E. Kristin Anderson
Southern Cold
Tonight I want to take my feet
beyond the answers, just as wild as the television.
I keep writing. This bitter mouth
shook your name from home, slowly here.
And the room is throwing wide the world
and living and dying and loving are left
in shadowboxes down the hall.
I could steal peppermint, a picture, the memory
close at the door—but the sleepy sweet of fear
at three in the morning is enough before dawn.
Over the ache down my spine I forgive
and hold grudges and know the spell to resist
the woods when it’s dark. I carry the air
instead of stars, love a hillside hushed nearby.
This is an erasure poem. Source text: Andrews, V. C. Flowers in the Attic. Pocket Books Paperback ed. New York: Pocket Books, 2014. 29-42. Print.
Based in Austin, TX, E. Kristin Anderson is the author of nine chapbooks, including A Guide for the Practical Abductee, Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night, 17 seventeen XVII and Behind, All You’ve Got (forthcoming). Kristin is an assistant poetry editor at The Boiler and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker.