Rikki Santer has been described as “a rad and ready wrangler of pop culture, an alchemist who is expert at excavating the universal and the personal in the popular and remixing it all into a glorious concoction that tingles the tongue as it reflects, refreshes and nourishes.” A recipient of six Pushcart and three Ohioana and Ohio Poet book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, her eleventh poetry collection, Stopover, which is in conversation with the original Twilight Zone series, was just published by Luchador Press.
“While visiting the Wolf Art Gallery in Cleveland, Ohio, I wandered into its workroom where Kristen Newell was framing drawings for the gallery. There in the corner stood her seven-foot sculpture, Husk (2020), that summoned me immediately to explore the fullness of its being. This poem is the result of that encounter.”
after the sculpture by Kristen Newell
Let’s say after months and months,
slanted and stained, you turn
yourself inside out to travel far
from wanting, you plant your feet
to elongate your stance, you scale
serpentine steps snaking up
your calves, you channel dark
melodies from the mulberry tree
rooted into the cavern of your
belly. Let’s say your collar and
chest are dotted with tiny windows
where inside, levels deep, a hive
of galaxies sparked then seared
and you strain to conjure
the synapse of a few sparkling
chapters—Tinkertoy bridges,
sock monkey friends, whispers
of your nickname smooth as
stones skipped across a pond.
Let say you nod to the nothing
more than this husk of you
and looking outward, arms
above your shoulders, hands
clasped behind your head,
your hinged face swings
open, final fulcrum,
to release all of us
you will leave behind.
