Perhaps erasure poetry is always inherently a political act, perhaps it is always inherently a violent act. ~Jennifer Chang, poet.

For my erasure poem, “Not An Apology," I used an email my ex-husband sent me after we attended our son’s graduation from nursing school. We had been divorced almost two decades by then.

The first paragraph is blah blah blah about how we worked together to be good parents, but the second caught me by surprise. It began as an apology. “I am sorry…” he wrote, and followed the phrase with an explicit list of abuses. On first reading, I only saw that sentence. Actually, for a long minute, I only saw “I am sorry…”

Within minutes of reading that one sentence, while crying, I replied and thanked him. It took a while to gather my wits and slowly read the entire paragraph—over and over.

It was not an apology.

*I write essays and poetry. My Substack is Glorious Ordinary. Please subscribe!

*I’m a mindfulness teacher with a long meditation practice. Soon you’ll be able to find my talks and guided meditations on Insight Timer!

*I’m an executive and life coach. My niche is helping women navigate or recover from abusive workplaces.

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