Persimmon

glossy orange fruit
alongside apples and pears
would my mouth pucker?

cold first and foremost
textural surprise: firmness
a juicy softness

different and new
sweetness stopped me in my tracks
honey, brown sugar?

little orange fruit
maple syrup adventure
that autumnal orb

joy and possibility
alchemy, simplicity

Kim M. Russell, 11^th April 2026

On the 11^th day of NaPoWriMo, our optional prompt is erasure poetry, also known as blackout poetry, created by taking an existing text and erasing or blacking out individual words. I enjoyed reading the examples Maureen has given us. I have written blackout poetry before  but have problems blacking out.

Our challenge is to write erasure/blackout poems, using use a page from a book or a magazine. Maureen says to feel free to maintain the whitespace of the original text or to pluck words/phrases from our chosen source material and rearrange them.

I found mine in an article entitled ‘Chasing flavour’ by Anna Ansari in the latest issue of the Waitrose and Partners Food Magazine and laid it out as a haiku sonnet. (Thank you, Melissa, for giving me that idea!).