List Poem Models

Every Thing a While
--Susan Firer

Clothespins, soirees, coldcuts, planets,
Pillsbury flowers, pedal pushers, grease monkeys,
Kleenex flowers, white earmuffs, Zwieback,
gray & chrome dachshund-shaped Electroluxes,
Godpots, dick flames, word cabinetry,
Zippo flowers, thunderworms, red lipstick,
lily drop soup, skirts with pockets, fogdogs,
bunkum, glowbowling, sea butterflies,
pollen sacs, cosmological effects,
the newdeadborn, the uncle sky,
the eye in the heart, the heart in the hand,
Chinese operas, west sky Venus, garters,
horoscopy, the Contraception Museum,
Tootsie Roll Pops, relic walls, grackles,
immigrant flowers' star vowels, immigrant
birds, death certificates' filigreed frames,
juncos' algebraic flights, arborists' dreams,
movie popcorn rain in the afternoon,
a crow in a pumpkin, night high-
rise-Iit office windows, bridges
of moving light, gold lame downtowns,
spiritual careerism, leaf cassocks,
birdbaths, marsupials, slapping ghosts,
flat tires, quotation marks, fairy drinks,
the wild ride of cells, breaths' blue overcoats,
Jesus doing the hand jive, computers'
lunar nerves, UFOs' revolving doors,
brain stems, brain plates, brain storms,
bedclothes, wish bones, orange protractors of sun,
Siberian sage, scilla siberica, zafu
crescents. The sturdy materiality
of the memory bank, the cloud bank,
the buildings of words.

 

Let Go
--Diane Seuss

Unfasten your belt. Let your stomach out.
Let it lower. Let it grow. Unbraid the braid.
Shake your hair out. Blow your nose. Spit.
The pantyhose-off, pantygirdle-off, panties-off.
Cut the straps of your bra with a jackknife.
Say blah and blech and break plates.
Break them into the basement.
Throw out the old food. Precious jellies and jams,
precious watermelon pickle- flush them.
Razor blade the snake bite and let the poison out.
Say dah and duh and don't.
Pour the crap out of the vacuum cleaner bag.
Scatter the manure over the weeds and pull up
the rose bushes by the roots.
Burst the seedpods of milkweeds, unhinge
the snapdragons from their stems. Clip
the hedges down to the bone and burn
the new growth and the old growth together
on a bonfire. Throw your animal skin underwear
in there, too, the ones you wore in high school
before you had a soul. The elbow-high gloves,
the pumps dyed apricot to match the trim of the dress,
the crown, the dried corsage. Bible-pressed and sad,
burn them, burn them and yelp. Say yah. Say uh.
The old and new tampons, the old blue boxes of Kotex,
the hieroglyphic mattress pads, the family photographs
and the baby hair flattened in envelopes, butterfly collections,
the precious wings of the luna moth, and the pins, all the pins,
straight and safety and bobby and hat, the patterns,
the corduroy and velvet and unused bridesmaids' dresses,
the newspapers claiming victory and the newspapers claiming defeat,
the headless Venus and the armless Buddha
and the Pieta made of plaster and beads, the death masks of Egyptians
and the fingerbones of saints, the surgical staples and scars,
the umbilical cords saved in jars, fetal chickens and cow hearts
from old science projects, diaphragms, rubbers, old moans and new groans,
glances, romances, beauty and guilt, regret,
remorse, rebates and rejuvenations, east, west, south and north,
break through the cobwebs with a broom,
cut through the weaving-in-progress on the hand-made loom,
unfeather the loon and the voice of the loon,
dismember the stories, the sternness of fact, the howlings of dogs,
the screaming of cats, let the trains clack till they fall
in the sea, dismember the dandelion, unhoney the bee,
spit the seeds high of the apple and pear,
uncover the caskets, throw the bones in the air
throw the bones in the air
throw the bones in the air
and cut off your hair.

The Beautiful Pain of Too Much
--Susan Firer

In the scruffle tremble
world my heart is
cake batter. The world rattles
like a piggy bank.
Have you remembered
why you're here?
In birdheaven humans wake
in their dark houses
& lean out opened windows
to choir sing mornings to nested birds.
I am trying to tell you something
about night games,
about the soul's regattas,
and the weight of skin.
Have you ever done anything beautiful?
Beautiful as a man carrying
a French horn ? My heart
closes like an automatic garage door,
opens like a drawbridge.
We are so perfect,
so many want pretty.
We are jewel eaters,
children in bright swimming
suits crucifix falling
into Windex blue days.
Priestesses of Incan temples
wore gold sunflower medallions.
We eat sunflowers.
sit on chairs upholstered
with stars. Can you only balance
alone? In the depathologizing quiet,
in the pharmacology of lake,
disks of us fall, human foliose.
into the earth's green pleats.
Our spines light with fireflies.
Our hands memorize.
The body memorizes
the places of rapture,
the assemblies of devotions:
the music of cold
trees, a lisp of ice.
the butterfly forest
(Have you ever put a butterfly
in your mouth?), the aspirin sun,
our time-lapse bodies,
snow fences blown wild
with the foreign language of leaves.
The memorizing foot repeatedly
puts its steps of divination
to the fragrant dreaming earth.