Susan Terris’ books include The Homelessness of Self, Contrariwise, and Fire Is Favorable to the Dreamer.
Her work has appeared in many journals, including The Southern Review, The Journal, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from Field appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. She is the editor of Spillway Magazine and poetry editor of In Posse Review and of Pedestal. In recent years, she has won both the George Bogin Award and the Louis Hammer Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2013, The Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems will be published by Marsh Hawk Press.Her website can be found here.
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Memo to the Girl in the Body of a Boy
not as simple as being a sissy how to
count up the wrong two a razor can clean or kill
if bone and bone were split if hair didn't grow
the nightlight might burn out if marbles
spin outside their circles girl-brother
boy-sister the way to hell is differently-paved
echoes of contralto cries and of a Beethoven sonata
skin-deep is deep skin not just one more bruise
Memo to the Widow Who’s Still Grieving
you're supposed to suck it up to pull boot straps
whatever that means sadness like death
might be contagious the old plaid bathrobe
rusting lawnmower letters written to
another woman how about when the canoe
tipped in the wild rice how dying he told you
your price was above rubies north-by-northwest
is the way to distress not healing but mourning
at morning to pack him in boxes and move him to
the attic may only send a mad woman there
Memo to the Woman Who Wants to Run Away
spell out the reasons as if talking with Helen Keller
is the distance near or far can you walk it in a week
sing a song of sixpence and of a no-life life
ask yourself it it's too late and how long
you'd have to hide and about the job of just enough
sweaters folded footsteps only your own
pansies in the window box plate bowl spoon
scissors in every drawer the newest Anna Karenina
only one lock on the door one key
the soothing order of disorder and of disambiguation