by Susannah Simpson
roguish royalty
& all that you’ve ever possessed
take take take & preen & print
& release what you’ve made
into a stream of who knows what
& filth & nonsense & shimmering
what-have-yous, we are worth more
than the muck we make our mark through
yes the lotus, yes the mud
yes necessary trudging for great bloom
& yet the myths seem
built to rationalize tragedy of
working class spilt milk realness
don’t give up,
your time will come
the darkest hour
is just before dawn
etc etc etc etc etc
i’m not saying the birthplace
of the phoenix is an ashy lie
just that i don’t want to accept
that rock bottom, that poverty,
that breakdown & death
are intrinsic to eventual success
all the witches i know continuously
calling in abundance to support
& sustain their magic
so many gifts & not enough money
there is sex work there is selling weed
there is waiting tables we all shuffle
our goods & make a buck somehow
when we were 20-something we had
more energy to work to then support
our less lucrative most meaningful labor
running from this job to that circle to
that rehearsal to that reading & now
pandemic-spent, exhausted, limbs
under-exercised from hours of staying
inside sleeping & streaming series
about royalty & queer romance budding
seem the only salvation i find my joy,
bursting open from the torrent of
my brain-cum-allness, nestled in bed
under the down comforter just like
my mother, inherited from her in fact
& have to pause the new sally rooney
adaptation to write:
just sitting in bed
like a proper american
watching tv and eating snacks
Goddess you did me right,
here i am divinity spinning
in all my cloistered dimensions
playing out livelihood
to the best of my abilities
& praying to be of service
exhaustion be damned—
where’s the spell for this?
Susannah Sian Simpson is a multidisciplinary artist, performer, and poet, based out of Durham, NC. They are the author of the poetry collection, I’LL GIVE IT TO YOU, and poems have recently appeared in Triangle Poetry, bedfellows, Day Job Press, and the art book Pure Paragraphs. Performance work has been featured in Ugly Ducklings’ Emergency Index. They are co-creator of the series ALL RIGHT NOW! combining art and ritual with the intention of collectively reframing our relationship to time.