Welcome to my Poet Lady Chat Room. I would like to invite you to click on the chat box and type in a question, a suggestion, submit a poem, in other words – “chat with me.” I may, if you submit a poem, decide to feature it in my Poem of the Week section or, we may simply exchange ideas and suggestions about your poem.
This is a place to “talk” poetry with someone who has loved it all her life. I have a true passion for the possibilities of poetry and would love to hear your thoughts and/or read your poem. I will be happy to offer my reaction to your work and, based on over 40 years of teaching poetry, organizing, and conducting poetry workshops, working as a book review editor for an international poetry magazine, authoring five books of poetry and two textbooks on teaching poetry, send along my thoughts on ways to make your poem stronger and more impactful.
If you’re on my site, you have a connection to poetry. Feel free to connect with me – right here -right now, by typing your message into the “chat box” and clicking send. I’m waiting…
Your friend in poetry, Susan
FEATURED POEM
They say the night forgot me,
Though
Even the air remembers how he held me wrong,
Each whisper still sleeps inside my skin,
coiled like worms that dream of wings.
I did not ask for this harvest
this seed sown in my ruin,
this child who kicks against my ribs
as if begging to be forgiven for existing.
My womb became a cemetery
where tomorrow comes to rot.
I feel it move and wonder
if grief can grow a heartbeat.
It demands love with each kick,
but I am still negotiating with the bones in my chest.
Mirrors break their gaze on me,
afraid to chart the scars that bloom beneath my skin.
The water runs red sometimes,
but the doctors say that’s normal,
they don't see the prayers clotting inside me.
If I keep it,
will the child learn my silence,
inherit my trembling hands
and call it lullaby?
Sometimes I press my belly and whisper,
“I'm sorry you were born from a wound.”
And the womb answers back,
“It’s the only w
ay life ever enters this world.”