Poetry: “SHE WOULDN’T LET ME KISS HER” by Susan Tollefson
She wouldn’t let me kiss her except
in a Japanese garden by the river.
We went there
when snow covered the arched bridge,
the teahouse […]
UChicago's Oldest Literary Magazine
She wouldn’t let me kiss her except
in a Japanese garden by the river.
We went there
when snow covered the arched bridge,
the teahouse […]
“Are the living happier than
the dead?” children wonder
when they turn over a scarlet
brick and find a lost Atlantis.
There the worms […]
Every snowflake is an electric light of love, molecular
kisses tissue-thin coasting down from heaven’s
arboretum with drifts of frigid sweet alyssum
falling, falling, falling in pieces carrying remnants of serenity
and angelic peace from that snowy place […]
I keep track of the deepening circles
under my eyes
as if they were redwood rings
showing the number of nights
without sleep […]
Our house sat at the bottom of a hill,
where it all started, where we began,
the ground fertile, but the structure rotten.
It rocked and eventually fell,
the walls crashing outward toward […]
These willows are crones,
drinking tea, sipping
tea with the newly dead,
who have arrived recently.
Around them, the […]
One night, I dreamt a mouthful of broken teeth,
Jagged, inescapable ruins, salt white like the desert,
Wet like the jungle’s crawling underbrush.
The next, the faces of every clock smashed,
Hands palm up on the floor […]
I wanted to write of things seen new,
not screaming hate on deafened ears,
not watch-words or double-speak imbued
with harsher tones, forgotten […]
A being formed/not formed yet
into anything more than an orb
in a photo on our refrigerator—and this
pulsation will one day break
through embryonic sac, her skull […]
A lawn of fallen leaves
glints like the Bronze Age.
Shadows carve the dark
out of their own
likeness, […]