Friday Mar 29

TerrisSusan Susan Terris’ books include The Homelessness of Self, Contrariwise, and Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer. Her work has appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, The Journal, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from Field appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI.  She is the editor of Spillway Magazine and poetry editor of In Posse Review and of Pedestal. In recent years, she has won both the George Bogin Award and the Louis Hammer Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2013, The Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems will be published by Marsh Hawk Press.Her website can be found here.
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Memo to the Girl in the Body of a Boy
 

not as simple as being a sissy    how to
count up the wrong two     a razor can clean or kill
 
if bone and bone were split     if hair didn't grow
the nightlight might burn out     if marbles
 
spin outside their circles     girl-brother
boy-sister     the way to hell is differently-paved
 
echoes of contralto cries and of a Beethoven sonata
skin-deep is deep skin     not just one more bruise
 



Memo to the Widow Who’s Still Grieving


you're supposed to suck it up     to pull boot straps
whatever that means     sadness like death
 
might be contagious     the old plaid bathrobe
rusting lawnmower    letters written to
 
another woman     how about when the canoe
tipped in the wild rice     how dying he told you
 
your price was above rubies     north-by-northwest
is the way to distress not healing     but mourning
 
at morning     to pack him in boxes and move him to
the attic    may only send a mad woman there
 
 


Memo to the Woman Who Wants to Run Away
 

spell out the reasons as if talking with Helen Keller
is the distance near or far     can you walk it in a week
 
sing a song of sixpence     and of a no-life life
ask yourself it it's too late     and how long
 
you'd have to hide     and about the job of just enough
sweaters folded     footsteps only your own
 
pansies in the window box    plate     bowl      spoon
scissors in every drawer     the newest Anna Karenina
 
only one lock on the door     one key
the soothing order of disorder and of disambiguation