a week ago

Susan Scutti

at the party the art opening the party
white wine was chilled and served and the people gathered

in a thickly accented
the woman spoke
the artist

how badly she wanted people to see
this most ancient of art forms
lacquer paintings that are so hard

she left her daughter behind when she was 12

and the artist has great purpose, such great purpose to share her work which is based on ancient methods so she travels around the world and she has brought forth life and cast it off as well and the daughter is
and the mother travels everywhere making herself known and felt and listened to and photographed

she wanted more people in the shot
calling out to others

and oh paintings crowded the walls of the crowded room the paintings made with gold leaf and black and red oil to form characters that seemed to melt into the background and disappear like marks made by a child’s hand

so much of life is lost and then there is what is remembered and stored in recesses of the brain to be brought into light or not

what occurred in my father’s mind while he was failing from alzheimer’s, what exactly is decline?

neutral

Susan Scutti


i am a pulse responsive to
generations unborn

my vision narrowed to unquestioned facts:
this room, this night, this man

how innocent the mob
how quiescent the spaces between leptons

empty like time
the sturm und drang of fortunes

speechless, the many buildings spire toward heaven
babel is here upon your screen

unseen and perched on a high branch

Susan Scutti


the god of mystery
attended your birth
imagination was your midwife
and delirium the bath she plunged you in
to wash away your newborn tears

now you are here having flown high above a salty ocean
to arrive where you are wanted

needed

what is required of you is
reflex & gasp
Oh how the others continue wanting to shield themselves
from the secrets of the past

spheres

Susan Scutti

how long till the blunt faces

on the train evaporate from memory

only to melt into the unremembered stations of

daylight          or is it nightfall? later as you wait on a

park bench                                     you recall the afternoon:

sleeping swans floating on the pond’s surface               envy

parading at water’s edge          the molten god once again aloft

to think it all began for you with a physical contortion         two

bodies askew on a bed                        some internal logic forced

a liquid perimeter trespassed then multiplication commenced

separation undone           another singularity created

how it is the geometry of beginning equals

some compulsion to end

Happy people don’t plan wars

Susan Scutti

instead they sit in snug rooms
contemplating the flavors of impending meals
the pleasures of smoke and the age of
the red wine that flows in no way like
blood
and once sated they make love
co-existing without rancor
and why are most never schooled
to understand this is exactly
what life can be

enjoyed so as to avoid
unnecessary pain

the child alone
with stick and stone

it’s the latest it’s the greatest

Susan Scutti


it’s the library where you are
the littlest pea embedded
within a complex theory of pods

last night you touched her
while now you sit alone
groping a plastic keyboard

the printer printing out your thesis
makes a sound like marching soldiers
heads empty of introspection

the woman’s voice
skips towards you across tables
laid out like ponds

scholars sigh as they bend toward
the glowing faces of beloved
computer screens

Joy-z

Susan Scutti

As you sleep childhood hurtles towards me. Containers rust in sunlight as a bent and aging form hobbles down the aisle. I wear your foreign eyes to discover the familiar without sympathy… to read my future in the passing scene. Returning is difficult, beginning again is pointless. What is necessary and what is wanted? You continue to sleep. A draught of chill air sweeps through your dreams. I will not let go of what cannot be held. The passing landscape whispers squandered possibility.

Marching to Pretoria

Susan Scutti

On the edge of this night there are smudges,
blurs that call to mind women with habits,
users
of words like “indelible” and
unfamiliar with the need for forgiveness.
In a single breath opposition occurs –
inhale, exhale –
half your life toxic, in a sense
a pollutant to other humans.
So your middle years become tarnished
with remorse or with forgetting
until you understand that
peace may be found in either path.

Subtraction

Susan Scutti


A part of you is unborn
a slender fold within your mother’s womb
where you remain hidden from anger and ambition and
meanwhile most of you lives
a blameless existence in a city where
distortion is a general tendency.
You hear the notes of resolution
going flat or sharp unexpectedly.
Last night a man accepted your dollar bills
unclean and crumpled like discarded tissues
and then he stared with dark eyes
that spoke a guttural language of neglect.
After returning to your pillbox apartment
you imagined him asleep
folded between sheets
floating on a weary silence
just as your mother does.

Thinking inside the Box

Susan Scutti


In your inbox sits an email you can’t discard. Other things you can’t discard include mistaken ideas about the wealthy and your own impoverished pride. The one open seat was beside a questionable person. Wilting, you sat. The man asked if you had a habit. “A habit isn’t a bad thing, some people live their whole lives with a habit,” he told you. The train caused a wind in the station where it didn’t stop. You watched the hair of a woman on the platform rise and fall like an empire. The mask you wore for years is worn out now. You place it in the drawer beside your socks. You re-read the email and then your curser hovers like premonition above the delete button. The change you desire requires the arousal of primal fears. It is not in your nature to live like an ornament… or maybe it is?