refraction

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

today overlaps
dual-exposed
on the retinae

stretches all buses to double-deckers
and cupcakes rise in ghost wedding cake layers

my eyes are dreaming
though the body walks
awake

***Who knew a pharmacologic side effect could inspire poetry?

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 16 Comments

weird sounds: the bellgoat

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

My, God, I have serious poem envy right now. E. is brilliant!

eulonia's avatareulonia country

bellgoat comes from over the mountain. a bellgoat is
your neighbor growing out her hair. bellgoat knows
the anatomy by heart
of every dream in which you will end up running after something
you can’t see.

a bellgoat, incapable of lying, lying in a cape on the shore.
(this sentence intimates a cape: a body of water engulfed by sound
in the “c” shape.)

what will become of me? i ask over
and over. bellgoat tunes the fork to the sound
of my asking
plays it back: “dunnnnnnnn.” the sound of hooves
not moving.

what i learned about first impressions was this:
you cannot be a god if you’ve stepped over the pollen offering
or if you’ve thought about it. people will kill you.

the morning the pesticide plant blew to pieces my heel
rubbed in my sandal.
i wear sandals now.
tall ones.
when i want to feel legs.

View original post 64 more words

Posted in New Free Verse | 3 Comments

velliety into volition

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Paul (from somewhere in Romans):  For I do not do what I want, but do the very thing I hate.  

If only
I were a better mother
a kinder daughter
a truer lover,
less a liar sighed into air
and forgotten; inclination
minus drive leans living
in directions I won’t take:
a lightly traveled path
glimpsed and abandoned.

Still, this imperfect
skirting of rubber
kissing asphalt–
my do balanced after
I am and I think
until the scales tip the equation
and I bite the apple.
I take the hand.
I welcome the kiss.

Choice is choice.  

 

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , , | 41 Comments

memory

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

 

We all have shadows,
person-shaped
thrown against our hearts

sometimes,
mine dance.

 

 

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , , , , | 29 Comments

the promiscuity of pollen

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Summers, I drive past
regimented rows of patented plants
weedless and well-watered
behind signs saying where
seed DNA was spun,
like gold from straw was once,
magic from a mundane wheel;
but centrifuged stiltskin-like
and greedy for progeny.

There’s no stopping the spread.
Wind is innocent and bees
follow instinct as directionless.
Pollen is promiscuous and doesn’t care
who owns its code in the scatter
towards seasonal immortality,
the only way plants can know it.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , | 29 Comments

what we are

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

for T

 

I don’t read tarot any more
or enumerate names,
but there is safety in archetypes
predicting the obvious
and blaming a planetary dance
for the outcome.

What we are is more real
than a construct of cards fanned flat
on my grandmother’s scarf can tell.
This us requires more than guessing,
a substance fired into the house we grow,
slow in a row of nows, a mortar of yes,

and any future that needs reading
is solid, not scribed on these palms
dry from gardening and strong soap,
but etched in the curve of my mouth,
suggested in the corners of your eyes
when you smile.  We are past blueprinting
forever and build it, brick by brick
and stone solid.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , | 63 Comments

when the weather breaks

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Susan L Daniels

Spring is an egg, chipped
and spilling rain (not the blue
robin’s egg we know, but
the gray marble sky reflected
in the nests of house sparrows).

Impatient, we pace,
count steamed breath,
wait for weather to break, for what stirs
under that shell
to split one morning open,
becoming summer.

Posted in New Free Verse | Tagged , , , | 27 Comments