Susan Tepper is the author of eight published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent book just out in June is a zany road novel titled “What Drives Men.” Honors and awards include eighteen Pushcart Nominations, a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for the novel “What May Have Been” (Cervena Barva Press, and currently being adapted for the stage), NPR’s Selected Shorts Series, Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award, Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review, Shortlisted 7th in the Zoetrope Novel Contest (2003), Best of the Net and more. Tepper is a native New Yorker.
Hobbled
The sea pulls
a long string
under my rib cage
Lost city submerged
boundaries unclear
you spoke of love
climbed fences one by one
Hobbled/
as distance grew
out of the air
steaming—
cows make their soft unending cry.
Jump
Grass heavy
in my bucket
I have ordered us both
not to
A day longer than
what came before
and will be longer still
‘til one of us
feels free enough
to jump.
The Galway Review 