Erasure

By DAVID LIVEWELL

High up on fire escapes the schoolgirls clapped
erasers, chalk dust floating in a cloud,
the words and numbers scripted by the nuns
freed to autumnal treetops. Often girls
would stamp their names in chalk on the brick walls,
reminding us, like ashes, “dust to dust.”
Beneath this task the cemetery slept,
the Celtic crosses propped like dolmens on
a quiet glen in County Clare. Down steps
was the boys’ bathroom, just an outdoor shed
that froze in winter, stunk in spring. We feared
the dead might clench our ankles till they pulled
us down into their moss-furred crypts. When running
the slated path from school to shed, we glimpsed
a chiseled Irish name or cherub face that rain
and time attempted to erase. I sensed
the corpses’ slow decay, small piles of chalk,
the former schoolboys damned to run no more.

David Livewell is the author of Shackamaxon, winner of the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press.

[Click here to purchase your copy of Issue 07]

Erasure

Related Posts

The parthenon in Nashville

March 2024 Poetry Feature: New Poems by Our Contributors

MATT DONOVAN
On my flight to Nashville, after / telling me the Parthenon in his town was far better / than the one in Greece, the guy seated beside me / in the exit row swore that Athena was an absolute / can’t-miss must-see. Her eyes will see into your soul, / he said, no goddamn joke.

picture of a bible opened up

February 2024 Poetry Feature

CORTNEY LAMAR CHARLESTON
There was tear gas deployed without a tear. There were / rubber bullets fired from weapons that also fire lethal rounds. There were / armored vehicles steering through the streets of the capital that stars our maps. // What we saw was only new to the people it was new to.

Headshot of Anne Pierson Wiese

Sharp Shadows

ANNE PIERSON WIESE
On our kitchen wall at a certain time / of year appeared what we called the sharp / shadows. / A slant of western light found / its way through the brown moult of fire / escape hanging on to our Brooklyn rental / building for dear life and etched replicas / of everything