Suzanne Richardson: July 2021 Poet of the Month

Photo: Joanna C. Valente

He Tried to Enter Me, Someone/Something is Already There

I don’t remember letting anything in? 

I try

to open 

for him,

seraphic

hinge but

scallop osseous

process pearl

raw

thumping

clumps

of blood ruby 

block 

the way. For 

punishment 

I wear a 

wool dress,  

walk in circles 

in the formal 

garden. Heat

treated. Sun

Wash. Cleansing 

behind 

a rag bush 

I reach inside

my fleur-de-

lips. My O ocean, 

Mollusca,

growing 

inside me? Or 

am I growing 

around it? The 

triple-tiered

porcelain 

pavilion 

fountain sputters 

as I tamp 

with my fingers. 

Past sunset 

striated 

sulcus vulva, 

inside my

cavern

calculous.

Superdeep diamonds. 

Did he empty the sea

inside me?

No, sadness 

fills the body 

with a gemstone. Forming 

in the body’s mantle.

amethyst in 

my amaryllis: 

despair’s

black pear

in my middle.

Black agate

semiprecious 

sorrow

 precious

   me.

---

Suzanne Richardson earned her M.F.A. in Albuquerque, New Mexico at the University of New Mexico. She currently lives in Utica, New York where she's an Assistant Professor of English at Utica College. She is the writer of Three Things @nocontactmag and more about Suzanne and her writing can be found here: https://www-suzannerichardsonwrites.tumblr.com/ and here: @oozannesay