‘Catch me in a lie.’ by E. Kristin Anderson

Still standing they got into high beams, ghastly
blacks and whites, stains of creation in a scream.
Reflexes popped some old man-eater, swelled
louder like a radio full frozen in motion. O, my heart,
my heart in half a circle this is accelerating, neon
detonation split open and bloomed going nowhere.
I’m all wrong, I see stars, look and die. Found at
two o’clock on the burning sky pure arithmetic
passed and smiled, the end of heroine, Miss Sixteen,
ever burned out, gone to murder. Prosaic cancer
can kill you, in instant weirdness, impossible
in the strong light past the tangle of doubt in the grass.
A hundred man hunters give up the juniper bushes,
like the night crying in half-doze, following miles
out to the country. Shivering, the angel’s shadow
is time – the colour of his eyes a bullet in the head.
The American girl has worked the nightmare.
I’ve told you – I love by the road, this distance,
this fire the power that climbed for the truth.

This is an erasure poem. Source material: King, Stephen. Carrie. New York: Anchor, 2011. 260-270. Print.

From issue #5: autumn/winter 2017

About the Author
E. Kristin Anderson is the author of eight chapbooks of poetry and editor of three non-fiction anthologies. She is the poetry editor for Found Poetry Review and her work has appeared widely.