S U S A N   T I C H Y
__________________________________________________________

THREE POEMS

(note)

 

Desk & Chair

First dream mountain second dream mountain
Nothing now anxiety can gain

Took out one line    anyway
Never intended to construct heaven

Never intended to construct heaven
Stork in a marsh or stork on a brass turtle

My tongue is mine aine
But who said that

Slave born in the master's house

Walked into a web
With a dead spider dead center

Penny under the door o
War no more o

The first line is repeated

The first line is repeated you
Honeycomb and mutter me

If you are not war what are you? say

Brass pages that do not turn
My internal fortress sounds like this

•

If you are not war what are you
Of which I am an inmate tried and true

Write this poem from ten to two
Two to six listen to transport planes

Droning along the river toward Washington
O the cover of night is a wonderful thing

Ferocious mumbling in a public place
Regarded as inferior to silence

A woman with her hair in her hands
Vibrato defined as an excess of attention

Thin man weighing a child versus
Firewood on a pole across his shoulder

O the cover of night is a wonderful thing
Jiggery-pokery    preterit    shebeen

My precious collection of English words
‘Till the bridge brak and we fell in the mire'

Cryptograms and all known plants
What happened that day and to whom it happened

What happened that day and to whom it happened
A rocket went through his neck

Handbook of omens, melos, love
Sliced in half like a flatfish

Sliced in half    consummated
But not on the last page

This page says
If numbed by numbers    truth in ash

Consummated but not here
The first line is repeated

The first line is repeated here
Are parallel lines that never meet

But carry

•

And O O my only-ness my
Love who never hurted any I

Was there for the taking
There for the quatrain

Bloodless till the last line when
It rhymes

Below decks was inhabited
O imperial language, old-

Time sing and shoutin was
Rich in syllables, rich in belly

Mutter mutter toil and stutter
Chair with a lock box under the seat

Guard sits on it    guarding

•

Now sound of lead but a soft lead
Unlimited proof    of agency

Cat in a cage dying
Monkey in a cage dying

Toy jeeps toy tanks toy trees toy planes
And one shoots down the other

Or, soaked in petrol and self-burned
The heart did not burn

The heart did not burn
In the diorama: Night Class in the 7 th Zone

The heart burned

•

Pray for the planes to go away, she said
To pray for the planes, to pray

For the planes to go away, she said
To pray for the planes to go away

For the planes to go away, she said
Is to pray for their bombs, she said

To pray for their bombs to drop, she said
To drop, she said, somewhere else

Through all the notes of the air raid
My ears were ascending rapidly

Concussion so great
The desk and chair changed places

 

 

next

 

 

[ page 1 of 3 ]