Honourable mention in the 1st Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest.

With­ my being allowed to eat
the ser­vants, I felt sorry I had
in my pos­ses­sion a curi­ous
Japanese sword—broad,
three-sided in the blade, and
in shape, a mov­ing snake;
this cir­cumstance gave
the weapon great value. For
sev­eral days, they con­tin­ued
to visit the house, bring­ing
along with them some fresh
com­pan­ion.

Erasure poetry is created by starting with an existing text and erasing bits in such a way that the words left in place take on new shapes and meanings. For the 1st Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest, we posted an excerpt from Roughing It in the Bush by Susanna Moodie, a memoir written in 1852.