Voice cold

Sure, I was lucky—more filled in,
worse than the devil blown. I tried
to picture fists bloodied by good luck.

Flat and holding a bitch death, I showed
a wildman that bewildered white, bubbling
like a pretty, half-hearted murder,

I kicked the root, started to hum,
rode in on boots, bright enough
to see worry where you put traction.

A face I recognized took that night to dance;
I’ll catch myself so odd and flat, calling from
a dead telephone in bright-eyed afternoon.
 
 
 
*This is an erasure poem. Source: King, Stephen. Christine. New York: Signet, 1983. 70 Print.
 
 
 
To the Circus

We went on Monday,
went back to building the dream,
realized it was the way you
seem to touch heat one night,
pulled up to morning, one eye
ugly and lapsed into silence.

Say anything—the radio
heard the story, waylaid
by Main Street, flashed off and on
at joy. I burn, water smells time
echoed the right lady, quick
into that overcast Sunday,
plenty of pardon in the spoils.
 
 
 
*This is an erasure poem. Source: King, Stephen. Christine. New York: Signet, 1983. 71-72 Print.
 
 
 
Spill Shocked

Disease is union—
the outlaw royal, the common carried
by purest chance, isolated in light,
destroying at will.

Working behind need,
on a sunset, leaning against pinks
and reds, sky and water,
you want nice.

The mind. More mind.

Words on the flexed hand
knock barriers. You throw your guts
into any of us, worked on silence,
gilding paper.

There goes velvet, hot, dirty.

Ashes are something, a voice,
light, innocent. You know you know.
Tell me the same golden, dangerous thing
comes back.
 
 
 
*This is an erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Carrie. New York: Anchor, 2011. 120-127. Print.
 
 

~  ~  ~

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and Hysteria: Writing the female body (Sable Books, forthcoming). Kristin is the author of eight 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), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press), and 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press). Kristin is an editor 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.