I've decided to "regularize" my posts about others' chapbooks as a Friday feature. Tune in every week for a cover image and sample poem (or two) from the selected chapbook. This week's entry is Burning the Fake Woman by Susan Yuzna, published by GreenTower Press. My copy cost $6, a first edition published in 1996. Hand-tied, 39 pages, with a two-color cover.
Here's a sample poem:
To the Moon Over the Mountain
They say you are old hat.
On TV tonight, they claim you were conquered
by the men sitting there, white-haired now,
lightly bouncing off your body
in their thick-soled boots
like boys on a trampoline.
Twenty-five years ago
and what do we know about the nature of anything?
There was a saint, once, claimed
more demons work between us and the moon
than move through the entire rest of the cosmos.
St. Jerome, I think it was.
But what I know is
when you let loose your fullness
and allow me no sleep, I must leave my house.
I must walk around and around
the door of the beloved,
for mystics have said
it is most foolish
to presume entry: a ferocious, white fire.
That shadow on the wall
was once a person
walking forward, hand outstretched.
Once a person coming toward you.
