by Susan Milchman

(a golden shovel after INXS)

We are all secretly in love with the scent of a storm coming. the awakening of an unknown. Your

absence casts a haunt that holds me like a knife. / Every wounded beast knows / the herd moves

away from the injured / in an untraceable moment / in a silent tear down the middle. / You are

the dark corner my body belongs to. / I am the wound that waits patiently for blood to arrive / so

I wait / knowing my lineage will arrive like a sea storm. deep from my watershed. urgent & raw.

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Susan Milchman’s poetry has appeared in The Journal, Stirring, Sweet Tree Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, SWWIM Every Day, Rust+Moth, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She has poetry in the anthologies Bramble & Thorn, 2017 and haunted, 2022 (Porkbelly Press); forthcoming work can be found in the anthology, FINAL GIRL (Porkbelly Press, 2024). Susan’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net and her published work can be found at susanmilchman.com.

by Susan Milchman

i am under renovation. i am a work of restoration. i am rebuilding

after destruction. all my names for beauty have scurried off like crabs

to bury their soft bodies in the sand. i am the wound that waits patiently

for blood to arrive. knowing it has to travel far. deep from the watershed of every

storm-licked sky. but i am not patient. i scream at stop lights. in slow lines at the

grocery store. at the edge of gravesites while people engage in small talk. i am

a yellow crave slinking off into a dark corner. i hear quiet down now. i hear

settle down now. and a murder of scrub grass untangles in my throat. i seek simplicity.

yet swaddle myself in complication. in the passage of other bodies. in the simmering

tides of fluid and fur. i am a fog of moonlight spilling through the ribs of your cage.

a warm bath of crows. a flood of empty words. i am an offering. i am a rejection.

i am blood spill. i am a drop of honey. i am vacancy of body. i am animal in high heels.

a howl in the bathroom. a mad crush in the space between moments. a boneless

blank page. i am a pool of skin in your mouth. i am a long blue sigh of hunger

disguised as a reckoning.

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Susan Milchman's poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal, Sweet Tree Review, Stirring, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, bramble & thorn (an anthology from Porkbelly Press, 2017), Rogue Agent, Rust+Moth, and elsewhere. She was a Best of the Net nominee in 2018 and is working on her first chapbook. Susan lives in Minneapolis by way of Washington, D.C. and holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland. Her published work can be found at susanmilchman.com.