Friday 20 September 2024

Three Poems by Susan Wilson

 




The Loop 

An early morning April freeze and shine 

through charcoal-curtained drapery of dread, 

by day and night I’m dreaming of the dead. 

 

A brilliant flame will scald returning times 

and hiss at days and dates with heat so fierce, 

my smouldered scars it will not fail to pierce. 

 

Clouds cast their smoke ahead, within, behind, 

a ghost train ride with terrors in the sky 

and pain that says paralysis can cry. 

 

Again I’m passing through to suffocate 

while breathing in a life where I am changed, 

though calendars ensure I am unchanged. 

 

The pendulum will swing its boxing glove 

to strike my hours full of waiting tears, 

a trickling sound to taste remembered fears.

 

 

Race to the Finish 

60, 64, 72, 77  

not out of breath yet 

with each numbered point 

where they left their heat 

minds commemorating  

milestones from millstones 

sad smiles at headstones 

running slowly as I lead 

first off the blocks 

in this new heat 

the sweat of wondering 

where my line will finish 

 

60, 64, 72, 77 

their route of sepia crowds 

is our technicolour rerun 

not a race, more a journey 

as we gather experiences 

into memory purses 

growing heavy with coin 

our footstrikes on stones 

embroidered with grass 

our jumps and our trips 

over hurdles and water 

as we beg for release 

 

60, 64, 72, 77 

but we’ll win anyway 

at a point beyond 

this world of records 

to be held or crushed 

by a sleep that refuses 

to wake us every one 

a contemporary falls 

and we all continue on 

inhaling and exhaling 

until the clocks untick 

and the hands unclap


60, 64, 72, 77 

passing the 60 

arriving at the 64 

moving onto the 72 

and then the 77 

maybe even the 84 

a record she still holds 

though she runs no more 

and with every stride 

we are closer to her 

and the others who ran 

hold their signposts for us

  

 

Banknotes and Bronze 

A brief handling prints fingertips onto cupro-nickel, 

an alloy and an ally, like the rectangular papers, 

neatly folded and slipped inside my warm palm. 

 

This modern barter in tokens is a promise kept for now 

as the new polymers unfold into faded crumples –  

perhaps too thick to last but they still bounce around. 

 

Tended pennies are tendered beside independent pounds. 

It’s a coinage practically beaten then flicked, dropped  

or rolled like a wheel of your old-fashioned fortunes. 

 

Obverses and reverses are observed and reserved 

but I’m only the small fry at the lone cash self-checkout 

as the plastic people swim past me like sated sharks.  

 

Blown on temporary highs, the printed profiles grow jaded 

and monthly salaries are sweating in fear of a currency 

that sits in the clouds. Touch the screen and not the cash. 

 

Hold on tightly to the pledges that were tenderly made 

in the vaults of the bank in Threadneedle Street. 

Yes, there will always be cash. Promises. Promises.









Susan Wilson lives in East London and began writing poetry following the death of her mother in 2017. Her poems have been published by Lucy WritersSnakeskinRuncible SpoonDreichAreopagusStreetcakeRue ScribeAmethyst Review and Lothlorien. Prior to the pandemic she was a regular performer at “Spineless Authors”, a local open mic event. Her debut chapbook is “I Couldn’t Write to Save Her Life” (Dreich, 2021). 

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