by SUSAN COMNINOS
after William Wordsworth’s “Nuns Fret Not”
Within the sonnet’s scanty plot of ground
someone sings off-tune. Someone’s plotted
novel flips off-road. Someone’s plot to leave
a neutral town — paved over, by shift in plot
to a storied house, with trees. The plotted room
— mute office in the wake of the plotted degree —
unrented, undrawn, reverse-plotted. For sake of
vinting, local-sourcing, ecopoverty — whatever the plot —
instead plot what happens: backyards; gardens; cook
-outs, camp; children’s freshly pillowed heads. Plot
even the snipped poms of plotted stalks: roses
rushing towards the dawn of the domestic plot —
the rise of the plotted drowned, briefly shining
in prosody’s time, before the freshly dug plot.
—
Susan Comninos is both a poet and teacher. Her poetry’s recently appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. It currently appears in Juked, Ninth Letter, The Pinch and Iron Horse Literary Review. This year, it’s been shortlisted for both the Conduit Books Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize and the Cider Press Review Book Award. She’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and most recently, SUNY Albany. She lives near Albany, New York.