Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie. Episode 5 features Amanda Russell and Susan Ayres. Amanda Russell reads “Rediscovery” from her chapbook Processing. Susan Ayres reads “Unforeseeable” from her chapbook Walk Like the Bird Flies. Both poets are part of the Fort Worth Poetry Society. Unforeseeable by Susan Ayres Remember that one grain of grit can ruin a whole dish. —Katherine Anne Porter Sometimes an otherwise fine Greek meal will have grit in the spinach. Your plate overflows with pan-fried perch, sautéed baby portabella mushrooms, rice and spinach, when you comment, My, this spinach is gritty. Your lover, the cook, will rest his hand on the table and glare at you long after you eat the spinach and your words. Sometimes an oak limb suddenly will break, crushing a car or jogger one dry summer’s day. Once, a limb crashed through a bedroom window, killing a mother and toddler, who’d run to her bed frightened by the storm. Once a limb crushed a jogger, who lived to become a paraplegic governor. Sometimes a green hummingbird will hover inches away when you are quietly reading in the garden. And you will imagine it’s your recently dead mother greeting you, showing off, checking in. Just like she’s the mourning dove perched on the eave, cooing at daybreak. You see her everywhere saying, take joy in being alive, love the grit. Somewhere a dog is barking. A small dog with the kind of bark that hurts your ears. Two hummingbirds settle in a high vitex branch, then fly off, looking for nectar, cheeping in short, high-pitched chirps that sound like toy ratchets. As usual, doves sit on the telephone lines. Once I found a hummingbird nest lying on the ground. Inside were tiny eggs I mourned.
Amanda Russell is an editor at The Comstock Review. Her poems have appeared or will appear in Lily Poetry Review, Pirene’s Fountain and Gulf Stream Magazine. She is the author of Barren Years (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Processing (Main Street Rag, 2024). She is a member of the Fort Worth Poetry Society and the Calling All Poets Series. She lives in the DFW Metroplex with her husband, two kids and a labrahound named Lilly.
Susan Ayres is the author of Walk Like the Bird Flies (Finishing Line, 2023) and Red Cardinal, White Snow (Main Street Rag, 2024). Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her poems and translations from the Spanish have appeared in numerous journals. She lives in Fort Worth and teaches at Texas A&M University School of Law.
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You can also find this show on the Topsham Public library website, www.topshamlibrary.org/ And, on the Fort Worth Poetry Society website, www.fwpoets.org