Suzanne Frischkorn

Discordant Landscape

​Cobwebs hook our lampshades
            to the walls. This barn turned home
 
boasts no copper flashing, still
            it provides shelter for the spiders
 
and for us. It’s the trees long-time
            residents tell us, leaves flap, spiders
 
fall—I feel haunted by substance
            and mine their webs for metaphors.
 
Gravel migrates over the threshold,
            tumbles the wide plank floors--
 
People pay a lot of money for their floors
            to look like that. Give me a cannon
 
and I will release confetti, a nod to joy
            and distressed wood floors. Our mailbox
 
lost its motivation to clasp, and our cellar
            hums with mice and spiders; they throw
 
parties, but never invite us. So we hang
            our wet quilts on the clothesline, release
 
our small sadness this sunny, blustery day.
            Our reward— horses queued on the road.

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Suzanne Frischkorn’s most recent poetry collection, Fixed Star, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press (Autumn 2022). Her honors include the Aldrich Poetry Award for her chapbook Spring Tide, selected by Mary Oliver, an Emerging Writers Fellowship from the Writer’s Center for her book Lit Windowpane, and an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. She is an Editor for $ - Poetry is Currency and serves on the Terrain.org Editorial Board.