PoetryMagazine.com
Since 1996 Volume XXI



Susan Terris
Susan Terris’ most recent books are Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems (Marsh Hawk Press) and Memos (Omnidawn). She is the author of six poetry books, fifteen chapbooks, and three artist's books. Journal publications include The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review,Blackbird Online, PoetryMagzine.com, diode, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from Field appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos appears inBest American Poetry 2015She's editor of Spillway Magazine. Her next bookTake Two: Film Studies will be published by Omnidawn in 2017.www.susanterris.com

Flamingo Dream

 

Pink vision with knob-stick legs and bat-wing

feet: listen—the man in the moon can

 

see your neon flash even through

cloud. Parchment beak, feathered down,

 

a careful adagio of time, you tell me

a story of white lilies and blue-green

 

algae, of winter and summer's hard sting.

In your eyes, both the blink of dawn

 

and ember of last light. There poised

on one foot, a shred of desire—

 

windsong, furrowed water,

tropical warp, and a slow stuttered rapture.

 


Ice Bear Dream

 

What does it mean to have inky skin, guard hairs,

and glassy needles of fur that trick

 

the eye into seeing white, when there is none?

You are a cunning boar, sometimes crashing, yet

 

still graceful as you move from place to place.

Polar creature, Arctic heart, you seem to revel in

 

your accidental beauty. Keen of sight and smell

and touch. Patient enough to wait, then wait

 

longer for what you want most. Merciless with the

weak and always hunting. It’s all about the hunt.

 

The catch satisfies only briefly as does the ice cave

where we sometimes lie in raw embrace.


DÉjeuner

 

Stare. Stare until the canvas begins to tilt and shimmer,

until the moment four friends sharing a forest picnic

 

stir and bite into succulent peaches and plums.

Did I enter from the front or from the sunlit meadow

 

beyond? The meadow, I think. What happened to

the Musée d'Orsay? Is the giant clock still pulsing?

 

Do I have a time limit here? Am I clothed or naked?

Have I come with another cornucopia?  Filled with

 

grapes or cherries? It's warm, but I'm quite content.

Instead of déjeuner, I shall roll in the grass

 

with a bearded man. Then, even more content, I'll

lick peach juice from my lips, wipe it from my chin.


Cave of Night

 

Mind burnt by fever, eyes tearing, cowl of my gown

sweat-wet, I see a pulse of silvered fish steeped in

 

the chalky river of an underground ice-cave. No thirst

here or hunger, the only light—glint off a pale

 

phalanx of stalagmites. Each breath of mine, a chuff,

and around me, an ivory sheen, Above, a colony of

 

bats, albino wings clicking open, then closed,

as their mouse-squawks echo my own hoarse breath.

 

Ashy geckos ooze across stone shelves. Frosted snakes

and spiders skid. Everywhere, milky water drips.

 

Still, while silvered fish fin slowly by, in this cold,

I am hot. . . achingly hot.







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