This selection, chosen by Guest Editor t.r. san, is from Dressing the Bear by Susan L. Leary (Trio House Press 2024).
dwelling
again my brother calls in the middle of Property Brothers
to tell me he can build a better house. a blue house with a bluer door
& a hundred noiseless windows where i can live overlooking the sea.
a writing desk. sheets of sun stacked to the ceiling like paper. miniature
rooms hidden inside every doorknob, one with a library the size
of my thumb, fleabane vased in barnacles.
i could live there, i say. in the house built in the company of tv static
& other troubled men. feces on the walls & pillows soaked in piss,
jumpsuit removed & toothpaste spread over one man’s genitals.
yes, even there, my brother thought beauty. even there, resting
besides a hemingway novel on the bookshelf, will be an immaculate
little dwelling for his urn.
Susan L. Leary (she/her) is the author of SENTENCE (Nine Syllables Press, fall 2026), selected by Eugenia Leigh as the winner of the Nine Syllables Press Chapbook Contest; More Flowers (Trio House Press, February 2026); and Dressing the Bear (Trio House Press, 2024), selected by Kimberly Blaeser as the winner of the Louise Bogan Award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in such places as Indiana Review, North American Review, Third Coast, Cream City Review, Smartish Pace, The Arkansas International, and Verse Daily. She holds an MFA from the University of Miami and lives in Indianapolis, IN.
t.r. san is a poet and translator currently based on Gadigal land, with recent work found in minor literature[s], The Cincinnati Review, HAD, Smokelong Quarterly, The Offing, &c. read & reach @thoushallkill on Twitter, or trsan.neocities.org.
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