Tag: Susan Cossette

Stations of the Cross by Susan Cossette

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Stations of the Cross

Do not anger the domestic goddess.
Ora et labora.

Her nave is a mirror
that refuses to hold the shadow
or a footprint,
the bedroom carpet
a field of unblemished snow
vanquished weekly
by the Hoover god of destruction.

She is only safe when
the salt and pepper shakers
are aligned on the cherry wood altar–
Scarlet swiss guards,
perfect porcelain sentries.

She wields the Windex bottle
like the priest’s aspergillum,
and anoints the windowsills
with lemon chrism–
every smudge a black transgression.

The tea towels wait
to be ironed into a hiss of silence,
compressed into a memory of starch
and placed into the cedar Reliquarium.

That last speck of dust
is a persistent ghost.

From dust we came,
to dust we return.

She kneels weekly at the basin,
to scrub the white toilet
and flush her sin into the earth.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she was awarded the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize and is a two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee. Look for her published and forthcoming poems and essays in ONE ART, SWWIM, The Eunoia Review, The New York Quarterly, Rust and Moth, As It Ought to Be, and Anti-Heroin Chic, as well as the anthologies Fast Famous Women, Fast Fallen Women, and Fast Forbidden Women (Woodhall Press). If you meet her, be sure to ask about her cats, Sylvia and Charles.

A Former Mean Girl Contemplates Her Life from the Parking Lot of a Strip Mall by Susan Cossette

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A Former Mean Girl Contemplates Her Life from the Parking Lot of a Strip Mall

I tug back the blank drapes
of memory from the rear-view mirror
of my hail-dented black Mitsubishi SUV–

which is in serious need of a wash
and interior cleaning.

What remains?

Two Minnesota winters
of road salt and gravel,
McDonald’s receipts,
three dimes, a quarter,
and some pennies in the console.

K-Mart winter boots,
a box of office things
from a job I was fired from
18 months ago

two coats (winter and spring),
jumper cables,
and unreturned library books
strewn on the back seat.

I look hard in the tilted mirror.

I have the same green eyes
I always had, the identical
double chin I teased my mother about
when I was 20.

In the parking lot of the Family Dollar
I remember friends
I am no longer friends with.

We were all bridesmaids
in each other’s weddings,
all of us shackled before the age of 24.

So much pink taffeta, blonde hair
and chocolate-covered strawberries
served on Royal Doulton dishes
should not be allowed to exist.

I am ashamed.

Ashamed of flicking cigarette ashes on fat girls,
scrawling graffiti on Jill’s dorm room door
because she smiled at my boyfriend,
snickering behind a pink manicured hand
at Tracy in her cheap dress with her acne scars
who tried way too hard to draw attention
to herself while dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

But really, I dug through the sofa
for spare change to do my laundry,
ate canned chili from a hot pot–

Small hands crumbling saltine crackers
over the warm Sunday night meal,
reading Dickens and Plath,
curled under my tartan quilt.

These green eyes remember
sinking shiny pink pedicured toes
into the sand of a Connecticut beach
I once called home—

Crab cakes and lobster,
a Polish lady who came weekly
to clean my home.

Today I will seek redemption

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she was awarded the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, look for her work in the Eunoia Review, Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women and Fast Famous Women (Woodhall Press).

I Did Not Do It by Susan Cossette

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I Did Not Do It

That cheap leather belt
tossed on the floor is yours,
not mine.

Those angry wounds
wrapped around my neck,
that guilt is yours.

I had the new books for homeschooling,
hand-sewn turquoise and pink ribbon dresses for my girls,
herbs and pine nuts gathered from the desert.

The purple Nevada sky hides no lies.
You know the truth, as do I.

And three tiny dark-eyed girls gaze
at a freshly filled grave,
plump earth adorned with pink flowers
that will wither in a day.

My Paiute mother tells me

         don’t come back,
         there is nothing here for you,
         don’t visit anyone in their dreams,
         your work here is done.

But I tell you—
I did not do it.

*

About this poem:
A month ago, a family member of mine perished under suspicious circumstances at the too-young age of 28. Initially thought to be a suicide, investigators now believe it was an incidence of domestic partner violence. The case remains open and is being actively investigated by law enforcement. Our family demands answers and justice.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

*

Buy One Egg McMuffin Get One Free by Susan Cossette

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Buy One Egg McMuffin Get One Free
Douglas Drive, Crystal Minnesota

Every cracked sign has the sirens’ lure.

We clean cars better than the rest,
repair vacuums, examine eyes.
There are free X-rays for new dental patients,
all-you-can eat shrimp Thursdays at
the boiling seafood Cajun kitchen.

No McFibs, just real ribs at Arby’s
and bargain cremations at Washburn McCreavy’s.

Put a quarter in the shopping cart at Aldi,
gather fresh produce and meat,
house-brand snacks and cheap cheddar cheese.

This ecosystem of minimum-wage workers,
these canned beans, rice, and pasta will feed me for days.

But the Target superstore oversees all,
its red dot a plastic knowing, omnipotent eye—
rusted cars darting in and out
of the kinetic concrete hive.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, look for her work in Rust and Moth, The Eunoia Review, The Rat’s Ass Review, New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

Elegy Before Snow by Susan Cossette

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Elegy Before Snow

Today, the towering ash
tree stands watch,
leafless. Emerald borers
tunneled through bark, left
dry vertical cracks, green sprouts
huddle over roots –
children waiting for a dead parent.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog by Susan Cossette

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Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog
-after Casper David Friedrich

I climb to jagged crags
overlooking churning cauldrons
of swirling green mist and vague mountains
dotted with nameless pines.

I have ascended,
planted my splintered wooden cane
into each moist mossy crevice.

I have ascended,
at times on the backs of others,
a guilty, selfish insurgent.

You only see my worn green coat from behind,
petulant blonde curls
blown by indifferent winds.

My heart facing outward
is the center of this universe,
searching for signs of the divine.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Susan Cossette

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Wide Sargasso Sea
August 2000, Darien CT

I do not remember my son’s third birthday.

But the photographs stuffed in my mahogany night table
show a too-thin frantic girl with untamed curls
serving drinks and cake to family,
my mother and father in ecstasy.

I was a mother. I was married.
Oh, how I wanted to please them,
their supplicant, their sacrifice.

Look at the crazy girl,
her father’s daughter.
Crazy like her aunt,
crazy like her grandfather,
beat into tacit submission.

She is safe, for now.

Later, my child clutched two tiny wooden trains,
chubby hands, face smeared with sticky cake icing
regarding sailboats in the harbor
and white clapboard mansions by the sea.

My small house was supposed to be
a sanctuary, but the ocean closed in on me–
marooned among twisted seaweed
and ragged grey oyster shells.

Everything was either brightness, or dark.

Floating face up, palms up to the blood moon
illuminating the grey harbor.

Look at the crazy girl,
her father’s daughter.
Crazy like her aunt,
crazy like her grandfather.

Then came the flames,
then my streaming hair,
tangled and strangled.

The girl caught in a gilt frame,
crooked pirate smile.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

I Was Diane DiPrima in Another Life by Susan Cossette

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I Was Diane DiPrima in Another Life

I was one of the boys.
I dropped acid with Timothy Leary.
Ginsberg hit me up for weed,
Kerouac for wine and typing paper.

I sewed stars in my hair,
spoke golden truths from other planets.
Buddhist monks chanted my poems like sacred wisdom.

I wanted every electric experience,
the eternal wisdom of peyote and Shiva,
my words to churn and blaze.
Goddess of destruction, purveyor of mercy.

I am really a middle-aged refugee from New York,
living semi-anonymously in the Midwest.
I have a mortgage, a day job, and landscapers.
Two cats, two dogs, and boxes of old memories
packed high in the garage, after the divorce.

Diane, all I have for you tonight
is Muskrat Love on the Legion Hall jukebox,
Christmas music in October,
and monolithic credit card debt.

My brain a thick concrete brick,
dank mud-filled swamp.
Paralysis by analysis.

The letters and syllables buried with old tires,
rusty license plates, plastic six pack rings,
and visions of what I could have been
had I been born thirty years earlier.

It’s not too late, Diane, right?

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Struldbrugs at the Wine Bar by Susan Cossette

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Struldbrugs at the Wine Bar

They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld; and the women more horrible than the
men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional
ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years.
                  -Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

What does forever mean?

Younger women have asked the same,
and heard the same dull echo from the void.
Lead shadows hissing threats.

Nameless servers pour pity wine
for those of us who still taste.
The glasses rattle and the chatter clacks
from the tin ceilings, for we who still hear.

Frozen in time, covetous and vain,
incapable of friendship,
selfies of ourselves.
Botox grins, taut hollow masks.

Those of us still allowed to work toil
under ignorant children with no memory of the past.
The rest are granted a scant allowance.

Ever practical, we brush thinning hair forward,
cover the black mark of the eternal immortal.
Our birthright, unending days.

The shadows of dead lovers dance in mirrors,
and the nameless ones who never were
reflect back, taunting.

We’ve reached that age.
Our rights are gone.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Procrastination by Susan Cossette

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Procrastination

Next summer I will plant flowers
in a perfect circle around the towering pine–

Carve tiny cradles for each pink impatiens,
pat flat the cool damp mulch.

Next summer I will tame wild ivy
on the hundred-year wall,
coerce it into tidy compliance.

The soaring rhododendrons stand guard,
old wise, twisted roots.
The stories they can tell.

Next summer I will hang a suet feeder
outside the kitchen window and await red cardinals.

It is August, and next summer is a long way off.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

The Procession of the Living by Susan Cossette

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The Procession of the Living

You return to that old place.
The musty salt smell of low tide floods back flush.
You did not notice it when you lived there,
Twenty-five years.

Green lawns lush,
shrubs carved into false spires,
obscene roses, impossibly fluorescent hydrangeas–
perfect, expensive, artificial world.

Ten cars crowd the curb
near the neighbor’s grey clapboard house.

I never really knew the man,
saw him in passing, smiled and waved.
Three small children, petite blonde wife.

Then the Saturday run, then the heart attack.

The joggers still jog.
Mothers pull sunburned children to the beach in red wagons,
a slow cadence to the sea.

The purple clouds and fog hang over the horizon at sunset,
florid balloons wafting in stifled air.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

There is No Wine in this Poem by Susan Cossette

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There is No Wine in this Poem

Just a rumpled periwinkle quilt,
two cats, ice water, and opioids.

There is no wine in this room.
I fold into red pain,
the scar on my throat raw,
stuck together with adhesive tape.

I have seen the mountain,
tribes of electronic monitors and surgical equipment,
given enough fentanyl to put down an elephant,
and equal amounts of Narcan to awaken the dead.

            Breathe Susan, let me hear you breathe.
            That’s a good girl, breathe and you will get some ice.

The nurse scooped tiny chips
into my mouth like a mother bird.
I swam to the sterile porcelain surface,
racing home to fluorescent light.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Misbehaving Body by Susan Cossette

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Misbehaving Body

A malignant alien
lives at the base
of my throat.

He has a name.
If I say it
he wins.

In three weeks
he will be in a jar,
his memory a scar.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

The Night Before Prozac by Susan Cossette

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The Night Before Prozac

The amber bottle of green and white capsules
waits in the plastic pharmacy bin,
for three days now.

The strap of muscles clenched around my ribs,
The nausea and stomach churn tell me it is time.
My pulse pounds
go, go, go.

At 3 am, I will think of the perfect things I should have said at work but didn’t.
I will regret the things I said but said anyway.
I will imagine every way I could possibly die.

CNN reports a 50% increase in the number of liver transplants needed
due to pandemic binge drinking.
I cringe at the dozen empty wine bottles
in the kitchen trash.
So many colors, each with its own mood.
The good pinot grigios remind me I overspend.
The cheap ones scream of bored desperation.

In 1999, I crawled into bed for a month.
Nothing existed but the lace curtains, the damp sheets,
a toddler and his grandmother in the next room.
All it took was a pill to wind me up again–
a blank-gazed cipher in pink gingham,
contorted limbs, stiff painted smile.

At 3 am, I will worry I won’t write another poem again.
But I need to sleep and smile and do my job,
the one I waited my whole life for.
I have bills to pay.

The amber plastic bottle waits.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.

Two Poems by Susan Cossette

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Helix Nebula

At the center, a knowing red eye—
Hot dot glowing, regarding the universe with cold disdain.
A thousand sapphire crystals ring the pupil then scatter,
Glittering into nothingness.

You do not blink.
You observe the blackness in silence.
You are studied from afar, photographed and measured.

We want to know you,
Beyond the disconnect of light years, the vacuum of dark distance.

Short-lived star, the core of you imploded ages ago,
Detritus of dust and gas cast into hollowness—
Hydrogen, helium, plasma.

Are you a dying star, or a star nursery?

Gravity will lure the cold crystals back into your scarlet mother’s eye,
Coalesce into new life and possibilities–
The ceaseless cycle of disintegration and rebirth.

*

The Blue Nude Wishes the World Was a Snow Globe

I am not lost.
Leave me in peace, to count paint chips on the worn wooden floor.

I am not singular.
Just indistinguishable from your vague, empty background.

Content to shut my eyes,
Curl inward, as you coldly tally each vertebra of my bare spine.
My bruised thighs delineated by crude black brush strokes.

I expect or desire nothing.

I dream of being rooted in a plastic dome
Among fir trees and singing red finches,
Thatched cottages, distant gothic cathedrals, smiling gnomes.

A shake brings silver snow, dark crows.
For a second I am that forgotten child.

The music box bells tell me, sleep in heavenly peace,
As particles rest on the plasticine ground.

*

Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota and is a two-time recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. The author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, Adelaide, Clockwise Cat, Anti-Heroin Chic, Loch Raven Review, As it Ought to Be, The Amethyst Review, Cross and Crow Keys, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley’s and After the Equinox.