Some Assembly Required
Susan Lewis
dancing girl press, 2011
$7.00
SUSAN LEWIS is the author of “How To Be Another” (Cervena Barva Press, forthcoming), “Commodity Fetishism,” winner of the 2009 Cervena Barva Press Chapbook Award (Cervena Barva Press, 2010), and “Animal Husbandry” (Finishing Line Press, 2008). Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in Atlanta Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Boog City, Cadillac Cicatrix, Chronogram, Cimarron Review, Cross Connect, Cutthroat, Descant, The Dirty Goat, Eclipse, Fact-Simile, Fast Forward, First Intensity, Fourteen Hills, Fox Cry Review, Fugue, Global City Review, G. W. Review, Gulf Coast, The Griffin, Gulf Stream, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Hubbub, The Hurricane Review, The Journal, Kitchen Sink, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, Lullwater Review, Lungfull, Mad Hatter’s Review, The Madison Review, Minnetonka Review, Nestmonger, The New Orleans Review, The New Press Literary Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Of f the Coast, Other Rooms, Pantophobia, Pearl, Pool, Phoebe, Prairie Winds, Quantum Tao, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, RiverSedge, Sawbuck, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Seneca Review, Snow Monkey, So To Speak, South Carolina Review, Sulphur River Literary Review, Sycamore Review, Terminus, The Tusculum Review, Verse (online), Verse Daily, Xavier Review, Zone 3, and an anthology called Breaking Up is Hard To Do. Her Speech Quartet (music by composer Jonathan Golove) has been recorded by the Maelstrom Percussion Ensemble and performed at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie’s Weill Hall. Imaginary Songs II, another collaboration with Mr. Golove, had its world premier at Weill Hall. She is an editor of the Mad Hatters' Review and co-hosts the Mad Hatters' Review Blog
HOW TO ATTEMPT OR ENJOY
1. In which everyday pain nuzzles
your neck and various & sundry accessories. You may or may not know whereof I speak (to the swell of strings). Trekking like Ulysses to taste this shirking savor (acquired). Eyes closed, mind. Or ambiguate. A lively intercourse of sodden factors, amour propre and not-so-much, victimized by what we laughingly call success.
2. Not to ignore the comedy of horrors
by which anything mortal can be understood to swear. Which is not to say sacred or profane, beyond sampling the wares & preserving the buffet of options. Tasteless or spiked, extended or ranged from here to there like anybody’s flavored dream. Losing our windblown parts seriatum until.
3. In a contingency don’t forget to plan
& later map your lost rigidities. Real if not ideal, salivating or slavering for the taste of any kind of limit. Limned in profile or its loyal opposition. Vaunted as any victor, marching toward Bethlehem to be borne.
4. Not to put too fine a point on
the optimistic view to be personalized, with or without divine flourish. Plus a cherry on top, cheery & paternalistic, like any daughtered god. Lest you wonder how to tolerate or map this sojourn. A blink of the eye in animal years — a flash, a nod, a morsel, a smithereen. A vale of saline exudations. A gobbet, receptacled. Long on fear & suffering. Short on on. Ask anyone, ask everyone. There’s the glow of lights at evening, there is ecstasy in tasteless bursts, there’s the optional leave-taking with its impotent attention, contained horror, captive blossoms. After which you might expect to revisit & compound the error of your wayward wondering (to the taut & tragic swell of strings).
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