Susan Isla Tepper has a Novella just out from Wilderness House Press titled GIRL UPSIDE DOWN. Currently it is only available from the author direct. A twenty-year writer, she has penned 14 published books of fiction and poetry and 7 Stage Plays. Honors include 25 Pushcart Prize Nominations, a win in the Francis Ford Copolla Zoetrope Contest for the Novel (2003), Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award and more. Her stage play ‘The Crooked Heart’ concerning artist Jackson Pollock premiered on October 25, 2022, at the Irish Repertory Theatre in NYC. Adapted from an earlier novel, it was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Susan is a Brand Ambassador for The Galway Review.
http://www.susantepper.com
COMEUPPANCE
By Susan Isla Tepper
Roll of the dice
you wind up here
or there.
America, America.
Once again
if truth be told:
Cherokee, Iroquois
Navajo, Cheyenne
Lenape, Choctaw
and so the list went on…
Government comes
marching in
Bigfoot.
Get rid of them by proxy:
supply the ammunition
encourage hide hunting
kill off the bison
starving the tribes
will melt them away
into the river beds.
I’ll go to the land where my father is gone;
His ghost shall rejoice in the fame of his son;
Death comes like a friend to relieve me from pain;
And thy son, O Alknomook, has scorn’d to complain.
The DEATH SONG OF THE CHEROKEE INDIAN
Words by Anne Hunter (1742-1821), printed London, 1784.
AMERICA
you have received your comeuppance
you are not home of the brave
or the free
you are a vast land
left to the harvest.
Phoebe Wilcox is an award-nominated novelist and poet whose work explores the intersections of human experience, imagination, and resilience. Her debut novel, Angels Carry the Sun (Lilly Press, 2010), was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her poetry chapbook, Recidivist (Lilly Press, 2010), features the Rhysling Award-nominated poem “A More Significant Sun.” Her poetry has also received recognition through three Pushcart Prize nominations and the Gertrude Stein “Rose” Poetry Prize from Wilderness House Literary Review (2012). Wilcox is currently working on her second novel, ALL THE PRECIOUS DANGERS. She lives on the East Coast, where she continues to write fiction and poetry.
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