Photography © Glenn Bowie

 

From My Bowl Birds

Your eyes show something
no longer pleading;
those shadowy sorrowful eyes
have left the nest.

The crow now struts his stuff
while I’ve turned
docile dove sugar and fluff.

Built my plan around
your fluttering heart,
weaving the crown
of despair
out of feathers from
my own unsteady hands.

When you eat the soup
from my bowl
you slurp loudly;
Before it was a gentle thing,
cautious, a tiny ripple
hardly a swallow.

 

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

Glenn Bowie is a published poet, lyricist, musician and photographer from the Boston area. He also owns and operates an elevator company that supplies custom-built elevators for clients from New England to Hollywood. The author of two poetry and photograph collections (Under the Weight of Whispers and Into the Thorns and Honey) from Big Table Publishing, he donates all profits from his books to various charities for the homeless and local animal shelters.