Who did you say was calling, & how should we proceed? While Ms. Universe feeds a clandestine cracker to the roiling fright mob purling its sodden fur. & another gilded lizard worms its way into our crumbled confidence, washed up & strung out like beads overloading the overlord lording it over our puny hoards. Lost in transliteration consonant with our quisling position, poised to be trounced in this Year of Our Lord Supplicant-Mendicant, baring our lissome stringy throats to the dominant stomp. Still we hiss & rip at our simpering peers while our mute & blindered so-called enemies hide from the winking glare of rugged nuggets dug from the depths to dull the sullen tantrums of the glutted, sucking like bloated ticks on our wan host’s inky juice. O cry me a reaver, plow me a river of miscreant leaders steeped in the sorry sap of this, our ambient amnesia. That is, chop-chop, buck up or bow out, hang on or sink in like a river rock battered to the blandest bauble.
Susan Lewis
Susan Lewis is the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom, winner of the Washington Prize (The Word Works, 2018). Recently, her work has appeared in They Said (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches Editions, 2017), and Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press, 2018), as well as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Web Conjunctions, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT. She is the founding editor of Posit.