E. KRISTIN ANDERSON / 3 ERASURES
SUMMER AT LEAST
The lucky girl has to know all about flying—
I don’t know the moment, headed down exhaustion,
a dreamy voice wondering overnight, some half-remembered
ill. And beneath all that, a swelling inside the terror of half an hour.
Panic—
mostly just loving, hair perfect in sleep, hurt in the pocket—
how unexciting, a little mystic digging up fingernails.
Some things are coming on, remembered bizarre and pink,
paper spilling mild, like boredom on the lips. I’ll believe
this brave year just enough to keep the night. The medicine.
Lower in the clouds, safe and good like a smile. Sort of
hungry. The tapwater turning in the blood, the mad heart
close to pretty, my time flipped back. The world turned.
Nervous.
APPLE OVER AND OVER
Looking at the telephone, I find honey—a pattern in trouble,
a warm place to think. The dark drifted down, young, and I know
the little girl in the door. I’d stand echoing and grief-sick,
this cackling hello just the glass.
No one looked down;
her teeth felt dangerous, shoved the tide out the window.
Ready to fall, shoes burning, I felt God running toward
the profane, carrying the sea like a vicious animal. By morning
eyes opened surreal—a vault I left to the night of uneasy spirits.
The sidewalk ended silver, reflected the cold of five years
again in the dead.
SEMIHYSTERIA
I blew sparks into feathers,
my lips white and stony, looking over
my shoulder at never the one never in the road
not on any map. In five years it’s the sound
of sirens, the hesitant sunlight knotted
around the trees. A little farther on the radio sent
a little girl,
buzzed across the room, this pulse at peace,
one eye on the dying.
A little girl
can survive without being seen, but
a doll can, too, loosened in water. Heavy,
a yellow sign, a dozen keys, a daughter
popped open like a winter storm—I dreamed
of birth and lightning, a second New England
to keep under the stairs.
Source material: King, Stephen. Firestarter. New York: Pocket, 1981. 8-20 (“Summer at Least”); 28-41 (“Apple Over and Over”); 171-203 (“Semihysteria”). Print.
E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), We’re Doing Witchcraft (Porkbelly Press) and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press). She is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Porkbelly Press. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker. Find her on Twitter at @ek_anderson.