Susan Yount
bury me. The size
of human heartache
the weight of an airplane
the bedrock, the folds of quake—
life. The way I fit into your handprint. How your palms warm me
when I pray
when you pray.
No milk from me, when you squeeze.
A rock farmer from southern Indiana melted, molded and tumbled
into Chicago
an avalanche
a temblor
landslide
thumbprint
wrist-bent-
cyst-pressed, pressed deep into the limestone
snap
snap
snap… just another stone to add to the childless memories.
Oh! How the rock garden grows.
So heavy now
slow down
the wrinkles
the wine
have buried
you broken rhinestone, soiled seraph, pollen-pearl.
Blue Island Rock Chic a go
Pilsen
busted flagstone
buried bones bitch.
Without blinking—
How screwdrivers break windows
when you could not dream
what was stolen from the road the wrong place
milk.
Susan Yount was born and raised on a 164-acre farm in Southern Indiana where she
learned to drive a tractor, harvest crops, feed the chickens and hug her beloved goat, Cinnamon.
Soon after receiving her BA from Indiana University in Photo-Journalism, she moved to Ohio and married
a physicist. While attending Kent State University as a guest graduate, she worked at the largest flour
mill in northeast Ohio where she kept those Accounts Receivables up-to-date (no small feat, that!).
Not long ago at all, she moved to the South Side of Chicago with a view of the Sears Tower from her
front windows. She is the Editor of Arsenic Lobster and works (for pay!) at the Associated Press
on Wacker Drive. She will begin graduate studies in poetry at Columbia College in Chicago this September.
Only Mimi Mousy Tongue knows what Susan will be doing next and she's not talking. Her poetry has appeared
or is forthcoming in several print and online magazines including Elixir, andwerve, can we have our ball back?,
Verse Daily and The Chaffin Journal. Susan is a 2003 recipient of The Lynda Hull Memorial
Scholarship in Poetry.