Poetry
Susen James
Because I haven’t the attention span. Because I wander woods with a candle & book
like a ghost only to ponder light passing through my hands. Because I worry for things
I said when I was winter & this is what steeps in me from months of rain. Because I
bear the tarnish of time. Because most ideas I write too unreasonable to fit story. I
write poetry to linger excess white space. Because in this place I isolate to write the
witching moon comes creeping phrasing in phrasing out. Because I might do with a
challenge of bleak bothersome rhyming. Because plucky but unlucky, I encounter
lunatic corpses sentient storms babbling champagne rabble. I have newfound
persnicketiness; it’s my age & wrinkle moons sag beneath my eyes. Because I like the
idea of haunting. Because too many thorns pierced my heart. Because reading poetry
breathes blood into pale lips Because it feels like I hold a lit match between my lips.
Because the sadness is on me. Because every coffeehouse needs a resident poet.
Because curious & cryptic are viable ambitions. Because poetry opens the veil between
this world & the next.
Because I am somehow still alive in this absurd aching world.
Why I write
rather than fiction
PERSEPHONE LITERARY MAGAZINE
03
POETRY