About My Work
To paraphrase May Sarton in A Journal of a Solitude, “I write poetry to know how I feel. I write to capture and hold joy, to get to the root of chaos, to understand relationships and my world.”
Featured In
Another Chicago Magazine (ACM)
Stray Bullets: A Celebration of Chicago Saloon Poerty
Appleseeds: Sacred Fools Press
Finalist, Chicago Team, First National Poetry Slam
Poems
El Cajon
You could watch this place forever.
Nothing would change.
It is dusty on my tongue.
There is no soft domestic curve,
no full belly place to curl in,
only ridges, sharp rocks underfoot.
Breathing hurts.
Everything’s too heavy to lift
like dead weight of legs in a dream.
No simple geometry
can explain how rocks fell
just this way and no other,
what heaving made the canyon,
this steely hill. Every step
tells me I don’t belong here.
My son climbs far ahead,
nearly out of sight—a suddenly
muscled land, undimpled and straight.
Unsoftened by hands, hard before
his shape was finished,
before I had time to smooth his brow,
put a finer curve to his lips—
a clay pot that dried too soon,
flawed and final.
Suzanne Frank
as published in Strong Coffee; nominated for Pushcart Prize
