SINGED, UNHURT
E. Kristin Anderson
Death stands amid rumors that a blue-ribbon tragedy ends.
Scorched hearts have been saying for centuries that this small mortal—
guarded, graceful—lies on the rim of shattered wreathes.
Still untouched by time, survival lived in years, risen from possibility,
damned lightly to live bad, too many ghosts in too many corners.
Rubble and women exchange grief, the dead guts in mass ceremonies.
Stripped songs broke tears, parties as hearses ripped through
the last spirit lost, swept away by brick, unhurt.
Waiting to die is not enough.
Averted to late night, burning, point out the grave.
Rip a line from a poet, serve as epitaph, decide
some paranormal reason is like a weed, pretty in the world.
Author's Commentary: This is an erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Carrie. New York: Anchor, 2011. 282-290. Print.
E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Prince fan, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She the co-editor of Dear Teen Me, an anthology based on the popular website and her next anthology, Hysteria: Writing the female body, is forthcoming from Sable Books. She is currently curating Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture for ELJ Editions. Her writing has been published worldwide in magazines and anthologies and she 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 Acoustic Battery Life (ELJ). Kristin is Special Projects Manager for ELJ and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She now works during daylight as a freelance editor and writing coach. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.
