Infinite Difference
“If we keep on speaking the same language together,
we’re going to reproduce the same history.” Luce Irigaray
Our language holds us hostage.
and we are forced to speak
new truths but sometimes,
the words are twisted into lies
we are told to hide.
To speak louder calls attention
to the volume not the words, not the
meaning, not what lies we are told to hide.
The ending is another beginning,
and to end is to begin another story.
Some nights, snow falls in the periphery of
evening’s dark drift. The light shifts
the bed around until it finds itself
in another room, in another state
or another country.
And, a different kind of
history keeps repeating like
a skipped song on a bad CD.
If we shift the songs tempo then
the truth could fly free.
Songs are moving art which can
redefine the infinite difference.
Songs let us to look closer at the lies
that we are told to hide.
Words paired with music can
obliterate stereotypes, birth operatic,
free the throat and offer a chance
to take another avenue on the
road back home.
Songs offer new beginnings
and another ending to the same story.
But, they can also slip through
a man’s hands as the light shifts the
evening’s drift because love jams
the works and sometimes
no words are heard.
.
Realignment
I consulted three tarot cards
to see if there might be
someway to shift this
strange karma.
The Hanging Man,
The Fool, and Three of Swords
were proof that something
sticky was stacked against
me. Lo and behold, knee
deep in debt, unable to pay
next month’s rent. This was
in the cards and now
denying that standing outside
Bud’s garage, a skinny
mechanic informs me the
engine is beyond dead.
I walk in Arizona’s triple digits
and toss those cards up into
the heavy desert heat which
beats deep into every bone.
Inside the Cactus Lounge
beer in hand, smoke curls
round a tall cowboy.
If he looks my way
we might be able to
burn this bad luck
to oblivion.
Bio
.
Susan Sanders was granted fellowships from The Vermont Studio Center Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers Conference and The Frost Place. She was awarded The Charles Dunson Scholarship from Northern Arizona University’s English Department and The Faculty/Staff Scholarship at Johnson State College.
