When We Were Through, and: Where Song Comes From
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When We Were Through
Our bed filled with liliesand vowels the color of indigo buntingsand other epiphanic terrors.We were creating thisplural. We genie polished & stretchedmuscles' roses, the origami ofspine and limbs, and rushing breaths.
It seems our job is to dispersethe mind around us-bolts of sky, cells' silly scribbles,pergolas of grief. Let bodiesconsecrate then disappear, reduceall to a single vowelthe size of a vole's skull.
Where Song Comes From
The Star Acrobats' Cirque du Soleil,the 23-25 vertebrae in a swan's neck,dream arsonists, ardha chandrasana,the village west of Warsaw,Zelazowa wola (ZHEH-lah-ZO-vah VO-la),where Chopin was born, my sister'ssuicide room, the dupioni sky,silver hair clips, Estabrook pens, [End Page 164] Chinese dragonfruit, Portugueseblossom sheets, Ricky Ricardo'sruffled-white-blossom nightclub sleeves,singing cemeteries, buildings of clouds,the Italian bicycle team's spinning wheelscircling the Brown Deer concrete velodrome,the white spellings of seagulls on the noon lake,the borders of words,mermen, where light ends,waves' minarets, dowsing rods,the body's short joyride,the 5 feet (5') of windpipe tuckedin the keel of the Whooping Crane's breastbone. [End Page 165]
Susan Firer is the author of four books of poetry. Her third, The Lives of the Saints and Everything, won the Cleveland State Poetry Center Prize and the Posner Award. Her New and Selected Poems 1979-2007: Milwaukee Does Strange Things to People is forthcoming from Backwaters Press this fall.
