Susan Rose April, whose roots are in Lowell and Dracut, Mass., is a past contributor to this blog. Her writing and artwork have appeared in many publications and on various digital platforms. She lives in Maryland and has a new poem in the Frederick (Maryland) Arts Council Literary Magazine, issue number one, Fall 2026. The new magazine is titled In Your Walk on This Earth. Readers from the Lowell/Dracut area will recognize place references and cultural details in the composition. For more of Susan’s story and work, visit her website. She is a writer and a scientist with degrees from UMass Lowell and the University of Chicago as well as an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. The poem is reprinted here with permission of the author. 

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Fragment of Portrait of Man

by Susan Rose April

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How do you map the geography

when the path is an esker

and the water is dangerous?

I think you must have wings.

Here, then, is the map of me:

My fabric is velvet

My wine is dry, fruity, with a hint

of the ruined vineyard

My grandfather was a thief

My brook is Black Brook

My lake is Long Lake

My tree is Catalpa

My weather is a hurricane

with no name

My snow is asbestos

My clouds are high cirrus

My song is Sober

My street is Osgood

My desert is the Desert of Maine

My honor is negotiable

My rock is granodiorite with

mica and muscovite that steal

glints from the sun

My home is the mills

My air is more soot than oxygen

My arm hurts

My dirt bike route skirts

the Nickel Mine

My mother is gone

My father fought fires

My arm hurts so much I want

to tear it off.

I have no park

I have no song

I’ve missed the bus

My home is snow

My soot is air

The path is dangerous

The esker winds and winds

and disappears in the Nickel Mine.