Longlisted for the 2nd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest.

I heard he wants me to come

over and conversate, compliment me,

paint me, do whatever. I can’t help his celebrity

but I’m actually most alive

in my picture, a magnetic, inky thing.

Now he tails me: fame after its famous,

my friends. It’s an illusion:

they, like me, appear to be on this earth, people,

alive and fucking! Every era has its gag.

Mine exists at the back of your throat, a comet

soon gone, pulled from b-low, to the perfect end.

If he’s sore, let him be

an example for men.

Erasure poetry begins with removing letters and words from an existing text in order to create a new stand-alone piece that provides new meaning to the original passage. For the 2nd Annual Geist Erasure Poetry Contest, we posted an excerpt from the novel How Should a Person Be? by acclaimed Canadian author Sheila Heti.

The 3rd Erasure Poetry Contest is now underway. Enter today!