In “Slumber party,” our Redacted challenge finalist, Zoe Korte uses the burning haibun poetic form to navigate sexual trauma and the loss of autonomy. It was an honor to speak with Zoe about their poem’s structure, language, and craft. Read the piece, and then check out our conversation.
Rebecca Paredes: You submitted this piece for our Redacted challenge, which invited writers to explore the after-effects of what gets hidden. How did that prompt inform this poem?
Zoe Korte: As a kid experiencing child-on-child sexual abuse (COCSA), I had no vocabulary to name my trauma. If that wasn’t taboo enough, I was entrenched in purity culture, the adults around me sheltered and deprived me of self-knowledge. Victims of abuse are encouraged to keep silent and avoid conflict, and receive backlash for using their voices. My words, my autonomy, my understanding of myself was actively being erased. I have been working with erasure poetry for about a decade and recently started experimenting with the burning haibun form created by torrin a. greathouse, who has also used this method to explicate themes of sexual trauma.
RP: We universally applauded this poem’s layers—the way the opening poem is so impactful, yet disorienting, not unlike the speaker at the slumber party, followed by the self-erasure to reveal the deeper truths underneath. Can you talk about your approach to the three levels of self-erasure?
ZK: Each iteration of erasure represents repeated trauma, as the voice of the poem becomes increasingly disjointed and associative. The speaker is reduced to simple begging, insisting in new ways while being ignored, and gradually gives up on being heard at all. Similarly, the form mimics how memory degrades over time, but as it decomposes, it can fertilize new insights. I tend to think of erasure poetry not as burying meaning, but unearthing or excavating it, almost in a surgical sense as the writing process requires an almost meditative state of focus and discernment.
RP: The phrase “small but dense” appears multiple times in the beginning, and it’s such an evocative phrase—of childhood, of bodies, of an innocence that must now carry weight. What does this phrase mean for you in the poem?
ZK: With most of my work, I often don’t realize a poem or volume has accumulated its own lexicon except in retrospect, when my obsessions and thought patterns emerge across pieces. However, in the run-on word-vomit section of my burning haibuns, I do consciously double back and recycle phrases to unfold multiple dimensions and reach a semi-satisfying conclusion. Revelation and realization alter the past as we remember in new ways and experience multiple truths. I have often found that growth feels like spiraling back to the same ideas but with added insight. This particular phrase is an echo of a recurring motif of mine. Thinking of myself as discrete, compact, or finite has always helped ground me, like an antidote to dissociation. Acknowledging the limits of my body, memory, and perception, especially in regards to my child self, has led me to feel less overwhelmed and consumed by trauma and shame.
RP: Is there anything else you’d like to share about this piece, or anything you’re working on now?
ZK: I am polishing up a full-length collection of erasures largely composed during the early days of the pandemic that I hope to publish in the near future! I also encourage everyone to look into signs of COCSA, whether you suspect you have experienced this type of abuse or would like to be more aware of how to prevent it. RAINN has some great resources.
