Suzanne Edison
Staying
Try to praise the mutilated world.
—Adam Zagajewski
If I say praise,
inhaling jasmine & stench of subway piss, let
euphorbia’s milky saprasp
my skin inside the nap
of a velvet dress
I need also say, forgive
my crackdown
on budding desiresthe smack
upside a child’s mouth
full of questions
when I turned away, shellacking
kindness.
Warped & rusty
how do I stand
under a flag
whose red & white glare now flares blue
on those longing
for their war-born rights?
If I say to myself, listen
beyond the swarms of must have,
& those who breed hate
I also want to sting
awake this somnolent body,
shouting
not one more
be taken
nameless.
Let me not forget
the unruly world revolts
plate against tectonic plate.
All our cleverness will melt
with the ice. It must be
then, whatever keeps me steady
be like morning glory, bindweed,
cross all our divides.
Suzanne Edison is the author of The Moth Eaten World (Finishing Line Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in UCity Review, Bombay Gin, The Naugatuck River Review, The Ekphrastic Review, The Seattle Review of Books, Spillway, and The Examined Life Journal, as well as in the anthologies Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith Mysticism and Awakening (North Point Press, 2004), edited by Linda Hogan and Brenda Peterson; and The Healing Art of Writing, Volume One (University of California Press, 2011), edited by Joan Baranow, Brian Dolan, and David Watts. Edison lives in Seattle.
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