A phantom grace: three blackout/erasures of Sylvia Plath poems

Source material: Sylvia Plath’s Sleep in the Mojave Desert from Crossing the Water

Source material: Sylvia Plath's Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond

Source material: Sylvia Plath's Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest

Ghost Priest

A sliding haze

in dark-webbed branches



     wavering gauze-edged, inhabited

     by a voice furred with frost,



a haunt of gilded questions.

love gnaws me


     a phantom

     grace             splits from that pale mist.







*Illustration of erasure*


An erasure of Sylvia Plath's Dialogue Between Ghost and Priest

Sleep

Out here,


             It is dangerous.



mad men inhabit the blue hour,



glittery fictions glide

In the crevice of shadow


comfortless as firedogs in the wind.


here,

heat-cracked crickets

creep into our hair.

 
 
 
*
 
 
 
Erasure of Sylvia Plath's Sleep in the Mojave Desert from Crossing the Water

Bonewhite light - A Plath Cento

Something else hauls me through air——


Listen: these are its hooves:


A bonewhite light

behind all things.

The low smokes roll from me like Isadora’s scarves.


A life baptized in no-life for a while,


the spirit

escapes like steam.



Tonight it has receded like a ship's light.


I can't get it out of my mind.





*





This is a cento constructed with lines from Sylvia Plath's poems from Ariel: Ariel, Elm, Fever 103, and poems from Crossing the Water: Insomniac, Last Words, The Surgeon at 2 a.m., Zoo keeper's Wife