Here's a preview from Susanna Childress' new book, Entering the House of Awe:
Instructions for the Twitterpated, Nightingaled, and Sore in Love
Begin by throwing something away: the microwave,
for example. This will be easier after the crimson hibiscus
fall from where you hung them to dry, their huge corolla spilled
like dark tortillas and your own ticking pulse
won’t stop you from sagging to the floor with a heady,
comprehensive loss, those flowers you strung up by the broom
stunningly ruined, their long stems, too, snapped like the legs
of a praying mantis. After this, sweep your arm
across the cupboards and fill a canvas sack with the butter pickles
and wheat germ nobody bothered to open, the prize-winning box
of cereal, the spindled cheese grate. Whatever you do, do not
toss the egg shells, which, after having broken each open,
you returned to the carton like a dozen viscous sockets
that might yet sing. Run your fingers over their fractured edges
and don’t be surprised if you’ve never touched
such a thing, parchment-thin, specked with the memory of locust,
millet, wind, now crooked halves of a yolky hollow,
cupped grottos of sound you’ve become deaf to, ears dwarfed
with your own importance—to thy high requiem become a sod—
so that when you’re standing here with me, wondering
what you’ll do without the toaster oven and why my face
is an insouciant cheddar pink, you must offer the old knife with one hand
and arch my back with the other. Watch me slice open two avocados
and with palpable shock behold their pits, so beautiful
that after you leapfrog the gates of heaven and get a good look
at God’s knuckles it’s these you’ll recall, not the trash bin,
not the emptied palms, goose bumped with secret. For now,
stand still a decent while: turn your hand over, let them go.
Check out more of Susanna's work at the YAPRS reading at Beaverdale Books on Thursday, October 6th at 7pm.
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