by Susan diRende
Long Distance
The bottom of water with bones
and hooks, tackle of the lost, a boot
and a brake drum, parts of us
or how we went, and why they come
to me I don’t know. Without oratory
of moon, starlight singing, without
duality or black holes, distant
diffuse timbres. Travel is when time
folds. We get there before we know it.
When my mother called from
the nursing home, well not mother
but brother, when he held the phone up
to her sitting up in bed with two
pillows behind her and her
roommate wondering if maybe she
had on her nightgown, she spoke,
didn’t speak exactly but breathed,
pressed her air out into me,
exhalation into my ear, something
between word and kiss, maybe
song. I didn’t know how long to wait.
I don’t know now.
The plants are waving.
The giant fish parks in air
or what seems like air to fish.
Ralph Burns is the author of seven books, most recently, but not yet, winner of the Blue Lynx Poetry Prize and published by Lynx House Press, and Ghost Notes, winner of the Field Poetry Prize and published by Oberlin College Press. His poems have recently appeared in Image Journal, The Common, Crazyhorse, and Georgia Review.
Author/artist Susan diRende travels the world with no fixed abode. She has won awards for her writing including the 2017 Special Citation for Excellence by the Philip K Dick Awards. Her artwork has had exhibitions in New Zealand, Belgium, Mexico, and the US. Most recently, she has had writing and artwork published in The Dewdrop, the Pine Hills Review, and The Gaze Journal.