First prize winner of the 3rd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest.

        War’s

a cut up killing

for to break us

‍

a time to

    line up quiet

    people are just quiet

    get your soup, Indian, and—

                go mad.

‍

Some see me. Some do.

‍

Blankets and boxes and bags of bitter money

    sending us to slavery

    on streets

    across the City.

‍

And the family            on the ground

                wind cold, sun shining,

‍

a man’s daughter         singing her thin goodbye;

‍

maybe her son he gone too

a branch in bloom—        

                torn.

Erasure poetry begins with removing letters and words from an existing text in order to create a new stand-alone piece that provides new meaning to the original passage. For the 3rd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest, we posted an excerpt from a prose poem, Cottonopolis, by Rachel Lebowitz.

‍