Early Season Erasures

This poem is informed by 90 poems written by young rural poets who most likely have never been to San Francisco or a museum, who live in their own anguish and imagination, often unheard by their parents and sometimes their teachers too. I publish their  poems each April in “Early Season,” Modoc County’s student poetry publication.

Rocks and bushes gasp for air,
for the beautiful sight
they would make it rain,
dress their brains with glittery
flan and jello. They put
on eyeliner for those who do not care
in seventh grade, not repeated
or recognizable, short or giraffes
locked in their arms, beat drums
on a roller coaster, scream,
watch birds die, shots ring,
they scatter, quack, scamper,
retreat white as teeth,
not yet a personality or commodified cult,
not spongy or artificial, flimsy or light,
not historical, cultural or physical,
to an end they don’t know of spaceships
fighting clouds, buildings on
mountains, bread, butter and pancakes.
A Chinese dragon, totem pole jungle gym,
go in through the mouth, wish, wait
for the clean call, the faux friends.
They pierce pieces of living hell, terror,
agony, scream from the furnace,
disassociate shoes, weird pens, paper,
cans of soup, under the care of demons in disguise,
99 percent soup, one percent themselves,
hot, dry, blue, dead, red.