Suzanne Underwood Rhodes
Roses from Susan and a christening
into what I have no idea of.
Blanched and christened. White
polo shirt heavy on the slumping
sacred body. Keys to the kingdom
in his lost pocket. Still
I hold him, pietà, my hymn,
body still warm
in the death that shirks this life,
the darling they said dead I said
risen. I said.
Suzanne Underwood Rhodes is Arkansas’s eighth poet laureate. She is the author of Flying Yellow: New and Selected Poems, named a semi-finalist in the 2022 North American Book Award of the Poetry Society of Virginia. Other books are What a Light Thing, This Stone; two chapbooks, Hungry Foxes and Weather of the House, and two books of lyrical prose, A Welcome Shore and Sketches of Home. Her poems have appeared in many journals, books, and anthologies such as Mid/South Anthology, Slant, Shenandoah, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, Christian Century, Words and Quilts, and others. Awards include nominations for the Pushcart prize, first place in the Dr. Lily Peter Memorial Award, first place in the Virginia Highlands Creative Writing Contest, and others. A retired college professor, she lives in Fayetteville and teaches virtual poetry workshops through the Muse Writers Center in Norfolk, Virginia.