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 Coppola 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
TOUCHABLE MATTER
-for Judith A. Lawrence ( 1941 – 2026)
By Susan Isla Tepper
I
It took but a moment for you
to rise and see everything
All you missed
those final years
a hard unsparing decade
II
Your gift was disproportionate:
a love for the world
against what it gave back.
I can only bow
to your humble beginnings
and the flower thus unearthed
III
How much pain to dig
art out of the dirt?
Does this ever occur
to you now, free
And the way you sprang up
laughing and flying
shaking timid ground
IV
Underestimated,
your deep life-force
shines brightest of
the faraway stars
Yet more than a star’s lustre
you were touchable
matter
V
On certain days I can see
your return to the kitchen
near the Bristol Bridge
Boiling water
in the red tea kettle
I sent you through the mail
Judith A. Lawrence was the editor/publisher of Lilly Press and River Poets Journal for several decades. She is also a prolific painter, and writer of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Originally from Philadelphia, PA, she now resides in Florida. She has published five chapbooks of poems, written a volume of short stories, and a recent memoir titled “Point of Comfort.” She is currently completing a murder/mystery novel and a book of short poems containing her watercolors, under her nom de plume Juniper Rue.