Susan Rich's Writings
View Susan’s Books | Read Susan’s other writings below.
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Poem
Sep.05.2008
Caffiene Destiny
You call and offer me June strawberries with organic cream; drive over with two dishes balanced between your knees. Steering, shifting, you negotiate bridges, freeways, traffic circles to appear undeterred by my front door.
Tilikum, Totem, Tristar— From blue glass bowls we lift this moment to our lips, deftly fix the berries on our tongues; we taste...
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Poem
Sep.05.2008
Caffiene Destiny
Falls deep into disarray; dishes cleansed by the cat's rough tongue,
her whiskers skate along the dinner plate's gray rim; soon pyramids of underwear
rise above the hallway's long horizon. Days I stay indoors answering to no one.
Seasons change, change back, unfinished, rooms, half-painted, hold no door frames.
Light bulbs die, the wood stove's...
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Poem
Sep.05.2008
Caffiene Destiny
My mother believed in the strength of labor over love, she'd torture each microbe, disappear dust on two bent knees bearing down on a faux marble floor.
And when it was scrubbed beyond question, past reason, she'd call Su—san, handing me a faded rag and ancient tin of something cool as resin:
A blue-green glaze to brush across the burnished forms of...
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Poem
Sep.05.2008
Umbrella
I long to live as a lighthouse keeper ensconced
on the lip of this world
my needs complete as lamp fuel, raincoat, flour.
I'll wake at ease with the infinite
blue, silver, and mottled gold; in ocean storms rising;
awash in cool luminescence
claiming the light- house life as my own.
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Poem
Sep.05.2008
On balconies safer than passport pages
bright, hard blossoms light up bullet worn apartments. Amidst the cracks
from mortar shells-begonias-
Rex Begonias: the commonly grown, taken for granted,
impossible to kill- flowers are flourishing.
They work in the dirt.
While no one else in Europe or America interferes,
like a strong neighbor, the Rex Begonia is there-...
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About Susan
A transplanted Bostonian, Susan Rich is the winner of the PEN USA Poetry Award as well as the Peace Corps Writers Poetry Award for The Cartographer's Tongue: Poems of the World, (White Pine Press, 2000). Her book, Cures Include Travel came out from White Pine...
Connections
Causes Susan Rich Supports
Doctors Without Borders; Amnesty International, Oxfam America, Barack Obama , Whit Press
Susan is a fan of
