Day 11 ... NaPoWriMo / Poem-a-Day 2026 / Stafford 85

Welcome back, friends! My poem today is #85 in this year's Stafford Challenge (and #450, including last year's poem count). Maureen Thorson’s NaPoWriMo prompt: “Erasure poetry — also known as blackout poetry — is written by taking an existing text and erasing or blacking out individual words. . . . Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own erasure/blackout poem.” Robert Lee Brewer’s Poem-a-Day suggestion: “For today's prompt, write a home poem.” I'm combining both prompts, as I always try to do. I'm working with a page from Richard Hugo's wonderful book The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing (1979). My poem is a blackout/erasure poem but I've not done any blacking out or erasing; instead I've left the original text visible and circled the found words and phrases that make up the poem. —Draft by Vince Gotera    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] About his poem today, Alan told me, "I have been reading Mary Karr lately, and I especially appreciate “The Blessed Mother Complains to the Lord Her God on the Abundance of Brokenness She Receives,” and it of course in these times led me to think of another mother named Mary. The Blessed Mother Complains to the Lord Her God on the Abundance of Brokenness She Receives [Mary Redacted] By Mary Karr Today I heard a rich and hungry boy verbatim quote all last night’s infomercials — an anorectic son who bought with Daddy’s Amex black card the Bowflex machine and Abdomenizer, plus a steak knife that doth slice the inner skin of   his starving arms. Poor broken child of   Eve myself, to me, the flightless fly, the listing, blistered, scalded. I am the rod to their lightning. Mine is the earhole their stories pierce. At my altar the blouse is torn open and the buttons sailed across the incensed air space of the nave, that I may witness the mastectomy scars crisscrossed like barbed wire, like bandoliers. To me, the mother carries the ash contents of   the long-ago incinerated girl. She begs me for comfort since my own son was worse tortured. Justice, they wail for — mercy? Each prostrate body I hold my arms out for is a cross my son is nailed to. —Draft by Thomas Alan Holmes    [Do not copy or quote . . . thanks.] Alan, good job on your blackout poem. Thanks for dropping by, dear readers. See you again tomorrow! Friends, won’t you comment, please? Love to know what you’re thinking. Thanks! Ingat, everyone.  ヅ