• Alexandra Lewis

Erasure from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

 

 

EDITOR, NOW:

Freakish willingness arouses

raw quality nostalgia.

 

Amusement gave me the first hint.

 

Chronology breaks down. Born, dies,

ill, ill, removed: idiosyncratic.

Attends, joins, once again returns.

Regularizing, censoring.

Saga breaks down.

 

(Let me advise you, let me plot

to introduce you to explicit detail)

 

 

INTERPRETER, THEN:

Notice pleasure –

stimulus - pleasure -

show each other what we wrote.

 

Ambiguous, Christian, women;

the weapon. Not true praise: hard work.

 

Zest obtruded. Hard refusal.

Querulous sympathies

touched the wall.

 

Prepare our minds:

(Preface this; Notice that;)

What more shall I unbend?

 

Demon life – Afreet –

If the result be attractive?

Blooming close.

 

Who is coward now?

 

 

ERASURE, TO THE LETTER:

The colours of the rainbow resemble

their tongues. Black eyes; blue

conversation Throttler.

 

Execute intention,

tarnish and dust.

 

Doleful intervals. Direct me

to self-respect. Obey your lock,

your bolt; omit the look

 

double-edged spring knife!

That great tempter, to

Thwart, Kill, Fight,

Love: Instrument of Horror.

 

I’ll make the porridge’- out of habit.

I should proxy

I hate

I wretch

I shall expect

 

           what rough beast? Not a foliage,

           but flint, rock. Devil’s spies.

           Arm me at the window for

           zealous fevered hammering;

           rappings and counter-rappings.

 

           A shower of my blood-drops ghosts the bog.

 

           Dark track beneath the lug-hole.

           Blade thrown in, those hands,

           and back again. Constrict. Release.

           Weary of hanging, I’d stretch

           that artery, myself,

           across the restless grave;

           embalm my own heart

           laughing reckless as a dog.

 

 

Nerves pinched tight for the cut.

                                                      I must away.

Slit. Pain, flow. Rattle; twitch.

 

                                                      Summons the blot.

Out, Gimmerton bell, Out.

                                                      Run, wild hares.

 

 

I was not aware how openly I grieved.