Lolita Erasures

2.1

I           grew to prefer
reconciliation
this    parody of
      paradise
the                   self-conscious
repetitious
surrender
the strange country
of                     Midwestern     midnight

do you remember        me
       cultivated
           green      or
garden
or         acres of
flowerless       wilderness

I began to understand
the implication            of
     co-operation
                  second nature with            me
still
I want to protect you
still                  your guardian
       and          therapist
anxious to please
       and excuse

the girl who participates is     looked upon
not       as
respectable               victim
      but                   delinquent                       child
      the                         shared guilt
shaping and sustaining
the            silence
I accepted
part                 of the
whole       arrangement

2.3

my             curiosity    was
                            akin to      repulsion
     and
            invariably                   cruel
in                    gratification
   but    I          was
all                   grit and
   liberation
looking
for      sensations        influences
     if not actually
hauntings

I was interested in    the
risk
that ran through
                        the lyrical
while the                        romantic
               seemed to offer
a                                  language
        I could use

    passion         was
real     and       unreal
essentially       proof            of existence
atmosphere     and
       landscape
      of               becoming
and      I          was
still                  here
         waiting               to grow up
I had not yet
lived
enough to distinguish
art                    from
    impersonation
a routine
     choice         for girls
to survive
for the purpose of writing

2.4

love
at      first
    like     Shakespeare
was
    a verbal phenomenon
I   would
   live             only in                          words
      but                                                   touch
a            wasteland
       running parallel to
                    pleasure
arrived
to spoil everything

Eva Della Lana is a poet and diarist from Ohio whose recent work has appeared in Lunch Ticket and The Florida Review. Her erasure project in conversation with her teenage chapbook, Places She's Been (Pudding House), which received a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2006. She currently resides in Los Angeles, where she works in a library.