Thursday, November 22, 2012

Rendez: Vous


                    by Susan Lewis

You might be a fragment of a magic nation;
& the small fish, mouthing the glass.

& the eyeball, rolling in regret.
& the tentative tongue.

My skin is raw where it is unmatched.
My bones are sore where I’ve been another.

Don’t forget the words I meant to say.
Don’t forget immersion, which emulates our loss

(wed as you are to probability)
(led as I am by possibility)

—the low of pleasure sampling
our speculative past.

You’ll want your fingers back,
I’m not done marking them—

swollen as they are with fog & dread,
glazed as they are with our slant need.

This light is hyperactive or afraid;
it can’t stop bouncing.

It glances off the water
like someone crazed in love.                           

The ancient pier rots,
an island in the river:

Detached from its old use,
feeding its resistance to new trees with shaky futures.

Perhaps we shouldn’t focus
on their tender roots.

Perhaps it’s best to join the busy lanes,
which might ever take us back.

___________________________ 


Susan Lewis contributes regularly to this blog. Her work will also appear in AlteredScale.com 3, the Internet arts journal with which this blog is associated.

"Besides my work as an editor at Madhatters' Review, I'm the author of “How To Be Another” (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming, 2013), "At Times Your Lines" (Argotist e-Books, 2012), "Some Assembly Required" (Dancing Girl Press, 2011), “Commodity Fetishism,” winner of the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Award, & “Animal Husbandry” (Finishing Line Press, 2008). My work has appeared in many many venues, including Berkeley Poetry Review, Boog City,  Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, The Dirty Goat, Eclipse, Fact-Simile, Fast Forward, Fourteen Hills,  Fugue, The Journal, Kitchen Sink, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Lungfull, Monday Night, The New Orleans Review, Ninth Letter, Other Rooms, The Otherstream Anthology,  Pool, Phoebe, Raritan, Seneca Review, Snow Monkey, So To Speak, Sycamore Review, Verse (online), & Verse Daily. My collaborations with composer Jonathan Golove have been recorded & widely performed & my collaborations with artist Melissa Stern have been exhibited in New York City & Seattle. My website is www.susanlewis.net."


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