Anonymous Thinks of Erasure
by Mary Moore
My tongue worries a molar
while I doodle the dream
catcher that webs
my window, fetish
against bad vibes
and spirits other than gin.
I look up. The overcast dulls
the tin-cigar stovepipe
next roof over but doesn’t erase it––
though that verb keeps rubbing
my mind right or wrong these days.
The wind says hush real loud,
a form of erasure,
or maybe it’s wash, wash,
a compulsive’s hash and rehash
or a mother’s. I wish my daughter whose
immune’s not well can wash
the viruses away.
The roof shingles next door
look like sideways book backs, shelved
on a slant, their author Anonymous,
her name weathered away.
I studied her once.
Now I’m doodling bed springs,
staircase spirals,
a tornado of zeros
until I bump
the page’s end or
the day’s—not a landscape
or even a word did I do.
So what if erase rubs them out?
They dervish, pirouette,
spiral an old phone cord,
betwisky, joining
daughter and mother whose talk
rings around the rosey
plague-sign. She used to sing
and whirl till vertigo
and all fall down.
May she be well:
May dancing’s blur be
her only erasure.
May she be and be and be.
