Two Poems, by E. Kristin Anderson

SHE SEEMED HYSTERICAL

With siren and flashes I was
trying to raise flames—

I couldn’t spread heat, flying isolated
and dead in this part of town.

I know you had a smash, lurched
out of shadows like trace memory.

As an amorous swain might,
all the plugs buzz buzz buzz.

Like an echo, teeth climbedover elms in town,
one last cruise down the sidewalk.

You see, I do get blood on your floor.
Surge over the national dance—

             we’re going to be worse than arson.

This is an erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Carrie. New York: Anchor, 2011. 228-235. Print.

BUTTERFLIES BEHIND HER SKULL

                  Helpless, sweating,
every climax      filled musical
               difference—
                     all the difference.

Aftermath flying in the face
of logic       with mixed metaphor,
       raised voices
           (convocations)     (bitter)
swallow trappings of Ouija boards,
floating irresponsibly—the outcome
                    of an earthquake.

The natural is to react,
               the truth
                   in the living room
          singing,          lower lights burning,
                pumping a new dress
                beneath the song.

God at work: the Earth, sinner.

This is an erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Carrie. New York: Anchor, 2011. 58-59. Print.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet, Prince fan, Starbucks connoisseur, and glitter enthusiast living in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She the co-editor of Dear Teen Me and her next anthology, Hysteria: Writing the female body, is forthcoming from Sable Books. She is currently curating Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture. Her writing has been published worldwide in magazines and anthologies and she is the author of seven chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks), Pray Pray Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), and We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press). Kristin is an editor and designer at Red Paint Hill and was formerly a poetry editor at Found Poetry Review. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She now works during daylight as a freelance editor and writing coach. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.