Featured poem, ‘Most Fateful Day: A Ghazal’, by Susan Chast
Tuesday, September 18th, 2012
Most Fateful Day: A Ghazal
A hiss echoed from its spiked tongue and you thought
That the snake had not lied to you in word and in thought?
Watch it slide away and take the apple along too
Neither giving it to you nor to God as we thought
Your tell-tale teeth marks are in it too, along with my own—
Seeing our DNA together, the snake will know that you thought
We’d be together in Eden or in jail and– no matter how much
We pay for it–happiness follows this ability to have thought.
But doubt is quite difficult. I liked it much better
When fate was determined and we need not have thought
About all of the options, the leaves of the trees, whether
To beat you or to love you. I wish I had thought
This before, dear Lady, I opened my mouth to your pleases
And caresses and most seductive scatterings of thought.
Susan Chast’s work has been workshopped at dVersePoets and Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads. One of her poems was recently published in the first issue of Nain Rouge Magazine. She blogs at Susan’s Poetry, and you can find out a bit more about her in this interview at Poets United.
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