Susan Isla Tepper is a twenty-year writer and the author of 11 published books of fiction and poetry and 2 stage plays. Her play ‘The Crooked Heart” concerning artist Jackson Pollock in his later years was presented as a staged reading on October 25, 2022 at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC. Tepper’s new satirical Novel titled ‘Office’ is forthcoming from Wilderness House Press this month. Another Novel titled ‘Hair of a Fallen Angel’ will be published by Cervena Barva Press in the spring. http://www.susantepper.com

RAPTURE

By Susan Isla Tepper

After a period of intense heat
during which the artist
sweated blood from his ears
and the pores of his back
the rapture crested.

As artists go, he was a genial sort
not given to outbursts—
If, for instance, his food
crusted and spoiled.
No fits erupting when
due to a neighbor’s carelessness
about the chimney
parts of his roof caught fire, too.

He kept a few sheep and two goats
at his simple compound.
He never married.

After his earthly departure,
people remarked about the pair of goats.
How in their less than wedded animal bliss
they must’ve satisfied his primal curiosity.

Painting by Bridget Seley Galway for The Rapture

Bridget Seley Galway, Artist/Poet graduated from UMass Amherst with a BFA in Painting and Art Education. She received a full scholarship and was the recipient of the Binny & Smith Artistic Achievement Award. Her poems have been published in several anthologies, and her collection of poems and images “What Moments Yield”, published by Ibbetson Press, is included in several library collections. She has exhibited throughout New England; her paintings have been selected for the covers of Bagels with Bards, Ibbetson Press, and individual poet publications.