Assistant Editor Lisa Low: In “31” by Christian Aldana, the Henry we know from John Berryman’s The Dream Songs is revealed to be “a cockroach / & cannot govern.” A take on “Dream Song 31,” Aldana’s poem follows in a long line of erasure poems critiquing a found text—but unlike a traditional erasure, “31” reorders elements of the original text. This play on erasure effectively creates a new logic out of the old, and the writer’s process imagined by us as readers—erasing, revealing, separating, repurposing—is an implicit ars poetica of sorts. Through this transformation, Henry becomes both stubbornly Henry and the everyman who abuses power.
To hear Christian read his piece, click here:
31
take it from the increasingly fanatical, foolish americans;
Henry is a cockroach
& cannot govern.
His mind, in general,
did a rose-blue flame
as obvious as despair.
Henry rose,
kissing
himself
blue,
fixing his all on a flickt zippo.
Christian Aldana is a Bay Area native who is an MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. This piece is part of a larger collection of erasures of Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs that he aims to critique, compare to today, and obliterate. Find him @CdotdotdotA.
For more miCRo pieces, CLICK HERE
