susannah baker

 

 

Childless

I will not explain myself
to Ritalin or trick-or-treat,
offer no apologies
to video games or terrorists
and never to those first-grade crayons—
the fat ones made for tiny hands.
To the house where I grew up,
foreign policy or the works
of A. A. Milne, primary colors
and graduated licensure
I make no excuses
nor least of all
to all of you who time and time again
emptied yourselves earnestly
into nothing.



 

After several very interesting careers including medieval lexicography, psychiatric social work, and health-services research, Susannah Baker abandoned professional life to do what she always wanted to do anyway--write a novel. Poems, however, simply will be written. Alas, what can she do but show them to the paper?


 




 

back to issue 19

take me home