Susanna Roxman
Ithaca
Yes, that was how you returned,
on long shipwrecks.
In love with homecoming, wholeness,
you’d worn out the slowest war
but brought no gold or glamour,
simply the gift of revenge.
They didn’t expect you back.
It could have been more convenient.
Only the dog neglected
your histrionic disguise.
Stones shone in your beginning
where you and the world overlapped.
Now time holds you by the throat,
shaking you like a rabbit.
Your dreams are gorged
with white limbs disappearing.
Once you called yourself No One.
This is the enduring ache,
to know against burnt sunsets
you should have stayed away.
Susanna Roxman writes in English and Swedish. Her latest collection, Broken Angels, was published by Dionysia Press, Edinburgh, and won the Arts Award of the City of Lund, Sweden.
Page(s) 48
magazine list
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
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- Shearsman
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- Staple
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- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
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- Yellow Crane, The