Photography © W.F. Lantry

 

Escaped

Misplaced sorrow
teeters at the brink—
tho’ the fish in the pond
swim contentedly

no one / nothing
will betray them

Every morning so hungry
for a fresh start
the sun’s yolk shining

you take out the bread,
butter, jams and
all the trimmings;
try taking out love—

it has escaped you.

 

Susan Isla Tepper has a new novel released from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC, titled Hair of a Fallen Angel. A twenty-year writer, she is the author of twelve published books of fiction and poetry and7 stage plays. Tepper has been nominated 21 times for the Pushcart Prize in both fiction and poetry. 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. A YouTube music video for her new novel was made by Tim Young and Paula Parente.

W.F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, is a widely published prize winning poet and fiction writer who has been featured in poetry journals and readings nationally and internationally. He currently lives in Washington, DC. He taught for eight years at L’Université de Nice in France, earning his License and Maîtrise in English Literature, Linguistics and Translation. During this time, he won the Paris/Atlantic Young Writers Award. Boston University awarded him a Fellowship to study with Derek Walcott and George Starbuck, who together directed his thesis. There he received an M.A. in English and Creative Writing. He holds a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston where he worked with Donald Barthelme, Ed Hirsch, Mary Robison, James Robison and Adam Zagajewski. He has taught at 12 different Universities on two continents in a variety of fields, most often Literature and Rhetoric, but also in History, Library Science, World Civilizations, and Information Technology. He served as Director of Academic Technology at a national research university in Washington, DC for 15 years.