Shearsman 54

Susan Briante

Three Poems

Prints

34 grackles rise from the grass, recorded effortlessly,
an exercise in blossom;
your lungs fill with music, cedar

You decide not to notice, wipe the pane, tell the story
for what the story is – scent, kindling –
          as the sky goes from blue
to porcelain, spoontaste before you swallow
rain in italics, power
surges, puddles

Meanwhile, touch turns to crows, a watermark left by strangers
          of comfort and dialogue

The oak dies late this year, perspective works its spell, negotiates hard
truths: a stump
          becomes a saucer of ash and mud falling
to someone other than me; the vespiary frays

Same feet through our backyard.

 

While The Bride, Miami Beach, 1999

1.
undressing
she is an impossibly white shoulder
in a rind of sun

2.
L says: "Nothing really looks like that."

She fingers the border between Florida and Georgia.

3.
Where she cannot be bent:
scapula, sternum, ribs: so stiff
they hardly seem part of anything
you could possess: a man with a rosebud
mouth, lips worn smooth: the temple
grooved for thumb, a body carries blades.

4.
Her mapping of the island is instinctual.

5.
It is hopeless for a woman to write about love
to get it right she must slip
into the front of a taxi, palm the steering wheel,
and watch herself stride across the street,
traffic working at her skirt hem,
threads trailing from her sleeve.

6.
little ear filled with storm
little eyes scratched by dawn
little mouth against the morning train

7.
Where the shoreline blots each wave; repeats herself; hems; rages;
unravels; calls her lover back; rejects architecture, garments, pathways.

Nothing swallowed suits the thirst.

The conch holds its color.

8.
Water boundaries unchallenged, it has more to do with hierarchy, a north imposed on a south, a spatial privileging of "up", a globe positioned against infinity so that you will never be sure of where you are going unless heaven sits heavy as glass

9.
on insect wings.

10.
"I wanted you to be true to scale.
I wanted you to be glossy."

The Groom Stripped Bare

The hero flies through the air
on a steed; on a raptor; in the form of a falcon; on an '88 Harley-Davidson; on the board
          of a flying schooner; on her flying carpet; on the shoulders of a giant; in the wheel
           casing of a 747
He travels on the ground or over water
on the back of a horse or wolf; on the over pass; through the underbridge; in a green
           Volkswagen taxi with the meter whirling; in a stifling boxcar over the Rio Grande;
           a handless soldier carries a legless one
He is led
a coyote ushers the hero through a desert; red cotton thread unwinds like a clock from
           his lady's hem
He makes use of stationary means of communication
he climbs a stairway; he finds a subway passage; he walks across the back of an enormous
           pike as a across a suspension bridge
He follows bloody tracks
to the cougar's lair; to a rusty tin; to the pulpit; to the villain; to one cardinal flame
           burning above the charred door of her hermitage

Copyright © Susan Briante, 2003