The Sunday Poet: Susan Hankla

Susan Hankla

 Susan Hankla lives in Richmond, VA. She teaches adult writing classes at the Visual Art Center. Groundhog Poetry Press LLC just published Clinch River, her debut collection of poems. Burning Deck Press published her chapbook, I Am Running Home. Other works are in Gargoyle, Beloit Fiction Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Blue Mesa, Artemis, Hollins Critic, Open Places, Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest and the New Virginia Review. Recipient of a Virginia Commission on the Arts Grant for Fiction, and of a fellowship to attend the Frost Place, she has enjoyed being a fellow many times at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and a summer presence at Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. A graduate of Hollins University, she has an MFA in creative writing from Brown University.


November

The snout’s red,

throat cut

to bleed the meat

On the outdoor table,

the centered grin.

Once you have seen a beheading,

you will never again

collect decorative baskets.

Now the body’s upside down

strung from the clothesline

boiled neat,

and field hands scrape

bristling hairs

in the sleet.

"Reprinted from Susan Hankla’s Clinch River, copyright © 2017, with the permission of Groundhog Poetry Press LLC"

Reprinted from Susan Hankla’s Clinch River, copyright © 2017,

with the permission of Groundhog Poetry Press LLC