Two poems by Kim Suttell
My Shoes Betray Me
I wear a plainly embroidered blouse.
The skirt I bought at the tram-stop newsstand.
I bought shampoo there, too.
The bag for peppers
is the same one they all use.
I paid five stotinki.
And my first-world status
doesn’t extend for me
the limited choice of cheese.
I share a layer of coal soot
with everyone else,
men with coffee, stray dogs.
The half-assembled cityscape
crumbles under construction.
in no aspect is newness
or selection apparent
except in my shoes. I think
if I stay mute I might be part
of what is not noticed—
absent plaster, missing banisters,
pilfered grates, and effort.
In my life, I will never
have to try so hard.
The dull curry-curdle color
painting every other structure
pains to be sunny.
The café strains for comfort
with two menu items.
Little girls bear up
under assiduous ribbons.
I wear easiness not washed out
even in the same caustic detergent.
Youngstown
Around the corner extends a minor canyon.
Hear an Aaron Copeland swell. Course
a swallowing sidewalk of lost paving stones,
mud gullies, dust and buckle, unsuitable for tricycles
and old women who man day care centers
where children swing on rails of pipe
and chip concrete from porch steps.
A street for lumber-trudge families
on the edge of America, wedged
in the middle of it. Row houses,
like trail mules banked for service,
linger on a high voltage tether:
Doleful windows, slack, shaggy siding,
tarpaper saddles, a bray and a tinkle of bells.
All haunch-shift idle in heave-halt descent.
Trek home without looking up.
About the author
Kim Suttell, born in California, has crisscrossed the USA many times and landed in New York City. She is a returned Peace Corps volunteer…
Read the full bioIssue 20 · May 2014
Table of contents
- From the editors
- Poetry
- Two Poems by Kassandra Montag
- Two Poems by Bernard Henrie
- Two Poems by Anna Weaver
- Seamstress
- Gifts: Naxos
- hands off
- Two poems by Gary Maggio
- Ukrainian Now
- Etched
- Newport Mansions, Observed from the Cliff Walk
- Two poems by Pepper Trail
- 10-100
- First Day in Sydney, 1992
- Microclimates
- Two Poems by Laurie Byro
- Train Kids
- Floating World
- Morning Trip to the Mechanic
- Transcendental Nocturne
- Two poems by Kim Suttell