Susan Lewis

From: Life Sentences

Immersed

in the immensity, rehearsed with the intensity, 

malefaction guaranteed or your honey sacked. To 

fudge or not to fudge, make a proffer we can’t defuse 

or shop, drop, & roll. There go the planes, they’re 

American plains, like the bird outside my window 

digging at the seed of the seed of the seed. Ceci n’est 

pas une idée fixée when there is ought to fear in fear

itself, no more nor less than the frail souls we 

squander, scaling our ladders to nowhere, stat, while 

vengeance cups her expectant buds to survive not 

survive their dubious fruit.

Wallowing

amidst these plushy petals like good & merry 

pranksters, spanking our own intransigence with daisy 

chains of spleen. The sun glistening on our 

fare-thee-wells like wintergreen & waterboards, fairy 

dust & feral lust, labile & nubile & loathe to lend a 

whelping hand. Turned coats wandering through 

mounds of sawdust, precious & immense. Hawking 

their wear & tear unto tears. Quiet & quite undone 

through this thicket of bad deeds by good actors 

unpunished for the best of their worst. Dying if not 

daring to defect from the defects stealing the dwindling 

breadth from our stray & wondering kin.

Prisoner’s Cinema

Until the destiny of defeat floods the final fluid & 

every nook & cranny is drowned. Tulips & agendas, 

comments & comets digging in their heels to skip 

being sucked down the proverbial drain. But what if we 

sing for our suppers someone might or might not 

wonder, although just pretend is more likely to prevail, 

as if belief were like cupcakes or Ikea furniture, a 

reward for following instructions. While the rest of us 

seek our final bleak emoluments before shuttering 

down, despite the negligible effect on our fearsome 

view.

Susan Lewis is the author of Zoom, winner of the Washington Prize, and ten other books and chapbooks. Her poetry has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, Tupelo Quarterly, and VOLT. Her collaborative work has been recorded and performed at such venues as the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Hall, and is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is a co-host of KGB Monday Night Poetry and the founder and editor-in-chief of Posit.