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YOUR CART

Catherine Gander

To Erase a Memory

Call yourself to the stand          commit perjury        

              as many times as needed to                confuse the jury.
 
Unpin your memory               from its room of maps.          
 
           Spackle the remaining            hole     then     detonate the walls.
 
Push your memory      through a cathedral’s              latticework of shame
 
                                       until it             turns to beads.
 
Forage the substrate                for the root                  to your memory
 
                  and pull it                    like a plug.
 
Drop your memory                 like egg-yolk               flecked with blood
 
                            into milk             & watch it
 
                                                              curl and vanish.
 
Your memory             lies                  looped                         decades long.
 
                       Your palm        a rhizome            of your past.
 
                Every person                         in the courtroom               is you.

S. Erin Batiste
Catherine Gander was born in Middlesex, England, has lived in several countries, and now resides in Ireland where she teaches at Maynooth University and runs a number of poetry initiatives, including the Maynooth Poetry and Poetics series (with Karl O’Hanlon) and Diversifying Irish Poetry: Poetry Critics of Colour in Ireland (DIP). Her recent words and art can be found in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Juniper, Abridged, Poetry Ireland Review, One Hand Clapping, Bad Lilies, The Madrigal, and The Irish Times.
Art: Katedrála (The Cathedral) by František Kupka 
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