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 Purple Echoes*

 After the break, the weatherman said,
 he'd talk about purple echoes:
 tornadoes careening through the south,
 leveling cities and farms as well as
 trailer parks. When they struck,
 cows floated Chagall-like on air
 with cars, rooftops, baby beds. Showers of
 shattered glass rained from the sky.
 Godzilla, an 8-foot lizard, escaped
 from his cage in Virginia. Nearby,
 a monkey was eating stray cats.
 
 A stillness in the eye. Though not
 transported to Oz, she was floating, too.
 Weightless for a moment, buffeted
 by purple echoes of her own:
 severed poppies brushing her cheeks,
 the meadow scented by wild azaleas
 where she knelt on a white rock
 by the stream, winged dryad lithe
 and unsuspecting, pre-Raphaelite hair
 bright on her back and shoulders.
 Before the storm. Before the end.
 
 In the science museum, the tornado surges
 and forms in its plexiglass cylinder,
 clear image braiding upwards
 against gray-black walls. No lizards
 or monkeys or showers of sharp glass.
 No ache from the perfume of white azaleas.
 Instead, something contained
 and controllable. Something halted
 with the flick of a hand
 or allowed to rise. Beauty
 but no echoes. And no hint of purple.
 
 *Sheila-Na-Gig

 SERIAL KILLER*

 On New Year's Eve
 when we were celebrating with
 Bryan the tarot reader,
 a magician who swallows needles,
 and a graphologist who sleuths
 for the FBI, Bryan said the death card
 could be read two ways while
 the graphologist was telling Olivia
 she has the handwriting not of a prodigy
 but of a serial killer.
 
 If she's an assassin, she's subtle,
 implying she's ranged flowers
 fresh-clipped from her own yard,
 when she's been shuttling vases
 to Yoko's on Haight. Or she will mention
 business in Denver when she's skiing
 Vail, will fictionalize or elide
 the daughter who seeks asylum
 in Shangri-La with a female Hindu guru.
 
 Sometimes Olivia needles spouses, friends,
 occupations like half-done knitting.
 If she drops a stitch, she creates another
 and proceeds, vowing to catch
 the loose one before it ladders.
 I am trapped, suffering as if my sister
 cast a pall at some formal dinner
 by fingering her crotch or picking her teeth.
 But I feel anger, too, and impotence.
 My tarot reading exposed the Ace of Swords;
 and I'm afraid our prodigy,
 may be laddering flesh
 behind my ribs as she revenges that gift.
 
 "Death," said Yoko to the man who wanted four lilies,
 while Olivia and I, holding her vases, stood listening.
 "In our culture, four means death." The man
 fled; but I, though bleeding, stood my ground.
 
*The Creative Woman
 

© All Copyright, 2001, Susan Terris.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.