Poetry by Suzanne Edison

      Dane Van CC





Doctor’s Notes Found After

A new mother razored her wrist, marooned
herself in a white ward with residues of baby
blue pills. Her face, like sea glass shimmering
in sand, unstrung jewel. I think of metal glinting
at water’s edge, a lure like mist rising
from a lake—the lake, shiny as beads
of mercury, as wounds that churn
in indigo recesses, pressed inside bodies.
The man in room 3 believed his teen, found
lost in a muddy river, didn’t slip off the bridge--
his boots were patinaed green, laces twisted
as a head rubbernecking a car crash. His body
hollowed with salmon spawn.






​Mapping the Land of Loss
​
i.
Grandpa Sid lay like a deflated
tire.  This  was  in Brookhaven,
the dying home,  rooms-full of
those waiting their turn.

Grandpa, is there anything you are
holding  on   for—my   attempt   at
rabbinic      calm     or    unwanted
Buddhist pretense.                    He
replied;

you are not getting my money.

ii.
A comatose  baby  occupied  the
crib        in        my        six-year-old
daughter’s shared hospital room.
No one

visited that baby the whole three
days we were there.               Once,
a   nurse   came   in,    closing    the
curtain between the beds.

After that, no  matter  the  length
of  appointment,  or  the years  of
treatments,    Rosa    would    only
sleep when we were in the car.

Together.              Headed home.

iii.
The man I loved                      last
put his cheek to  a  Jeffrey   pine.
In my  unwashed   sheets,  traces
                   —pineapple and vanilla.

iv.
Did the shrub    willows   cushion
my father’s head? Did the  stellar
jay watch him stagger?

Did he skitter or scream on  the
gravel road when he toppled,

on his way
to the fishing hole?

v.
I crawled onto the wasteland
of mother’s bed

and brushed her hair--
almost                          unaware

a little too hard—because dammit





Suzanne Edison’s book, Since the House Is Burning, by MoonPath Press was published in 2022. Her chapbook, The Body Lives Its Undoing, was published in 2018. Poetry can be found in: The Missouri Review, SWWIM, Solstice Literary Magazine; RockPaperPoems; Whale Road Review; Lily Poetry Review; JAMA; and elsewhere. She teaches expressive writing to caregivers through UCSF Wellness Center for Youth with Chronic Conditions and lives in Seattle.