NVN Monday: Erasure Poems, ie Poems About Erasures

“To The Pencil” by Tricia Knoll and “What Doesn’t Vanish If Denied” by Devon Balwit

TO THE PENCIL

by Tricia Knoll

after Elon Musk’s posting on Xwitter the video of Milton Friedman’s use of a pencil to explain world trade.

*

Erasing seems obsolete. We delete,
Seldom switch away rubbery debris.
(Some poets cross-hatch
the words they want to keep
but know should go,
gimmick-choice.)
 
To mistakes with no reminders.
Paper without blemishes. 
 
School bus yellow
and shades of graphite
smog on a very hard day 
 
but the pencil has come of age—
icon of interdependence, 
cedar and rubber, metal tourniquet
 
around tariffs in supply chains
that bind rebounding erasures 
of migrants, protestors, equity, 
inclusion, earned retirement security,
health care and the welfare
of children. 

The pencil writes Chinese
as well as English. 

*

Tricia Knoll grimaces at the Trumpian erasures of truth, of people, of traditions, and promises. She writes dozens of postcards to elected officials using pens so as not to be completely erased.

*

WHAT DOESN’T VANISH IF DENIED

by Devon Balwit

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

*

Department of Commerce announces the end of $4 million in funding of climate risk projects at Princeton. —Daily Princetonian, April 9, 2025

*

The prevailing wisdom used to be to hide 
the ailment from the ailing and, in so euphemizing,
ease their dying, like a fringe of trees beside
the road used to mask clear-cutting.
 
But the patient, intimate with tumors and waning powers, 
knew, and felt the greater pain for all 
the smiling, for all the cheery cards and flowers,
and wondered at the falsehood, and was appalled.
 
And we, too, as we hear our current leaders
asking scholars to deny how far gone
we are so we mightn’t worry—as if our rivers
weren’t in flood or our homes burned to the lawns.
 
As if insisting there’s no such thing as gravity,
makes the times we’re living in less heavy.

*

Devon Balwit edits for Asimov Press, Asterisk Magazine, and Works in Progress.