6:00am

By Susan Robertson

The cat mewls
outside the bedroom. A robin— 
 
or is it a cardinal? — won’t stop
calling. You once asked your mother
 
if life had a purpose. The cat’s paw
darts under the door.

---

Still Life with My Mother's Diary

By Susan Robertson

A little girl in a red dress. A book
of Edwin Markham’s poems. The musk
 
            of chicken shit in the rain. After her strokes
            my mother lay in a hospital bed patting
 
a small stuffed bear. A bird
flew out of the Christmas tree
 
            the year that I turned eight. My sister and I
            studded Styrofoam balls with sequins.
 
We’d lick a finger to pick one up.
A straight pin fit the hole.

---

Mercy

By Susan Robertson

​Mercy of the rock.
Mercy of the blow.
Mercy of not seeing what hit you.
Mercy of the rainbow.
Mercy of the no-more-flood.
Mercy of the landlord.
Mercy of the judge.
Mercy of not needing to ask
            for mercy.
Mercy of two against one.
Mercy of the maggot debriding
            a wound.
Mercy of God, the fly.

---

Wh[a]t We Lost When She Died

By Susan Robertson

​In Memoriam: Roxa Mansfield [1898-1985]

​No wooden structure
for cows to feed, to sleep in.
No fields her own. No loft piled
with bundled dun to prick my thighs.
No plot to hoe and grow in.
No red rounds. No climbing greens
boiled in lidded vessels, stored
in hollowed ground.
No hollowed ground. No room
behind the door we climbed to.
No wet drumming its tin roof.
No fingers twining my curls
in lots of three. No mother’s mother.
No she.

---

Family Tree

By Susan Robertson

​This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God
created man, in the likeness of God made he him. Genesis 5:1

Lucinda bore Martha Ann. So began
our line in Barren County.
 
And Lucinda lived — 
 
 
                         [slathered planks]
 
 
Martha Ann bore Sarah Frances.
And Martha Ann lived —           
 
 
                         [tin roofs]
 
 
Sarah Frances bore Susan Mary.
And Sarah Frances lived —          
 
 
                         [red steps of earth]
 
 
And the line endured in Barren County.
 
Susan Mary bore Roxa.
And Susan Mary lived —                            
 
 
                         [wooden pews]
 
 
Roxa bore Virginia Aileen.
 
Virginia Aileen went out from Barren County
And bore three children.
 
And God called Roxa after 86 years.
And Roxa said I am here.

---

​I Imagine a Painting— 

By Susan Robertson

A woman holding a plate of olives
like in a painting
 
of Santa Lucia the iconic plate
in her hand, the saint proffering not olives
 
but eyes—Lucia’s own plucked out.
In her sockets, two new eyes.
 
The woman offers the olives to a man
at a long, narrow table,
 
a long, narrow drawer ajar.
It’s missing a knob.
 
The man rests his elbow on the table,
thumb a buttress to chin.
 
He’s thinking. Or working.
She’s holding a plate of olives.
 
The brush strokes so precise
you can see the sheen
 
on the olives, the stitching
of the man’s open vest.
 
You could almost miss
the strip of cloth
 
tied to the woman’s finger, shadowed
as it is by the plate. I imagine
 
her blood welling like sap—no— 
like blood. 

---

​Susan Robertson grew up outside Washington, D.C. but has made her home in Canada for years. Her poems have appeared in journals in Canada and the United States, most recently in Prairie Fire, Parentheses, the Offing, Grain, and EcoTheo Review. Baseline Press will publish her first chapbook in 2025.