David Dodd Lee

Unlike the Camelopard

(an Ashbery erasure poem)

                  Anything too obvious

                     doesn’t know it’s

rented


                    property

      It

    must realize

      it wants

                   to be American

But in the end

                   it’s your mouth

we can’t abide

         sorrow shaking in the trees

from Quick Question

---

Mottled Tuesday

(an Ashbery erasure poem)

So     laughable

                   that

           shoal

                of references

I add to

       the pile

   my laundry   a point of departure,
   my white              swizzle stick

We’re

       bogus.

But sometimes, you know,

        we continue to

                   populate

        bizarre self-imaginings

Here’s hoping

            our units

     fold to mere

                   specters

The new day

                 is not

       able to make

                 a distinction.

from A Worldly Country

---

By Forced Marches

(an Ashbery erasure poem)

He

    of the slaughtered wilderness
    the dainty meadows

                       reached the

                   divided silence

                     a beacon loud

                 in the night

                                  no horizon

He severed

his fingers

         I squatted nearby

            We were

            prismatic

                      each afraid     alone

a certain

satisfaction

in the mirror

                   but in fragments

                   no fullness

only light

       sketched in

from Hotel Lautreamont