MANIFESTING
how it only rains when I plan to be inside
and the sun sets when my eyes want closing
it’s good to live the god of a small world
and tell the wind to nurse the heavy clothesline
nothing lost or wasted, nothing more than
what I want, all the time, water mulling
rocks to pebbles to line my windowsills
the light left on so I can count the moths
apples blushing on a branch, soon they know
I’ll want a pie, another, and sooner still I’ll find
bruised fruit washing to the shore, price tagged,
sandstuck, and ask it how’d you wind up here?
it says: where I was, I was not right. didn’t you
want me? and isn’t it lovely to find me here?
yes, oh yes, the way the world can still disturb
the poet’s plan, the salt on the skin in the bite
Suze Kay
Suze Kay is a pastry chef in New Jersey by day and a writer whenever the oven's off. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in HAD, Wasteland Review, Acropolis Journal, and more. She loves liminal spaces, one song on repeat, and her little gray cat, Aura. You can find her on Twitter @suz_chef.
Why this Knocked Taylor Out:
Gonna keep it simple today, not because this is a simple poem that isn’t worthy of a close read, but because sometimes that isn’t what the poem needs, or our readers, or me.
I'll also be the first to admit this is probably an uncharacteristically soft poem for me to accept BUT I really think this was a poem I needed to read in a big cosmic way, and that's what the whole poem is about so it just managed to strike me in exactly the right way when I needed it. And I’m glad that it went up today with our schedule (which right now is planned months ahead!)
There is a really simple but powerful message here that I think all of us need to be reminded of: the world can and will disturb/hurt us AND we can still find small ways to tend to our space and to each other.
Tending will save us. It will save us. It has to.
Interview:
Why did you choose Team Taylor for this poem?
Every poem on BRAWL is a banger, but Taylor's choices sound like home. Most of my work is, in a roundabout way, about divinity and/or the body, which seems to slam-dunk me into her bucket. I could imagine Taylor reading this poem and feeling, as I did while writing it, a hunger for a tidy, self-directed world in which the only surprises are good ones.
There are a lot of "objects" in this poem (apples, pebbles, bruised fruit, windowsills and moths etc) . How do you go about choosing which "object" fits a specific moment in the poem and also fits in the poem as a whole?
The objects each asked to be there. In the moment of this poem -- an early fall weekend in my hometown, Westport MA -- they live just as I've described. A lot more does, too, but each object I highlighted gave me something concrete to tie into the act of crafting myself and my world. The potential of an unripe apple, the lazy evolution of a pebble, the casual invitation a light gives a moth... all of these things are natural until made magical. They're things I can harvest for a good life or a good poem.
I've read a few poems from you where you give a voice to something that in the "real" world, cannot speak for itself. Is this typical of your poetry? Why do you think this is something that you do and what does it mean for you to give this voice to something that can't speak for itself?
Yes, over the last year "the voice" has become a constant presence in my writing. I live an interior life. My days are relatively solitary, despite living with my husband in a busy city. I'm the sole pastry chef for a restaurant, so I work mostly alone, and when I'm done with work I write alone. I'm always in conversation with the things I see and touch, but it's not until I write a poem that I can get a grip on what I wish they'd say. It makes me feel less lonely to imagine a world that talks back.
This is actually also from your second submission to BRAWL! You decided to resubmit after a first rejection! At BRAWL we LOVEEE this! Why were you willing to resubmit to us?
The feedback I got from my first rejection was so encouraging and clarifying. I knew even a second rejection would get me closer to not just placing a poem with BRAWL, but also bettering my writing. Overall, I love BRAWL's ethos, the work the editors choose, and their ceaseless social media championing of writers and craft. Why wouldn't I shoot a second shot??