I’ve known coffins coming through and high heels, shoeless men. They carry their own mythologies. They’re aware of a galaxy of knives they used to cut whatever they cut—fibrous or kneaded. Each memory they carry has an underbelly. Each acorn a tree. We alleys can link one side of a street or idea to another. Can punctuate and invent a persona unlike any other alley. That’s me, a windpipe of trash bins and tiaras and the song of a nightingale. I’m fickle. I’m push and shove. I’m a clock of figures and witness. Over and out, from this space to another, feeling the needled rain, the scabs, the shit-faced lover and splayed centipede. I don’t have legs, so I feel lopsided, some days wishing for a lollipop. Other days I’m like a washboard, using Boraxo when what I really want is a moonscape under which I’m wanting hanky-panky with a saxophone as my backdrop. Thinking of crows, I think of absence. It does not make the heart grow fonder. I’m a morgue of dead birds that flew into the skyscraper windows. I opt for the loveseat someone tossed and sleep it off in the rain.
–
Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poets’ Laureate award. Books include Crossings; The Inspired Poet; What We Bury Changes the Ground; and Other Voices. More than 400 poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Poet Lore, Margie, Nimrod, Rattle and others. She taught at Highline College and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.