Susan Isla Tepper has a Novella coming out shortly from Wilderness House Press.  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 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.
http://www.susantepper.com

BIRDS

          after Of the Dark Doves by Federico Garcia Lorca

Lorca
did you dream
those birds
you wrote
into your poem

two dark doves
lit on laurel branches
sun-bleached
landscape
By then were you in hiding?

Grave— you wrote grave
in your poem
obsessively, repeatedly
beseeching the doves
and snow eagles:
where might that grave be?

Strange convoluted
responses croaked
from their feathered finery.

Lorca
did you huddle each morning
cold—
despite the oppressive heat
cold— fearing the awakening

knowing love
would forecast your end.