s no s                        laves s                          in nest/s with
                in come sir                                  my lie
                                                ge lord it i
                                 s now y/                                 our turn co
                me b                        e me rains fa
                            ll no wa                            ter in t me and p
lay your p
                                          art the sun ros                                  he t
                ub                                                                under sk
                            in sin for                          ty days fo
     rty nigh                          ts forty ce                             dis for forty
                sins j'aim                            faim j'ai
                                faim god of                            spire spes and p
          raise turn and                          turn the bo                               nes sing
                               a son                                  g of wa
                                         ter a wat                                er so
                     ng sin                         g song sin                          g song de
                               fend the d                           ead & sin n
         o sin sin                           g the bo                               nes h/o
                        me what w                         ill my b                               ones say h
                                         ow do the                        y forty we
               eks come to t                        erm shh au                                  di can you
                                       not he                           ar from the de
                                                  ep the voi
                        ces not sir                                                ens we are a
      t sea the d                                            art of my sto
                                         ry stings i me
                      ant no harm                                         no hurt res







                                          cue us rag                                        and bone men in
               dict the a                                           ge pears in g
                              in in                    wine win                                ter wine and y
                                      ou Ruth                              this story ne
                   sts in the ne               t the we                                    b of ti
                                       me tam                p it down do
                                                  use the flam                 e of this ta
               le what pro                                      fit me if mon               coeur non est
                                 we wind o                                       ur way sub
                                                                    water o
                                       nly the bone                                       s of the sh
                     ip their e                          yes dart this
                                   way and th                                                              at soft so
                                                                                   ft they ro
                         am the ship                                                            their cri
                                                            es grate on me
                                          y ears drag                                the dee
                                                            p for the b                            ones of my so
                              ul their sou                                  ls cast the n
                                                    et wide to the d                             eep men to the
                     p and a                                             tot of ru
                                           m...

From Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip. Copyright © 2008 by M. NourbeSe Philip. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved.

We must ask ourselves                         what purpose is
ultimately served by this                                 suspension of
all the accepted                                              unities
if, in the end, we return to                               the unities
that we pretended to question                at the outset.
        In fact,
the systemic erasure of                         all given unities
enables us first of all                                       to restore to
the statement                                                 the specificity
of its occurrence,                                  and to show
        that                                                       discontinuity
is one of those great                                       accidents
        that                                             create cracks

not only in the geology                          of history,
but also in the simple                                      fact
of the statement;

it emerges in its historical     irruption;
what we try to examine is     the incision

that it
makes, that
          irreducible—                                  and very often tiny
                                                      —emergence.
However banal it may be,
however unimportant its consequences may appear to be,
however quickly it may be forgotten after its appearance,
however little heard or however badly deciphered
                                                 we may suppose it to be,

a statement is always an event

that neither the language (langue) nor the meaning
                                                    can quite exhaust.
It is certainly a strange event:
first, because on the one hand
                                           it is linked to the gesture of
                                           writing or to the articulation of

speech,
            and also on the other hand
it opens up to itself a residual                                      existence
in the field of a memory, or in the materiality of            manuscripts,
books, or any other form of recording;
secondly, because, like every
event,

                        it is unique, yet subject to repetition, transformation, and reactivation;
thirdly, because it is linked not only to the situations that provoke it, and to the consequences
that it gives rise to, but at the same time, and in accordance with a quite different modality, to
the statements that precede and
                                                                                      follow it.

Copyright © 2011 by Vanessa Place. Used with permission of the author.

—The "Miranda Rights," established 1966

You have the right to remain
anything you can and will be.

An attorney you cannot afford
will be provided to you.

You have silent will.
You can be against law.
You cannot afford one.

You remain silent. Anything you say
will be provided to you.

The right can and will be
against you. The right provided you.

Have anything you say be
right. Anything you say can be right.

Say you have the right attorney.
The right remain silent.

Be held. Court the one. Be provided.
You cannot be you.

Copyright © 2012 by Charles Jensen. Used with permission of the author.

(Haiku Erasure of Lord Byron's "Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed from a Skull")

Start spirit; behold
the skull. A living head loved
earth. My bones resign

the worm, lips to hold
sparkling grape's slimy circle,
shape of reptile's food.

Where wit shone of shine,
when our brains are substitute,
like me, with the dead,

life's little, our heads
sad. Redeemed and wasting clay
this chance. Be of use.

Copyright © 2012 by Ravi Shankar. Used with permission of the author.

When children can no longer devote sympathy, owing to growing up. One mind always engaged or found with labor in order to be. Later on the trees acquired winter. Sent and took and did not go out. The weight of never shedding. We anticipated a cure if come willingly. We were unable to carry out nature. These impressions, fresh, often made me to see his life previous, the principal sadness I had to recognize.

We planted trees. We cleared the pond. Gathered different, undisturbed faith. Gradually the steps further and further withdrawing over the hills, beyond the fencerow. I was too
weak. I was often driven, but saw no way. I would never go back.

The difference, between us, not because I remained the same, unable to unalter, but taken from the midst, rarely clouded, and the broken. It was this, which woke me open, opened
to an outsider, a stranger.

Copyright © 2014 by Carrie Olivia Adams. Used with permission of the author.

An erasure of Grant Allen’s Recalled to Life

I don’t believe
I thought

or gave names
in any known language.

I spoke
of myself always

in the third person.
What led up to it,

I hadn’t the faintest idea. 
I only knew the Event

itself took place. Constant
discrepancies. To throw them

off, I laughed,
talked—all games

and amusements—to escape
from the burden of my own

internal history. 
But I was there

trying for once
to see you,

longed so
to see you.

I might meet you
in the street:

a bicycle leaning
up against the wall

by the window. Rendered
laws of my country

played before my face. 
Historical, two-souled,

forgotten, unknown
freaks of memory.
 
The matter of debts,
the violent death

of a near relation,
and all landing

at the faintest conception.
Dark. Blue. And then.

All I can remember
is when I saw you. 

It was you
or anyone else. 

The shot
seemed to end

all. It belongs
to the New World:

the Present
all entangled, unable

to move. Everything
turned round

and looked
at you.

Copyright © 2017 by Robin Coste Lewis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 5, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

200 cows         more than 600 hilly acres

            property would have been even larger
had  J not sold 66 acres to DuPont for
                      waste from its Washington Works factory
where J was employed        
                                                did not want to sell
            but needed money   poor health         
mysterious ailments

Not long after the sale cattle began to act
deranged     
                          footage shot on a camcorder
grainy               intercut with static         
Images jump repeat      sound accelerates        
      slows down          
                    quality of a horror movie

the rippling shallow water       the white ash
      trees shedding their leaves 
                                                      a large pipe
discharging green water      
                                                  a skinny red cow
hair missing      back humped  
                                               
a dead black calf in snow         its eye
      a brilliant chemical blue    

                                            a calf’s bisected head       
      liver     heart    stomachs    kidneys           
              gall bladder      some dark      some green                  

cows with stringy tails         malformed hooves           
      lesions      red receded eyes        suffering   slobbering       
                  staggering like drunks

It don’t look like
                               anything I’ve been into before

                                   

I began rising through the ceiling of each floor in the hospital as though I were being pulled by some force outside my own volition. I continued rising until I passed through the roof itself and found myself in the sky. I began to move much more quickly past the mountain range near the hospital and over the city. I was swept away by some unknown force, and started to move at an enormous speed. Just moving like a thunderbolt through a darkness.

 

R’s taking on the case I found to be inconceivable

It just felt like the right thing to do
                                                                   a great
opportunity to use my background for people who
                                really needed it          

                                R: filed a federal suit 
                                         pulled permits  
                                             land deeds    
                                                     a letter that mentioned
a substance at the landfill     
                                                 PFOA          
                               perfluorooctanoic acid

a soap-like agent used in
                                              ScotchgardTM
                                                                         TeflonTM

PFOA:                 was to be incinerated or
                              sent to chemical waste facilities     
                                    not to be flushed into water or sewers

DuPont:
                 pumped hundreds of thousands of pounds
                          into the Ohio River    
                 dumped tons of PFOA sludge
                          into open unlined pits 

PFOA:
               increased the size of the liver in rats and rabbits         
                                  (results replicated in dogs)
               caused birth defects in rats      
               caused cancerous testicular pancreatic and
                             liver tumors in lab animals      
               possible DNA damage from exposure 
               bound to plasma proteins in blood     
               was found circulating through each organ       
               high concentrations in the blood of factory workers   
               children of pregnant employees had eye defects          
               dust vented from factory chimneys settled well-beyond
                            the property line
               entered the water table
               concentration in drinking water 3x international safety limit
               study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer
               worth $1 billion in annual profit
 

(It don’t look like anything I’ve been into before)      

 

Every individual thing glowed with life. Bands of energy were being dispersed from a huge universal heartbeat, faster than a raging river. I found I could move as fast as I could think.

 

DuPont:
               did not make this information public
               declined to disclose this finding       
               considered switching to new compound that appeared less toxic
                        and stayed in the body for a much shorter duration of time
               decided against it
               decided it needed to find a landfill for toxic sludge
               bought 66 acres from a low-level employee
                        at the Washington Works facility
 

(J needed money         
                                         had been in poor health     
a dead black calf              
                                         its eye chemical blue          
cows slobbering               
                                         staggering like drunks)

 

I could perceive the Earth, outer space, and humanity from a spacious and indescribable ‘God’s eye view.’ I saw a planet to my left covered with vegetation of many colors no signs of mankind or any familiar shorelines. The waters were living waters, the grass was living, the trees and the animals were more alive than on earth.

                                   
D’s first husband had been a chemist
                                                                          When you
worked at DuPont in this town you could have
everything you wanted
                                       DuPont paid for his education          
secured him a mortgage           paid a generous salary 
even gave him a free supply of PFOA

 

He explained that the planet we call Earth really has a proper name, has its own energy, is a true living being, was very strong but has been weakened considerably.
 

                                                              which she used
as soap in the family’s dishwasher       

 

I could feel Earth’s desperate situation. Her aura appeared to be very strange, made me wonder if it was radioactivity. It was bleak, faded in color, and its sound was heart wrenching.

 

                                                Sometimes
her husband came home sick—fever, nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting—‘Teflon flu’

             an emergency hysterectomy
                                                                   a second surgery          

 

I could tell the Doctor everything he did upon my arrival down to the minute details of accompanying the nurse to the basement of the hospital to get the plasma for me; everything he did while also being instructed and shown around in Heaven.
 

Clients called R to say they had received diagnoses of cancer
         or that a family member had died

                  W who had cancer had died of a heart attack

            Two years later W’s wife died of cancer

They knew this stuff was harmful
            and they put it in the water anyway
 

I suspect that Earth may be a place of education.
 

PFOA detected in:
                                American blood banks    
                                blood or vital organs of:
                                                                            Atlantic salmon
                                                                            swordfish
                                                                            striped mullet
                                                                            gray seals
                                                                            common cormorants
                                                                            Alaskan polar bears
                                                                            brown pelicans
                                                                            sea turtles
                                                                            sea eagles
                                                                            California sea lions      
                                                                            Laysan albatrosses on a wildlife refuge
                                                                                          in the middle of the North Pacific       Ocean;>


Viewing the myriad human faces with an indescribable, intimate, and profound love. This love was all around me, it was everywhere, but at the same time it was also me.

 

                                      We see a situation

        that has gone

                                from Washington Works
 

All that was important in life was the love we felt.
 

                                                                                          to statewide
 

All that was made, said, done, or even thought without love was undone.

 

                                     to everywhere
 

                  it’s global

                                  

In my particular case, God took the form of a luminous warm water. It does not mean that a luminous warm water is God. It is just that, for me, it was experiencing the luminous warm water that I felt the most connection with the eternal.

Copyright © 2017 Tracy K. Smith. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 17, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets. “Watershed” appears in Wade in the Water, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in April 2018.

redacted from Smith’s Quarto, or Second Book in Geography, 1848, p. 17

     division

     division

                           general divisions

                  opposite
cluster     clusters         What considerable number

 

Where is
                           Where is Cape Farewell?

 

What sound leads into            the largest

         What  What  What  What

Boundaries  Bound United      Bound
          the    New    ?       Bound      possessions?

        What  What  What  What

prevails

        What  What  What  What

races  What   race    ?

Copyright © 2017 Elizabeth Bradfield. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in Tin House, Winter 2017.

The removal of aliens who pose  
[      	 ] shall be ICE’s high [      	 ]
 
These aliens include  [      	 ]
engaged in or suspected of
[      	 ] or who otherwise pose
 
[      	 ] aliens convicted of [      	 ]
particular emphasis [      	 ] and repeat
 
aliens [      	 ] who participated [      	 ]
[       	] subject to outstanding [      	 ]
who otherwise pose [      	 ]  to public safety.
 
 
Aliens who are [       	]  otherwise
obstruct [       	]  fugitive aliens,
in descending priority as [      	 ]
aliens who pose [      	 ]  security;

[      	 ]  or who otherwise pose [      	 ]        	
the community; [      	 ] other than [      	 ];
and [      	 ] who have not been [      	 ];
 
aliens who reenter [      	 ]  in descending
priority as [      	 ]  aliens who pose [      	 ]  
previously removed [      	 ] who other-
wise pose [      	 ]  to the community;

previously removed [      	 ] who have not been
convicted of [      	 ] who obtain
admission or status by [      	 ] ;
otherwise  [  

Copyright © 2018 by David Buuck. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 8, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.

I am white       where it matters        in front of the
camera     I am an egg             a cobweb          when
my mother calls        me Haloul       I pretend not
to hear                here I am a résumé                 doll
gown of paper            checklist             piss in a cup
I was afraid          of my body                        but not
anymore           now there’s respect              this bitch
pantyless                      humming           louder than
the                    machine            I am white         when
asked to be                   storyboarding             my own
grandmother      into a                         poem           here I am
meet cute           between              egg &           song

Copyright © 2019 by Hala Alyan. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 14, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets

an erasure from the history section of the Anglican Trust for Women and Children’s website

a      constant danger—

people who desire

                                 exceptional experience

in     controlling     girls

                                            nature and scope of work

and        milk

Copyright © 2019 Chloe Honum. Used with permission of the author. This poem originally appeared in The Southern Review, Winter 2019.