Opon | Issue 6
3.25.19
Susan Lewis
One Cusp
over the lip
of this
maw
beyond the dark wall
braided through
the burning current
oily tides
lick you
raising faces
seared by ice
& molten
scorn
storied & abandoned
like mother
love
of any other
lipped masks agog
sunk
by
tilt
drowned
by
silt
—this dearth
of sweet
fume —
or probe
the shrunken
womb
of this
raked & raging
ragged
future
Arrested
in the midst
of words
sour & thunderous
as water
wailing from
the nether reaches
of internity
~~~~~
tousled
unto
dearth
~~~~~
cold & ever
colder
~~~~~
sloughed &
slow &
slavish—
~~~~~
if we could only
purr today
like no tomorrow
~~~~~
while the ones with
no future
are robbed of
their squalid present
by
us stuffing
our daily dying
with more
& more
not ours.
~~~~~
Mother, what to hang
on this dim
scaffold?
~~~~~
Child,
what you
can.
~~~~~
(blossoms dropped
on pallid soil)
(tadpoles hatched
in cracked mud)
one & all chasing the ring of
bone
or
smoke
&
mirrors
~~~~~
touching something
warm & moist
&
breathless
real
Susan Lewis (www.susanlewis.net) is the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom, winner of the Washington Prize (The Word Works, 2018). Recently, her work has appeared in They Said (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches Editions, 2017), and Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press, 2018), as well as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Web Conjunctions, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT. She is the founding editor of Posit (www.positjournal.com).