Erased

an erasure created from the text of a July 3,
2021 Washington Post article on the
planned demolition of the collapsed
Champlain Towers condominium in
Surfside, Florida

What is left is fragile.
Wind, rain, and fire

move faster. A cost
is coming to the coast—

flooding, wreckage, disaster.
Can we make revisions

to a month, a day,
a morning—collapse

time, the need to be
in motion? Hope,

memory, everyone
we know—that is

what’s left, what’s left
to implode.

Erin’s Murphy’s work has appeared in The Best of Brevity, Ecotone, The Georgia Review, Rattle, Women’s Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, most recently Fluent in Blue (Grayson Books). She is professor of English at Penn State Altoona. www.erin-murphy.com