by Susan Grimm

The dead crowd the table thickly, criticize our meat. They give
off a low dark buzz. Floating like stodgy balloons, they wobble-

perch on their usual chairs. If they could pick up a spoon,
add just a little salt. I want them the same, not purged

of their flaws. Their wrongnesses so small, you could hide them
under a plate.I would like to hear once more the underwear

argument (civil), the story of riding the pig. Witness the ritual
coffee slop. I’m glad I joked through their dying and their dead.

Oh, I could not be pulled into the well of grief or ever
get out. I saw it from the corner of my eye. All the water

of purpose and sweat and love, heavy and drenching.

Susan Grimm has been published in Sugar House Review, The Cincinnati Review, Phoebe, and Field. Her chapbook Almost Home was published in 1997. In 2004, BkMk Press published Lake Erie Blue, a full-length collection. In 2010, she won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize. In 2011, she won the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize and her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published. In 2022, she received her third Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant.