1. The Grand Erasure Step One

I laid out several recentish collections of poetry on my desk, and then formed them into a pile. I picked up the top book, and looked for words in the text that made for an interesting line, and then kept going until I was done with that particular poem. Then I grabbed the second book, shuffling the pile immediately. You don't have to do any of this. I just wanted to make this totally random.

I am writing these poems in a notebook which I've called "What I'm Currently Reading". I write each mini-erasure in one color ink pen, switching colors every time I switch books.

I haven't finished my poem yet, but here are my first two pages of mined lines/stanzas, and the corresponding text they came from:

Logic is ten percent recovered from bone
opened to crude reason

The brain monsters a residence
in the captive ritual of absence

imagine your head is god
soft fontanels of youth
break this smoking hole
beyond churchless quiet

deliver me past noticed
the abandoned bed of shy recognition
                                                 No
                                                 wonder

These days you sleep in an older language
Nothing pretending to be sick but comfortable

Behind angry forgiveless power
each death: a lost howling

There is no ruthless in blame
who sang a permission of filling pages

I'm barely made of childhoods
a form of architecture I found ragged

If I scratched forth yesterday's treachery
by factually exposing each death defying twitch
If I interrupt a word in fullest wiggling tumble
feathers made of plastic grace
singing clamor and providence
fragment unthreatened as a tombstone
dug up in sin

I am transparent in summer
Always speckled weird that tastes superior
I wonder if some seaside faded fireflies
will calmly mention the sleep they do not believe will arrive

---

Poems excised from:

1. Sam Sax "On Trepenation" (http://www.wintertangerine.com/on-trepanation/)

2. Rachel McKibbens "Deeper Than Dirt" (https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/deeper-dirt)

3. Major Jackson "Dreams Of Permanence" (https://newrepublic.com/article/61818/dreams-permanence)

4. Matthew Zapruder "Poem For Massachusetts" (http://floatingwolfquarterly.com/5/matthew-zapruder/5/poem-for-massachusetts)

6. Rachel McKibbens "Letter From My Brain To My Heart" (http://quondam-dreams.blogspot.com/2013/03/you-have-my-permission-not-to-love-mei.html)

7. Li-Young Lee "Trading For Heaven" (https://books.google.com/books?id=W2WcAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=li young+lee+trading+for+heaven&source=bl&ots=65nbEzC0w3&sig=h0RkP4aLLzGb0wdWuraPQJIxxYI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiG8aKSmbPYAhUQMd8KHexGAlUQ6AEISTAF#v=onepage&q=li-young%20lee%20trading%20for%20heaven&f=false)

8. William L. Boyd "Backup For A University"

9. Patricia Lockwood "The Hunt For A Newborn Gary" (https://books.google.com/books?id=g7SKDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=patricia+lockwood+hunt+for+a+newborn+gary&source=bl&ots=fp-3C-zzQS&sig=pjvUfxocm0oC9hY6xB68W2BLIY8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiFg6b7mbPYAhVCZN8KHXThAfgQ6AEILjAB#v=onepage&q=patricia%20lockwood%20hunt%20for%20a%20newborn%20gary&f=false)

10. Danez Smith "Faggot Or When The Front Goes Up"

11. Matthew Zapruder "I Drink Bronze Light" (https://pen.org/i-drink-bronze-light/)

12. Major Jackson "Tour Of The Food Distribution Point, Ifo"