Viral

“One boy leaps from a bridge into a river, and the ripples from his fall ring out to encompass a nation. All that remains unspoken in the reportage—the sorrow and compassion and anger—is given eloquent voice as Suzanne Parker documents another tragedy that challenges our political experiment. Grief-stricken and abiding, Viral addresses our ongoing struggle for democracy.” —Michael Waters

Written in response to the tragic suicide of Tyler Clementi, Viral explores the complex issues of sexuality, shame, and masculinity. Grief and loss guide us as Suzanne Parker investigates the issues of privacy, voyeurism, and human contact, seeking to understand what it means to live in a world where technology can quickly turn a dark computer screen into an open window.

Only Kissing

The webcam showed only the two men kissing

In the eyes now
a wilderness—
when the birds open
their beaks
not in song,
but a breath
escapes from the rigor
of killing and feeding
and climbing to find,
again, the swaying
of the grass, the nudging
a body makes as it moves,
no matter how
quietly, through
the world,
setting its neighbors
in motion—
How do you sleep
when the siren
is your own exhaled cry:
"Oh Christ."

Suzanne Parker's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Rattapallax, and numerous other journals. She is a winner of the Alice M. Sellars Award from the Academy of American Poets, was a poetry fellow at the Prague Summer Seminars, and has received fellowships and scholarships from Sarah Lawrence College Summer Writers Seminar and Prairie Schooner. Suzanne directs the creative writing program at Brookdale Community College and is an editor for MEAD: A Magazine of Literature and Libations.