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by Jocelyn Ajami

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

After Francesca Albanese’s U.N. report on
               “Genocide as Colonial Erasure”

a poem’s lines ripple 
like ridges of ancient sands

couplets ring fervent notes
a distant hand intrudes

unfamiliar chimes
the new timbre

incongruent to the tone
it clips the old refrains

although the verse lingers
it is never free 

the fitful hand scrubs lines
slowly mutilating the structure

gobbling vowels and vows
nothing satisfies its lust

the poem still has claws
but no wings

clinging to its soil 

when battered lines shrill 

against white space, the hand races 

to delete remaining words

and proclaim erasure

a blank page all its own

Jocelyn Ajami is an award winning painter, filmmaker and poet. Jocelyn has received several awards for her films, Oasis of Peace, Gypsy Heart and Queen of the Gypsies. She turned to writing poetry in 2014 as a way of connecting more intimately with issues of social conscience and cultural awareness. She has been published in several anthologies of prize winning poems. Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, she speaks five languages and lives in Chicago, Illinois.