poetry

New Chapbook Available

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My new chapbook, Eyes of Some Robbers, is now available through Dancing Girl Press & Studio.

https://dulcetshop.myshopify.com/products/bishop

About Eyes of Some Robbers:

“Bishop’s phantasmagoric writing doesn’t adhere to common form or convention. She walks through her spirit world, using a knife to ‘cut the wires’ that blaze in ‘stolen desert’ as an unapologetic, multifaceted orator of truths. Bishop’s Eyes of Some Robbers stares down the ultimate monster, those collective, oft-ignored harms.”

Candice Louisa Daquin, Managing Editor, Lit Fox Books, author of The Cruelty

“With poems ranging from her childhood to her most recent years, this collection delves into the multifaceted nature of grief, despair, and inner strength. In Eyes of Some Robbers, Bishop endures the many faces of harm–personal, professional, societal–but leaves her readers with hope. Bishop has managed to synthesize it into a collection of profoundly personal poems.”

Mario E. Martinez, Editorial Manager, Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe, author of NEO-Laredo and The Chickens That Are Not Her Chickens

“Each poem is crystalline.  Chiseled and distillate.  As with much of Bishop’s work, there is a deeply ethereal, evocative quality, aptly enough based on a fairy tale.  And just like with a fairy tale, the reader is entranced, all the while knowing that danger lurks.  Frankly, each poem is a deceptive little explosion.  So lovely readers won’t know what hit them.  As I read, there were moments when I was literally knocked back in my seat.  It was that physical an experience.”

Nancy Dunlop, author of Hospital Poems

Eyes of Some Robbers | Suzette Bishop

An Art Walk Through Our Home: Wedding Gift

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Since I wrote about a Debra Hensley-Luczycki print in my last blog, An Art Walk Through Our Home: The Smirking Heart https://suzettemariebishop.com/2019/02/18/an-art-walk-through-our-home-the-smirking-heart/, I thought I’d write a poem response to a second print by her.  Debra surprised us with this print which she gave to us as a wedding present.  The print is appropriately titled Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Turquoise.

 

Our Turquoise Pools of Quiet

The shower curtain clips,

I start unhooking them at one end,

 

You at the other end,

Some pull open easily,

 

Others stay stubbornly closed.

I leave those for you to try.

 

Yesterday, you washed the dishes

So I’d have a spoon for my cereal.

 

We need more spoons,

We can use all the ones we have

 

In a day, sitting in the grey sink,

Some days we need halos,

Plates falling, veils lifting off,

Tools, missing parts in the junk drawer.

 

I finally got us a tool bag,

Organized the nails, duct tape, dust mask,

 

Large enough for the hammer on the bottom,

Messages on torn paper.

 

The filmy shower liner tossed,

We begin attaching the new one,

 

Unfolding the plastic pleats,

Thread the round hooks through,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magnets seal them at the sides of the tub,

Porcelain echoes metal.

 

I often don’t know what to say,

You and the cat never mind

 

 

 

 

 

An Art Walk Through Our Home: Listen for the Ship’s Horn

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Tim Tracz, a photographer, was kind enough to allow me to choose one of his photos for the cover of my first book, She Took Off Her Wings & Shoes.  I tackled the difficult task of making a selection, finally narrowing it down to two photos.  To me, they were the ones most mirroring my poetry collection.  One photo collage, however, was in a landscape orientation and, unfortunately, wouldn’t work for the portrait orientation of the book’s format.

Still, the collage image with a woman reading in the woods stayed with me.

 

Both the image I chose and that second one were gifted to us by Tracz and hang in our kitchen.

 

 

He also sent us other magical prints I’ve hung by string lights in our staircase.

 

 

 

 

For this blog, I wrote a poem inspired by Tracz’s photo of the woman reading.

 

Apertures

 

The flipped,

Fossilized metal doors

Drift behind her

A century later.

 

Like her iron chair,

The sedan hovers patiently

Awaiting her return

Or forward time travel

 

From brown tinting, hair-tangled moss

Like a chignon let down,

Fish spines of ferns

Long unfurled, dried up.

 

Her crooked elbow sinks into a pillow,

Her other elbow presses her hip

Just above her waist’s narrow canal,

Posed in specked light.

 

The oriental rug

With a fleur-de-lis border

Pulled out from under the forest floor,

Victorian house, and the book

 

She’s not reading flaps open,

A ship’s hull

Parting the waves,

The hundred details of departure.