Writing
The Slake
blood scarlet, spider black, a keening in the wind, nearer – I ready
tall poppies bend heavy, sway among grasses in a farther meadow
their breath becomes my breath, I become moon absolute
Requiescat, soft body waiting, existence, a flame, I burn
a burn like opium night windows reflect flames, winter stars, ice
scintillations, frost glazes glass, crimson silver the sorrow of weary I strive
to keep the lull, the sate, the slake
wholly to regain the sky, to rest in peace, adrift holy
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in The Slake August 2000
Contents
The Slake
My hands are composed of butterflies
My Witch
Wake
November Sky
Morningstar
Dignity
My Dead
Ghosts of You
Into Thin Air
A Dream Begins
My hands are composed of butterflies
My hands are composed of butterflies
making it impossible to grasp the most important of things;
the most important of treasures slips
into the bright flittering spaces of breath left after flight
ever lost as light
beneath ephemeral wings.
My spine is the birch tree branching higher,
twigs ever-thinner nerve tendrils creeping through the current of flesh;
the flares of fire encode this life, passed
into the rings of my body as a count of years with dimming sight
insubstantial as light
entwined to the earth.
I hide this extinction
behind my fluttering fingers.
If I could have held onto them
what worlds we could have lived in.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Grim & Gilded Issue 7 July 2022
My Witch
You were sleepwalking under a summer moon
and I followed.
The air filled with violets
when you told me you were mine.
While I was burning pages I caught my feet on fire;
this traitorous world carries some of us away.
A thief of chances promised me the summer sun
and I followed
until I found all there is there
is sand and blood.
While I was burning futures I caught my eyes on fire;
this sacrifice for a mere glimpse of my fortune.
The incessant tide caught me, faithless,
and I followed. I swallowed memories
of your hair in the wind, of wild days entwined like daisies, the taste
of your smile like sunflowers.
I was burning my life and
I was the fire the whole time.
I’m coming home.
You were my witch;
you taught me
there are a thousand moons
and all of them,
all of them mine.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Prismatica Magazine Issue 6 Fall 2019
Wake
beneath the reaching hazel tree
a sweet witch's spell we tangle in a summer charm, humming
in her shade then, we sleep
two of us, reaching, winding, wanting
windows wide to white light, curtains fly our same wet German sky
on the down then, we sleep
winding dunes, far north of Amsterdam, we
flee with the wind, with the sea, with the seconds bitter cold, still colder
tomorrow then, we wake
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Coffin Bell July 2020
November Sky
There is a story in the November sky,
story of a storm of indigo and grey,
of the way
hallowed crows fly
while yellow leaves sail like pain through pearl snowlight
across violet space
and of the way
I cry
as if burned to ashes,
as if to prove to autumn
I knew her
in her garnet and gold, I was with her,
here with her.
On this earth I was alive, I was
alive.
©Susan Zegarsky
Morningstar
Because you said so,
I changed my name
to iron, plate, scrub, dig, deliver, shame.
At first I became a dead bird, hollow boned and lighter
and lighter with time,
then, dried petals, a smudge of ash, barely visible, a
floating mote of dust, but then, then an ember.
Flagrant, irreverent
particles of me began to flake, to lift skyward, to phosphoresce;
irrelevant fragments fell, fell
back to the earth.
I am coming for everything
you denied me.
I shine above the clouds, above the mountains, above the rain,
daughter of the morning,
my particles becoming waves, bearing terrible
blinding light.
Daughter of morning,
I am the brightest of the stars.
If you see me now, you will see the depth
your darkness buried you.
If you see me now,
you will see no more.
Yet I’m still learning to forget
that you said it was I who was the adversary.
My name is now
birdsong, summer sunrise, morning star, blue sky
because I say so.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Prismatica Magazine Issue 6 Fall 2019
Dignity
I have wrapped myself in cinnamon and cedar.
I have filled my body with honey drunk by moonlight.
My feet are oiled, henna bloodstained with lotus blossoms, my hands swarm with bees
who whisper, sah, sah, the sound of the wind chasing the sand.
I have eaten gold and opened the eye while borne on the backs of blue scarabs
who summon me, Star of Egypt.
Recounting the days when I was bought and sold,
I throw your lies back to you from the scale, one by one by one,
until your ears ring with the songs of all women before me and after.
Floating like myrrh, I stretch my open bones to the bright stars,
to the immortals,
and now I am sure you can never touch me.
Knowing what I know now
I would never let you enslave me
as the price for beautiful days
not even to become one of the gods I am.
Though you tore out my tongue and stole my fingers, yours was a secret I would not keep.
Notes:
Sah, the ancient Egyptian word for mummy, means dignity, nobility.
The Egyptians called the circumpolar stars the immortals; they were always visible, always watching.
The Star of Egypt is Sirius.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Cauldron Anthology Issue X Cult Winter 2019
My Dead
Mouth frantically wide, teeth of razor blades, saw blades,
in the night, in my bed, she chews my legs down to bloody raw meat
stark bones between feet and thighs
until she shrieks at me what she speaks I do not know
as her jaws stretch and clack to bite,
but it is pain.
Skin of shadow blue, veins showing through, gaunt and gut-wrenching, beautiful,
he lounges at my door, thumbing thin the cover of a leather journal in wasted hands;
a void, silent, he watches the hours of night and silence slip into early morning,
he watches the dawn come until he fades with the stillness into rays of pink and autumn,
until he whispers to me only,
“Sorrow.”
My dead want vengeance for the ways I’ve made them suffer.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in The Horror Zine January 2020
Ghosts of You
You left many ghosts
in my care.
You left the ghost of
your voice, your red
rage the thunder in my ears
that shakes me unexpectedly in the dark.
Your ghost comes out of my mouth
when I speak of myself.
Freak, you say, Failure;
those names like curses you spoke at me
always threatening something more.
You left many marks
engraved across my skin, still etched
on what is left of me, on what I haven’t yet peeled away
to erase your touch, your every touch, carvings, your marks
the ghosts of fangs
and venom.
You left ghosts of your hands,
bruised the throat of my hope
voiceless where you strangled it, wrung it
dry;
your handprints remain
where you twisted my gifts into grievances.
You left one of your ghosts
in the corner, in the space
where I always hid from your furies
until one the day you found me.
This ghost stands there still, still and hot,
all eyes,
the way you stood over me, towering, a disobeyed god.
Your boot prints appear and disappear here, laden ghosts
crushing down my bones to grime
beneath your weight, your weight
somehow less heavy
than the fear tightly packed inside my chest.
You left many ghosts
in my care.
But these ghosts of you
are only half of what you were,
lesser tormentors,
only your echoes, your aftermath, the nightmare
of you,
not you,
and this is my relief.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in The Horror Zine January 2020
Into Thin Air
From a distant life,
from a thousand miles away,
I recall the innocence of your hands;
I remember the way you held onto me as if to keep from falling away,
the way you reached out for me as if to save yourself from drowning.
This is all I’ve saved of an uncorrupted time when I didn’t yet know
your feral malice would sear me into cinders of bone, one day
your fingers would stretch and ache to choke like tendrils of seaweed.
In silence I was nearly tangible
but as I spoke, you alone became immuring stone.
I recall the sharp rage of your hands born
to tear the voice from my throat, to bury me, erase me, snuff me
still, so I,
I dissipate into air, ash, autumn sky.
life slips into the air – blades of yellow leaves rain through slips of perilous sun
someone sleeps on the ground – something slips from my hands
breath escapes, never caught again – they will know you did this
Soon only one of us will drown in thin air and still
love is not war no matter how bloody you make it.
©Susan Zegarsky
first published in Ink in Thirds Issue 9, February 2017
A Dream Begins
A dream begins with a young girl who thinks herself a witch,
with long, moonlit nights and explorations of limitless futures, a trusting,
careful sounding so as to plumb the brightest one and shy from the misstep.
So young, she made you charms to protect you, to bring you peace, lived
all for you, while you stole away her voice and her choices.
She held still when you sliced your words across her skin, while you
tore the music from the harp of her broken fingers, crushed her,
the one who never conceived a man could appear alive while in the lack
of a heart. Oh this child, she kept smiling when you hung her.
When you hung her, she smiled for you,
because you were all she loved, all the world
she knew.
A woman then, she raided past moments for the one small thing she’d missed, a change in the air,
a faltering, a feather, that sign of any
card unturned or omen glimpsed yet unheeded,
for the simple chance to say: Freeze.
There, that. That is what I did not see. That is where I mistook,
where I took
the wrong path, where my gifts failed me, where I
fell.
Now that was long, long ago and all magic was sorely spent. Now the undone bones
of distant melodies poke through her threadbare skin, rattle empty of tune.
The eyes of a thousand birds peer from the weeds of her hair, these harbingers. Sobs
of sorry bees echo beneath her lips long sewn tight and in age alone she gropes toward the sea
with blind eyes, no longer smiling.
Or she is simply the witch you burned.
And then it ends.
But the sweetest words are a dream begins.
©Susan Zegarsky
First published in Cauldron Anthology Issue X Cult Winter 2019
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