I stare down ash
by E. Kristin Anderson
I stare down ash—
this is where I
was bricks, collapsed,
a charred point of reference for
myself in this sea of
almost a month.
The coal justice
escaped the why. Perhaps
anyone would have the odd
condition of
returning.
But no one is returning
and against my venture,
invisible, circling—
there’s no intelligence.
I had to see so much. I made it
their plans,
finally
organized. His hands
let go. A day, a little tour
is just
the same.
The same. My left temple
hit me with the coil. Memories swirl,
try to sort out what is false
in the ruins:
This hard concussion?
still
the drugs, my sometimes guess.
I’m still convinced that hallucinating
snakes
(one of the
simplest things)
begins in my home.
I was the hunger. I
was
dead—likely, probably dead.
Should I come down?
My voice reaches through the watching,
crouched down,
elbows on my thighs, braced.
This is an erasure poem. Source Material: Collins, Suzanne. Mockingjay. New York: Scholastic, 2014. 3-4. Print.
E. Kristin Anderson is a Pushcart nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine, and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Kristin is the co-editor of Dear Teen Me,an anthology based on the popular website. Her YA memoir The Summer of Unraveling is forthcoming in 2017 from ELJ Publications. She now lives in Austin, Texas, where she works as a freelance editor and is trying to trick someone into publishing her full-length collection of erasure poems based on women’s and teen magazines. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.