A prompt from Maureen Thorson.
“Write your own blackout poem. Maybe you’ll find something of interest in the Internet Archives.”
According to Claire McNerney, from The Writing Cooperative, “blackout poetry is a form of found poetry where the poet takes a text and removes words from it, creating a new text”.
Here’s mine:
She looked like a goddess,
no doubt,
in another way,
she seemed very much a woman.
She was primitive,
casual
in her childlike uncovering of her body,
in the unconcern of the eyes of others
when she bathed.
She knew that she was beautiful;
and she had knowledge of the power
of beauty.
She watched a wild goose fly overhead,
watched it as it disappeared from sight.
“Tell me,” she said, “where did I come from?”
Needling of apprehension through my body.
How much she should be told
was not easy to determine.
“From across the sea.”
“It must have been long ago.”
“Yes. It was long ago.”
Isabelle Palerma
Isabelle Palerma 