The Next Leg

Tim Suermondt

To my surprise the greatness of mankind
triumphed with no irony attached.
What the next leg will be I have no clue
but I see a little girl dressed as an angel,
her winged arms stretched out
for the entire play and a boy, in a navy
blue suit, banging a drum, relishing
the noise. Perhaps everything does come
around again, the sun, moon and earth,
those slivers of silver and gold, of mercy.

Tim Suermondt is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Trying to Help the Elephant Man Dance (The Backwaters Press, 2007) and Just Beautiful (New York Quarterly Books, 2010.) His third collection Election Night and the Five Satins will be published early in 2016 by Glass Lyre Press. He has poems published and forthcoming in Poetry, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Blackbird, Bellevue Literary Review, PANK, North Dakota Quarterly, december magazine, Plume Poetry Journal and Stand Magazine (U.K.) among others. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.