Susan L. Leary
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susanlleary.bsky.social
Susan L. Leary
@susanlleary.bsky.social
2.6K followers 1.7K following 1.1K posts
Poet | MORE FLOWERS (Trio House Press 2026) | DRESSING THE BEAR (Louise Bogan Award, Trio House Press) | A BUFFET TABLE FIT FOR QUEENS (Washburn Prize, Small Harbor Publishing) + 2 📚| Mayah 🐶 | www.susanlleary.com
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susanlleary.bsky.social
Leigh Lucas 💙

“Help. Is a beautiful thing to say.”

from LANDSICKNESS (Tupelo Press)

I am forever altered by this book!

@tupelopress.bsky.social
I know I am embarrassing myself. I try to calibrate the distances. Art requires careful theatrics. Yes, be more cold. Be ventriloquizer. Quoter. Don't make a feast of cutlery. Help. Is a beautiful thing to say. Surrender. When I had butterflies I couldn't shake he’d scoop me up and lie on top and Squeeze Those Nerves Right Out. So what now?
December 7, 2025 at 4:05 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Louise Glück ♥️

“I speak / because I am shattered.”

Always revisiting this poem.
The Red Poppy The great thing is not having a mind. Feelings: oh, I have those; they govern me. I have a lord in heaven called the sun, and open for him, showing him the fire of my own heart, fire like his presence. What could such glory be if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters, were you like me once, long ago, before you were human? Did you permit yourselves to open once, who would never open again? Because in truth I am speaking now the way you do. I speak because I am shattered.
December 6, 2025 at 4:58 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
New poem in The Louisville Review from the new manuscript. I am grateful to the editors, especially Flora K. Schildknecht, for including this one: another poem for the brother. 💙
Susan L. Leary Mouth Because you are physically worn down, I build a mouth for you from insufficient materials. I sew letters onto the wrong tongue & collect stray teeth like dice, string them awkwardly from a too-lit ceiling. Later, you spit into a paper bag, then bite down into a metal tray so someone can thieve an impression of your mouth in defense mode. There is a specific type of silence, you'd said. To survive this place you must be repressed. You must sink yourself into the hole of your own damage, strip the mind of sensory overload-drown out the noise so the noise is just noise: eat cake. Funny, your whole life everyone was yelling into that hole, offering you more mouths than limbs, offering you more "you's" than could ever be relevant. The construction of anything is complaint, is highway robbery, is unadulterated system. Without saying much, you say we are insufficient. With the page, you build yourself a replica & lie down in its body while it revs, inaudibly, for truth. You create your own mouth, a second mouth. You speak as it fills with water.
December 2, 2025 at 7:02 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
More from Chessy Normile ♥️
OK, LOOK I went into the woods alone alone and came out wet and aware of the blight that's killing the aspens. You could write things down just as they are, just as you see them. You could try that.
December 1, 2025 at 6:50 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Eliza Griswold 💙

“Love surprises us. / It ends.”

I can’t stop thinking about this poem!
Flood Eliza Griswold I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps. The room itself: "You're wasting this life expecting disappointment." I packed my bag in the night and peered in its leather belly to count the essentials. Nothing is essential. To the east, the flood has begun. Men call to each other on the water for the comfort of voices. Love surprises us. It ends.
November 29, 2025 at 9:25 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Stuart Kestenbaum 🤎

“Stitch it back together.”
Holding the Light for Kait Rhoads Gather up whatever is glittering in the gutter, whatever has tumbled in the waves or fallen in flames out of the sky, for it's not only our hearts that are broken, but the heart of the world as well. Stitch it back together. Make a place where the day speaks to the night and the earth speaks to the sky. Whether we created God or God created us it all comes down to this: In our imperfect world we are meant to repair and stitch together what beauty there is, stitch it with compassion and wire. See how everything we have made gathers the light inside itself and overflows? A blessing.
November 27, 2025 at 9:08 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Eve Luckring’s SIGNAL TO NOISE (Ornithopter Press) was so very good!

@thetenderbetween.bsky.social
@ornithopterpress.bsky.social
Eve Luckring’s poetry collection, Signal to Noise, displayed next to a vase of red carnations.
November 26, 2025 at 5:19 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
🌸🌺 MORE FLOWERS 🌸🌺 forthcoming February 2026 from Trio House Press! Enjoy this little unboxing video and pre-order at the link in the replies! Endless gratitude to so many!

@triohousepress.org
@krisbigalk.bsky.social
@natashakane.bsky.social
November 20, 2025 at 2:54 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Chessy Normile 💙
VULNERABLE MAN At night, when we're not looking, small blue flowers close their mouths in the grass.
November 18, 2025 at 3:47 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Proof copy is here, and she’s lovely, so let this be a little reminder that MORE FLOWERS is out with @triohousepress.org in less than 3 months! You can pre-order at the link in the replies or wherever books are sold!

Here’s to more poetry and more flowers!
🌺🌸🌼
The poetry collection, More Flowers, resting against a vase of red carnations. ♥️🌸💐
November 16, 2025 at 6:53 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
More from Eve Luckring ♥️

from SIGNAL TO NOISE (Ornithopter Press)

Happy #smallpoemsunday!

@thetenderbetween.bsky.social
@ornithopterpress.bsky.social
@tomsnarsky.bsky.social
ECHOED : familiar but unrecognizable : this "b" for that "v" sound : whenever they blame the victim : each room swarming with ants... : how I let her down; I let her down; let her down
November 16, 2025 at 3:20 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Eve Luckring 💙

from SIGNAL TO NOISE (Ornithopter Press)

@thetenderbetween.bsky.social
@ornithopterpress.bsky.social
SCATTERED : in my mother's ashes : some sort of daughter : with an unreliable sense of direction
November 16, 2025 at 12:56 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Chelsea Dingman ♥️

“There is such violence / in the sunset.”

@chelsdingman.bsky.social
Sunset Do you forget the roar of tiny lungs unsettling your sleep? How I was once, a sparrow lost in the yard? Or was it safer for you to let him open new seams, your scars still so raw? I used to wake and run all of the faucets, as if we lived inside the falls. The house, lit like a constellation. Was I ever yours after that? There is such violence in the sunset. You wanted me to beg, but I held my breath as I wanted to be held. I should have said I wanted sky to claim the stars. That I understood to be a good girl I had to lie low like the aging hardwood floor. But, when I return, it's to stand in the soft light on the sun-porch. To admit the sunsets are drawn by my hand.
November 15, 2025 at 4:16 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Jill Osier 🤎

Beautiful poem, beautiful poet.

@bullcitypress.com
THEY'RE SAYING NOW THAT FEATHERS ARE MOSTLY LIGHT, THAT WINGS ARE MOSTLY NOT THERE But sometimes it's warm enough for the neighbor to stand in the field and brush out her horse's tail. She knows the sun slips through it. The horse, two-toned, is losing a winter coat, the day a world slipping through its own hands. Dusk will lead them out to a road that leads out of town, and she'll teach it how to walk this way, through shadow.
November 13, 2025 at 4:24 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
M. Cynthia Cheung ♥️

from COMMON DISASTER (Acre Books)

I absolutely love this poem!

@acrebooks.bsky.social
Still Life The backyard foxes are lean this winter, and the birds bright. Most days I can't bring myself to do anything but watch the vixen root for something. A run of good days means I'll spend hours rearranging the pantry, as if preparing to paint a Dutch still life. All that's missing is a milkmaid. Or a dead bird. My dress, wrinkled and sleeveless, is nothing like the sky. The foxes grow thinner, and I wonder whether I should feed them, though I don't really know what they eat. Nights stretch and I sleep little, but it's the days, the sun at four o'clock, that are the most difficult-when the movement of clouds appears full of peril. People once drilled holes into other people's skulls, just to let that darkness out.
November 9, 2025 at 5:46 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
“…I hide / my sadness well / behind all the birds / in my poems.”

from Othuke Umukoro’s FENESTRATION (Texas Review Press)

A beautiful book, friends!
Late Spring The chiaroscuro of tulip poplars. The scarlet tanager is back from its travel along the long white dress of the border. Someone once told me I hide my sadness well behind all the birds in my poems. A slap of wind pushes us to go, then to go. You turn by a boulder to kiss the cold tip of my nose. I will keep an eye out for wonder.
November 2, 2025 at 11:27 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Joanna Klink ♥️
Elegy BY JOANNA KLINK I saw you fall to the ground. I saw the oaks fall. The clouds collapsed. I saw a wildness twist through your limbs and fly off. The river fell, the grasses fell. The backs of six drowned cattle rose to the surface ice-nothing moved. But a wind touched my ankles when the snow began. You left that night and we stayed, our arms braced with weight. What power there was was over. But I switched on the light by the porch to see if anything was falling-and it fell, a few glints in the air, catching sun although there was no sun, and the long descent over hours, all night, seemed like years, and we buried our faces in what came to rest on the ground or moved our feet over it, effortless, as nothing was in our lives, or ever will be.
October 25, 2025 at 10:36 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Ellen Bryant Voigt 💙
Practice Ellen Bryant Voigt To weep unbidden, to wake at night in order to weep, to wait for the whisker on the face of the clock to twitch again, moving the dumb day forward— is this merely practice? Some believe in heaven, some in rest. We'll float, you said. Afterward we'll float between two worlds— five bronze beetles stacked like spoons in one peony blossom, drugged by lust: it I came back as a bird I'd remember that— until everyone we love is safe is what you said.
October 24, 2025 at 7:15 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Louise Bogan 💙

#smallpoemsunday
Song by Louise Bogan Love me because I am lost; Love me that I am undone. That is brave,—no man has wished it, Not one. Be strong, to look on my heart As others look on my face. Love me,—I tell you that it is a ravaged Terrible place.
October 20, 2025 at 12:25 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
New poem in Cream City Review alongside the work of so many extraordinary talents! I’m super excited by this one, which is also forthcoming in my collection, MORE FLOWERS, out with Trio House Press in February 2026! 💙💜

@creamcityreview.bsky.social
@triohousepress.org
Susan L. Leary At First, Obedience, Subsequently— Defiance. The wound, begging for attention: its half heart beating beneath a lace doily while the ugliness explodes to the surface. Why disrupt this flourish of peace, this little tomb of white space? She looks good, they'd said. Brave inside unworkable conditions. Dead or alive, we make an anniversary of our sorrow, expeditious with our buckets of spring. To what do we owe the pleasure? You fabricate worlds in dreams while a girl fabricates worlds on the page. This is what is meant by ritual. When we say, the pedigree of the mouth-body is good. There's no use determining for whom our company is intended. Every gesture is dangerous. Were I to cut my ear off, I'd give it to you. An image of the front cover of Cream City Review.
October 16, 2025 at 9:57 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Carl Phillips 💙
We Turn Here If we don't have to bring honesty into this, why bring it, or that's at least what I think the question was, though what I more remember is how it kept breaking— the question did—the way waves do, touching shore (one, that I shall be punished, two, that this is not yet the punishment), each wave eventually indistinguishable from the wave before.
October 15, 2025 at 11:43 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
“…touch is the body’s first language.”

—I.S. Jones in BLOODMERCY ♥️

@ampoetryreview.bsky.social
BETWEEN GRACE AND MERCY we learned mercy so young: a beetle with its hind legs crushed. a dog impaled by a rusty fence. a hare thinking it was clever enough to reach the other side of the road. a veil of light drapes each moment— red, tangerine, azure, lavender, each waiting to reimagine the sky. the beetle frantic to undo what sudden brute force divided its from legs still moving towards a song. with the beetle, it was simple. Cain crushed the small creature with the heel of her foot, splayed open like a wish. people think suffering is meant to be purposeful, otherwise why name it. maybe i am nostalgic for what wounds best. the hare & tire & the asphalt. the asphalt gowned in viscera makes a new animal. a dog leaps too low & yelps all evening for Baba into the orange-pink sky. all day blood weeps into the rust. rust twisted deep into the animal. i take the dog's face in my hands. touch is the body's first language. blood is the body's first covenant. kill it, says a sister. you kill animals all the time. i kiss the dog's eyes closed.
October 15, 2025 at 2:29 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
“Everything ends up being an ode to death.”

—Martha Silano in TERMINAL SURREAL (@acrebooks.bsky.social)
DEATH POEM Death is the one-day-alive mayfly clinging to a watering can. When the grass turns brown, how can I not think of death? In my heart, death lives like a mama raccoon with her two young. We haven't figured out a way to undo death. Death awaits the pigeon on a roof, says the Cooper's hawk. It's not cool to mention corpse beetles when there's a death. Did you know there's a death's-head hawkmoth? A scrub jay squawks death, death, death! Dragonflies and death: they live about six months. Eating is for sure some kind of elaborate death feast. Sometimes death is invisible, especially when we laugh. Our planet: one big tribute concert to death. Death be not proud, says John Donne, but death is proud, I think. Everything ends up being an ode to death.
October 12, 2025 at 3:00 AM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Happy Pub Day to TERMINAL SURREAL and the beautiful soul that will always be Martha Silano 🩷💜

@marthasilano.bsky.social
@acrebooks.bsky.social
September 1, 2025 at 10:52 PM
susanlleary.bsky.social
Vikki C. 💙

from WHERE SANDS RUN FINEST (DarkWinter Press)

Day 31 - #SealeyChallenge

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@darkwinterlitmag.bsky.social
@sealeychallenge.bsky.social
Beyond The Knowing Is it this world or the next? Or the blue-green marble held out in a child's open palm? How pristine light passes through and leaves as something boundless? I see her pupil dilate with what must be wonder — a constellated night no god has framed. Today, we learn how small things hold an entire universe. She is looking at me, through what men say is not the earth. And I am looking back — just to be saved.
September 1, 2025 at 5:24 PM