Tag: erasure

Two Poems by Lisa Beech Hartz

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Francesca Is Complicit
After Amy Sherlock, “Multiple Expeausures:
Identity and Alterity in the ‘Self-Portraits
of Francesca Woodman,” 2013, an erasure

The nude hovers

between flesh and ideal.

Always an external gaze

complicit. The tactile

apprehension –

sensation of intimacy

thwarted. A mourning.

The withdrawal caught:

every gesture suspended.

The nude crumbling blurs

the doorframe. The threshold

never there.

*

Francesca Is, Francesca Does
After John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972, an erasure

A woman is
different. Her attitude
defines what can
be done to her.
Her gestures, voice,
a kind of
aura. To be born
a woman
into the keeping
of men. A self
split must watch
herself:
her image of herself
walking,
weeping. Walking
or weeping.
Everything she is,
she does. Men
survey women.
Women must
contain, interiorize.
Demonstrate
what is and is not
permissible. Women
watch themselves
being looked at:
She turns herself
into an object.
The nude aware
of nakedness
is not as naked.
The mirror
in her hand –

*

Lisa Beech Hartz directs Seven Cities Writers Project which brings writing workshops to underserved communities. She guides poetry workshops for men and women in two city jails. Erasure and ekphrastic poems are among her writers’ favorite ways to create new work. She is the author of The Goldfish Window (Grayson Books, 2018) and These Kismets (CutBank Books, 2025).

Stand by Tina Em

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An erasure poem of Trump's deferred resignation letter he sent to federal employees. Poet Tina Em has created an erasure poem that speaks truth to power. Link to the letter: https://www.opm.gov/fork

Tina Em (she/her), born in poverty, raised in a bi-racial family, serves others through her professional life as an engineer and innovator in federal public health workforce, and in her personal life as a volunteer, tutor, and writer.  Her first published poem, A Time to Rest, commemorated the bicentennial of Harriet Tubman in The Ekphrastic Review in 2022. Her recent work will appear in the 2023 Maryland Bards Poetry Anthology. Tina was awarded Honorable Mention for flash nonfiction essay in the Bethesda Local Artist Showcase in 2023. Tina co-led the Bethesda Poetry Group sponsored by The Writer’s Center, where she has been an active member since 2019. Tina is currently writing a poetry manuscript and a novel. She lives with her family in Rockville, MD.