Two Erasures || The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot

Dion Farquhar 

Poetry

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An Erasure by the Sybil

Source text: The Waste Land, epigraph and Part I, The Burial of the Dead

the boys asked: What do you want?

         cruelest

Memory

Bin      keine    				echt 
                           
          I  was 

In

		much		    night, and 

Out 
broken

					no shelter

And 	dry	   no sound

				    fear in a handful of dust

          I could not

Speak				I was

							Nothing

Looking into 						     silence

leer

		to be
			
said she

I am forbidden  



myself


death	    undone 

And

										 
  up	          and down

            dead

			     	 disturbed

						       men

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An Erasure by Four Women

        Source text: The Waste Land, Part II, A Game of Chess

1. Cleopatra  

The she


	     a burnished throne

Glowed on the marble

Held up by standards	    	 fruited

			     peeped     out	

        eyes behind his

Doubled     flames

			   as     

       glitter    her

		   poured

In vials

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic

     	Liquid—troubled, confused

drowned the sense in odours

Burned	   and 	      framed

      Freshened

In fattening

 		 a window gave upon

	sad light

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2. Philomel

	barbarous king    

forced

Filled 			with inviolable voice

And still she cried

dirty 

withered stumps

     told			     staring forms


		           hushing	      enclosed

						her

Spread out

             Words,               savagely still

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3. The Woman

My nerves are bad              Stay with me.

Speak to me.

				     What thinking

I think we are    rats’

          Dead men lost

“What

			is

Nothing again nothing.

	Is there nothing in your head?


What shall I do now?

                out as I am			walk the street

         my hair down

       we shall play a game

			waiting

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4. Lil

	Husband

			I can’t bear to look at you.

					a straight look

no more

Oh is there

Then I’ll know who to thank

I can’t help it

     them 

				all right

             Sunday	was				hot

       Goonight.

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Dion Farquhar has recent poems in Non-Binary Review, Superpresent, Blind Field, Poesis, Cape Rock: Poetry, Poydras Review, Mortar, Local Nomad, Columbia Poetry Review, moria, Shifter, BlazeVOX, etc. Her third poetry book Don’t Bother is in press at Finishing Line Press, and she has three chapbooks. She works as an exploited adjunct at two universities, but still loves the classroom, and she is active in the University of California Santa Cruz adjunct union, the UC-AFT.