Dodo Eraser

(Knowing more about Nancy Guthrie than one’s own parents/grandparents)

Magic-marker advice I found taped to my forehead:
If grandma is abducted and she is
-n’t recognised or her family are losers/
Nobodies—in your micro or macro nations
Or those others that occasionally guest star—
, She’s fucked, was never there
—What, grandma? What grandma?—.

Another disappeared disappearance,
An abducted abduction. Sorry, but, all of this
Is 110% true. It’s true, totes true! The 98%
Being buried alive—what
Is spawned in, squids out
Of, sandbag lungs?—

In a sepia township
Impaled with the name
Of Somewhere, Arizona.
When did we last recall anything
More than desiccation, desertion—whatever

The word is—? Surely, finally, the sun will set
Today? At least come midnight? I need to achieve
Some stardom this week, right now, last year. Then
—Since we cured death ages ago—

I definitely won’t die and “I” won’t die for
At least a few smoothed eternities, and
If not, somehow, then I’ll be, like,

An exceptional exception, a
Symbol of something,

You know.

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Brighton Grace is a 24-year-old queer writer from Sydney, Australia, currently based on Gadigal land. Seeking to preserve audience autonomy, his writings offer refractions of contemporary concerns and excavations of hidden feelings. He has been or will be featured in the Cordite Poetry Review, Soft Union, Maudlin House, Westerly, and Scissors & Spackle. You can sometimes find him scavenging the wasteland of Twitter for book recommendations @BrightonGrace37, or eroding his attention span on the marginally less problematic option of Instagram under the username brightongrace37.