All in by Suzanne Edison

by Suzanne Edison


Maybe it is the shriveled spiders,
looking like compost flakes on the rug that tell me,

these beasts were fornicating and feasting
more than I. Maybe it is the scraping sound

of sow-bug shells, sucked up and spinning
in the vacuum I employ that reminds me

of the ladybug carapaces, dozens
scattered on my dining table, that greeted me

years ago. Then, my mother had been dead

less than a day and I was not there to feed her
ice chips, soothe rattle and wheeze, or shroud

the carcass of her last breath. My memory opens
like a slash of flesh—I am the same age now

as she was then.

Fogging my reflection

in the picture window I watch evening
hug the swelling redbud limbs

as bats drain the air of insects.
But I am not here to grieve.

I want to know about the living
to come. How to navigate by clouds.

How the tree grows around a nail
pounded into it.

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Suzanne Edison’s recent chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Poetry can be found in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Naugatuck River Review, Scoundrel Time, Mom Egg Review, Persimmon Tree, JAMA, SWWIM Every Day, and elsewhere. She is a 2019 Hedgebrook alum and teaches at Richard Hugo House in Seattle.

by Suzanne Edison

Who isn’t sick

            of being Sisyphus, pushing the rock

                        of your body daily, up from the bed?

When someone says hypochondriac

            all I can think is, give me a shot

                       

of adrenaline    irradiate this burden

no pain, no need to gain.

            So many tried

                        and failed treatments I say

                                    give it a name

call it, a filament

            spun into tourniquet

anomaly twisted to penalty, an infestation

scaling my nerves.

                                    ✷

What about heartache? multiple strains

            of arthritis, hers, her child’s,

                        the husband leaves

            she’s a power outage

                        a walking specter in bruised daylight

what bandage or antiseptic for her plight?

                       

                        was there an expiration date

                                                            for rupture?

pathologic or melancholic,

            her grieving—

                        a trail of gauze.

                                    ✷

A man says, “it’s transient”—

            he’s seeking

                        ground—a rock

the war

            still resides inside, amps up

                        his sugared house

bloody lows and highs, twitchy

brood of his eyes

            a bilious babble, warbles

                        like a bird of necrosis

                                    winged psychosis

his fractured peace

            begs     for measure.


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Suzanne Edison is the author of The Moth Eaten World, published by Finishing Line Press. Poems can be found in: About Place Journal: Rewilding issue, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, JAMA, SWWIM Every Day, What Rough Beast, Bombay Gin, The Naugatuck River Review, and The Ekphrastic Review. Her work has also appeared in the anthologies Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith, Mysticism and Awakening, ed. Joy Harjo & Brenda Peterson, and The Healing Art of Writing, Volume One.