Susan Isla Tepper has a new Novel out titled “Hair of a Fallen Angel” from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC. A twenty-year writer, she authored 12 published books of fiction and poetry and 5 Stage Plays. Honors include 21 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 many more awards. 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 new novel: https://youtu.be/W2HVIc4NrqY
http://www.susantepper.com

Rimbaud

By Susan Isla Tepper

Certain it was you I saw
on my early morning walk
down the Boul St. Germain

You filling water bottles
from a fountain
in front of a posh apartment
set back some distance
from the street

Water that keeps repeating
through dirty pipes.

You, in fact, looked used
as well:
cheap suit rumpled
hair askew
sweaty face
nervously turning looking around

shirt with unknotted tie
hanging—

this annoyed you;
knocking it back
as you filled
bottle after plastic bottle

Must have picked them
out of various garbage bins

to sell to thirsty tourists
on this muggy fall day,
leaves along the boulevard
rusty;
so little rain

You, Rimbaud, of the famous
sea poem
one hundred lines
after all this time
still the water obsession

Can your soul
not get enough?

Last night,
in that apartment
did you feel
the long violet clots

As your lover’s wife
once described you
calling you a dirty whore