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Susan Grimm 
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Mare's Nest

Spicy, wild conundrum I’ve become—I’d like to think. Spotted lily with a brave and graceful throat!

But that’s not the boat I’m in. My spine a ziggurat of ice.

Walking through the darkened house. But worse than a dream. Clumsy enough to tip. Heavy enough to fall. Foreground footstool. Background rug. Mantle and igneous still swallowed inside the crust.

Or driving down a street cum alley, Roman style. Narrowing. Cobbles and stones knackered together. There’s a terrible scraping sound.

Where is my horsepill of happiness? Misery sifts in like regular dust.

Which is why I say keep your lips mutinous. (In a trice takes a long, long time.)

Susan Grimm is the author of Almost Home (Cleveland State University Poetry Center 1997), Lake Erie Blue (BkMk Press 2004), and Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue (Finishing Line Press 2011). Her work has appeared in Blackbird, The Journal, The Cortland Review, Seneca Review, and Tar River Poetry. She earned an MFA in poetry through the Northeast Ohio MFA consortium (NEOMFA) and teaches creative writing part-time at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She also occasionally teaches classes for Literary Cleveland. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and can be found online at The White Space Inside the Poem.

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