Little Snid Bits

DENTIST OFFICE
peppermint, drills, & latex gloves
the dentist smells, & im stuck
i hate this place they send me
fluoride sticks & my teeth feel ruff
im done & not coming back

SPRING
green moss, sticky dew
the smell of red flowers
bees hovering over pink daisies
fluffy cotton flies in circles
the first signs of spring r here

Erasure

poets have long known that there is as much power in words that are missing as in those that rest on the page. Anne Carson provided a brilliant example of this in If Not, Winter, her 2002 translation of the work  of the ancient Greek poet Sappho. Of the nine books of lyric poetry that Sappho wrote—on papyrus rolls—only one poem has survived intact; the rest are fragments. To indicate where words are missing or, in some cases, are illegible, Carson included brackets, so that one of the fragments begins "]heart / ]absolutely / ]I can" while another is a single word trapped in, as John D'Agata put it in an essay in the Boston Review, "a blizzard of brackets." The haunting fragments bring to mind the best erasure poetry, in which the poet alters an existing text by striking or erasing words. Fact-Simile Editions, an independent press in Denver, recently published a unique example of this form of found poetry. While The 9/11 Commission Report is an important and compelling text in its own right (indeed, when it was published in 2004 the report soared to the top of several best-seller lists and was named a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award in nonfiction), its riveting account is nevertheless crowded by the mountain of information that the commission was obligated to document. Travis Macdonald, a graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and a coeditor, with JenMarie Davis, of Fact-Simile Editions, used the text for an erasure titled The O Mission Repo that is a moving commentary on what Davis calls the "shifting fields of language that have arisen in the post-9/11 world." For instance, the second page of the preface, or "reface," as Macdonald has modified it, reads: "Our aim has been to / redress / Its / lexicon / adjust the / lines within / between and / across / loss / and / balance / event / against / the instruments of / change / over every page" with heavy black lines obliterating every word of text save those that remain. In another section, "The Found Error," taken from the original chapter titled "The Foundation of the New Terrorism," the preserved words seem to float down the pages as if in clouds, the missing words literally erased from the text. Macdonald lived in Brooklyn, New York, at the time of the terrorist attacks, and Davis says he performed the erasure "with the alternating tenderness and rage of one who has experienced the uncertainties of this changed world firsthand." The press also publishes a biannual poetry magazine of the same name that is always open to submissions of "work that pushes the envelope of polite society and has little to no regard for the arbitrary margins of genre." Those interested in more erasure poetry might want to check out the Erasures section of the Wave Books Web site, where users can create their own virtual erasures using texts by Henry James and others. Of course, the great thing about erasures is that a poet can use any source text—even this one. Go ahead: Print this page out and run a pen or marker over any of the words or punctuation to see what kind of poem emerges. Send it to us (90 Broad Street, Suite 2100, New York, NY 10004) and we'll post it online.

Stichomancy

The woman walked in with a very unflattering waddle. The only way to describe her was extra wide. She brought with her a very disgusting fragrant of pees and grass. She walked carefully around the room wobbling to and fro like a bloated cherry. She froze in front of the cheese and began to feast like a lion with its first kill. It was awful, the woman was a vagabond. She was most awfully an ugly woman and walked with a strange superiority. Like she had just conquered cheesecake mountain.

You

Clouds loom over, dark grey, and blue
It shows the world how badly I feel
Because everything always reminds me of you
I beg Got to take me, I'll make him a deal

Because since you left me
My hearts been tumbling, falling
The tears down your cheeks there all I see
I can't feel your touch, or hear you calling

A Good List

I've thought and thought about the things I will do,
But that list wouldn't be very long.
Its the things I won't ever do that tell a story,
 Like I won't ever go sky diving,
Or be the President of the United States.

I won't ever try a fried grasshopper,
I will never take a tour of a sewage plant.
Never ever go white water rafting,
Third world countries are  places I will never go.
But all of those are obvious things.

I will never get my hand stuck in a toaster,
Or try to cook eggs on the sidewalk.
I won't ever try to climb the roof of my house,
Or ride on the hump of a camels back.
Those are just plain stupid things to do.

I won't ever leave my laundry until it reeks,
Or wear the same socks 4 weeks in a row.
I will never eat food that was on the ground first,
Or try to eat my breakfast cereal with a fork.
All of those are things my brother has done.

I will never hitch hike on the back a strangers bike,
Or go snow sledding down Devils Slide.
I won't ever climb Mt. Everest with a bunch of tourists,
And I definitely would never go bar hopping.
Those are all things my mother would advise against.

I'm used to people saying; your completely overboard,
And i definitely know that, I just don't care.
So though some might say I'm just too cautious,
Get used to it thats just the way I am,
And I won't change for you, or me, or anyone.