Posts by Susie Gordon

Poetry for along the way – by Susie Gordon

THIS POEM FIRST APPEARED IN UNITED VERSES

Over plains and hills we came

for miles. Miles and months we trod west

in a camel train, carrying silks and furs,

jade and ivory, wood and metal

from Chang’an. Turkan, Altai, Tashkent, Palmyre:

miles of tundra, desert, forest, lush brown foothills -

obsidian sky;

each night a caravanserai.

In Damasc by the mosque my father heard it said

there was a lodging ten miles out of town

with a bath-house tiled in topaz, day beds thrown with fleeces,

and a poet who spoke and sang of truths, of secrets.

A short story by Susie Gordon

THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN HALITERATURE

My name is Tom Winston, for all the good it does me. I remember when a name like mine used to mean something in Shanghai. Being Tom Winston opened doors. 

We journalists think we own the city, and in a way, we do. A part of it, at least. Don’t ask us why we’re here instead of working on a broadsheet back home. We’ll only wane lyrical that the jackboot of censorship is preferable to the sheepskin shoe-boot of some cashmere-clad Daddy’s girl who lisped her way into the editor’s chair of some gently right-wing rag.