In Quest
If words were pixels I could lighten these shadows. If words were
pixels, my logic could be leavened. If words were binary, machines
would chuckle at the right moments. The sun, alas, will still be
reprehensible. I‘m not talking about death-dealing or its opposite,
but something anomalous I can’t disclose. Tell me your deepest
secret, as soon as I forget. There is this nagging lack, there is this
honeymoon of cones & rods as colorful as any Indian wedding.
Black, black is the rarity some of us are bound to crave. Call me
contrary, call me besotted with soot or unwilling to put this idea
beside its natural brother. What I won’t revisit is the Age of
Affront. You may vibrate with sympathy for a plethora of
accidental beauties, although they are no less probable than the rest
of us.
—
This selection comes from Susan Lewis’ book How to Be Another, available from Červená Barva Press. Purchase your copy here!
Susan Lewis lives in New York City and edits Posit (www.positjournal.com). In addition to How to be Another, her most recent books are This Visit (BlazeVOX [books], 2015) and State of the Union (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2014). Her work is forthcoming or has recently appeared in The Awl, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Connotation Press, EOAGH, Gargoyle, Luna Luna, Otoliths, Ping Pong, Propeller, Raritan, Seneca Review, Verse, Word For/Word, and Yew. More at www.susanlewis.net.
Marika von Zellen has a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell College (no, not the one in Ithaca). She’s had poetry and fiction published in Open Field, Temporary Infinity, The Grin City Monthly, and the anthology Rock & Roll Saved My Soul. As an Editorial Assistant for Sundress, she’s copy-edited the book Picture Dictionary (2014); as a freelance editor she copy-edited the photography book Face It (2013). In the summer of 2012, she attended the Grin City Collective Artist Residency in Iowa. Besides writing, she enjoys theoretical physics, playing piano, ghost-hunting, climbing trees, and drinking good Czech beer. She’s also a scholar of Lewis Carroll.
