THE PHYSICS OF GRIEF: AN ABSTRACT

The speaker is old. The speaker’s dog 
is also old. On any given day, between them, 
they have three good knees. Each morning, 
together, they face the problem of the stairs.
The speaker has a penchant for the melancholy; 
the dog, for cheddar cheese. The speaker proposes 
a proportional relationship between gravity and grief, 
although no such formula exists. The speaker has lost. 
Is lost. The dog, after a bath and a good brushing, lies 
in the sun, releasing her summer coat to the month 
of October. The speaker is struggling to understand 
the point of it all. The dog, stretched out beneath 
the fluttering swirl of the swamp maple’s falling 
yellow stars, breathes in, breathes out.

Susan Barry-Schulz is a first generation Estonian-American poet and visual artist who grew up just outside of Buffalo, NY. She practiced as a physical therapist for many years before becoming disabled by chronic illness in 2020. Her work has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and Best of the Net awards and has appeared in The Westchester Review, Rust & Moth, SoFLoPoJO, and in many other print and online journals and anthologies.