Poems by Susannah Maltz

Summer

by Susannah Maltz

From Canary Summer 2015

Susannah lives between the Lower Hudson Watershed and the Northern Long Island Watershed.

everyone goes louded by rain / falling into the damp sheets
everyone learns a new name for an old city / barometric pressure rises at the windows

you with your humid kiss / your snakes under the floorboards / or in the downstairs apartment
where they nest and conspire / where we hear them fight / the air conducting sound like the bell
that hums with vicious energy before Silence can pack her hands against the rim / Sundays, mornings
the forecast arrives on the surface of the coffee / oil from your lips churns one way or another
left the monsoon / right the thunder / curling up the drizzle and sigh / curling down the flood

God promised me but he didn't promise you / the wood steams just like a kettle
if you pour cold water on the stones they will cry / in heaven there are succulent plants
that thirst after nothing / in heaven the angels can hear us fighting in their downstairs apartment
there's an underwater city / on the first page / of the new scripture

oil from your lips hisses in the rainwater / we'll be swimming devils / I'll name the ocean after you
underwater everything will finally be clear / the angels in their beachfront finery will drop pennies
a rain that rusts / a rain with no prophecy / a rain that falls inundated with hope and want
an ask begets a pause / a pause begets a nod / we'll grant wishes like sages / thirsting after nothing