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Conditions for an Agreement


All right, I said,
as petals sheared from the peony in the glass vase,
but I wasn't the one that started this.

Under the leaf a green worm
eats his way toward the fringed heart,
a canker  — unnoticed
until the damage has been done.

All right, I said,
gathering scallops of cast-off color,
but I am still afraid of promises.

Where the stem is cut
the sap seals and pinches brown,
its loss an ache,
an absence, a terror of mourning.

All right, I said,
sailing petals one by one from the balcony
into the darkened shaft of evening.

When afterimage is as real as image,
when the canker no longer bites,
and stem has forgotten the weight
of the flower,

only then, I said,
will it be all right to cast my rings into the void
and come there to meet you.





Spell Against Leaving


The bezoar,
tourmaline formed by the waste of wild lynx,
a golden anvil,
mayfly nymph with vestigial wing:
I release them all
now that I am roused
and sliding from the angle of repose.

Tasting your salt on my skin,
inhaling your scent on the burnout gown,
I lie here
as night-clamor fades
to whisper of morning,
and I am listening,
listening but will not open my eyes.

SUSAN TERRIS'S Susan Terris' new collection of poetry FIRE IS FAVORABLE TO THE DREAMER will be published by Cedar Hill Publications in 2002.  Other recent books include CURVED SPACE (La Jolla Poets Press); EYE OF THE HOLOCAUST (Arctos Press); ANGELS OF BATAAN (Pudding House Publications); and Nell's Quilt
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Her journal publications include The Antioch Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Ploughshares, Missouri Review, Nimrod, Southern California Anthology, and Rattapallax.  

On-line she has had work (partial listing) in Recursive Angel, Conspire, Web Del Sol, Perihelion, Poetry Daily, New Works Review, The Blue Penny Quarterly, Blue Moon Review, In Vivo, Switched-on Gutenberg, PoetryMagazine.com, PoetryBay, On the Page, Ariga:Visions, Zero City, Wise Women's Web, & Zuzu's Petals.

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