Tag: Susan Zimmerman

ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023

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~ ONE ART’s Top 25 Most-Read Poets of 2023 ~

1. Abby E. Murray
2. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
3. Betsy Mars
4. Donna Hilbert
5. Linda Laderman
6. Alison Luterman
7. Julie Weiss
8. Robbi Nester
9. Roseanne Freed
10. Karen Paul Holmes
11. Heather Swan
12. Timothy Green
13. James Diaz
14. Jane Edna Mohler
15. John Amen
16. Barbara Crooker
17. Jim Daniels
18. Susan Vespoli
19. Sean Kelbley
20. Susan Zimmerman
21. Kip Knott
22. Jennifer Garfield
23. Margaret Dornaus
24. Paula J. Lambert
25. Gail Thomas

Memento Mori by Susan Zimmerman

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Memento Mori

No need for a skull on my desk.

All I see will survive me,
be handed on, arrive at last
in the Goodwill jumble,
handled or worn or read by strangers.
All things escape as if leaving me

when I am the one leaving.
Some things seem close in time
but far in distance. I cull my life.
Sheets of paper, so light, multiply,

grow heavy. If I try
to remember it all, I’ll go mad.
When rings melt down for gold—

Let go, let go, they sing
in their melting.

*

Susan Zimmerman’s chapbook, Nothing is Lost, was published by Caitlin Press in 1980. Her poems have more recently appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as Prairie Fire, Gyroscope Review, The Maynard, and SWWIM Every Day. A poem of hers is also included in the new anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, edited by James Crews.

ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of July 2023                               

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~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of July 2023 ~                               

  1. Alison Luterman – My Vibrato
  2. Betsy Mars – Residual
  3. Susan Zimmerman – Two Poems
  4. Donna Hilbert – Two Poems
  5. John Amen – The 80s
  6. Jennifer L Freed – Five Poems
  7. Margie Duncan – If Found, Return to Store
  8. Robert Darken – Everyone Has Better Parents
  9. Lisa Zimmerman – Two Poems
  10. William Palmer – Four Poems

Two Poems by Susan Zimmerman

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After the Diagnosis

Have questions? Ask me now.
Soon I’ll be working on
what day it is, what year,
hoping the baby learns my name
before I forget hers.

Apologies? Don’t wait.
I’m ready to forgive anything.
Time is running
through my hands.

Want the painting of pears,
the convex mirror from Venice?
Tell me now while
it means something.

Don’t save your praise for my funeral.
It’s my funeral now. Tell me.

*

Making Strange

The house changes. It is not yours anymore.
Tomorrow it may be yours again.

Who lives in this place?
you ask, like my aunt asked each time

we brought her back to the Home,
that shifting world.

People you ask for directions gaze through you,
ragtag old lady they directed only moments ago.

Who can you trust? How can you put yourself
in the hands of strangers, all

with the same face, the same voice?
No choice where every door is barred,

every corridor’s a maze.
Are you the strange one? Am I?

*

Susan Zimmerman’s chapbook, Nothing is Lost, was published by Caitlin Press in 1980. Her poems have more recently appeared or are forthcoming in literary journals such as Prairie Fire, Gyroscope Review, The Maynard, and SWWIM Every Day. A poem of hers is also included in the new anthology The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, edited by James Crews.