Susan Lewis
A LOAN
& inpatient as any trimmed term while bald egos drone &
old souls flutter on brittle wingless feats. Steeped to sleep
in the seeping gloam or gulping our time like baby’s brew,
sweetly bitter & bound to let us drown. To whisk unto our
storied breath, bated as hope & sated as spilt blood, split
& listening to these hapless cries beating like moths on
reality’s glass. While pretty protests dent the dark divide &
gilded gluttons hurl their bloated gloat to the hormone
sharks thrashing our plasticene seas.
HELLED UP
& holed in like a snack in a snapped trap tripped shut &
clinging to the sweet-sour dwindle of its treat-besieged
meat. Gripping & slipping from hale fellows well met to
pale fallow to forget, waving hello out there, resisting this
twist of the wrist flight to the blessed curse of respite from
the blessed curse of more. Waving thanks for what you
toss our way. Weaving our grief in its fragile nest of
thorns, waving to this stubborn self-made prison for its
spiky sweet-sour plush. Waving to the sand not yet castled
& the grasp not yet joined.
ANOTHER SUNSET
in the squalling bildungsroman squalid as this sequined
sequel with its tragi-comic trail of fire & brainstorm.
Boosting our engaging ice like trophy wives, willowy &
weathered as the servile song of Cheeky Fromm & other
incogniscenti. Pity-less &-full as any zealous convert
lobbing rocks at covert hydras lopped off & roiling in
dough, mad as foxes slinking through the sedulous crops,
seeding lies by the dozen, stealing the fealty of the
trampled as they creep fore and aft through the tangled
grass.
Susan Lewis is the author of Zoom, a winner of the Washington Prize, and ten other books and chapbooks, including As In As If (forthcoming from Antiphony Press). Her poetry has appeared in Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, VOLT, and many other journals and anthologies. Her collaborative work has been recorded and performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and is held in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a co-host of the KGB Monday Night Poetry series in New York City, and the founder and editor-in-chief of Posit. susanlewis.net
