‘I could pull off an insecurity’ by E. Kristin Anderson
On the velvet streets, a magnetic girlhood
wants to risk that irreverent love. A little sweet,
one might expect frivolity – the devil, the tease,
the uniform, Peter Pan. My hands hide winter,
my legs wear ribbon.
The effect: a wink of myself,
accusing the street, mistaken for mature beauty.
Mourn adolescence, fly. Hold weird romance,
a taste for darkness, in standard riffs.
When something dovetailed nicely, candy hearts
a revelation, one beauty made Saturdays for
all the virgins, the dark angels, the nymphs.
Our vision informed the innocent, being visible
to the first person to act on Bambi legs,
layering mess, pleasure, twentieth-century life.
Girls are just girls –
skirts, symmetry, mystery. Young. Knowing.
A naïve promise still to come.
This is an erasure poem. Source material: ‘Lolita for Life’ by Stephanie LaCava. Elle, September 2014, pages 272-276.
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.
