Poems
by Lauren Suchenski

I follow the courage of
bare feet across the genealogical map -
Past Kentucky; Broken Arrow;
Names that place themselves at the
back of my tongue; slide down my
throat, but cannot be swallowed /
I consume this history - easy;
words on paper - letters on
carved rocks - headstones
on new grass and depleted soil /
clay rubbed eyelashes - your heart
pearled into the oxygen of the
atmosphere
like so many ancestors
curling towards the sky //
Tiny ridges on the hillside;
roots digging towards the hollow
light of the earth; nothing insignificant;
nothing not worth
reaching towards;
everything somewhere;;
or all at once
in its own
place
just where it has always been

I follow the path, the past, the part of the
place misplaced from where it partook in the
participation of
the present

I follow the courage
of so many bare footsteps
(whose prints have long since
blown away in the wind)
but whose clay rubbed wishes
still find me in the
roots
reaching towards the hollow light of the earth;
nothing insignificant; nothing
not worth
reaching towards

TO THE WIZARD OF OZ

to the wizard of oz and all the oddly shaped balloon men haunting your hollow oystereyes:

have no fear, there are only words on this side of the fence. the grass is greener- but the trees are all dead by now. the leaves have all left- that’s what i mean to say. i mean to say the season has dissolved the smiling skin of certainty. shriveled senseshadows – that’s what the winter breathes. that’s what the breath begins with.

begin at the end
to accompany the cold riddle of resistance – to hold rapture in your hands;
the new brilliance of a bold-faced beginning.
A spindrift birth of bravery.

WE THREE KINGS

We three kings

piled high with ring-sings

of the roller-derby of our

Years, piled next to one another

in concentric circles

circling the sky,, 

Piling low onto the rooted fumble

of the wish 

of our reflection

to meet

half past the radiation

of the shadow cast

by the aged sun age-ing

us against the earth

We three captives of chlorophyll

captains of this corner of the world

coronation of the curdled seeds 

of tomorrow never blossoming

We three carriers of story bones,

of storm homes,

of wander eyes wandering without lies

with the geyser of growing

glimpsing the gargantuan 

chasm we endlessly

root towards ;

The wild chasm

we endlessly

grow up out of ;

Scrambling towards the light/

or towards the storm/

Or towards the story
half-told mid-flight

where we remain

always king of shadows never cast