Susan Daniels Poetry

My mouth is made to kiss
& wants to
but
in the safety
of this restaurant,

my lips
can only shape words
to charm.

I laugh,
simply to allow sound
my breath carries
to break against your skin.

While I use the right fork
should I say I carried your name
inside my mouth all day,
rolled like something sweet
under my tongue,

or should I shift our conversation
from the ramifications
of neofemnism
in the workplace

to an analysis
of your eyes?

Instead,
I will pose
sleekly civilized,

sip pinot grigio,
smoke from my cigarette
obscuring desire

behind my eyes.

My hands are peasant hands
shaped to mold clay, knead dough.

My feet are most beautiful
stained dark purple
flat feet made to walk wine
from grapes
or stomp barn dances.

These legs carry a body
made for children,
widehipped for men
whose boots shake the walls
of my house.

My bones hold knowing
mouth lacks language to tell
& my loving
spreads deep in the belly
like strong brandy.

I am a woman who laughs
from the toes up,
who breaks easy
as bread,

who gives simply.

How, then,
do I love something
I can touch
only briefly?

My face follows
your arc of flight,

sunflower
stretching forever upward

just know, love
if my body were made for wings
& not so rooted

I would meet you
some place

between earth
& air.

***this is an oldie–pre-1995, and I am still tweaking it today!  My barefoot haiku reminded me of it.

I remember her in mirrors
when light touches my cheekbones
at certain angles,

surprising
to find her French variations
in Irish features.

She, who always smelled of Dove soap,
is responsible.

She taught her daughter
to love language.

I played beneath this table
while they solved Sunday crosswords,
their voices sifting to my ears,
5 down–an infinity
of afternoons.

Did she ask my mother
to hand that love to me,
like jewelry and dishes promised my sister;
china saved for guests.

Her table supports my page.

I conjure her with ink;
small woman in the chair nearest the window,
her head to one side
like a curious bird,
listening (even my gestures
                      are borrowed).

Why am I surprised?

Fingertips know this wood
polished and welcoming
as skin.

Sense more basic than touch
travels my arm, tells me
this is my grandmother’s table

& these were her words
before they became
my own.

It is dangerous to stray
far from my own skin,
world wrapped tight like bandages,
smothering.  Still, I read newspapers:

Stories of women scalding the devil
out of children in anonymous bathrooms,
bodies left torn
and empty in ditches,  fields,
like so muchgarbage;
sometimes months
or even years
before discovery.

The radio screams bloody murder
as I read, so I turn to the classical station
where smoothvoiced men
serve atrocity gently;
Tianamen square
sandwiched between Teleman
and Ravel.

I can change the station,
close the page,
avert my eyes.

Across the world a girl screams
because she was in the wrong place,
an unfortunate bystander,
mistaken for a dissident;
doused in gasoline and burned.

I learn this
on 60 minutes
in 20 minutes
& I cry with her,
as she tells her story again,
but tomorrow I will forget–

her burning story,
horror-tale,
her pain real as burned skin
but I will forget

because my throat is not raw
from breathing flame.

It is dangerous to see so much,
to be so open, to die slowly
with each slow death.

The words/images
come fast and sharp as stones thrown;
but, I can escape
the bruises my skin carries.

Every day, as I read
or listen
I become the burned one.

I am the ruined child
whose eyes accuse, 
or the man who cannot stand
because his feet are rags worn pliant, bones shattered
from so many beatings.

But, unlike them, 
I can step away from the nightmare, 
change the station, 
turn the page.

The doll her father
brought from Thailand
belongs to this room, a study
in patience.

This doll knows
how women with bound feet
kept time, measured hours
learning art of black widows
spinning intrigue, perfecting poison.

But this doll waits for nothing.  Dust
dulls her hair.  Her mouth,
sensually red,
never whispers secrets,
never eats,
never kisses.

But she, my sister,
she is not cloth
and wood, motionless
in his absence.

Her flesh dreams past
the black lacquer square
he places her on.

She is not made
to pose, to take casually
from the shelf.

She is not this doll,
patiently chaste.

How did fat
Swallow these hipbones?

When I was 16
Skin was so close to bone
The mirror
Was an anatomy lesson

Still, sometimes
This fatwoman loves
Her body–it’s not portable
Or led easily,

Shaped like paleolithic fantasies
of deep-bellied women

Birthing the world
between mammoth thighs.

1.  Microscopy

Life unfolds
silent in space
small as the pupil of an eye

I eavesdrop chemical language,

tangled helices
I cannot translate.

among these threads
our grandmother’s recipes;
love and bread,
herbs that bring life
mixed with honey
& the yolk of an egg.

Forgotten craft manifest only
in the way your palms open.

2.  In Vitro

Here      everything
is memorized
I know & can number
every facet of bone
each articulation

the brain I study
in anatomy lab
simply architecture
strangely heavy
in my hands;

cerebral ridges
curving inward in subtle patterns,
thoughtprints & dreams
erased moments
after the heart stops.

3.  In Vivo

Faceup
on a hillside
you close your book, ask
where sky begins
why it does not hold us flat
I say we breathe it

(the threads uncoil)

I want to know where you begin (magic)
to touch core
(a space smaller)

a woman of concrete faith
like Thomas
I am not satisfied
with words:

silent knowing
beyond suggestion of eyes,
deeper than smiles,
past yes

my hands
deep in your body
(eternal gesture)

believe