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✍🏻 best words, best order
best words, best order: susannah violette
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best words, best order: susannah violette

a reading of the poem plum moon sighs

best words, best order is an occasional feature of 100 Stories, celebrating brief excerpts of exceptional writing read aloud by their authors. Subscribe at bottom to receive 100 Stories in your inbox.


The Nomination by Rebecca Hooper

“Susannah’s poems are like fires in the hearth; they leap and flicker and dance, wild and free and sensuous, yet in their hearts they are quiet and still – soft embers holding light within them, gifting their wisdom to the world with a hushed whisper. For me, the dance of the fire comes with the first read; the quieter gift comes with the next (and the next, and the next – I find myself reading and reading Susannah’s poetry and each time, there is something new). The Violet Tiger was one of the first Substacks I read when I joined this platform, and I was instantly besotted. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Susannah’s visceral, embodied, brave and vulnerable work has quickly made her one of my favourite poets. I chose Plum Moon Sighs to nominate for Best Words, Best Order because it is the very first of Susannah’s poems that I read, and it was the perfect introduction to her work.”

Rebecca Hooper


Plum Moon Sighs

The tongues of mad iris 
lick me, slowly soften the day’s lacquer. 
I bed her immaculate purples. 

Why a woman buddha? 
Her body half flowers, 
sacrum, illium, and folded legs 
are like fields that have been left alone, 
gone to seed, like words in the dark.

Indian summer takes me like this.
Under the Red Oak, acorns 
are umbilical. 
I lie with the spiked leaves,
turning brown. 

If I wake deformed, I would not be surprised.

I bleed like the sun, haemorrhage light.
The moon presses her bare teeth
into my burnt shoulder,
falls into me.

An unexpected flick of new life, 
its tadpole-tail in my belly.
I conjure myself with this body-made-vial.

From liquorice and star-filled obscurity
I birth myself anemone. 
Leave the mist as afterbirth
Lie fresh in the sparkling dew.

Susannah Violette, The Violet Tiger

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