Photography © Phoebe Wilcox

 

Seven Days

Mami says we can live
on water for seven days,
falling to her knees
calling out to God for help.

There is no food
we cup snow in our hands
drink it—

My older brother says
screw God.
She jumps up and slaps him
hard across the face.

My little brother cries out.
He’s learned to count.
Only three days left and
he’s no tonto.

Up ahead a wildfire
or maybe lights from a town.
Either way—
we can’t go there.

In a town we are sure to be
picked up, arrested.
Thrown in a cell
like others not born
in this country.

Mami is back on the ground
scooping up snow.

 

Susan Isla Tepper has two new books forthcoming from Wilderness House Press. Her novel Hair of a Fallen Angel came out from Spuyten Duyvil Books, NYC, in the fall of last year. A twenty-year writer, she is the author of twelve published books of fiction and poetry and 7 stage plays. Tepper has been nominated 24 times for the Pushcart Prize in both fiction and poetry. Her play The Crooked Heart is a broken love story concerning artist Jackson Pollock that 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 latest novel was produced by Tim Young and Paula Parente: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2HVIc4NrqY

Phoebe Wilcox’s first novel, Angels Carry the Sun, (Lilly Press, 2010) was nominated for the PEN/Faulker award. Her poetry chapbook, Recidivist, (Lilly Press, 2010) includes the Rhysling-nominated poem, “A More Significant Sun.” Three Pushcart prize nominations and one Gertrude Stein “Rose” Poetry Prize later (Wilderness House Literary Review, 2012), she is hard at work on her second novel, Don’t Get Burned. In her photography Phoebe is a prolific profiler of life. She lives in a swing state on the East Coast.