Absurdery
Once upon this time, in a country far away, the ruler was very
old. The red hats had begun to dolly him to the podium,
his jacket flapping, at first with the curtain closed. He enjoyed
the ride, the breeze of it, like a tilting Segway. Was it necessary
to speak. Everyone could look as long as they wished. Rotating
his flicker of selves—life sized cutouts, an overtaxed engine
whine—he felt momentarily lost. Hand to his chest—not
allegiance but a nudge to his heart, an adornment like a clothespin
squeezing it shut. He had made a style of this but was more
concerned with his pants–the pockets hanging heavy how he liked.
~
The House is Burning
Ghosts on the White House lawn like an assembly
of flamingos or a murder of crows, so thick
I’m surprised the press corps can breathe or
the presidential helicopter land. I’ve heard DC
is sinking and maybe this is why. Inside it smells
like the British blaze in 1814 or the Government
Pamphlet Fire of 1929. If the house is burning what
will they save. Is it the Presidential Palace again—
this claw machine scraping all the goods out of the bin.
~
Minor Edits
Like the bats that used to stream from its vents, the movie theater
with its suspect red seats has dissolved into the air. All the old
neighbors diminished away. The south neighbor’s yard-sized
flower boxes gone. The clamor of crows that settled for two
days in the gone-away trees. Fumes from the auto paint business
on the corner, the neighborhood bar where they say someone
got temple-punched, went home, and dropped. Slate
sidewalks, cracked as they were. The great stinking bushes
that flanked our concrete stairs. The reach of the forsythia–
trimmed each year out of all of its height. The ice-skating
rink in the back dribbling constant and chilly from the hose.
All colors of squirrels now. A few less cats. The rabbits still
plumped up and stunned when you surprise them in the drive.
~
Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and Field. Her chapbook Almost Home was published in 1997. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2010, she won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize. In 2011, she won the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize and her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published. In 2021, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.