Mindful | Golden Yellow by Kim Suttell
Angie Macri | Two poems
Wave
Call the sky from the bottom of the well.
The sycamore are too far to block it.
No circle, no curves of any kind: angles
of boards that fell away. You were warned,
but snow made you forget even
your name with all its diamonds,
hard edges you thought couldn’t break,
but the silver did that bound them
just like moonlight. No roots here or water.
An airplane crosses as silver fragments.
Later a helicopter, closer, looks
for a prisoner escaped, not uncommon
and always found. Rivers here offer
natural barriers. The sun itself becomes
the old story, chariot driven by a god blind
to all but the horses in front of him in rhythm
of bone to ether. I warned you
like a mirror, like water casting
your likeness back to you. The sky
warns you now that time is passing.
Comes a shadow, a man,
a god, a stranger, taller than he is.
The sycamore are too far to block it.
No circle, no curves of any kind: angles
of boards that fell away. You were warned,
but snow made you forget even
your name with all its diamonds,
hard edges you thought couldn’t break,
but the silver did that bound them
just like moonlight. No roots here or water.
An airplane crosses as silver fragments.
Later a helicopter, closer, looks
for a prisoner escaped, not uncommon
and always found. Rivers here offer
natural barriers. The sun itself becomes
the old story, chariot driven by a god blind
to all but the horses in front of him in rhythm
of bone to ether. I warned you
like a mirror, like water casting
your likeness back to you. The sky
warns you now that time is passing.
Comes a shadow, a man,
a god, a stranger, taller than he is.
If Worst Comes to Worst
So often, songs have wings. Not yours.
They root to the earth
and pull open chambers where girls go
taken by god.
He offers her seeds
and she accepts.
Even something so small
can bring ruin to me. Don’t lose sight
you might be taken, too,
that god is cruel
and men hungry, that mothers
wander in every verse
to say joy will end sooner
or later, eventually.
I know that’s true.
Sing something else to me.
They root to the earth
and pull open chambers where girls go
taken by god.
He offers her seeds
and she accepts.
Even something so small
can bring ruin to me. Don’t lose sight
you might be taken, too,
that god is cruel
and men hungry, that mothers
wander in every verse
to say joy will end sooner
or later, eventually.
I know that’s true.
Sing something else to me.
Angie Macri is the author of Sunset Cue (Bordighera), winner of the Lauria/Frasca Poetry Prize, and Underwater Panther (Southeast Missouri State University), winner of the Cowles Poetry Book Prize. An Arkansas Arts Council fellow, she lives in Hot Springs and teaches at Hendrix College.
Kim Suttell is a collagist just emerging from a career in bureaucracy and spreadsheets. Paper, as her medium, speaks in torn edges, subtle curls, and tiny glimpses of previous use. The grid template references both quilts and ledgers, places where individual pieces must interact to create a new whole. It is the point to limit the format so that color, texture, and fragmentary images make their own movement and meaning.
Instagram: Page48paperart
Instagram: Page48paperart
