Poetry from The Literary Review



(The movie set on the horizon glows)

SUSAN WHEELER

The movie set on the horizon glows
        all night as well, seeking strength in spirit
beyond the Kohn-Pederson-Fox monolith
        novitiate there were large-scale failures
priorly a stub below the real. It was
        Prior just one challenge
who buggered hard in his fiancée's wake,
        and a United Airlines Flight 175
bee that in the sink tonight
        I stubbed. Still, the incredible feat—
All this is true and will you make
        it false. Empire once fought the
True-dat, not-true-dat: they played
        this game—officials will—
on radio before gangster rap        
        was banned. As one official put it—
To be a movie set the tarps went up
        like gaffs 220 pounds
in the sharp morgue scent—acrid not
        true dat———former jet pilot Donald
the rid in putrid truer and I want it false.
        Für Elise dragnet for America's
was Ludrid deaf when first he
        heard it? Military installations.
Patois, tonight, shouts from the park—“he
        president” U.S. service members
and then the wash of flesh in air hard
        sinking, that came upon America,
on, the furry lungs in-taking, true
        dat was a command post at
that the sharp of acrid——glow burning——It is
        Steve McQueen——Congress, perhaps
it's Lubitsch——————It is undone
        by grief. I was just incredulous.
This is all true. The city is deaf
        in grief. Wascom said the airlines

O will they come 2 hear him. Pocketknife and corkscrew
O U that turned and saw. Turned stone.
                                 U.S. News & World Report, September 24, 2001



Over Once and Over Again

SUSAN WHEELER

Dear Kršna Ex:

In reply to your last letter, the skin does not recall. The pant of the mutt on the curbside couch rises ten floors tall, it beelines itself into here, its rasping sands my ears half off.

Colleen Braverman dipped her hair in green for the holiday. State Street busted out. The river dripped with a viscous puke. I found a broken bottle stitched with heavy hemp and bulging at its base; the memory that it brought back reminded me of you.

Once God had entered the equation, a girl was no competition.
Okay. I'll come for you. Why did I lie (why do I ask still).
Why wait on you (or You, for that matter). You, for that matter.

In the still hard space of a field at night lights overhead, the smallest leaf doth undertake to exercise its fight or flight. The dog does his best to inhale the rest, in reply to your last letter.

                                Yours, sincerely,

                                Gerry Mander