cicada and I have work forthcoming in The Boiler and The Indianola Review. I grew up in Maine, live in Austin, Texas, and blog at EKristinAnderson.com.
NOTE: This are erasure poems sourced from Stephen King’s Carrie.