Do You Recognize Me Without My Tomahawk?

×

Expand

ErasureContest_FirstPrize

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.