about the author
Suzanne Marie Hopcroft’s poetry has recently appeared or will soon appear in
The Catalonian Review, SOFTBLOW, White Whale Review, PANK Magazine, and others.
Suzanne is a PhD student in Comparative Literature at Yale University and writes from New York City, where she
also teaches composition at Hostos Community College. You can read more of her writing at
suzannemariewrites.com.
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After Fall
Suzanne Marie Hopcroft
And it’s moon-time again when
she feels it safe to emerge. The corner
closet is dust mites, spider-webbing, night
by day. From inside the work
sounds lapping gentle against the
wood make a liquid comfort: kitchen
rustles and infant wails and the sweep
of broom-straw against the tile. Already
she’s not the least traveled almost-
orphan in this house. But her father’s
scissors gleam like the hair she wouldn’t
hatchet in two, bee-brown Maker’s sloshing
in his seventh cup. Her mother’s
crystal, emptied of value like she’s been
of air since winter, which hasn’t gone.