New poems from Susan L. Lin
The Current Exchange Rate
The Human Animal plays
at the creek behind her house
every afternoon.
She feeds the ducks
leftover bread crusts.
She steals the iridescent plumes
they shed in the grass.
A fair trade, she decides.
She takes a feather home,
attaching a pencil tip
to the hollow shaft:
a bonafide quill!
She pens stories and poems
with her new organic instrument.
She feels like a real writer.
Years later,
she sees a photo of a red fox,
bird feather clutched in its maw,
and feels an immediate kinship:
They have the same dream.
Sheer Fabric Bodysuit
The Human Animal has beautiful skin.
She doesn’t use any moisturizers,
creams, or fancy cleansers.
She hardly gives her largest organ
any attention at all. And yet,
her epidermis remains dewy and smooth
like a newborn baby’s.
But why is it so frustratingly opaque?
Sure, it holds her other organs together;
they are a tangled mess inside their home.
Sure, its lack of transparency
hides every flaw and weakness.
But sometimes she longs to know
what those innards might be thinking
if they were sentient beings,
what secrets they would have to share.
Like a moon jelly or glass octopus,
she longs to be translucent.
Before Death
The Human Animal is inside a submersible,
afloat a cold and unforgiving sea,
when she encounters a bright teal squid:
the cephalopod drifting past
her round observation window,
a pair of tentacles pressed together
in namaste… Stunned,
she returns the gesture
as her capsule starts to sink:
The Human Animal is slowly going under.
Were these alloyed parts
forged in some foreign land?
She frightens easily, nightmaring
of subterfuge in these final moments.
The truth is, her own tender cuts
have felt alien to herself for some time
now: Among other horrors, she has...
a heart that beats only with
the assistance (and insistence)
of machines... blood that flows
in the wrong directions and won’t
stop abandoning its vessel; never even
waves goodbye or pens a simple note...
hands that freeze... joints that lock up,
and then throw away the master keys.
The river’s rapid; she’ll never dive in
to retrieve them. And her dry skin cracks
self-deprecating jokes to a tough crowd:
The unfriendly mob would rather lob tomatoes
than allow a low laugh to escape their bellies.
Seconds before death,
The Human Animal thinks
of that giant squid,
its incredible bold color.
She thinks of those fettuccine arms
suspended in time and
wonders how she ever thought
a peaceful animal like that
could be better off dead,
boiled and braised above a flame,
its long limbs served to her
atop a bed of salad.
Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from Southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella, Goodbye to the Ocean, won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her literary/visual art can be found at susanllin.com.
