From Each
her deadlift limitation, to each her accordion need. Wandering towards wonder at the old one-two as if physics could say if not save the day, steal if not seal the deal, stave if not stow the dole drilled from the spoils of this ever spill. Weep if you think worse of anyone than you should might have been said, or wink if you think better. Banking fluff to spread like butter to unjam these mucked works, wagging a tall tale & loving the otherly without worldly wordless nose to sort friend from foe as we fling our flimsy fate to the chipped & brittle wind.
In the Interstices,
lost & bothered, blocked & fathered, feathered & weathered to a wept slip with the heft of ease-less daze, this laden daisy-chain of appetite & sallow glut dulled & fallowed. Following appeasement’s lead, its sweet suck drawing us down & leading us on from tearful dread to painful word to dreadful panting deed. Gasping & grasping for the hope of float: a glass ring or a gossamer string to fasten to our frail & fleeting sail.
Leering & Peering
through the haze of this amazement, transmogrified by grief & grievance, masking the facets & tasking the assets of hope & greed to lick the splintered spittle of disgust. While ennui probes the tunnels of desire & despair bells the belly of your ire, darkening the spark of its dime store resolve. As dendrites stretch & spread, dead to the shock of the possible, plowing & plundering the slough to show us saints in our spaghetti & heroes on our side of the divide. Waltzing towards better & worse to be borne, phrase change a figment of your faithless fantasies. Drawn like spawn to the vulture hunched atop the final fence, jagged wings fingering our looming future.
Susan Lewis is the author of Zoom, winner of the Washington Prize, and ten other books and chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and VOLT. Her collaborative work has been recorded and performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a co-host of KGB Monday Night Poetry, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Posit.
Image: indpendent.co.uk
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