Pisces

Seriously? This and other nonsense from The History of Birthdays
(which I am not vouching for, but can be found HERE).
alchemy for DKK



The alchemized poem:


Image and source material, Where I Live Now, by Deborah K. Kelly.

a multiple pass poem
Source material: War Came to Ukraine and Its Dogs Are Not the Same
Source material for the source material: Dogs of War: The Effect of War-Inflicted Environmental Damage on Free-Ranging Domestic Dogs
Actually, it’s been a year since I started posting Thursday mornings on Under Construction, with occasional off-cycle posts.
Thank you readers – whether you’re a subscriber, follower, fan, or however you’ve arrived.
Thank you to those who know me, those who know my work, those who have been introduced to Under Construction by someone who knows me or my work. Thank you to those of you who … well, I’m not sure how you’ve found your way here, but I’m glad you did.
Under Construction is where the door is always open, where we don’t blame the dogs and we don’t answer all calls, where all the doors have automatic openers, and where iguanas are not invasive. It is where we, too, dream of peace. It is for all the poets and all the mourners, and it is where adverbs and nouns are shapeshifters. (If you read all the way to the bottom of the posts, right above the Subscribe button you’ll see what I mean.)
It’s where poems echo through the years and through the poets – looking at you X. P. Callahan, Deborah Kelly, Josh Datko. Erasures, with links to the source material, are here: Call and Response: owl; we lived and we ate; and war and peace.
Where I cannot stop writing about residents dying in nursing homes, because residents are always dying in nursing homes. Where birds are poets, bees stir the mirror, and you – readers – are the one thing that matters.
an off cycle post
For those who blow whistles in Minnesota and elsewhere else

Source material: “On Living in the Hour of Cities Under Siege” by Carolyn Forché from Otherwhere: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2026 (Scribner Books, forthcoming in September 2026)
An old school erasure using a Tombow water-based marker



“in New Mexico landlocked” is sourced three times from: Anelise Chen, “Clam Down,” from The Daily at The Paris Review.
Chen’s memoir, Clam Down: A Metamorphosis, is now available.


For a different take on the demise of Penny, look at the source material, The Penny Dies at 232, which was erased then compressed for this poem.

I was called to write this poem when I read War Erasure #4, by Josh Datko.
The two poems come from the same source material.
an off-cycle post

i want back the streets from zealots
to reduce all things hard-edged & splintering
to make room
Source:
Renée Nicole Macklin Good (1988–2026), “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” Academy of American Poets Prize, Old Dominion University (undergraduate), 2020