s w i f t s  &  s l o w s: a quarterly of crisscrossings

four prose poems
Mary Kasimor & Susan Lewis

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we are born

We are born into the center of ourselves but never round. Our intelligence shares itself with immediate conflict. Loud as the clash of symbols in our rattled heads, rolling between hither and yon. Seriousness in the weight we bear. Our tongues hold the whimsical truths of puppetry strung between invisible hands, fingers plucking at our tiny fates. We find our eyes between our blindness and throw them into echoes. The harmony of sound and fury focuses our intention. We play with our bombs and light our silences on fire. Our haziness keeps us alive. Who would not be dazzled by such extravagant damage? While our victims simmer and multiply, exchanging sequin kisses for leftover gravity. Soon gratitude will go extinct. Who knows what dazzle may emerge from whose twinkling diode. Who knows what depth we are in the wilderness, distracted by these gleaming shallows.

washed like peeled eyes

Washed like peeled eyes or cliffs edged in gold, despite the difficulty of domesticating our decisions. While the hero furled illumination and burrowed skyward, and we tried to adapt to what we learned of strength and beauty, salvaging hand-thrown pottery from thinnest night. We ate off plates crafted by aliens. The food was simple yet we remained hungry for the food of ideas. No life forms were harmed while sanding the castle, but that didn’t stop us from storming. The urgency of our appetite stood between expectation and execution. In its imagined mind, it kicked the earth to the ground, where we found a re-enactment of murals. The worst of us rebelled against the insight, throttling the collateral damage. Others huddled in clusters and dug for random bits of light. Streamlined into atoms, we caught ourselves free: music without sound.

most picnics came down

Most picnics came down from the mountains. Fire sat in the middle, devoured by dragons. To survive, we made lists of trivial consequences and positioned ourselves in a positive radiance, following the sun’s throat. Sliding down easy, ambrosial. Flawed but winged, riding bright waves of appetite. Crystal glittering with impossible insight. We flicked the ashes down river. The water rang bells but no one found it. Drought was a scientific fabric, yet the sun stood in the ooze of prairies. Some days it wore plaid, but none of us were fooled. Floral disappointment rode shotgun with the stinging swarms until the light quit toying with us and went out.

old women emerging

Old women emerging from chin to lung. Some cannot remember the compatibility of their lives, lost in the jumble of broken china, though China is so far away. Where can she dig to find a home? The billboards lead us. We all have an animal in us that wishes to shop for bright birth utensils. Utility being a last resort of the used. On display or transported, literally and figuratively, containered if not contained, curtained gazes shoveling like no tomorrow for the hope of one. Observing the mudslides and dancing horizons, finding equality in purpose as we search for death among the living. Saved for safety. Tradition holds us in tight smiles while we wait. Conniving with life is our fiction. Denial another layer of burial, hiding vestigial bones of contention in holes of our own hiding. A knot of disheveled fantasy, a garland of false memories, leveraged. Without her lies, she would be no one. Invisible old woman of regret, tearing out her liver and feeding it to the monkey on her back. While we insinuate ourselves into your houses and ply you with our ancient thoughts. Dragging ourselves in dirge, waiting to cerebrate.

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Mary Kasimor has been writing poetry for many years. Her recent poetry collections are The Landfill Dancers (BlazeVox Books, 2014), Saint Pink (Moria Books, 2015), The Prometheus Collage (Locofo Press, 2017), and Nature Store (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). She has also been a reviewer of many small press poetry collections. Her collaborations with Susan Lewis have been published in Otoliths and They Said (Black Lawrence Press, 2018).

Susan Lewis is the author of Zoom, winner of the Washington Prize (The Word Works, 2018) and nine other books and chapbooks, including Heisenberg’s Salon and This Visit, both from BlazeVOX. Her poetry has appeared in Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Diode, EOAGH, New American Writing, Prelude, Verse, VOLT, Web Conjunctions, and many more. She’s the founding editor of Posit.

To see more of Susan Lewis’s work you can go to:
susanlewis.net