The Price

By Susandale

In Verlaine’s garret, chiseling sentences lean
Feeling for words, breathing life into them
Attaching to__ turned pages of time
For whom the bells tolled 
For Hemingway 
When he shot himself in Ketchum, Idaho

In a room of her own
Mrs. Dalloway’s daughter spoke to us
Through the heavy thoughts she slipped in her pocket
To walk into the River Ouse

This side of Paradise
Scott’s diamond-facet’ sentences
Sharpened in too many nights
Of too many hangovers

Painting the torture of his mind
To jump out of canvases
Piercing our hearts
Until a shot rang out
And we gave Van Gogh up 
To the starry, starry nights

Tactile spaces, words of lifetimes
Textures, and orchestral colors
Symphonic sweeps of brilliance
And the terrible prices extracted for genius

Susandale’s poems and fiction are on WestWard Quarterly, Mad Swirl, Penman Review, The Voices Project, and Jerry Jazz Musician. In 2007, she won the grand prize for poetry from Oneswan. TheSpaces Among Spaces from languageandculture.org has been on the internet. Bending the Spaces of Time from Barometric Pressure is on the internet now.