Received by Susan Tepper

You have received darkness

in bags and in pieces

the way people picked up

coal near train tracks

during The Great Depression

running home to light the stove

cook an egg shivering wet

the cold as night

splattering the floor

Its fragments of shell

for birds

Susan Tepper is the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent is a chapbook of poetry titled CONFESS published this month by Cervena Barva Press.  Last June her road novel “What Drives Men” was published by Wilderness House Press, and shortlisted at American Book Fest Best Book Awards. Other honors and awards include eighteen Pushcart Nominations, a Pulitzer Prize Nomination for the novel “What May Have Been” (Cervena Barva Press, and currently being adapted for the stage), NPR’s Selected Shorts Series, Second Place Winner in Story/South Million Writers Award, Best Story of 17 Years of Vestal Review, Shortlisted 7th in the Zoetrope Novel Contest (2003), Best of the Net and more. Tepper is a native New Yorker.