Spell for Revision in January
Sing seven decades of light to the poem Sling it over your shoulder like a cross Eat mercy while you write Search for a whiskey’d saloon poet with a clockwork miracle in his gut to help rescue metaphors Stage whisper the words as if in a confessional Climb through its lazy forensic architecture Use brambles & nightshade vines to animate a gothic still life Apply onomatopoeic logic Chant the prayers you still honor till your tongue burns Expose your typing fingers to candlelight X out the surface chatter Respond from an existential perspective not a clinical one In the flinty hour before moonrise leave the door open to hell All behavior is excused as long as its offered at the altar of the muses Witch a second chance closer closer to the edge of the page Revise Love the cold flowers that belong to winter Re-see with nuclear blue eyes that rouse suppressed sins Chortle at yourself in waltz rhythm ha-ha-ha ha-ha-ha Let everything shatter & write about the moon
Pick a tarot card, any tarot card.
The Séance
At nighttime things happen that aren’t allowed in daylight your dead lover wants to see you wants to rendezvous to peep you up & down he will sojourn in the hall mirror or half way up the curvy staircase he will meet you in the thorniest bramble of wild roses he wants to speak to you in poem in music & kinship with the elements he is wind clawing the doorframe begging to be let in he wants to poem you & feel your breath on his naked neckbones he says your hair smells of Salem in autumn he carries a jam jar of tears he yearns for an encounter at Starbucks if you’ll buy him passion tea he is spelling your name in Ouija taps he is unafraid of your dark wants to look down the barrel of your pen write peace with you says you’re a wise old thing with a faint vibe of sadness he will come to you like the last call of a nightbird like the last call at your favorite 4am bar he wants to perfume you with the oils of a lonely deadman wants you to see him wan & edgeless he wants to come to your bed hovering like mist from dry ice he wants to come to you he wants to come
He is searching for a blessing One more smoky hour.
Susen James
Susen James is an old hag born in the concrete shadow of Chicago, but she doesn't let that depress her too much & spends her time wandering graveyards, the older & more neglected the better, feeding her obsessions & spending time teaching her students at Columbia College in Chicago.
Header image by Annie Spratt.
