Your cart is currently empty!
Two Poems: Hag Dances
In her new collection Hag Dances (At Bay Press), poet Susan Wismer confronts the darker recesses of the self in order to change and heal. Read the poems “Hand Shadows” and “After All” from the book, below.
Two Poems from Hag Dances by Susan Wismer
Hand Shadows
Imprisoned
bound hands, cuffed wrists
fingers clenched and outstretched
clenched again
The bagpipe’s nine notes
hearken the possible –
breathe through the keen cuts
of grief, sun silent stripes
the barred window
on the wall her fingers draw
chiaroscuro
shadow and light
her butterflies fly
Sign up for monthly poetry!
The There’s a (monthly) poem for that newsletter releases at the end of every month, with a featured poem delivered right to your inbox. Better yet: if you love the poem, you get a subscriber-exclusive discount to the collection.
After All
The bow scrapes
across strings, cello’s body
resonates, sings, breathes
in my arms
Under your pianist hands, keys
white, black rise and fall
that slight, graceful lift
of your head, our eyes
catching light –
memory
All those songs
we sang and sang
are with me still
but I’m fine
after all
without you
* * *
Susan Wismer is a queer poet who is grateful to live on Treaty 18 territory at the southern shore of Manidoo-zaagai’gan (Georgian Bay) in Ontario, Canada with two human partners and a very large dog. Recent work has been published in These Small Hours (ed. Lorna Crozier) a Wintergreen Press chapbook, Pinhole Poetry, Orbis International Literary Journal, Poetry Plans (Bell Press), Qwerty, Prairie Fire ,and Poets in Response to Peril (eds. Penn Kemp, Richard Sitoski).Â
Photo of Susan credit Frances Morency.
* * *
To purchase a copy of Hag Dances from us or your favourite indie bookstore, click here.
For more from Two Poems, click here.
Tagged:
