AND OTHERS, VAGUER PRESENCES, MORE ASHBERY ERASURE POEMS (2017)
STRANGE
CINEMA
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
I come
here
trembling
The wind is
a felon
We sit
I am afraid
nothing will happen
To go on
as I did
a stranger
undressed
the surf churning
in
heaven
We are
a retrofitted
commodity
a sweetness
adjusted
from Your Name Here
HUNGRY AGAIN
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
I
shout
stars
The rain
appears
to know
this
It has
not come
to take
me
to God
God is
at your house,
a
dark
wind swept
storm
a mind-crystal
from
A Worldly Country
WHETHER IT EXISTS
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
Although
the
land tilted
the owl of life
moved
in
with conviction
rind
pulp
a gown.
Later I added
a
field I
no longer remember.
Tenderness
pours it
on again.
from Houseboat
Days
WE HESITATE
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
To improve
your portrait
of God
make it plain.
Our bodies.
The new great somber hope,
a tree
a
giant
tentative cloud.
from Shadow Train
HOMECOMING
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
Ether drips
quietly through
my diary
What
homecoming?
It's Jean and the kids, waving
in cold
anonymity
crowds sifting to the furthest exits
from
Wakefulness
Damaged hair
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
My
pimple
closes a window
you
report
amazement
Out of respect I should say I
still
have room
for
these
slanted teeth
the maid
is
a bright idea like a
bride
is a
forthcoming
sunbeam caught upside down
on
a
postcard
from
page 63 of Flow Chart
THIS ECONOMY
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
I am
a pedestrian
my
radish
half-demented,
sour with
all that went before
staggering across
America
naked
a bush in
the
sunset
I am still
in America trying to figure out
how to pay to ball
a lonely eye
on a bus
in America I am
too much
from
Quick Question
AND UT
PICTURA POESIS IS HER NAME
(an Ashbery
erasure poem)
You can say it that way
Beauty you have
come out into the open
and that
would
not be
self-analysis
Now,
what to put
in your poem-painting
Her skyrockets—do they still exist?
They
must.
She
is
like foliage
between
breaths,
desire
you desert
for
others
so that understanding
may begin
from
Houseboat Days
VARIANT
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
A word,
a
hand,
a glove, the way
fraught
is
not the word "fraught"
secret valley
some distance
from
the
lightly
wooded
from Houseboat Days
LAUGHING
GRAVY
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
The crisis
Uh oh
Looking for someone to blame
The last time
I noticed
your ear
all the wolves in the wolf factory paused
from
Wakefulness
COUSIN
SARAH'S KNITTING
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
You keep asking me that
Trust me I think
nobody
is
that nice
Pulled from space
after they examined
her
no one
living
understood
Then
it was all
a longing in the loins
I was going
to remind you of the story
of
the overfed
One got off
The other
was dazed
By the time
it was summer again
somebody's boy came
up
and
wandered over
their
reputations
from
Wakefulness
PALINDROME
OF EVENING
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
In places
I found
buttons,
high
higher
highest
silk communication
No one
escapes
The bear goes down
on the badger
Horrified spectators
can't go back
to the restaurant
from
Wakefulness
AT THE
STATION
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
I thought I was
just thinking
It was time to go
in the ground
Look,
I
bought you a box of
dreams
The grass grows
sideways into
the wind
from
Wakefulness
EPISODE
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
Odd
Tried to figure
how to write
fell on a bed
chewed the crevices
the long
flared
parts
There was music
preparing for
the pain
Sure, I was hoping you could articulate
what the lurching moon
had
taught us
Dumb comes back
to being alone
calm under
even unwanted
inspiration
But
we cannot
label the
adventures
of the past
and passing days
from
Planisphere (pp. 21 – 22)
THE GRACIOUS
SILHOUETTE OF . . . WHAT?
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
The
great
document
Gosh it feels so good
to
be
someone
Someone said
return
us
to
our
love
plants and fireman
clam-sized
citizens
from
Planisphere
HAIBUN
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
I can never
walk
through
the space
between us
the interesting objects
waiting to be
the intellectual world
But poverty
shall
surprise us
I must be heightened
by
instinct
even
forced to
invent the process
I am first person
sexual
born
to inspect
the
collection
as though it were a
point of pain the
possibility of
pain
to have written
something profitable
in winter
I
did walk once, for a
time, in some sort
of frostbitten
world
But I was not abandoned.
from
A Wave
CARD OF THANKS
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
Asked if he
liked her
he
galloped away like
a sheep
She went and
sat beside
the
violet rocks
the sublime facades
He was hissing like a vulture
It
seemed
whatever
was his
the rhetoric in the now
the
reimbursement across the shirt
of an even bigger sea
was sorted out
and blotted
with a wand;
a beautiful disease
from Quick Question
WORDS TO THAT EFFECT
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
You remember
how it
was
the week
we
talked about
deforestation.
How sad.
I walked you to your
door.
Voices
on the periphery.
from Quick Question
A SMALL TABLE IN THE STREET
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
Less and less
the cheap shots,
a powerful
effusiveness
firecrackers
maybe
I see
this strange
thing:
The
wind
refuses
to grovel
when it seems appropriate
to do so
The old
excuses
are
not
real life
from A Worldly Country
TO REDOUTE
(an Ashbery erasure poem)
To true roses uplifted on the bilious tide
of evening
And
morning glory
seeds:
I am
light forever
Or back into
night,
magenta
in
the
grave
from
The Tennis Court Oath
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