The Fissured Tongue Series
A Deforestation
Susan Sonde
Susan Sonde
Moonlight, Stranfgade 30, by Vilhelm Hammershøi, 1900-1906 (image courtesy of purchase, European Paintings Funds, and Annette de la Renta Gift, 2012, The Art Institute of Chicago)
The scent is why we enter the room. We can’t figure it at first, but it scratches at the back
of our collective memory drawer like the rats rutting beneath the floorboards of this
ongoing gentrification. Once, back alley abortions were performed here. The bedsheets
bloody and lying on them never pat away the hurt or stilled the pulse. Life hung on the
edge of a tear, the flywheel around which all other things whirred.
There was no discourse
in the ancestral cosmos, just the stars and the broth in which they’d been suspended, silent
as the gleaming white bones of an ichthyosaurus. Stars have their avatars: swan-chasing
paddleboats
have none. But the pageantry of death is a given, lurching through time and space like an
unspecified endless parade; no flags naming country. No citizenship required.
Strays roam the gray circuitry of the city’s streets, none ancient. The liturgy-created
nightmare of a fiery hereafter is. Did the Gods not leave their finger prints on all its
pages, each filled with the hasty, careless calligraphy written by the smoke shaved from
ash?
I’m the fire that dies in wind
said no God ever. Desire never turned its back on the world. It turns this open air market
of a planet into a honeycomb ravaged by people, all sweetness siphoned off. Dissatisfaction
the knife we thrust into our own hearts. Our tears taken to auction. What’s needed’s a
sponge to absorb all our wickedness and pigeons, those reliable avifauna to stand vigil at
our tombs.
The earth burns with a dimming flame, sleep-drunk in orbit.
of our collective memory drawer like the rats rutting beneath the floorboards of this
ongoing gentrification. Once, back alley abortions were performed here. The bedsheets
bloody and lying on them never pat away the hurt or stilled the pulse. Life hung on the
edge of a tear, the flywheel around which all other things whirred.
There was no discourse
in the ancestral cosmos, just the stars and the broth in which they’d been suspended, silent
as the gleaming white bones of an ichthyosaurus. Stars have their avatars: swan-chasing
paddleboats
have none. But the pageantry of death is a given, lurching through time and space like an
unspecified endless parade; no flags naming country. No citizenship required.
Strays roam the gray circuitry of the city’s streets, none ancient. The liturgy-created
nightmare of a fiery hereafter is. Did the Gods not leave their finger prints on all its
pages, each filled with the hasty, careless calligraphy written by the smoke shaved from
ash?
I’m the fire that dies in wind
said no God ever. Desire never turned its back on the world. It turns this open air market
of a planet into a honeycomb ravaged by people, all sweetness siphoned off. Dissatisfaction
the knife we thrust into our own hearts. Our tears taken to auction. What’s needed’s a
sponge to absorb all our wickedness and pigeons, those reliable avifauna to stand vigil at
our tombs.
The earth burns with a dimming flame, sleep-drunk in orbit.
About the Author
Susan Sonde is author of seven collections. Grants and prizes include The Capricorn Book Award, a PEN fiction award, The Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Maryland State Arts Council grants in fiction and poetry. She was a finalist in The National Poetry Series, James Tate Award, and others. Publications include The North American Review, Boulevard, Quarterly West, and many others.
About the Work
"As the title indicates, a denuding is taking place, not of a forest but of the human soul. What remains, taking the metaphor at its most literal, are the stumps of trees in a forest raised by fire or the axe. One might well ask whether the forest will rebound or be condemned by mankind's hand to everlasting death."
About the Author's Process
"In many instances I begin with nothing more than a first line which often becomes, at least partially, my title. From that I find a theme. But I don't want to let theme dictate and therefore have to fight the urge to be consistent and instead let my instincts play out."
Susan Sonde is author of seven collections. Grants and prizes include The Capricorn Book Award, a PEN fiction award, The Gordon Barber Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Maryland State Arts Council grants in fiction and poetry. She was a finalist in The National Poetry Series, James Tate Award, and others. Publications include The North American Review, Boulevard, Quarterly West, and many others.
About the Work
"As the title indicates, a denuding is taking place, not of a forest but of the human soul. What remains, taking the metaphor at its most literal, are the stumps of trees in a forest raised by fire or the axe. One might well ask whether the forest will rebound or be condemned by mankind's hand to everlasting death."
About the Author's Process
"In many instances I begin with nothing more than a first line which often becomes, at least partially, my title. From that I find a theme. But I don't want to let theme dictate and therefore have to fight the urge to be consistent and instead let my instincts play out."
