Two Poems

 

by Susan Scutti

 

 

 

 

naiveté

 

 

dispel

the hysteria of

an answer to

a question unasked

 

the landslide of

conjunctions and clauses

remains amiss

not listened to

except as cause

or curse

 

what is shadow if light

is both

a particle and a wave

the residue of

dusty complaint

acceptance of

imperfection as divine

acceptance of

this life as mine

 

 

 

 

Like Childhood or an Army

 

 

this Winter will be replaced by

another face

worn beneath your mask

and all that you love will pass

away in time or

truce.

Regret is without use or

ceremony.  Behind

unnoticed door, a man

discovers the antennae of

his thought.

 

Minds were manufactured to meld and

retreat, repeating each synapse of

conspire.  Do

you know where your song

begins?  It is

here where you fear

conclusion dwells in muddy

boots cemetery puddled and

here, too, the spiral recurs —

a revolution

as earth on

axis continues

clandestine orbit, this continent

splattered across

its shiftless face.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Susan Scutti lives and writes in New York.  Her poems have been published in The Christian Science Monitor, New York Quarterly, The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, Philadelphia Poets, Tamarind and other reviews.  Her collection of poems, The Commute, was published by Paper Kite Press.