Bequeathal
If legacy means long arms—
my grandfather’s smile
stitched to the gap
in my teeth, then
when I die, make
me a golem
from a palmful
of dirt and torn
pocket of time, with arms
long enough to reach
you, to play
with the fringes at your waist.
Susan Comninos’s poetry has recently appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner, and North American Review. It’s forthcoming later this winter in Juked. Her debut book manuscript, Out of Nowhere, has been named a finalist for Conduit Books’ Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize. She’s taught creative and critical writing at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and SUNY Albany, among others. She lives in upstate New York.
*Ninth Letter is proud to be the original publisher of Susan Comninos’s poem, “Bequeathal.” The poem was plagiarized by a writer submitting under the name “Bill Shay” and published in Friends Journal in February 2025. Friends Journal has removed the publication from their online edition and notified Susan Comninos and Ninth Letter. We appreciate Friends Journal for their commitment to maintaining rights of authorship and for making public the plagiarizer’s information so other editors may be vigilant.
