10
the hospitals
reek
of meat.
the recollection
of toil
empty of hope.
and!
the screams.
when grief is active
and halfway
up
the steps.
Source & Method
This poem is a redactions of Geraldine Brooks’s March. The text comes from a single page, 10, and that page number is the title of this poem. This is similar to blackout work, except that I have lifted the words in the order they appear and given a more poetic arrangement than traditional blackout allows.
Michael Prihoda lives in central Indiana. He is the founding editor of After the Pause, an experimental literary magazine and small press. His work has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology and he is the author of nine poetry collections, most recently Out of the Sky (Hester Glock, 2019).
Photo is remixed by Dale Wisely from source photo by Gilberto Olimpio.