BROWSE Columns
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A water-stained binder full of recipes in a bin at Goodwill. A bin that is shovel shaped, like a scoop, like a grave. Domesticity and complicity. The binder was put in
A box in a spider-webbed garage by kin, or Antiquing Annie. No one cares for your news of ranunculus, Arizona daisies, or sweet peas now. Cherry pie can be bought
Boxed and whole and organic. Would I rescue the binder at a dollar a pound? I find its weight enough to sink me and leave it in the broken glass.
Grackles dive into the bottomless sea moss meadow in front of me at the drive-thru of the bank where you work. You left your coffee cup in the car half full
I dropped you at the airport, the long silent ride I can’t manage all of it you said and left the coffee. You sighed, I’m so exhausted and got out of the car.
In my dream, spider webs thick and long. Sun gold songbirds that once lived in thrift stores and sun gold butterflies that had crossed borders without paperwork
Were fixed in the sticky net, still alive—that’s the important thing. I would free them within a few moments, before it was too late. One flew free only because I was
Nearby and that’s the important thing, too: the freedom and ease I carry with myself, if I choose to walk there on the bright, cold tiles.
Susan has two poetry chapbooks: Beyond this Amniotic Dream (Beard Poetry, 2016) and Left-Handed Like a Lightning Whelk, (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her work has appeared in places such as Ponder Review, Blue Bonnet Review, Belleville Park Pages, Ginosko, The Freshwater Review, and Summerset Review. Susan has taught her poetry workshops at the Loft Literary Center, University of Texas-Informal Classes, Austin Bat Cave, and The Writing Barn. She has been featured in live poetry shows in Minneapolis and Austin. Susan's novel Kara, Lost (North Star Press, 2011) was a finalist for a Midwest Book Award (MIPA) for Literary Fiction.
