
ErasureContest_ThirdPrize
Third prize winner of the 3rd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest.
Trouble comes, naked and tough as grief. It takes most everything: our books, bones, bags of used batteries. People are just tired and quiet and trouble gets what it sees, penny by penny. Help hobbles in, brutish, sad, nothing holy about it, toothy, money-avid. Not at all very different. A drear argument to sort out. I want it to end. Sun, rain, clouds and then sun again. Pennywhistle concerns. Who will stand up for me against the still wind, the cold sun, the not one or the other? Trouble is a white blossom delicate as a tar flow.
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.