Susan Isla Tepper presented her darkly comic play CLANDESTINE in an Equity Premiere Staged-reading, hosted by SHOPTALK, on June 10 at EAG Guild Hall Theatre, NYC. Her latest Novel “Hair of a Fallen Angel” was published by Spuyten Duyvil Books. A twenty-year writer, she’s written 12 published books of fiction and poetry and 7 stage plays. Honors include 21 Pushcart Prize Nominations. Her 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. A Youtube music video for her latest novel at: https://youtu.be/W2HVIc4NrqY

Crisis

By Susan Isla Tepper

Camels ran past, in the dark
indistinguishable
from the land smell of
pocked craters
Earlier than the beginnings
of imagination—
the true crisis.

For eons we’d intended to meet:
You, there
on the other side or was it I

we set out anyway, finally
on the same long road
you from your side
me, mine.

Such discoveries!
Identical in form if not in scope.

Yours was an illusionary lens
thick with dust and fibres

mine a single stroke out of
a bent pen:
Relentless grit.
Filled notebooks: my eyes,
hair, everywhere
an opening.

Your own fashioned out of
a perceived glow from the sun
I found intimidating—
everything a piled up sex act.

For my part not a scrap
of decent meal the whole journey.

You may have fared better.
Who’s to say—
what is civilized; decide
which meat is most tender.

Phoebe Wilcox’s first novel, Angels Carry the Sun, (Lilly Press, 2010) was nominated for the PEN/Faulker award. Her poetry chapbook, Recidivist, (Lilly Press, 2010) includes the Rhysling-nominated poem, “A More Significant Sun.” Three Pushcart prize nominations and one Gertrude Stein “Rose” Poetry Prize later (Wilderness House Literary Review, 2012), she is hard at work on her second novel, Don’t Get Burned. She lives in a swing state on the East Coast.