Susan McLean

The Year of the Snake

I have peeled off my skin again.  
Shedding the seamless life I'd made
feels blistering, like being flayed,
and I'm more rattled than I've been
in decades. Aching, raw, bereft,
I search for any salve to numb
the oozing wound that I've become,
still reaching back for what I left.

How much I wish I could refuse
the price of living: to outgrow
the skintight sheath of all I know
and all I care about; to lose
my job, my house, my town, my friends,
as one life starts and one life ends.


The Nick of Time

Time to a child moves smoothly, even slowly,
till like her first encounter with a razor,
it opens a small gash that leaves a scar.
The blood is startling, but it doesn't faze her.
She sees how stable things around her are.
When people leave, she knows they're never wholly
gone; eventually they reappear.

And then they don't. Her father's mother dies.
Next, her father's father. There's a blade
shearing away the people she holds dear. 
And where they lived goes, also. She's dismayed
as huge swaths of her past are razed.  She tries
to pack them in her mind like nested dolls.

Years pass as silent scythes mow down the dead—
neighbors, friends, relations, all laid low
at random, with a coolness that appalls.
And other blades are moving that don't show:
unseen, a specter glides inside her head,
cutting connections, putting things to bed.

Susan McLean, a retired English professor from Southwest Minnesota State University, has published two poetry collections, The Best Disguise and The Whetstone Misses the Knife, and one book of translations of Latin poems by Martial, Selected Epigrams. Her third poetry book, Daylight Losing Time, is forthcoming from Able Muse Press.