Chuka Susan Chesney’s poems have been published in Britain, America, and Australia. Some of the literary journals they have been in are Claudius Speaks, Peacock Journal, Inklette, Picaroon, Pure Slush, Lummox, Live Nude Poems, and The Altadena Poetry Review.
She is a visual artist and a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. Her art has been in exhibitions around the United States and in the New England Review zine.

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Green Potato

Behind our laundry door we store an ironing board.
The T.V. trays club sandwiched on a rolling stand.
On the laundry room shelf, cans of beefy mushroom soup.
Potatoes stacked with onions pass for shaven heads.

I magic mark the wall until I rubber glove your death,
like a middle school frog your body spread.

You still kazoo through slats in our heater vent,
skindive the molecules of phosphorescent ghosts.

I recall hallucinations in my leotard of dreams
when your fevered braided knots crimpled too tight,
and snails along brick borders left slimy invitations.
Your heart would smithereen when you collapsed on it.

Houndstooth pajamas stacked in hospital drawers,
the giant box of insulin took up the floor.

I slept through til morning on a Naugahyde chair.
If anyone brought nightshade they couldn’t leave it there
while your throat blew bubbly chemtrails of less and less air.

I shoveled by your side until the powdery blue end,
before you open flamed in oblivion.